TYRWHITT, Sir Philip, 4th Bt. (1633-88), of Stainfield, Lincs.

Tyrwhitt’s ancestors had held land in Lincolnshire since the reign of Edward II and first represented the county in 1415. His father was in arms for the King in the Civil War and compounded for £3,488. Tyrwhitt succeeded to an estate of £2,500 p.a., and shortly afterwards defeated Sir Frescheville Holles at a by-election for Grimsby, probably on the Belasyse interest. But he was unseated in the following month, largely through his counsel’s mismanagement, without leaving any other trace on the records of the Cavalier Parliament. He was convicted of recusancy in or before 1674, and in 1676 his wife asked Stillingfleet and Burnet to engage in a debate with his spiritual advisers, for whom Colman the plotter took the lead. After Colman’s execution he went abroad with his wife and children, but James II granted him a dispensation from the Penal Laws in 1686 and restored him to local office. He gave affirmative answers to the lord lieutenant’s questions on repeal, but died on 6 July 1688, and was buried at Stainfield. His son, the fifth baronet, became an Anglican, and sat for Lincoln as a Whig, with one brief interval, from 1715 to 1734.4Cal. Comm. Comp. 954; Her. and Gen. ii. 125-6; PC2/64/435; Burnet, ii. 105; PC2/67/149; CSP Dom. 1686-7, pp. 66, 68.