WIMBLEDON COMMON. 91 



of Wimbledon on his third son, Sir Edward Cecil, 

 who was a distinguished soldier in the time of James I. 

 and Charles I., and was created by the latter, in 1626, 

 Baron of Putney and Viscount Wimbledon. He died 

 in 1639, leaving only daughters, who sold the Manor 

 to trustees for Queen Henrietta Maria, in whose 

 possession it remained till the deposition of Charles I. 

 In the time of the Commonwealth, the Manor, like 

 many other possessions of the Crown, was put up for 

 sale, and was bought, in 1650, by Adam Baynes, for 

 7,000. This gentleman re-sold it two years later, at 

 a good profit, for 17,000, to General Lambert, in whom 

 it remained vested till the restoration of Charles II., 

 when it reverted to the possession of his mother, who 

 gave or sold it, in 1662, to the Earl of Bristol, with 

 whom scandal had connected her name ; later it 

 went to Thomas Osborne, Marquis of Carmarthen, 

 afterwards created Duke of Leeds. During the time 

 the Manor was in the possession of the Duke, an attempt 

 appears to have been made to inclose the Common, but it 

 was resisted successfully by a gentleman named Russell. 

 On the death of the Duke, the trustees of his will sold 

 it, in 1717, to Sir Theodore Janssen, one of the South 

 Sea directors. On the bursting of the South Sea 

 bubble, Sir Theodore Janssen was ruined. The Manor 

 was seized, with his other property, and was sold to 

 Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, wife of the great Duke, 

 and she, dying in 1744, bequeathed it to her grandson, 

 John Spencer, youngest son of the Earl of Sunderland, 

 who had married, for his second wife, the younger of 



