Family and Education

b. c.1632, 4th but 3rd surv. s. of Sir Christopher Wandesford^† (d.1640) of Kirklington by Alice, da. of Sir Hewitt Osborne of Kiveton. educ. Bedale g.s. 1643; Chester g.s.; Richmond g.s.; Christ’s, Camb. 1649-51. unm.1

Offices Held

Commr. for corporations, Yorks. 1662-3, loyal and indigent officers 1662, hackney coaches, London and Westminster 1662-3, assessment, Mdx. 1663-d.2

Biography

Wandesford’s ancestors had held Kirklington since the 14th century. His father, who was returned for Richmond in 1625 and 1626, the first of the family to sit in Parliament, was appointed master of the rolls in Ireland by Lord Deputy Strafford. Although the family took no active part in the Civil War, the estates were sequestrated, and Wandesford’s annuity of £100 remained for some time unpaid. At school and university he ‘carried himself so obligingly that all persons of his acquaintance loved and admired in his sagacities’. But it was at Cambridge that he was first attacked by the illness which was to remain with him for the rest of his life. His sister wrote that he suffered

for several years since my brother George’s death, by reason of the want of the use of his understanding, which came to him by a deep melancholy seizing upon his spirit, partly for the loss of my said brother and the grief he took upon ill usage in detaining of his annuity. ... Yet did the God of mercy give him many intervals, in which time he was religiously disposed and constant in duties.

Despite the opposition of his mother he went to live in London, where he stayed in lodgings, suffering ‘great hardships and injuries for the want of some care over him’, until she made an annual allowance to a doctor to look after him.3

Wandesford was defeated for Richmond at the general election of 1661 but was awarded the seat when his opponent (Sir) Joseph Cradock was found to be disqualified as an ecclesiastic. A moderately active Member of the Cavalier Parliament, he was appointed to 21 committees, including those for the reversal of Strafford’s attainder and the additional bill for regulating corporations. He was also on the committee for the abortive bill to permit his sister-in-law to drain ‘certain oozy grounds’ in Hampshire granted her by the King. He was classed as a court dependant in 1664, although he is not known to have held any appointment or been in receipt of any pension from the crown. He died in his London lodgings on 2 Dec. 1664, aged 34, of ‘ague, joined with violent fits of the stone’.4

Ref Volumes: 1660-1690

Authors: P. A. Bolton / Paula Watson

Notes

• 1. Clay, Dugdale’s Vis. Yorks. i. 345; Thoroton Autobiog. (Surtees Soc. lxii), 40, 105.
• 2. HMC 8th Rep. pt. 1 (1881), 275; C181/7/151.
• 3. Thoroton Autobiog. 31, 36, 75-76, 105, 156-63; H. B. M’Call, Fam. Wandesford, 85-89.
• 4. Thoroton Autobiog. 162; CJ, viii. 541; M’Call, 88-89.