TYRINGHAM (TERINGHAM), William (1618-85), of Tyringham, Bucks.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1660-1690, ed. B.D. Henning, 1983
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

22 Aug. 1660

Family and Education

bap. 12 Oct. 1618, 5th but 4th surv. s. of Sir Thomas Tyringham (d.1637) of Tyringham by Frances, da. of Sir Thomas Gorges of Longford Castle, Wilts. educ. Exeter, Oxf. 1635; I. Temple 1636. m. (1) Elizabeth, da. of George Miller of Swallowfield, Berks., wid. of Henry Winchcombe of Bucklebury, Berks., 2da.; (2) by 1655, Sarah (d. 1679), wid. of James Martin, Fishmonger, of London and Putney, Surr., 1da. suc. bro. 1645; KB 23 Apr. 1661.1

Offices Held

Cornet 1640, capt. (royalist) 1643, col. by 1646.2

J.p. Bucks. July 1660-d., dep. lt. c. Aug. 1660-d.; commr. for assessment, Bucks. Sept. 1660-80, Surr. 1663-74, 1679-80, loyal and indigent officers, Bucks. 1662, corporations 1662-3; bailiff, Bedford level 1663-5, 1667-9, conservator 1665-7, 1669-79; commr. for recusants, Bucks. 1675.3

Gent. of the privy chamber 1668-85.4

Biography

Tyringham’s Tyringham’s ancestors held the village from which they took their name in the reign of King John and represented the county in the Model Parliament. The family was strongly royalist during the Civil War. In 1645 Tyringham succeeded to an estate encumbered with mortgages totalling £20,000. He petitioned in 1646 to compound for his delinquency, but his fine of £100, with a further £891 imposed on his deceased brother, was not paid until 1651. He was justly suspected of royalist conspiracy during the Interregnum, and taken into custody in 1658, but soon released. He was to have commanded the Buckinghamshire rising in 1659, but the Royalists made no move, and he was rearrested in August.5

As a Cavalier, Tyringham was ineligible at the general election of 1660, but he was returned for Buckinghamshire at a by-election. He left no trace on the records of the Convention. He apparently considered contesting the borough seat in 1661 when John Dormer transferred his votes to him, but he decided to stand again for the county. Reelected after a close contest, he was made a knight of the Bath at the coronation, and became a moderately active Member of the Cavalier Parliament. He was appointed to 77 committees, the majority being of secondary importance, but made no recorded speeches. A ‘country Cavalier’, he championed the dispossessed royalist Adventurers in the Bedford level against his cousin Lord Gorges (Richard Gorges), who had become surveyor-general to the new Adventurers during the Interregnum. On 14 May 1662 the House was warned of ‘a mischief like to ensue’ between Tyringham and Gorges, seconded respectively by Samuel Sandys I and Thomas Chicheley, and they were all ordered to attend the King ‘to give him satisfaction touching the difference’. In 1663 he was named to the committee to peruse the bill for draining the Bedford level and to determine the effects of the clause making the lands of the Adventurers liable for sale for non-payment of taxes. In the same year he was appointed to the committee on the additional bill for the relief of the loyal and indigent officers. He took no part in the Clarendon Code, but helped to recommend remedies for the unlawful meetings of dissenters and to consider the additional corporations bill in 1664. He was appointed to two further committees on the Bedford level, and on 14 Jan. 1667, together with Sandys, Robert Phelips, and other Adventurers, he presented a petition to the House. A bill to ascertain taxes in part of the Bedford level was read, and passed despite the opposition of Gorges and Chicheley.6

After the fall of Clarendon, Tyringham served on the inquiries into the miscarriages of the war and the sale of Dunkirk. ‘A handsome, civil and well-bred gentleman’, and the last heir male of his ancient family, he did not attempt to extricate himself from his financial difficulties by reducing his expenditure. He maintained a coach and six contrary to statute and obtained protection from his creditors by a post at Court. Control of the ancestral estate passed to Edward Backwell, whose son later married Tyringham’s daughter. Sir Thomas Osborne included him in 1669 among those who had usually voted for supply. In his only tellership, on 10 Apr. 1671, he opposed a proviso to prevent malicious and vexatious informations to the bill imposing a duty on legal proceedings. He was given an excise pension of £300 p.a. in 1675, and assigned to Osborne (now Lord Treasurer Danby) in the working lists. His reliability as a government supporter was apparently in doubt in 1676, though Sir Richard Wiseman intended to obtain from him an introduction to his absentee colleague, Sir William Bowyer Shaftesbury marked him ‘doubly vile’ in 1677, and his name appeared on the court list of government supporters in 1678. On 1 June, he complained of the distraint of one of his coach horses, but privilege was denied when breach of the statute was proved. Although he was not blacklisted in the ‘unanimous club’, he is unlikely to have stood again, and was buried at Tyringham on 6 Aug. 1685.7

Ref Volumes: 1660-1690

Authors: M. W. Helms / Leonard Naylor / Geoffrey Jaggar

Notes

  • 1. St. Martin in the Fields (Harl. Soc. Reg. xxv), 53; Lipscomb, Bucks. iv. 374; Burke, Gentry (1952), 2575; Putney Par. Reg. (Surrey Par. Reg. Soc. ii), 46; PCC 245 Grey; VCH Bucks. iv. 483.
  • 2. Hector Brit. (Cam. Soc. ser. 3, xviii), 75; Jnl. Army Hist. Res. iv. 196; List of Officers Claiming (1663), 133.
  • 3. Huntington Lib. Stowe mss, 2/452; S. Wells, Drainage of Bedford Level, i. 456-9.
  • 4. Carlisle, Privy Chamber, 182, 197.
  • 5. Lipscomb, iv. 373; Cal. Comm. Comp. 935-6; Surr. Arch. Colls. xiv. 189; CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 93; 1659-60, pp. 112, 125; D. Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 266.
  • 6. BL M636/17, Smith to Verney, 27 Dec. 1660; CJ, viii. 429, 430.
  • 7. Hector Brit. 75; Grey, vi. 92; VCH Bucks. iv. 483; CJ, ix. 486, 491, 496; Lipscomb, iv. 37.