WENMAN, Sir Francis (1599-1640), of Caswell, Oxon.

Although he had made little recorded contribution to the previous Parliament, Wenman had much to commend him to county electors in March 1640.13HP Commons 1604-1629. While not especially wealthy, from childhood he had moved in elevated circles and as time went on he apparently gained a reputation both locally and at court as an able public man. Connections through his maternal kin, the Gooderes of Polesworth, like the Warwickshire Rainsfords and diplomat Sir Francis Nethersole† (whom he also encountered at Trinity College, Cambridge), were complemented by contacts among similarly intellectually gifted gentry in Oxfordshire and beyond.14CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 491; 1631-3, p. 10; Warws. RO, DR(B)16/30; Coventry City Archives, PA/101/40/2; HMC Hastings i. 374. Through his wife Wenman became close to the writer and traveller George Sandys; through Wenman Sandys became an associate of the literati who gravitated to the house of Wenman’s neighbour Lucius Cary*, 2nd Viscount Falkland, at Great Tew.15‘George Sandys’, Oxford DNB. Edward Hyde*, who listed Falkland and Wenman first and second among his ‘most intimate friends’ of the 1630s, accorded the latter ‘great authority’ both inside and outside the Great Tew circle. Wenman

was a man of great sharpness of understanding, and of a piercing judgement; no man better understood the affections and temper of the kingdom, or indeed the nature of the nation, or discerned farther the consequence of counsels, and with what success they were like to be attended.16Clarendon, Life (1760), 29, 35-6.

A magistrate from 1629, in the 1630s Wenman also held other local office.17C231/5, p. 12; C181/4, f. 179; V.J. Watney, Cornbury and the Forest of Wychwood (1910), 227. In 1636 he was one of 40 county leaders who declined to pay Ship Money.18CSP Dom. 1636-7, p. 210. None the less, although he apparently possessed in abundance qualities requisite for active and effective public employment, according to Hyde his ambition was sapped by chronic ill-health: ‘a kind of laziness of mind … disinclined him for business’.19Clarendon, Life, 36. It is conceivable that, before he took his seat in the Commons in April 1640, he was already suffering from an illness expected to be terminal. His will of 30 March says nothing of his physical state, but appears to anticipate inheritance by his son Samuel, then aged about 15, while still a minor. The commendation of Samuel to the patronage of Lucy Hay, countess of Carlisle, and Henry Rich†, 1st earl of Holland, raises the possibility that Wenman preferred courtiers of independent mind; if the naming of Falkland and Sir John Danvers* as overseers denotes more than simple friendship, then it indicates that he was a fellow traveller with those who at that juncture were critical of royal policy.20PROB11/185/275.

Wenman made no recorded contribution to the Short Parliament, to which he was again returned for Oxfordshire with James Fiennes*, his partner of 1628. He died on 26 June.21C142/593/37. Samuel, who had been admitted to Magdalen College, Oxford, in April 1638 aged only 13, and who was described by Hyde as ‘a young man of extraordinary parts and expectation’, was killed in royalist service in 1644.22Clarendon, Hist. iii. 416; Witney par. reg.; Al. Ox. His younger brother Francis Wenman†, later 1st baronet, succeeded to the estate and followed their father in taking a county seat in 1664, but made similarly little impact in the House.23HoP Commons 1660-1690.