Thomas Wenman (died 1577)
Thomas Wenman (c. 1548 — 23 July 1577) was an English country gentleman who briefly sat in the House of Commons of England, representing Buckingham.
He was the eldest son of Sir Richard Wenman, a Buckinghamshire landowner, by his marriage to Isabel, daughter and coheiress of John Williams, 1st Baron Williams of Thame, who on her father's death in 1559 inherited the manor of Thame.[1]
Wenman was briefly one of the members of parliament for Buckingham in the parliament of 1571. On his father's death in 1573 he succeeded to estates in Twyford, Beaconsfield, Amersham, Penn, the Chalfonts, and elsewhere in Buckinghamshire, plus the manor of Eaton, then in Berkshire.[1]
On 9 June 1572 Wenman married Jane, a daughter of William West, 1st Baron De La Warr, at St Dunstan-in-the-West, in the City of London,[2] and in the next five years they had three sons and a daughter. Wenman died at Twyford on 23 July 1577, perhaps of gaol fever that had broken out at Oxford. He left high debts, some to the Crown, having borrowed at high interest before coming into his inheritance, and some of his land had to be sold, including Eaton, for which Sir John Danvers paid £7,700.[1]
When Wenman died, his eldest son and heir, Richard Wenman, was aged only four and the Court of Wards and Liveries made him the ward of Jane Wenman and the Earl of Leicester. Leicester sold his interest in the wardship to James Cressy, who then married Jane Wenman.[1] In 1628 Wenman's heir was created Viscount Wenman.
Notes
- WENMAN, Thomas (c.1548-77), of Twyford, Bucks. at History of Parliament online, from P. W. Hasler, The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1558-1603 (Boydell and Brewer, 1982)
- The Herald and Genealogist Volume 2 (1865), p. 523