819 



WYATVILLE, SIR JEFFRY. 



WYCHERLY, WILLIAM. 



850 



at the moment of bis capture, as narrated by Stow, gives him the 

 appearance of one who had completely lost his self possession. He 

 was not tried till the loth of March, and he is accused during the 

 interval of having implicated Elizabeth and others by his confessions, 

 in a way neither creditable to his courage nor his fidelity. When 

 however the attorney-general charged him on his trial with having 

 brought the Lady Elizabeth in question, he replied, " I beseech you, 

 being in this wretched state, overcharge me not, nor make me seem 

 to be that I am not. I am loth to accuse any person by name, but 

 th;it I have written I have written." He was executed on the llth of 

 April. 



Sir Thomas Wyatt appears to have been a zealous Protestant in 

 theory, although religion does not seem to have exercised much prac- 

 tical influence on Ids conduct. In his youth he appeal's to have been 

 rather wild than licentious. He was possessed of strength and address, 

 and that kind of courage which carries a man with dclat through a 

 battle-field, but breaks down under adversity and imprisonment. His 

 tone when taken prisoner at Ludgate, and on his trial, was that of a 

 man bewildered and borne down by his reverses. He does not appear 

 to have possessed any of his father's literary talent. It is probable 

 however that he had some taste for letters, or was at least capable of 

 taking pride in his father's distinction. The Harrington manuscript, 

 quoted by Mr. Nott ('Works of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, and 

 of Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder '), contains Sir Thomas Wyatt's (the 

 Elder) poems in his own handwriting, arranged into two classes, and 

 numbered by his sou, who had also copied into the volume two letters 

 of advice which his father sent him from Spain. 



WYATVILLE, SIR JEFFRY, nephew to James Wyatt [WYATT, 

 JAMES], and son of Joseph Wyatt, was born August 3, 1766, at Bur- 

 ton-upon-Trent, in Staffordshire, at the free-school of which place he 

 received his education. At school he appears to have been of truant 

 disposition, and was &o far from displaying any predilection for studies 

 connected with his future profession, that he was bent upon going to 

 sea, and made two attempts to do so, the first at the age of twelve, 

 the second about two years afterwards, but on both occasions he was 

 pursued and brought back. At the age of seventeen he was to have 

 gone out with Admiral Kempenfeldt, in the Royal George, but being 

 prevented from joining the vessel in time, he escaped the fate which 

 awaited it at Spithead. Thus thwarted, he betook himself to the 

 metropolis in the hope of finding some opportunity of entering into 

 the naval eervice, but as the American war had terminated, no such 

 opportunity offered. 



These disappointments however were all eo many turns of good- 

 fortune, which reserved him for higher fortune and distinction than 

 he might else have obtained. He was not left a friendless adventurer 

 in the metropolis : his uncle Samuel, an architect and builder of 

 some note and considerable practice (who erected the Trinity House, 

 London ; Heaton House, Lancashire ; Tatton Hall, &c.), took him into 

 his office for seven years. At the end of that period, in the course of 

 which he had become fully acquainted with the routine and business 

 of his profession, he served a sort of second apprenticeship with his 

 other uncle James, and it was no doubt from him that he imbibed a 

 preference for Gothic and Old English architecture. While with his 

 uncle James, he was brought into contact with several persons of high 

 rank and influence, and among others his future royal patron, then 

 prince of Wales. 



No great encouragement however, at least no opportunities seem to 

 have been held out to him at that time from that quarter ; for in 

 1799 he accepted the proposal made him by an eminent builder (Mr. 

 John Armstrong) who had extensive government contracts, to join in 

 business with him. The line of business he now engaged in was 

 eminently respectable and lucrative ; still it proved for about twenty 

 years a bar to his admission into the Royal Academy as a member of 

 that body, nor perhaps altogether improperly. It did not however 

 prevent his being employed very extensively as an architect by many 

 noblemen and gentlemen in various parts of the country, either in 

 improving and making additions to their mansions or erecting new 

 ones. Nearly all his works are of this class, however varied in them- 

 selves, with the exception of the new front of Sidney Sussex College, 

 Cambridge (1833). He was not therefore so much known by repute 

 to the public generally, as he might have been, had he been employed 

 on buildings more open to notice. 



It seems to have been unexpected by himself when he was sum- 

 moned to Windsor by George IV. in 1824; and perhaps it occasioned 

 some surprise in others, when it was first announced that Mr. Jeffry 

 Wyatt was to be the architect employed in remodelling the Castle 

 such an opportunity for the display of talent as had not till then been 

 offered to any one in the profession for full a century. The works 

 were set about immediately after the approval of the architect's plans, 

 the first stone of ' King George IV's Gateway ' (forming the principal 

 entrance into the quadrangle on the south side, in a direct line with 

 the long walk) being laid by the king himself on the 12th of August 

 1824 ; on which occasion Wyatt was guilty of the absurdity of adding 

 " by royal authority," the silly appendage " ville " to his name, in 

 order to distinguish himself from the other architects named Wyatt. 

