1584–5 for the trial of William Parry (d. 1585) [q. v.] for the like offence (Reports of the Deputy Keeper of Public Records, No. iv. App. ii. 272, 273). He was also consulted concerning the trial of Mary Stuart in October 1586 (Strype, Annals, 1824, iii. i. 529). He was one of the judges on the commission for hearing causes in chancery between the death of Sir Christopher Hatton [q. v.] in November 1591 and the appointment of Sir John Puckering [q. v.] in May 1592. Wyndham died in July 1592 at his house in the parish of St. Peter Mancroft in Norwich, (afterwards known as the committee house), and was buried on 18 July in the parish church. An altar-tomb without an inscription, bearing his arms and those of families to which he was allied, was erected against the north wall of Jesus chapel in St. Peter Mancroft. There is also a portrait of him as recorder in the Guildhall at Norwich. He married Jane, daughter of Sir Nicholas Bacon [q. v.], lord keeper of the great seal, but left no issue. His wife survived him and married, secondly, Sir Robert Mansfield. A letter from Wyndham to Lord Burghley is preserved in Lansdowne MS. 57, art. 49. Geoffrey Whitney [q. v.] addressed two of his ‘Emblemes’ (1586) jointly to Wyndham and Edward Flowerdew [q. v.]
[Cooper's Athenæ Cantabr. ii. 124–5; Foss's Judges of England, 1857, v. 551–2; Official Return of Members of Parliament; Blomefield's Hist. of Norfolk, 1806, iii. 359, iv. 220–1, 231, 235, viii. 113, 114, ix. 40; Ducatus Lancastriæ, 1834, iii. 214; Dugdale's Origines Jurid. 1666, pp. 48, 119, 253, 260, 261, Chron. Ser. pp. 94, 95; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1547–92; Manship and Palmer's Hist. of Great Yarmouth, 1854–6, i. 186; Green's reprint of Whitney's Choice of Emblemes, 1876, pp. 121–3, 352–3; Wotton's Baronetage, 1741, i. 4, iii. 348; Acts of the Privy Council, ed. Dasent, 1577–90; Weever's Ancient Funeral Monuments, 1631, p. 802.]
WYNDHAM, Sir GEORGE O'BRIEN, third Earl of Egremont (1751–1837), patron of fine art, born on 18 Dec. 1751, and baptised at St. Margaret's, Westminster, on 9 Jan. following, George II being a sponsor, was son and heir of Sir Charles Wyndham, second earl [q. v.], by Alicia Maria, daughter of George, second Baron Carpenter. He was for a short time (when Lord Cockermouth) at a school in Wandsworth with Charles James Fox, before going to Westminster (cf. a letter to Lord Holland, in Corresp. of C. J. Fox, i. 8–10). He was only twelve when he succeeded to the peerage on the death of his father. He took little part in politics, but in his earlier years acted with the whigs, and signed protests against the American policy of North, the rejection of Shelburne's motion in favour of economical reform, and against the restrictions proposed to be placed on the power of the Prince of Wales as regent in 1789. But he was not without political ability. Fox declared that he would rather have Egremont's opinion on his India bill than that of any other man, and Charles Greville was of opinion that had he chosen he might have taken a conspicuous part in politics. As he advanced in years his opinions became more conservative, and he was always opposed to catholic emancipation. On the rare occasions when he addressed the House of Lords he is said to have fully maintained the traditional standard of the Wyndham oratory. On 31 Aug. 1793 he was appointed to a seat at the board of agriculture, and he was lord-lieutenant of Sussex from 1819 to 1835. In addition to the Petworth estates and the property in the north and west inherited from his father, Egremont also succeeded in 1774 to the property in Ireland of his uncle, Percy Wyndham O'Brien, earl of Thomond. He was for very many years a leading figure in London society, but in later life lived almost entirely at Petworth.
Mrs. Delany, writing to Bernard Granville on 31 Dec. 1774, à propos of a match between Egremont and Lady Mary Somerset, says of the former: ‘He is a pretty man, has a vast fortune, and is very generous, and not addicted to the vices of the times.’ The marriage did not take place, nor did that mariage déclaré with Lady Charlotte Maria Waldegrave (afterwards Duchess of Grafton) six years later. This match had been negotiated by the lady's great-uncle, Horace Walpole, who says that Egremont's family showed great satisfaction with it (Walpole to Sir H. Mann, 6 July 1780). In announcing on 24 July ‘the rupture of our great match,’ Walpole says that Egremont had proved ‘a most worthless young fellow,’ and charged him with having given out that he, and not the lady, had been the first to draw off. The lady had behaved very well, and had taken the step because of her suitor's indiscretion and irresolution (letters to Mann, 24 July, and Mason, 8 Aug.) Mrs. Delany attributes Egremont's conduct to his being under the dominion of ‘a great lady (Lady M-l-b-e).’
Egremont made Petworth House a nursery of art and a college of agriculture. Arthur Young (1741–1820) [q. v.] was a frequent visitor, and superintended the disafforesting of the great stag park there. Egremont was a most successful stock-breeder. He had a fine stud, and his horses won the Derby and Oaks
