his fellow commissioners proceeded to Oxford on 1 Feb. 1642-3 with proposals for an accommodation. In 1644 he was appointed a commissioner to carry propositions of peace to the king, and was again nominated a commissioner at the end of the year for the negotiations at Uxbridge. His desire for peace may have been quickened by the fact that he was reduced almost to destitution owing to the seizure of his estates by the royalists. On 3 June he obtained from parliament a grant of 4l. a week for his maintenance until he should regain his property (Journals of House of Commons, iv. 141, 161). On 20 Aug. 1646 the allowance was discharged by order of the house (ib. p. 649). In April 1647 he was nominated on the parliamentary committee appointed to superintend the proceedings of the visitors at the university of Oxford. He was a third time appointed a peace commissioner, on 1 Sept. 1648, to treat with the king at Newport, and was one of the forty-one members who voted that the terms accepted by Charles were sufficient grounds for the house to proceed upon, and for this was 'secluded' by the army in December, and committed to close imprisonment. On his release he retired to Thame. There; in 1649, he gave shelter to Seth Ward [q. v.], who had been driven from Cambridge for opposing the 'solemn league and covenant,' employing him as his chaplain. When the Irish rebellion was reduced by the parliamentary forces, he became one of the adventurers, and, subscribing 600l., he received a grant of a thousand acres in the barony of Garrycastle and King's County.
Wenman was returned for Oxfordshire to the convention of 1660, and was introduced by proxy to the Irish house of peers on 13 July 1661 in succession to his father. He died on 25 Jan. 1664-5, and was buried at Twyford on 27 Jan. He was succeeded by his brother Philip. Wenman married Margaret (d. 1 May 1658). daughter and coheiress of Edmund Hampden of Hartwell, Buckinghamshire. By her, besides a son Richard, who died without issue in 1646, he had four daughters : Frances, married to Richard Samwell of Upton; Penelope, married to Sir Thomas Cave of Stanford in Northamptonshire, first baronet; Elizabeth, married to Sir Greville Verney of Compton Verney, Warwickshire; and Mary, married to her cousin Sir Francis Wenman of Caswell in Oxfordshire, first baronet. Two portraits of Wenman and portraits of three of his daughters are in the Mansion House at Thame Park, the residence of Mr. Wenman Aubrey Wykeham-Musgrave. Some commendatory verses by Wenman are prefixed to the second book of William Browne's 'Britannia's Pastorals' (London, 1616, fol.) The poet William Basse or Bas [q. v.] was his servant, and dedicated to him 'Great Brittaines Sonnesset bewailed with a Shower of Teares ' (Oxford, 1613, 16mo).
[Lee's Hist. of Thame Church, 1883, cols. 395-6, 434-40, 501-2; Willis's Hist. of Twyford, 1750-60, pp. 328-30, 336-7, 339-40; Lipscomb's Hist. of Buckinghamshire, iii. 131; Wood's Hist. and Antiq. of the Univ. of Oxford, ed. Gutch, ii. 459, 504, 545; Lodge's Peerage of Ireland, ed. Archdall, 1789, iv. 282-4; Burke's Extinct Peerages, 1883; Clark's Register of the Univ. of Oxford, 11. ii. 161, 277; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500-1714; Hist. MSS. Comm. 7th Rep. App. i. 483; Journals of the House of Lords, v. 440, vii. 166, 172, 187, 195, 211, 223, 230, 239, x. 536, 544, 547, 553, 575, 582, 589, 597, 603, 610; Lords Lieutenants of Oxfordshire, 1086-1868, p. 45; Evelyn's Diary, ed. Bray, iv. 185; Masson's Life of Milton, iii. 605, vi. 23.]
WENMAN, THOMAS FRANCIS (1745–1796), regius professor of civil law at Oxford, was second son of Philip, sixth viscount Wenman (1719–1760), who married on 13 July 1741 Sophia, eldest daughter and coheiress of James Herbert of Tythorpe, Oxfordshire. He was born at Thame Park, near Thame in Oxfordshire, on 18 Nov. 1745, and matriculated from University College, Oxford, on 22 Oct. 1762. He was elected to a fellowship at All Souls' College, Oxford, in 1765, and took the degrees of B.C.L. (1771) and D.C.L. (1780). On 12 May 1764 he was admitted a student of the Inner Temple, and in 1770 he was called to the bar. On 21 Jan. 1779 he was elected F.S.A.
From 1774 to 1780 Wenman was member of parliament for the borough of Westbury in Wiltshire. He was elected keeper of the archives for Oxford University on 15 Jan. 1781, and was appointed in 1789 regius professor of civil law. In December 1781 he became the deputy-steward of the university. He was one of the few students of natural history at Oxford. While collecting botanical specimens on the banks of the Cherwell, near Water-Eaton, on 8 April 1796, he fell into the river and was drowned. He was buried in the chapel of All Souls' College on 15 April.
Wenman began his professorship ‘with reading lectures, and only desisted for want of an audience.’ John Sibthorp [q. v.] bequeathed to him his collections for a ‘Flora Græca’ for completion, but his death a few weeks later prevented him from finishing the work (Hurdis's ‘Vindication of Magdalen College,’ quoted in Miss Quiller-Couch's Reminiscences of Oxford, 1892, p. 147). In
