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 J. 
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 IT., 
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 Karl of Sunderland, 
who had married, for his second wife, the younger of 
