WINDEBANKE, Thomas (1612-?bef. 1669)

Windebanke doubtless owed his election to the Short Parliament to his father’s contacts and the desire of the privy council to have friends in the Commons. His embryonic parliamentary career was evidently stifled by those same associations.

Following family tradition, Windebanke had been carefully prepared for government office. He may have been appointed a gentleman of the privy chamber as early as 1627, two years before his entry to university.16CB. If so, it was most probably through the growing influence of his father’s old friend, William Laud, shortly to become bishop of London. The connection may likewise have accelerated the passage in September 1631 of a grant in reversion of a clerkship of the signet, a position held by both his grandfather and his father.17CSP Dom. 1631-3, p. 155; Laud, Works, vii. 41–2. Thomas can only have been an irregular attender at court in these years. Having moved in March 1633 from Laud’s old college in Oxford to Lincoln’s Inn, by May 1634 he seems to have been comfortably established in the Loire valley, perfecting his French and ostentatiously entertaining his friends.18Al. Ox.; L. Inn Admiss. i. 220; CSP Dom. 1633-4, pp. 17, 20, 55, 58, 75, 128, 169, 183. He moved on to Madrid, arriving about the end of November.19CSP Dom. 1633-4, p. 350. There he stayed for the next 16 months, a very useful contact for a father engaged in delicate covert negotiations with the Spanish government.20CSP Dom. 1634-5, p. 521; 1635, pp. 336, 423, 553-4, 610; 1635-6, pp. 159, 181, 371, 394; CCSP i. 91. In Italy from April 1636, he had some opportunity for parallel employment in Rome.21CCSP i. 109, 116; Warws. RO, CR 2017/C5/35; CSP Dom. 1636-7, pp. 492, 503; 1637, p. 219. At some point before September that year he also spent time in the service of the leading Catholic peer Thomas Howard, 21st earl of Arundel, another hispanophile.22CCSP i. 109.

A share in a brewing monopoly was obtained for Windebanke in advance of his return to England in June 1637, and he seems almost immediately to have taken up or resumed his places at the signet office and in the privy chamber.23CSP Dom. 1636-7, p. 404. Probably that year Charles I wrote to a Bedfordshire gentleman commending Thomas as a suitable bridegroom for his daughter on the grounds not just of birth and education but also of proximity to the king in service, being a likely means of improving his fortune.24CSP Dom. 1637-8, p. 123. This match does not seem to have taken place.25CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 585. Having survived a severe attack of smallpox in the autumn of 1638, Windebanke was sent north to join the king’s army in April 1639 in his capacity as a waiting gentleman.26CCSP i. 159; CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 617; 1639, p. 27. Passing quickly through York, by 19 April he was in uniform with cavalry at Selby, and by June he was part of Charles’s lifeguard at Berwick.27CSP Dom. 1639, pp. 36, 47, 48, 60, 270. Writing to his cousin Robert Reade, assistant to Secretary Windebanke, he depicted dismal conditions in the lines and employed lengthy and colourful invective against the rebellious Scots.28CSP Dom. 1639, pp. 341-2. In late November he was despatched again, this time to France, armed with letters seeking (among other objectives) the release of the elector palatine from detention in Paris. Pro-French privy councillor Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland, expressed to his friend ambassador Robert Sidney, 2nd earl of Leicester, some scepticism over the ‘little’ envoy, but undertook to encourage him in the belief that he could be useful; with £600 in expenses he had means to make an impression.29HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 207, 225, 244; CSP Dom. 1639-40, pp. 147-8, 158, 159, 364; 1640, p. 80.

Since Windebanke came home only in the second half of April 1640, it seems clear that he had little part in procuring his election to the Parliament that met on the 13th. One of his promoters in Wiltshire may have been his father’s long-standing ally on the privy council, Francis Cottington†, 1st Baron Cottington: although his estate at Fonthill Gifford was hardly near Wootton Bassett, he was a force in elections in the county.30‘Francis Cottington’, Oxford DNB. Once tardily at Westminster, Windebanke made little obvious contribution to business. During a short session in which his father was a key figure, he had only one committee nomination (2 May, to consider petitions on second elections) and made no recorded speeches.31CJ ii. 18b. It is conceivable, however, that he had a supporting role behind the scenes.

Windebanke’s movements over the summer of 1640 are unknown. It is not clear whether he aspired to a seat in Parliament in the autumn, but if he was a candidate, the same receding influence that meant Sir Francis himself had to look beyond Oxford University, his constituency of the spring, may explain Thomas’s failure to gain election. When Sir Francis and his nephew Robert Reade fled across the Channel in early December, Thomas remained behind, taking advantage of his place at court to lobby the king on behalf of the departed secretary and his arrears of allowances.32CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 299-300, 312-5, 420, 427, 465-7, 562-3, 584. He also kept his eye on Parliament’s proceedings against the fugitives and seems to have obtained Charles’ modifications to a petition to the Houses from Sir Francis – although he evidently feared to present this piece of apologetics himself, delivering it on 13 August 1641 to an intermediary.33CSP Dom. 1641-3, pp. 8-9, 39-40, 58, 59, 66, 77, 86, 87. It is unclear whether he sufficiently overcame family fears of making themselves conspicuous to make the trip to France planned to take place soon afterwards.34CSP Dom. 1641-3, pp. 87, 99. He was certainly in England in the winter and spring of 1641-2, entrusted by Sir Francis with the care of Lady Windebanke and their estates; it was envisaged that he would enlist assistance from his brother-in-law and fellow alumnus of St John’s College Thomas Turner, nominated dean of Rochester by the king in February 1642.35CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 213; Longleat House, PO/vol II, ff. 66-7; Bodl. Rawl. D.390, f. 20; ‘Thomas Turner’, Oxford DNB. Probably before the mid-1640s he married Anne Grymes of Suffolk.36CB; N and Q 8th ser. i. 23-4.

