Titchfield Abbey and Place House, 1898, reprinted from ‘Hampshire Field Club Proceedings’) and Beaulieu was his house in Holborn, originally called Lincoln House because it was the town house of the bishops of Lincoln. From them it passed to the Earl of Warwick, and from him by exchange to Southampton, who named it Southampton House; eventually it passed with ‘the manor or grange of Bloomsbury,’ which Wriothesley acquired about 1542, into the Bedford family [see under Wriothesley, Thomas, fourth Earl of Southampton]. The fate of the earls of Southampton furnished Sir Henry Spelman with an illustration for his ‘History of Sacrilege.’
It is difficult to trace in Southampton's career any motive beyond that of self-aggrandisement. Trained in the Machiavellian school of Cromwell, he was without the definite aims and resolute will that to some extent redeemed his master's lack of principle. He won and retained Henry VIII's favour by his readiness in lending his abilities to the king's most nefarious designs, thereby inspiring an almost universal distrust. The theological conservatism with which he has always been credited was tempered by a strict regard to his own interests. Under Cromwell he was an enemy to bishops and a patron of reformers like Richard Taverner [q. v.] and Robert Talbot [q. v.]; he was thanked by another protestant for bringing him ‘out of the blind darkness of our old religion into the light of learning,’ and thought the ‘Bishops' Book’ of 1537 too reactionary. It was not until Cromwell had fallen and Henry had adopted a more conservative policy that Wriothesley returned to catholicism. Even then he sacrificed nothing in its cause, and few profited more extensively by the spoliation of the monasteries. He racked Anne Askew, it is true, but he also assisted to ruin the Howards, who alone might have stayed the Reformation after Henry's death. As lord chancellor he made no mark except by his severity towards the victims of Henry VIII, and his legal training seems to have consisted solely in his admission to Gray's Inn. Leland, however, wrote a eulogy of him (Encomia, p. 102), and he is credited with at least two irreproachable sentiments, namely, that he who sold justice sold the king; and that while force awed, justice governed the world.
There is some obscurity about the identity of Southampton's wife. He was married before 1533 to Jane, niece of Stephen Gardiner [q. v.], bishop of Winchester, and sister of the unfortunate Germain Gardiner, the bishop's private secretary, who was executed for denying the royal supremacy in 1543 (Letters and Papers, xii. i. 1209, ii. 47, 546, 634, 825). In all the pedigrees, however, his wife is styled ‘Jane daughter of William Cheney or Cheyne of Chesham Bois, Buckinghamshire,’ and there is no trace of his having had two wives. The inference is that the Countess of Southampton's mother married first a brother of Bishop Gardiner, and secondly William Cheney, being mother of Germain Gardiner by her first husband, and of the Countess of Southampton by her second. The countess survived until 15 Sept. 1574, and was buried at Titchfield, where her monument is still extant (Greenfield, p. 72). A manuscript book of prayers dedicated to her by Roger Welden, apart from its interest as a collection, contains some curious notes on the family history. It belonged to Sir Thomas Phillipps, and in 1895 to Bernard Quaritch. By his countess Wriothesley had issue a son, who died in August 1537 (ib. xii. ii. 546); another son, Anthony, who died about 1542 (the consolatory letter to Lady Wriothesley in Lansd. MS. 76, art. 81, apparently refers to this event, though it is endorsed ‘1594’), and his only surviving son and successor, Henry (see below). He had also five daughters: (1) Elizabeth, who was sufficiently old to have married Thomas Radcliffe (afterwards third Earl of Sussex) [q. v.] before 1550, and died without issue in 1554–5; (2) Mary, who married, first, William Shelley of Michelgrove, and secondly Richard, son of Sir Michael and grandson of Sir Richard Lyster [q. v.]; (3) Catherine, who married Thomas Cornwallis of East Horsley, Surrey, groom-porter to Queen Elizabeth; (4) Mabel, who married (Sir) Walter Sandys, grandson of William, baron Sandys of the Vyne [q. v.]; and (5) Anne, who was intended by her father to be the third wife of Sir John Wallop [q. v.] Wallop, however, died before the marriage took place, and Anne seems to have died unmarried (Trevelyan Papers, i. 206–16; Harl. MSS. 806 f. 45, 1529 f. 25, 2043 ff. 68–9).
Henry Wriothesley, second Earl of Southampton (1545–1581), only surviving son of the first earl, was christened on 24 April 1545 ‘at St. Andrewes in Holborne with great solempnity, the kinges Majestie godfather; the Erle of Essex deputy for the kinge; the Duke of Suffolke the other godfather; my Lady Mary godmother at the christninge; and the erle of Arundel godfather at the bishopinge’ (Wriothesley, Chron. i. 154). He was styled Baron Wriothesley from 1547 until 30 July 1550, when he succeeded as second Earl of Southampton. In August 1552 Edward VI was
