WYNDHAM, William (1634-83), of Orchard Wyndham, St Decumans, Som.

Originally a Norfolk family, the senior line of the Wyndhams had acquired lands at St Decumans in Somerset by marriage in the early sixteenth century and made their house there, Orchard Wyndham, their principal seat. This MP was a second cousin once removed to Edmund* and Francis Wyndham, from a junior branch at Kentsford, also at St Decumans. The patriarch of the family when William was born in 1634 was his grandfather, Sir John Wyndham. During the first half of the 1640s Sir John, now in his eighties, tried to steer a judicious course through the turmoil of the civil war. Although he probably favoured Parliament, Somerset was occupied between 1643 and 1645 by the royalists. His royalist kinsman, Francis Wyndham, regarded him as sufficiently suspect that in June 1644 he raided Orchard Wyndham and looted goods alleged to be worth at least £3,000.23HMC 4th Rep. 296. Sir John died on 1 April the following year, leaving most of his estates to his eldest son, John.24PROB11/195/184; Som. RO, DD/WY/3/G/115-16. To manage money set aside for his daughters’ portions, the latter had previously appointed trustees, headed by his brother-in-law Sir Ralph Hopton*.25Som. RO, DD/WY/3/G/112. In June 1646, with Hopton in exile and excluded from the possibility of pardon, John Wyndham cancelled those arrangements.26Som. RO, DD/WY/3/G/120. He had never enjoyed the best of health and died in early 1649.

William, his eldest son, was then still only 15. His immediate inheritance was therefore no more than his father’s books, his horses and £20, but his father had however taken care to nominated John Courtney, John Harris I*, John Gifford and Thomas Moore* to manage the family estates until William came of age.27PROB11/210/439; Som. RO, DD/WY/3/G/124. Within weeks he was sent off to London to study law at Lincoln’s Inn.28LI Admiss. i. 260. In November 1650 a pass to allow him and a tutor to travel abroad was obtained from the council of state, followed by a second pass for himself and two companions three months later.29CSP Dom. 1650, p. 565; 1651, p. 519. He had returned by May 1653, when he entered into an agreement with Anthony Hungerford* to marry Hungerford’s daughter, Frances. The wedding took place the following month. In return for a dowry from Hungerford of £5,000, Wyndham promised his wife a jointure of £400 a year.30Som. RO, DD/WY/4/I/126. Three years later he transferred some of his lands to the Hungerfords as a guarantee that this jointure would be paid.31Som. RO, DD/WY/4/I/135. At the same time he also transferred other lands into the hands of third parties.32Som. RO, DD/WY/4/I/127-8, 130-4. This may be evidence that his finances were becoming overstretched.

In 1656 Wyndham was still only in his early twenties and had not yet held any county offices. Even so, he was now elected as one of the Somerset MPs for the second protectoral Parliament. The 1,550 votes he received in the county election held at Wells on 20 August 1656 gave him tenth place in the poll for the 11 available seats.33Som. Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 76-7. Most of Wyndham’s known activity during his first session at Westminster was unremarkable. As early as 22 September he was included on the delegation sent to ask the lord protector to agree to a public fast and he was later named to the committees to consider the cases of Edward Scott (22 Dec.), Charles Stanley, 8th earl of Derby (22 Dec.) and the granting of Irish lands to John Blackwell* (31 Dec.).34CJ vii. 426b, 473a, 474b, 477b. In the meantime, he had probably spent two weeks during October 1656 away from Westminster.35CJ vii. 437b. But he played one crucial role in the most important matter considered by the 1656 Parliament during its earliest months. On 25 December John Disbrowe*, the major-general whose province included Somerset and who was one of the other Somerset MPs, asked permission to introduce the bill to establish the decimation tax on former royalists as the permanent source of funding for the county militias. This was widely viewed as an attempt by the major-generals to entrench their positions. In a thin House (because it was Christmas Day), Disbrowe’s proposal that this bill be introduced was accepted by 88 votes to 63. Wyndham and Sir John Hobart* were the tellers for the noes.36CJ vii. 475a. This strongly suggests that Wyndham shared the views of the many who had come to distrust and dislike the major-generals. It may even be that he had been elected four months earlier specifically by those Somerset voters who loathed Disbrowe. However, having opposed the introduction of the bill, Wyndham was probably not around to see it debated on 7 January and then defeated on 29 January. On 5 January the Taunton MP, Thomas Gorges*, obtained permission for Wyndham to take a second period of absence in the country.37CJ vii. 479b; Burton’s Diary, i. 303-4. Just how long this absence lasted is impossible to say. Wyndham left no trace in the records of this Parliament over the next six months.

