Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 63.djvu/302

 judges to give reasons for his judgment against Oates. Wythens pleaded that he had arrived at the judgment and sentence by a careful study of precedents, citing Coke, Bracton, and the Bible (re Nabal). A week later, however, the judgments were pronounced erroneous (Hist. MSS. Comm. 12th Rep. App. vi. 77–81). Others of his decisions were pronounced arbitrary and illegal (ib. p. 197), while in the House of Commons his concurrence in the opinion in favour of the king's dispensing power was adversely commented upon, with the result that he was placed upon the list of thirty-one persons who were excepted out of the act of indemnity. Beyond the insertion of his name in the act and the removal from the recordership of Kingston-on-Thames it would not appear that he was visited with any penalty.

He survived his discharge until May 1704, when he died at his residence of Southend, Eltham, and was buried in the church there on 12 May. He married, in Westminster Abbey on 21 May 1685, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Thomas Taylor, first baronet, of Park House, Maidstone, who, if the account given by Mrs. Manley in the ‘New Atalantis’ is to be credited, though clever and witty, brought no comfort to her husband, and acquired for herself a very bad reputation. That she involved him in serious expenses appears from an action brought against him in 1693 for extravagant outlay in dresses and millinery, which he was obliged to pay. Wythens left by her an only daughter, Catherine, who married in 1710 Sir Thomas, grandson of Sir Roger Twysden [q. v.] After the death of Sir Francis, his widow married Sir Thomas Colepeper, last baronet, of Preston Hall, Aylesford, who is stated to have formerly been her gallant. The judge's name was spelt variously Wythens, Withens, Withins, Wythins, and Withings.

[Foster's Alumni Oxon, 1500–1714; Le Neve's Pedigrees of the Knights; Hasted's Kent, ed. Drake, 1886, i. 195; Chester's Westminster Abbey Register, p. 24; Archæologia Cantiana, v. 39; Luttrell's Brief Hist. Relation, vol. i. passim; Evelyn's Diary, Index, s.v. ‘Withings;’ Burnet's Own Time, i. 484, 535, 572; Macaulay's Hist. 1858, ii. 105; Mrs. Manley's Secret Memoirs from the New Atalantis, 1709; State Trials, vii. 801, 1125, viii. 269, 1125, ix. 15; Wotton's Baronetage, i. 218; Parl. Hist. v. 338–9; North's Examen, p. 549; and the excellent memoir in Foss's Judges of England, 1864, vii. 284–9.]  WYVILL, CHRISTOPHER (1740–1822), advocate of parliamentary reform, born at Edinburgh in 1740, was the son of Edward Wyvill (d. 1791), supervisor of excise at Edinburgh, by Christian Catherine, daughter of William Clifton of Edinburgh.

The name of Wyvile is found in the Battle Abbey roll, and the family trace their pedigree without any break back to Sir Richard Wyvill, who was slain at Towton, the presumed descendant of Sir Humphry of Walworth and Slingsby Castle, who came over with William the Conqueror. Of the same family, without doubt, was Robert Wyvil, a native of Stanton Wyvil in Leicestershire, who in 1329, despite his ill-favoured person and illiterate mind, was nominated to the see of Salisbury. He recovered the castle of Sherborne for the see from William de Montacute, earl of Salisbury, and is said to have begun the building of the famous spire a few years before his death at Sherborne on 4 Sept. 1375. A beautiful monument commemorates him in the north end of the eastern transept of Salisbury Cathedral (see, Salisbury, 1814, pp. 43–4, 210–11). Sir Marmaduke Wyvill (d. 1616) of Constable Burton in the North Riding was knighted by Queen Elizabeth, was created a baronet by James I on 25 Nov. 1611, and lies in the north aisle of Masham church, Bedale, under a cumbrous marble monument (see, Richmondshire, ii. 103).

Sir Marmaduke's great-grandson, (1614–1672?), third baronet, of Constable Burton, baptised on 6 Dec. 1614, who was M.P. for Richmond in 1660, has been credited with a rare little octavo in the Bodleian Library entitled ‘Certaine serious Thoughts which at severall times & upon sundry occasions have stollen themselves into verse and now into the publike view from the author [monogram, ‘C. W.’], Esquire. Together with a chronological table denoteing the names of such Princes as ruled the neighbor states & were con-temporary with our English Kings’ (London, 1647). This volume of verse is described at some length in Brydges's ‘Censura Literaria’ (1808, vii. 261–4), and there dubiously attributed to C. Warwick. The Wyvill arms on the title-page point almost conclusively to (Sir) Christopher's authorship, which is conjecturally adopted in the British Museum Catalogue (cf., Handbook, p. 681; and , col. 351). The third baronet was also the author of an anti-papal duodecimo entitled ‘The Pretensions of the Triple Crown’ (London, 1672). He married Ursula, eldest daughter of Conyers, lord Darcy.

The third baronet's younger son, Christo-