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Description Isaac Seeman
Polish British d. 1751
Portrait of Thomas, Lord Wyndham (1687-1745), Lord Chancellor of Ireland
oil on canvas, in a carved wood frame
126.5 x 102 cm.
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Literature Inventory, 1849, p. 5, in the library;
Catalogue of Portraits, 1920, no. 36;
H. Avray Tipping, ‘Mersham le Hatch’,
Country Life, 8 August 1925, photographed in the library, p. 221;
H. Avray Tipping,
English Homes, Late Georgian, 1760-1820, London 1926, in situ, p. 136.
Notes This portrait of Wyndham dates from 1739. It shows him with the wand of office as Lord High Steward of Ireland. The office of Lord High Steward, the most important office of state in the kingdom, had passed through the family of the Earls of Shrewsbury since the fifteenth century, but their Roman Catholicism at this period prevented them from exercising its judicial role. It was therefore acting as Lord High Steward that Wyndham presided over the celebrated trial in April 1739 of Henry Barry, Baron Santry. A rakish member of the Irish Hellfire Club, Santry had murdered Laughlin Murphy 'in a fit of passion'. He claimed the right to be tried by his peers, and on 27th April 1739 Wyndham, acting as Lord High Steward, presided over the case with twenty-three peers acting as judges. It was the first trial of a peer in Ireland before the Irish Lords. The case against Santry was clear, and Wyndham pronounced the death sentence, though Santry was subsequently pardoned by the King. The trial excited considerable public interest, and the stress affected Wyndham’s health. On 7th September 1739 he resigned as Lord Chancellor and sailed for England the next day.?He retired to his native Wiltshire where he died in 1745. A fine tomb by Rysbrack was raised to his memory in Salisbury Cathedral.
He left a handsome bequest of £2500 to Wadham College, Oxford, and the remainder of his fortune to his nephew, the son of his sister Alice, who had married?Sir Edward Knatchbull, 4th Bt. in 1698 (see lots 110 and 112). The nephew, already christened after his uncle, changed his name by Act of Parliament?in 1746 and became Sir Wyndham Knatchbull-Wyndham on gaining his inheritance. The continual?use of the unusual first names of Wyndham and Wadham in the Knatchbull family stem from this inheritance.
A replica?of this portrait is in the collection of Wadham College (as is an early 19th-century half-length copy by Joseph Smith). Wyndham?was also painted by the Irish artist Thomas Mitchell, and a portrait by Isaac Seeman of Wyndham in Lord Chancellor's robes was sold from Bramshill in 1937.?For a further portrait of the same sitter see lot 116.