he used no exercise and could not be kept from eating.’ He himself had said a few days before his death, ‘Well, I have but three turtle dinners to come, and if I survive them I shall be immortal’ (Walpole to Mann, 1 Sept. 1763). Egremont's death put an end to the triumvirate. Though the king had quite made up his mind to get rid of them, and had already begun negotiations with Pitt, he showed great concern at the event. To Halifax, who went to announce the end (which took place at Egremont House, Piccadilly, at eight in the evening of 21 Aug. 1763), he ‘spoke in very high commendation of him;’ and in the two succeeding days spoke to Grenville ‘of nothing but Lord Egremont,’ making him give ‘a very particular account of his will’ (Grenville, Diary).
All estimates of Egremont's character agree in ascribing to him a large share of the inordinate pride of his maternal grandfather, ‘the proud Duke’ of Somerset. Walpole also adds to his bad qualities ill-nature, avarice, and an incapacity for speaking the truth. He denies him parliamentary ability and business capacity, but allows him humour and sense. Chesterfield thought him self-sufficient but incapable. Lord Stanhope's pronouncement that Egremont owed his advancement to his father's name rather than to his own abilities seems scarcely tenable in view of the fact that for the greater part of his career he was in close alliance with leading whigs.
Egremont married at St. George's, Hanover Square, on 12 March 1751 (N.S.), a reigning beauty, Alicia Maria, daughter of George Carpenter, second baron Carpenter of Killaghy, and sister of the first Earl of Tyrconnel. In 1761, when she was a lady of the bedchamber to Queen Charlotte, some verses were written in her honour by Lords Lyttelton and Hardwicke. In June 1767 she married, as her second husband, Count Bruhl, and survived till 1 June 1794. By her marriage with Egremont she had four sons and three daughters. Of the latter, Elizabeth married Henry Herbert (afterwards first Earl of Carnarvon); and Frances, Charles Marsham, first earl of Romney.
The eldest son, George O'Brien Wyndham, third earl of Egremont [q. v.], is separately noticed. Of the younger sons, Percy Charles Wyndham (1757–1833), secretary and clerk of the courts of Barbados, died unmarried; Charles William (1760–1828) left no issue; William Frederick (1763–1828) was twice married: first to a natural daughter of Lord Baltimore, and secondly to Julia de Smorzewska, comtesse de Spyterki; the eldest son by the first wife succeeded his uncle as fourth earl of Egremont. A portrait of Egremont, engraved after E. Harding, is at Petworth, where is also a painting by Hudson, engraved by Arkell, of the countess and one of her sons.
[Burke's Extinct Peerage; Doyle's Official Baronage; G. E. C[okayne]'s Peerage; Gent. Mag. 1763, p. 415; Harris's Life of Hardwicke, iii. 240–1, 258–9, 268, 310, 313, 320, 326, 350–2, 369 et seq.; Grenville Papers, vols. i. and ii.; Bedford Corresp. vol. iii. passim; Walpole's Mem. of George II, i. 80, iii. 2, of George III (Barker), i. 43, 65, 156, ii. 215, 219, 224, and Letters (Cunningham), vols. i–iv. passim; Bishop Newton's Life and Works, i. 68, 89; Chesterfield's Corresp. (1845), ii. 478, iv. 368; Albemarle's Rockingham and his Contemporaries, vol. i. ch. iii.; Fitzmaurice's Life of Shelburne, i. 189, 247–8, 266 et seq.; Ferguson's Cumberland and Westmoreland M.P.s, pp. 117, 118, 121, 127; Mrs. Delany's Autobiogr. ii. 450, iii. 421, iv. 344; Lord Stanhope's Hist. of England, vols. iv–v.; Almon's Memoirs of Wilkes, pp. 100, 214, 220–1; Arnold's Petworth; Murray's Handbook of Sussex, 5th ed. pp. 122–8; Evans's Cat. Engr. Portraits. Many of Egremont's most important despatches are contained in his correspondence with Newcastle (1750–62) among Addit. MSS. 32720–33067, passim.]
WYNDHAM or WINDHAM, FRANCIS (d. 1592), judge, was the grandson of Sir Thomas Wyndham of Felbrigg in Norfolk [see under Wyndham, Thomas, (1510?–1553)], and the second son of Sir Edmund Wyndham of Felbrigg by his wife Susan, daughter of Sir Roger Townshend of Rainham in Norfolk. Sir Edmund was sheriff of Norfolk during the rebellion of Robert Kett [q. v.], and was active in suppressing it. Francis was educated at Cambridge, perhaps at Corpus Christi College, and called to the bar by the society of Lincoln's Inn. He became a bencher in 1569, and in 1572 was autumn reader. He represented Norfolk in the parliament which sat from 1572 till 1583. In October 1573 his name appears in special commission of oyer and terminer for Norfolk. In the award dated 31 May 1575 settling the controversies between Great Yarmouth and the Cinque ports he appears as an arbitrator. In 1577 he was made a serjeant; in 1578 he was elected recorder of Norwich, and is spoken of as a justice of the Oxford circuit; and in 1579 he succeeded Sir Roger Manwood [q. v.] in the court of common pleas. He was placed on the commission of oyer and terminer for Warwickshire and Middlesex, constituted on 7 Dec. 1583 for the trial of John Somerville [q. v.] and others for high treason, and in that for Middlesex constituted on 20 Feb.
