Sir John Wittewrong, 1st Baronet
Sir John Wittewrong, 1st Baronet (1 November 1618 – 23 June 1693) was an English parliamentarian colonel and squire of Rothamsted Manor.
Life
The Wittewrongs were a Flemish Protestant family who in 1564 left Ghent in the Spanish Netherlands for London.[1] Jacques Wittewrong came to London with his wife and two children. Most of the Wittewrong family followed Jacques, who made a career as a public notary,[2] and died in 1593.
John Wittewrong was a grandson of Jacques, and son of Jacob Wittewrong(le) (1558–1622)[3] by his second wife Anna, daughter of Garrard Vanaker of Antwerp, a merchant. Jacob was a wealthy brewer.[4] On Jacob's death, Anna married Thomas Myddelton, as his fourth wife, and survived him.[5] Through his stepfather John gained a Welsh connection, and he was later High Sheriff of Montgomeryshire for 1665 though the manor of Talerddig.[6]
He was knighted in 1640, and then fought on the side of Parliament in the English Civil War as a colonel. He was High Sheriff of Hertfordshire in 1658.[7] In religion he was an Independent, at one time a member of the congregation of William Bridge, and later supported ministers of nonconforming views.,[8]
He bought land at Wheathampstead in 1649.[9] He was created baronet in 1662, and in 1667 bought Stantonbury from Sir John Temple, where he built a mansion of which only a few traces are left.[10][11] He also owned Rothamsted Manor;[1] the family had leased it from 1611, and purchased it in 1623, after which Sir John made many alterations.[12]
References
- Hertfordshire Record Society, Volume XV "Observations of Weather": the Weather Diary of Sir John Wittewronge of Rothamsted 1684-89
- The Copy of a Letter from Alisbury. Directed to Colonell Hampden, Colonell Goodwin, and read in both Houses of Parliament, May 18. 1643. Thomason Collection, British Library E.102[15]. A letter from Wittewrong, published in London, giving an account of the Royalists' burning of the town of Swanborne, in Buckinghamshire.
Notes
- 1 2 http://www.rothamsted.ac.uk/resources/rmlmanor/history.html
- ↑ http://www.hertfordshire-genealogy.co.uk/data/answers/answers-2007/ans7-031-wittewronge.htm
- ↑ http://gallery.e2bn.org/image651461-migration.html
- ↑ Liên Luu, Immigrants and the industries of London, 1500-1700 (2005), p. 285.
- ↑
Lee, Sidney, ed. (1894). "Myddleton, Thomas (1550-1631)". Dictionary of National Biography. 39. London: Smith, Elder & Co. - ↑ Powys-Land Club, Collections historical & archaeological relating to Montgomeryshire and its borders, pp. 343-4.
- ↑ James Sanders, History of the Siderfin family of West Somerset (1912), p. 23.
- ↑ John Trevor Cliffe, The Puritan gentry besieged, 1650-1700 (1993), pp. 48-9.
- ↑ http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=43282
- ↑ http://met.open.ac.uk/genuki/big/eng/BKM/Stantonbury/Index.html
- ↑ http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=62615
- ↑ http://www.theaa.com/walks/in-rothamsted-park-420615