The one event involving him from this period that did leave a record took place in Somerset. In April 1657 the local magistrates gathered evidence against one of his neighbours, Nicholas Luckis. Having encountered him on the highway, Luckis was accused of calling Wyndham a ‘rogue’ and threatening to kill his dogs if he tried to hunt on his land.38QS Recs. Som. Commonwealth, 343. It may not have been a coincidence that the previous month Wyndham had been among the men, mostly from well-established county families, added to the Somerset commission of the peace.39C231/6, p. 360.

Wyndham resumed his seat when Parliament reassembled in late January 1658. On 28 January he was included on the committee appointed to ask Cromwell to print the speech he had delivered to the two Houses three days earlier.40CJ vii. 589a. The following day he was a teller for the noes in the division on whether to vote on the proposal that the Commons meet as a grand committee the following morning to consider the message from the Other House about appointing a day of humiliation.41CJ vii. 589b-590a; Burton’s Diary, ii. 394. (The message had been delivered by his uncle, Sir Hugh Wyndham, one of the judges of common pleas.) For all his probable opposition to the major-generals, Wyndham’s attitude towards the protectorate was far from hostile and the lord protector seems to have recognised in him a young man whose support could be cultivated. One of Cromwell’s final acts was to reward Wyndham on 28 August 1658 with the grant of a baronetcy, just one of twelve such honours awarded by the protector.42Sheffield Archives, EM 1284(c); CB iii. 7. One press report at the time explained that Wyndham was ‘a person of a very noble extraction, of much merit, and of a high esteem in his country’.43Publick Intelligencer no. 140 (23-30 Aug. 1658), 784.

That ‘high esteem’ did not, however, guarantee him a seat in the next Parliament. The 1659 elections presented Wyndham with greater problems than those three years earlier. The return to the old franchises ruled out the option of standing again for one of the county seats. In January 1659, the mayor of Taunton, Hugh Gunston, wrote to Wyndham to inform him that he had been elected as their new MP the previous day. Apparently this was news to Wyndham.44Som. RO, DD/WY/20/63. What Gunston did not mention was that the election was disputed. His return had named Wyndham and Thomas Gorges, while a rival return named John Palmer* and Richard Bovett. Wyndham was allowed to take his seat on 27 January and he was appointed to the committee for elections and privileges the following day.45CJ vii. 594b. The committee heard evidence relating to the disputed return on 26 March and three days later found in favour of Wyndham and Gorges.46Burton’s Diary, iv. 276, 299. The Commons concurred with this decision on 4 April. In a division on whether to hear a petition from Gunston, Wyndham was a teller for the yeas and Gorges for the noes. Wyndham’s side won the vote, although, having heard the petition, the Commons then decided that Gunston should instead seek any redress in the law courts.47CJ vii. 624b-625a. His preoccupation with this election dispute seems to have limited Wyndham’s participation in other business in this Parliament. On 16 March he had spoken in the debate about the imprisonment of Robert Overton, the army officer who had been held since 1654 under suspicion of republican plotting against the protectorate. Wyndham seems to have joined with Thomas Bristow* in voicing the view that other prisoners had been imprisoned on equally questionable grounds.48Burton’s Diary, iv. 153. He was also named to the committee considering the case of Henry Howard, 23rd earl of Arundel (8 Apr.).49CJ vii. 632a.

Wyndham was re-elected as MP for Taunton for the Convention in 1660 and he also represented that constituency in the 1661 Parliament. The return of Charles II nullified his existing baronetcy, but the king first knighted him and then granted him a new baronetcy.50CB iii. 238. Any Cromwellian sympathies he had once had were quickly suppressed and throughout his time in the Cavalier Parliament Wyndham was a consistent, if rather quiescent, supporter of the court. He died in 1683 and was succeeded by his only surviving son, Sir Edward†, 2nd bt.51St Decumans par. reg.; Collinson, Som. iii. 495; CSP Dom. 1683-4, p. 124; PROB11/377/467; PROB11/378/129; Som. RO, DD/WY/4/I/142; HP Commons 1660-1690. The epitaph erected in his memory in the church at St Decumans declared that Sir William had ‘heroically trod in the steps of his ancestors in their faithful and important services to the crown’, and that, like the Roman republican hero, Marcus Curtius, he had ‘devoted himself and his very weighty interest to the closing [of] the dreadful breach of the late monstrous divisions’.52Collinson, Som. iii. 495. Such extravagant praise actually contained an element of truth, for, at the very least, Wyndham had represented effortless continuity in Somerset politics between the protectorate and the Restoration.