Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 63.djvu/273

Wyndham issue two daughters and one son, Mr. Frederick Wyndham, now co-lessee of the Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh.

 WYNDHAM, THOMAS (1510?–1553), vice-admiral and navigator, born about 1510, is generally identified with Thomas Wyndham, only son of Sir Thomas Wyndham (d. 1521) of Felbrigg, Norfolk, by his second wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Henry Wentworth of Nettlestead, and widow of Sir Roger D'Arcy. The family had long been settled in Norfolk, and derived its name from Wymondham in that county.

Thomas's grandfather, Sir (d. 1502), was knighted for bravery at the battle of Stoke on 16 June 1487; later in Henry VII's reign he became implicated in the conspiracy of Edmund de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, was convicted of treason on 2 May 1502, and was executed with Sir  [q. v.] on Tower Hill four days later, being buried in the Austin Friars' church (Cotton MS. Vitellius A. xvi; Lansd. MS. 978, f. 19;, Henry VII; , Survey, ed. Strype, ii. 116). By his first wife, Margaret, fourth daughter of John Howard, duke of Norfolk [q. v.], he was father of Sir Thomas Wyndham (d. 1521), who took an active part in the naval war with France in 1512–13, and became vice-admiral and councillor to Henry VIII (The French War of 1512–13, Navy Records Soc., and Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, vols. i–iii. passim). Sir Thomas married, first, Eleanor, daughter and coheir of Sir Richard Scrope of Upsal in Wiltshire; of his sons, Sir Edmund Wyndham of Felbrigg was father of [q. v.]; Sir John Wyndham married Elizabeth, daughter of John Sydenham of Orchard, Somerset, settled in that county, and was grandfather of [q. v.] and of [q. v.], and ancestor of the later Windhams of Felbrigg [see ; and ], of the earls of Egremont [see ; and ], and of the earls of Dunraven [see ]. Of Sir Thomas's three daughters, Margaret married Sir Erasmus Paston, ancestor of the earls of Yarmouth [see ]. By his second wife Sir Thomas was father of the subject of this article, to whom he bequeathed his manor of Wigton and other lands in Yorkshire.

As a minor at the time of his father's death, Thomas was possibly one of the king's wards of whom Cromwell became master in 1532, and, as no other contemporary Thomas Wyndham has been traced, he was probably the servant of Cromwell of that name who was employed in Ireland from 1536 to 1540. In October 1539 he was sent as captain of a hundred men to serve under Ormonde, and during November and December he saw a good deal of fighting in various parts of Ireland (Letters and Papers, i. 303, 611, 709–10). In March 1539–40 he was compelled to return to England through ill-health, and on 20 June following was granted the dissolved monastery of Chicksand, Bedfordshire. Soon afterwards he seems to have settled in Somerset like his brother John, and took to a seafaring life. In 1544, in command of a ‘west-country ship,’ he was serving in the North Sea against the Scots, and in the following year he commanded the ‘great galley’ of five hundred tons and three hundred men in the operations in the Solent [cf. ]. Wyndham, however, like most Tudor seamen, combined these legitimate commissions with filibustering on a somewhat extensive scale, and a few years later the French ambassador described him as an expert in piracy as well as ‘un grand homme de marine’ (Corresp. Pol. de Odet de Selve, pp. 234–5, 240). He was not particular in confining his operations to the ships of hostile nations, and early in 1545, with William Hawkins (d. 1554?) [q. v.], father of Sir John, he seized the Santa Maria de Guadeloupe, belonging to a Spaniard named Miranda. On 11 May the council ordered its restoration, and on 23 Sept. directed Wyndham to come to London to answer for his conduct. In May 1546 another prize which he had taken was seized at Bristol by the council's order, because Wyndham had failed to satisfy Miranda's claims, and on 18 July he was ordered to pay 380l. compensation.

In the autumn of 1547 Wyndham, who was given the office of ‘master of the ordnance in the king's ships,’ was appointed vice-admiral under Clinton of a fleet sent to the east coast of Scotland to enforce the Protector's Scottish policy. Its object was partly to intercept French aid, but especially to support the English and reforming party in the east of Scotland. In December Wyndham anchored in the Firth of Tay, and on the 18th he wrote promising not ‘to leave one town nor