Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 63.djvu/191

 (Rot. Claus. p. 64). On 25 June of the same year he was custodian of the temporalities of the bishopric of Winchester (ib. p. 73b). He was also forester of the counties of Somerset and Dorset, and later of Somerset and Exmoor. He was a canon of Wells in 1204, and in the same year became archdeacon of Taunton (, Fasti, ed. Hardy, i. 166). Soon after he received the churches of Warden in Sheppey and East Malling in Kent. Le Neve, misreading ‘Tant’ for ‘Cant,’ makes Wrotham archdeacon of Canterbury in 1206. He paid two thousand three hundred marks for the king's favour in 1208, and he seems to have held the office of warden of the seaports during most of John's reign (see Rot. Claus. passim). He was constantly with the king in 1209–1210 and 1212–13, and is mentioned by Roger of Wendover as one of John's advisers during the time of the interdict. He must have left the country during the war at the end of the reign, but was permitted by Henry III to return in safety in 1217. He died in that year, being succeeded by his nephew and heir, Richard de Wrotham (Rot. Claus. i. 352–3). His chief grants of land were in Somerset, and, according to the pedigrees given in Collinson, he was ancestor of the Wroth or Wrothe family, a name said to be a contraction of Wrotham [cf. art. , (1516–1573)].

[Rot. Pat., Rot. Claus., and Rot. Chartarum (Record Comm. Publ.); Madox's Hist. Exchequer; Roger Wendover, Matthew Paris, ii. 533, Walter of Coventry (Rolls Ser.); Collinson's Somerset, iii. 63–5, &c. (see general index, 1898); List of Sheriffs, 1898; Foss's Lives of the Judges.]

 WROTTESLEY, JOHN, second  (1798–1867), was born at Wrottesley Hall in Staffordshire on 5 Aug. 1798.

His father,, first (1771–1841), born on 4 Oct. 1771, was the eldest son of Major-general Sir John Wrottesley, bart. (1744–1787), by his wife Frances (d. 1828), daughter of Sir William Courtenay, first viscount Courtenay (d. 1762). He was a descendant of Sir Walter Wrottesley [q. v.], was admitted to Westminster school on 31 Jan. 1782, and served in Holland and France during the revolutionary war as an officer in the 13th lancers. On 2 March 1799 he was returned to parliament for Lichfield in the whig interest. He was re-elected in 1802, but in 1806 was defeated. On 23 July 1823 he was returned for Staffordshire, and after the passage of the Reform Act in 1832 he continued to sit for the southern division of the county until 1837, when, his seat begin endangered by the decline of the whig interest, he was advanced to the House of Lords on 11 July 1838 with the title of Baron Wrottesley of Wrottesley. He was a good practical farmer, and his lands at Wrottesley were furnished with the latest improvements in agricultural machinery. While in parliament he procured the exemption of draining tiles from duty. He died at Wrottesley on 16 March 1841, and was buried in the ancestral vault at Tettenhall church on 24 March. He was twice married: first, on 23 Jan. 1795, to Caroline, eldest daughter of Charles Bennet, fourth earl of Tankerville. By her he had five sons and three daughters. She died on 7 March 1818, and he married, secondly, on 19 May 1819, Julia (d. 29 Sept. 1860), daughter of John Conyers of Copt Hall, Essex, and widow of Captain John Astley Bennet, R.N., brother of Wrottesley's first wife. By her he had no issue (Gent. Mag. 1841, i. 650;, Memoirs, 1888, iii. 9, 13).

His eldest son, John, was admitted to Westminster school on 22 Jan. 1810. He left in 1814, and matriculated from Christ Church, Oxford, on 15 May 1816, graduating B.A. in 1819 and M.A. in 1823. He entered Lincoln's Inn on 19 Nov. 1819, and was called to the bar in 1823. He joined the committee of the Society for Diffusing Useful Knowledge, of which he continued a member until his death. While practising as an equity lawyer he settled at Blackheath, where between 1829 and 1831 he built and fitted up an astronomical observatory. He especially devoted himself to observing the positions of certain fixed stars of the sixth and seventh magnitudes. He took ten observations of each star, a task which occupied him from 9 May 1831 till 1 July 1835. In 1836 he presented his ‘Catalogue of the Right Ascensions of 1318 Stars’ to the Royal Astronomical Society, which he had assisted to found in 1820, and of which he was secretary from 1831 to 1841, and president from 1841 to 1843. The society printed the ‘Catalogue’ in their ‘Memoirs’ in 1838, and presented Wrottesley with their gold medal on 8 Feb. 1839. On 29 April 1841 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society.

After his father's death in 1841 Wrottesley transferred his observatory to Wrottesley, and provided it with an equatorial of 129 inches focal length by 73/4 inches aperture. In 1842 and 1854 he issued two supplementary catalogues of stars (Memoirs of the Royal Astron. Soc. vols. xii. and xxiii.). In