John Wildman
history:This article is about the politician. For the actor, see John Wildman (actor).
; the caption reads nil admirari ("astonished at nothing")]] Sir John Wildman (c. 1621 – 2 June 1693) was an English soldier and politician.
Wildman was born in the Norfolk town of Wymondham, the son of Jeffrey and Dorothy Wildman. His father was a butcher. John was educated as a sizar (a poor scholar who had to work as a servant to pay his way) at Corpus Christi College University of Cambridge taking an MA in 1644. He appears to have married twice, but sources differ wildly on the identities of the wives. Wildman's 1670 will (P.C.C. Barnes 105) unequivocally indicates that his only son John was born to the first wife, and ample documentation (including the will) confirms that the second wife was named Lucy. Wildman may have had legal training as he later described himself as an attorney or solicitor.
He became prominent, however, as a civilian adviser to the Army agitators, speaking in favour of the Agreement of the People at the Putney Debates. He was connected by friendship and marriage to the Republican MP Henry Marten and objected to all compromise with the king. In a pamphlet, Putney Projects, he attacked Oliver Cromwell; he may have written parts of The Case of the Army Stated, and he put the views of his associates before the Council of the Army at the Putney Debates that took place in Putney church between 28 October and 11 November 1647. By January 1648 he and John Lilburne were imprisoned for attempting to build a movement to campaign for the Agreement of the People. Clarendon, alleged that preparations were made "for his trial and towards his execution." However, he was released in the following August, and for a time he was associated with the party known as the Levellers, but he quickly severed his connection with them and became an officer in the army.
He was a large buyer of the land forfeited by the royalists, and in 1654 he entered the House of Commons as member of the First Protectorate Parliament for Scarborough. In the February following year he was arrested at "Easton near Marlborough" (perhaps the modern Easton Royal, not "Exton" as some derivative sources report) while dictating A Declaration of the free and well-affected People of England now in Arms against the Tyrant Oliver Cromwell, esq to his secretary.Waylen v.1,p.277 He was incarcerated in Chepstow Castle for four months. After his release he resumed plotting, intriguing with royalists and republicans alike for the overthrow of the existing regime. In the late 1650s Wildman was associated with the Commonwealth Club, a Republican club meeting at a Covent Garden tavern called The Nonsuch in Bow Street. He was also in 1659 a member of James Harrington's Rota Club, a Republican debating club which determined its by decisions by ballot. In 1659 he helped to seize Windsor Castle for the Long Parliament. After the Restoration, in November 1661 he was again a prisoner on suspicion of participating in republican plots. For six years he was a captive, only regaining his freedom after the fall of Clarendon in October 1667. Primarily out of hostility to Clarendon he became associated with the George Villiers the Duke of Buckingham, whose ministry introduced a measure of toleration.
In or before 1681 Wildman became prominent among those who were discontented with the rule of Charles II, being especially intimate with Algernon Sydney. He was undoubtedly involved in the Rye House Plot, and under James II he was active in the interests of the Duke of Monmouth, but took no part in the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685. He found it advisable, however, to escape to Holland, and returned to England with the army of William of Orange in 1688. In 1689 he was a member of the convention parliament.
Wildman was postmaster-general from April 1689 to February 1691, when some ugly rumours about his conduct brought about his dismissal. Nevertheless, he was knighted by King William III in 1692.
Sir John's only son, John, died childless in 1710, though he made John Shute, later Viscount Barrington, his chief heir, particularly of Beckett Hall, which Wildman Sr. purchased (indirectly) in 1655 and had been the estate of the regicide Henry Marten.
Marriage Controversy
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004) (ODNB) claims that Wildman's first wife was Frances, daughter of Sir Francis Englefield, while the second was Lucy "daughter of Lord Lovelace". The original Dictionary of National Biography (DNB), however, has a much different account, by which Wildman married Frances, daughter of Christopher Roper, fourth Lord Teynham, and Mary Englefield, daughter of Sir Francis (above), citing Collins's Peerage of England (vi. 85) and the Historical Manuscripts Commission (4th Rep. vi. 256). The DNB declines to speculate on the maiden name of the second wife Lucy. The DNB is clearly in error there, as this Baron Teynham was born around 1621 (per Collins vi. 84) and thus around the same age as Wildman himself. Evidence in Richmond shows that Wildman had married Lucy by 1653, at which time he and Roper were only around 32 years of age, hardly old enough for one to have married the other's daughter. Thus, Collins could only be correct if it is referring to John Wildman Jr., though most sources only indicate one marriage for Wildman Jr., to Eleanor Chute (DNB, v.61, p.235).
,
The ODNB account fails to identify its sources for the identity of either wife, so a critical examination is more difficult, but it would certainly seem more likely that Wildman had married a sister of Baron Teynham's wife Mary than one of their daughters, as the DNB has it. However, Betham's Baronetage of England (v.1, p.148) only identifies two sisters of Mary Englefield, Dorothy and Margaret, neither of whom is said to have married either Wildman. The identity of Wildman's first wife therefore remains unclear pending the discovery of more reliable sources.
While the ODNB'''s identification of the first wife is merely questionable, it certainly errs in its suggestion that Lucy was the daughter of "Lord Lovelace." Richmond cites direct primary source evidence that Lucy was the daughter of Anthony Richmond (see Richmond, v. 3, p. 134-5), and it is unclear that Lord Lovelace (presumably the 1st Baron Lovelace, Richard, who died in 1634) even had such a daughter, so the identity of the second wife as Lucy Richmond seems conclusive.
, Lawrence Goldman, Ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.