Dukes of Buckingham and Chandos: Sir Watkin Williams Wynne

Sir Watkin Williams Wynne (3rd Baronet) 1692-1749

Sir Watkin was one of the longest serving and most influential Jacobites in Parliament during the first half of the eighteenth century. From 1716 until his death he was MP for Denbighshire. He was one of the original members the Jacobite Cycle Club, founded at Wrexham in 1723. He was strongly opposed to Walpole. After Bonnie Prince Charlie landed in Scotland, Sir Watkin helped canvas support for the failed rebellion. The complicity of Sir Watkin and his associates was disclosed during the trial of Lord Lovat but the government did not push for their impeachment. After this, Sir Watkin took a less active part in politics. Through his mother, Sir Watkin inherited the Wynnstay estate of Sir John Wynn of Gwydir making him the largest landowner in North Wales.

Sir Watkin Williams Wynne (4th Baronet) 1748-1789

Sir Watkin was a significant patron of the arts. He collected old master paintings and commissioned work from many artists and sculptors. He was also a patron of architects, designers and gardeners, he had a passion for music, especially Handel, and he loved the theatre. In 1768-69 he toured France, Switzerland and Italy, spending lavishly on art. In Rome he commissioned a great portrait of himself and his companions from Pompeo Batoni. In Britain, he commissioned several pictures from Sir Joshua Reynolds, founding President of the Royal Academy, and the Welsh-born landscape painter Richard Wilson.

Brother to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn. Sir Watkin married:

Henrietta Somerset, a daughter of the Duke of Beaufort
Charlotte Grenville on 21 December 1771 (see family tree)

He had been a widower rather more than two years; his first wife, Lady Henrietta Somerset, daughter of the fourth Duke of Beaufort, died a few months after her marriage. As an infant of barely six months old he had succeeded his father the “Great Sir Watkin,” who was killed by a fall from his horse on returning from hunting in 1749. This Sir Watkin was a warm supporter of Prince Charles Edward in 1745, when, only by reason of the miscarriage or the tardy delivery of messages, he had failed to join the Pretender’s forces prior to the retreat from Derby. A tradition current in the family tells that Lady Williams Wynn (Anne Vaughan) was at Llwydiarth in Montgomeryshire when the news reached her, and she at once rode off to Wynnstay in hot haste, and burnt all documents which might incriminate her husband. What truth there is in this story it is impossible to say, but no papers of any kind whatever relating to the ill-fated Jacobite Rising are to be found at Wynnstay. Whether, if they ever existed, they were destroyed by design, or perished in the fire of 1858, when the house and the greater part of its contents were burnt, is unknown.

There was but five years’ difference between the ages of Charlotte and her husband. She came from one stately home to another, from a wide circle of public affairs, to hold a position of importance in the midst of a local world; for though Sir Watkin was in Parliament, his influence, politically, lay amongst his own people; he was a grand seigneur, neither a courtier nor a statesman. He was a cultured gentleman, a patron of the arts, with many friends, amongst whom may be counted Sir Joshua Reynolds, who painted several pictures for Wynnstay, one of Sir Watkin and his first wife Lady Henrietta in fancy dress, one of Sir Watkin and his mother, Frances Shakerley, one of Charlotte and three of her children, and one of Charlotte’s eldest son, afterwards the fifth Sir Watkin, as the Infant St. John. Sir Watkin (the fourth) was a member of the Dilettante Society, and his portrait is amongst those in Reynolds’s famous group bf the members. This portrait was copied by Sir Joshua for Charlotte after her husband’s death, and the permission to have the copy made, the sum to be paid for it (£35), and the conditions under which the painter was to proceed, are recorded in the Annals of the Society published by Mr. Lionel Cust and Sir Sidney Colvin in the History of the Dilettante Society.

After eighteen years of married life, at the age of 85, with three sons and three daughters, Charlotte became a widow. Her eldest son was 17, her youngest, Henry, 7. Two younger children had died in infancy. In the meantime her brothers and sisters at Wotton had grown up under the guardianship of their uncle, Richard, Earl Temple, and were taking their places in the world of society and politics. [Leighton p6–7]

Watkin Williams Wynne by Hamilton

Sir Watkin was a pleasure-seeking irresponsible youth, who was not taken seriously by the Westminster political community, which gave him the nickname "Bubble." Elizabeth Fremantle [Wynne] found him " an awkward, rather stupid gentleman" [Wynne Diaries II, page 198.]

He was, however, a committed Grenvillite as:

1779-1840: MP for Denbighshire
1794: MP for Beaumaris (a seat controlled by Bulkeley)
1799-1850: MP for Montgomeryshire

He was second for the first Duke in the his duel with the Duke of Bedford. The Wynns quarreled and broke with the Buckinghams in 1825.

Houses and Estates

The Wynnes had the reputation of being the powerful and hospitable family in North Wales. They had houses at:

Wynnstay, near Ruabon, Denbighshire. This was the hub of a great estate of 100,000 acres in North Wales and Shropshire. The last Sir Watkin Williams Wynn to live in Wynnstay was the 8th Baronet; he sold the house in 1947. The house was taken over by Lindisfarne College, an independent boys school; which went bankrupt in 1994.
London, 20 St James's Square. This was built by Robert Adam in 1772-75. It housed a great chamber organ by John Snetzler encased by Nash; this is now at the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff.

Source

Sacks and several others.