Appointed to the Berkshire and Wiltshire commissions of peace on 10 June 1642 in an attempt to stiffen royalist support, Windebanke (or one of his brothers) was reported to the Commons on 8 July for words allegedly spoken against John Pym*.37CJ ii. 651a; C231/5, p. 528. In the early years of the war it is likely that Thomas usually remained close to the king, exercising his office as a clerk of the signet, rather than taking a full military commission like his next brother Francis.38P. R. Newman, Royalist Officers in England and Wales, 1642-1660 (New York, 1981), 418. At Exeter with royalist forces in May 1644, Thomas was created baronet at Oxford in November 1645, perhaps partly as a gesture of reconciliation after the (unusually harsh) death sentence imposed on Francis by the king for the surrender of Bletchingdon House that April.39CSP Dom. 1644, p. 167; Docquets Letters Patent ed. Black, i. 278; Newman, Royalist Officers, 418; Warburton, Mems. of Prince Rupert, iii. 79. As a gentleman of the privy chamber present at the surrender of Oxford, in August 1646 Sir Thomas sought to compound on the Oxford Articles.40CCC 1467. Sequestration proceedings had begun the previous October but had stalled in the confusion over whether Haines Hill was the responsibility of Wiltshire or Berkshire commissioners.41CAM 614. Further confusion appeared to ensue over exactly when Sir Francis (who died on 1 Sep. 1646) had devolved his estates to his son and over the religion and whereabouts of Sir Thomas himself – recorded in December (in the context of his possession of the clerkship of the signet) as not only a Catholic but also beyond the seas.42CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 500. In fact Windebanke appears to have remained with the king after the latter’s departure from Newcastle.43CSP Dom. 1651, p.146. After the committee at Goldsmiths’ Hall refused him leave to compound on 11 March 1647, Windebanke petitioned the House of Lords (read 25 Mar.) that the estates had been conveyed to him in 1641, at which time Parliament had not impeached his father. He further stated that he had taken the Covenant and the Negative Oath.44LJ ix. 103A, 104b. The matter was not finally settled until July 1648, when following several changes of policy, his fine was fixed at £810.45Add. 22034B, ff. 24v, 44v, 45v; CCC 1467-8; LJ x. 199a and b.

In 1650 Windebanke belatedly obtained administration of his father’s will.46PCC Admons. 1649-54 (BRS lxviii), 406. Thereafter he seems to have gone abroad for the last time. In about 1655 he was in Paris, perhaps in company with privy councillor William Cavendish†, 1st marquess of Newcastle; he appears to have temporarily withdrawn from his clerkship of the signet by the time Sir John Nicholas was sworn in Cologne that year.47TSP iv. 661; CSP Dom. Addenda 1660-85, p. 471. It may have been he who, sometimes using the name Thomas Parsons, was the author of letters containing royalist intelligence written from Calais and Boulogne to one Thomas Jones between April and June 1656 and addressed to The Wheatsheaf in Drury Lane. Intercepted for John Thurloe* and credited to ‘Mr Windebanke’ they are not especially illuminating.48TSP iv. 710, 718, 754; v. 31, 141-2. The former MP may also have been the French resident and elective francophone Windebanke who was reported to Edward Hyde* in June 1657 to be employing the morally dubious Mr Nicholas White as his agent.49CCSP iii. 312. He was certainly in Paris in July 1658 receiving commands via Sir Richard Browne from Secretary Windebanke’s onetime assistant Sir Edward Nicholas†, attendant on the exiled Charles.50Nicholas Pprs. iv. 65. That September he successfully recovered a debt by suing through the Paris parlement, while in October he reminded Charles of a promise of favour designed to ‘perfect a grace’ to an unexceptionable family.51CCSP iv. 69, 104-5.

Still living in June 1660, when he wrote from Paris to John Evelyn, Windebanke did not respond to summons issued in December 1660 and June 1661 inviting him to reclaim his office of clerk of the signet; a reversioner petitioned that he was a Catholic beyond the seas.52Add. 15858, f. 200; CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 445; 1661-2, p. 3. A Mr Windebanke was in royal service abroad in 1666, but this may have been the secretary’s third surviving son Christopher.53CCSP v. 543; Mems. of St Margaret’s Church, Westminster ed. A.M. Burke (1914), 93. Sir Thomas was dead by July 1669, if the Frances Windebanke licensed to marry that month was, as is likely, his daughter.54N and Q 8th ser. i. 23-4. His demise may have happened at any time over the previous nine years, but it looks as though he had decided in favour of permanent exile. At an unknown date soon after the Restoration Dr John Windebanke, the secretary’s fourth son, who had served both king and commonwealth in the 1650s, unsuccessfully petitioned for the place of gentleman of the privy chamber to which he had been appointed on the death of his brother.55CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 598; 1660-1, p. 18; Mems. of St Margaret’s Westminster, 98. It is not clear whether this was Sir Thomas or the executed Francis, who had been an usher to the prince of Wales, but on 25 September 1660 John took steps to recover the manor of Clewer, alienated by Sir Thomas to pay debts.56CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 275.

No further Windebankes sat in Parliament. Sir Thomas’s son Sir Francis (d. 1719), 2nd baronet, who was living at the Tower of London when he married in 1686, was later suspected of Jacobite sympathies.57N and Q 8th ser. i. 24. John Windebanke established himself at Guildford and became a justice of the peace for Surrey.58CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 561; 1672, p. 72; Al. Ox.