Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 63.djvu/300

 Lætitia, daughter of Lucien Bonaparte, prince of Canino, by his second wife, proved unhappy. After the birth of two children, both sons, Napoleon Alfred and William Charles, Wyse's wife left him in 1828, and a deed of separation was signed. They never met again. The lady died at Viterbo in 1872.

Of Wyse's two sons, the elder, (1822–1895), born in January 1822, succeeded by a family arrangement to the manor of St. John's, Waterford. He was high sheriff of Waterford in 1870, but spent much time abroad, and is said to have issued privately two books, ‘Notes sur la Russie’ (Paris, 1854) and ‘Flores Pictavienses’ (Périgueux, 1869). He died at Paris on 7 Aug. 1895.

The younger son, (1826–1892), born at Waterford in February 1826, travelled as a young man in the south of Europe, and while at Avignon was much attracted by the work of the Félibres, who claim descent from the ancient troubadours of Provence. He joined the society and became an ardent student of the dialect, in which he published in 1868 a series of lyrics under the title ‘Parpaioun Blu’ (i.e. Papillon Bleu), with a French translation and an introduction by Frédéric Mistral (Paris, 8vo). This was followed by a fragment of verse entitled ‘La Cansoun Capouliero’ (Plymouth, 1877), and ‘Uno Japado Cerberenco’ (in French, English, and Provençal), printed at Avignon, but dated St. John's, Waterford, 15 Aug. 1878. In English Wyse wrote some very indifferent sonnets: ‘In Memoriam: the Prince Imperial’ (1879), and ‘Loyal Staves,’ to celebrate the jubilee of the queen in 1887. He was for some years a captain of the Waterford militia, and became in 1855 high sheriff of his county. He died at Cannes on 3 Dec. 1892, when his brother-Félibres issued an account of his career in Provençal (see Times, 5 Dec. 1892). He married, in 1864, Ellen Linzee, daughter of W. G. Prout of St. Mabyn, Cornwall, and left issue four sons, the eldest of whom, Lucien William Bonaparte Wyse, captain of the Waterford artillery, succeeded to the manor of St. John's, Waterford, upon the death of his uncle, Napoleon, in 1895.



WYTHENS or WITHENS, FRANCIS (1634?–1704), judge, born at Eltham about 1634, was the only son of William Wythens by Frances, daughter of Robert King of St. Mary's Cray, Kent. He was a great-grandson of Robert Wythens, alderman of London, and grandson of Sir William Wythens, who was sheriff of Kent in 1610, and died at his residence of Southend in the parish of Eltham, where he was buried on 7 Dec. 1631. Francis was educated at St. John's College, Oxford, whence he matriculated on 13 Nov. 1650; he was called to the bar in 1660 from the Middle Temple, of which society he became a bencher in 1680. The first distinctive notice that we have of Francis Wythens is as high steward of the franchise court of Westminster, and as a successful candidate for Westminster in the parliament summoned to meet in October 1679, but postponed by successive prorogations until October 1680, when Wythens found his lawful return disputed by Sir William Waller and Sir William Pulteney. A few months before, when petitions in favour of parliament's being assembled were disturbing the equanimity of the court, Wythens ‘presented an address to his majestie from the grand inquest for the city of Westminster, testifyeing their dislike and abhorrence of the late petition for a parliament that was carried on there’ (, i. 41). For this exhibition of zeal he was knighted on 17 April 1680. Now that parliament had at length been assembled, Sir Francis, as a member, was the first who was charged with his action as ‘an abhorrer,’ on the ground that this was an offence against the rights of the people; and upon evidence taken and his own confession he was ordered to be expelled the house, and to receive his sentence on his knees at the bar. ‘You being a lawyer,’ said the speaker in his address to him, ‘have offended against your own profession; you have offended against yourself, your own right, your own liberty as an Englishman. This is not only a crime against the living, but a crime against those unborn. You are dismembered from this body.’ A few days after this humiliating act of expulsion, the committee on the petition against his return reported that he had not been duly elected a member of the house. Roger North, in his relation of the severe treatment accorded to Wythens, illuminates the circumstance by a reading of his character. ‘He was of moderate capacity in the law, but a voluptuary; and such are commonly very timid, and, in great difficulties, abject; otherwise he was a very gentle person, what was called a very honest man, and no debtor to the bottle. Some cunning persons that had found out his foible and ignorance of trap first put him in