 On the king taking possession of the private apartments, December 9, 

 1828, he wag knighted. The completion of the alterations at Windsor 

 Castle occupied him almost exclusively for the remainder of his life, 



BIOQ. DIV. VOL. VI. 



during which he resided chiefly at Windsor, within the precincts of 

 the Castle, in what is called the Wykeham Tower, at the western 

 extremity of the north terrace; and where, after suffering for the last 

 five years of his life under an asthmatic complaint, he died, February 

 18, 1840, in his seventy-fourth year, and was buried in St. George's 

 Chapel. Sir Jeffry had been a widower thirty years, having lost his 

 wife (Miss Sophia Powell) in 1810; and of their three children, 

 Augusta, the youngest and favourite daughter, died at Windnor, in 

 1825; and George Geoffry in 1833; Emma (Mrs. Hambly Knapp) 

 alone surviving him. 



It was the architect's good fortune to behold his great work brought 

 to completion by himself, at a cost of over 700,000?., and it was his 

 intention to publish the designs, which he directed to be done by hia 

 executors, under the superintendence of Mr. H. Ashton. The work 

 was accordingly brought out on a magnificent scale in two volumes, 

 large folio, 1841, and forms, as regards the exterior of the Castle, one 

 of the most complete and elaborate series of illustrations ever pub- 

 lished of any single edifice, but is nevertheless defective, inasmuch 

 as, with the exceptions of the plans, there is nothing to afford any 

 information with regard to the interior, which, if not exactly what 

 Sir Jeffry wished to make it, contains much that would have been 

 interesting both to professional men and the public. 



It is further to be regretted that of his other works no authentic 

 illustrations have been published in any shape, not even of the princely 

 seat of Chatsworth, to which he made very extensive additions during 

 the last twenty years of his life. He was also employed at Longleat 

 Castle, Wilts, Wollaton Hall, Notts, and completed Ashbridge, the 

 seat of the earl of Bridgewater, which had been begun by James 

 Wyatt; lodges and other buildings in Windsor Park; a temple at 

 Kew ; and alterations at Bushy for the queen dowager. 



WYCHERLY, WILLIAM, son of Daniel Wycherly, Esq., of Cleave, 

 in Shropshire, waa born about 1640. In his fifteenth year he was 

 sent to travel in France, probably because his father's loyalist opinions 

 rendered him doubtful of the universities at that time. He does not 

 appear to have returned to England till a short time before the 

 Restoration. He resided, during the greater part of his stay in 

 France, on the banks of the Charente. The Duke of Montausier was 

 at that time governor of Angouleme, and Wycherly was favourably 

 received at the court of his duchess, Julia d'Angennes Rambouillet, 

 celebrated in Voiture's letters, " This little court, learned and strict 

 (savante et prude), must," says a French biographer, "have given 

 lessons of propriety to the young Englishman, of which he made only 

 an indifferent use." At the time, the tone of that court certainly did 

 exercise considerable influence on the mind of Wycherly, for during 

 his residence in France hd solemnly abjured the Protestant faith, and 

 was received into the bosom of the Roman Catholic Church. 



On his return to England, Wycherly was entered as a student of law 

 in the Middle Temple. It would appear however, from a passage in 

 Wood's ' Athense Oxonienses,' that he was previously sent for a short 

 time to Oxford to be reconciled to the Anglican Church. At that 

 university he " wore not a gown," only lived in the lodgings of the 

 provost of his college, was entered in the public library under the title 

 of Philosophise Studiosus, in July 1660, being then about twenty years 

 of age. He departed without being matriculated, or a degree con- 

 ferred on him, having been by Dr. Barlow reconciled to the Protestant 

 religion. 



It is not easy to trace with certainty Wycherly 's career from 1660 

 till 1669 or 1670, when he produced his first play. The accounts of 

 his favour with Charles II., intrigue with the Duchess of Cleveland, 

 his introduction to Buckingham, and his intimacy with Rochester, are 

 all derived from conversational gossip. It is sufficiently apparent how- 

 ever that he possessed means which enabled him to mingle with the 

 gay world on a footing of equality, and that, forgetful of the lessons of 

 the "petite cour savante et prude," he conformed to the manners of 

 the time. Major Pack states that the family estate was worth 600Z. a 

 year in the time of Wycherly's father. 



Wycherly's first play, ' Love in a Wood, or St. James's Park,' was 

 produced after May 1669, and before November 1671, with a success 

 which enabled him to take rank as one of the leading wits of the day. 

 His three other plays were all equally fortunate. ' The Gentleman 

 Dancing-master' appeared about the close of 1671 ; the 'Plain Dealer' 

 in 1674; and the 'Country Wife' in 1678. The plays however 

 appear to have been composed some time before they were acted in 

 1659, 1661, 1665, 1671. There is much wit in these productions, but 

 more manly common-sense expressed in racy English. Their licen- 

 tiousness will prevent their ever again becoming popular. The im- 

 pression produced on Wycherly by the severe decorum of the Duchess 

 of Montausier's court had been completely obliterated by the licentious 

 society in which he had subsequently mingled. But his intellect, 

 though familiarised with impurity, had not been enervated. He had a 

 strong and just perception of character, and expressed it with vigour 

 and felicity. 



Several years after the appearance of 'The Plain Dealer,' Wycherly 

 encountered the Countess of Drogheda, a young, rich, and beautiful 

 widow, at Tuubridge. They met in a bookseller's shop. The lady 

 came to inquire for ' The Plain Dealer,' and the master of the shop 

 presented Wycherly to her as the nal plain dealer. This must have 

 been subsequent to June 1679, when the earl died. They were soon 



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