mission was revoked on 15 Feb. 1663–4, Sir Thomas Modyford being appointed his successor (Cal. State Papers, America and West Indies, 1661–8, Nos. 656, 735). Windsor's sudden return provoked from Pepys the remark that ‘these young lords are not fit to do any service abroad,’ and he was sceptical as to the reality of Windsor's achievements (Diary, ed. Braybrooke, ii. 109, 117, 134). Windsor himself pleaded ill-health, and his statement that he came back 2,000l. worse off than he went out supplies a further explanation (Hatton Correspondence, i. 46).
On 9 July 1666 Windsor was commissioned captain of a troop of sixty horse (Dalton, Army Lists, i. 76; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1665–6, p. 490); it was, however, only a militia force, and was disbanded soon afterwards (Savile Corresp. p. 15). In June 1671, in return for a challenge which he believed John Berkeley, lord Berkeley of Stratton [q. v.], the lord lieutenant of Ireland, had sent him, Windsor challenged him at Kidderminster on his way to London (Berwick, Rawdon Papers, 1819, pp. 250–1; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1671, pp. 346, 387). Berkeley declined the challenge and informed the king, who sent Windsor to the Tower. He was ‘mightily complimented by visitts from all the towne, and stayed there, I think, about a fortnight, and then, released, came to Windsore and kissed the king's hand there. The councill would heare nothing in favour of him. They looked upon his challenge to a person in the employment of Lt of Ireland as such an affront to ye king as nothing should have made him presume to resent it at that rate’ (Hatton Corresp. i. 63).
In 1676 Windsor was appointed master of the horse to the Duke of York, and on 4 July 1681 was made governor of Portsmouth (Luttrell, i. 106). On 11 Nov. 1682 he was made governor of Hull, and on 6 Dec. following was created Earl of Plymouth, taking his seat on 19 May 1685. On 30 Oct. 1685 he was sworn of the privy council (ib. i. 362), a few days after the expulsion of his brother-in-law, the Marquis of Halifax, with whom he can have had but little sympathy (Foxcroft, Life of Halifax, i. 489). He died on 3 Nov. 1687 (Addit. MS. 28569, f. 180), and was buried on the 10th at Tardebigg, Worcestershire.
Plymouth's first wife, Anne Savile, died on 22 March 1666–7, and was buried at Tardebigg on 1 April following. He married, secondly at Kensington on 9 April 1668, Ursula, daughter of Sir Thomas Widdrington [q. v.], with the consent of her guardian, John Rushworth (1612?–1690) [q. v.] She was born on 11 Nov. 1647, and died on 22 April 1717. By her Plymouth had issue (I) Thomas (d. 1738), who served in the war in Flanders, was on 19 June 1699 created Viscount Windsor in the peerage of Ireland, and on 31 Dec. 1711 Baron Montjoy in the peerage of the United Kingdom, and left a son, Herbert, on whose death in 1758 these peerages became extinct; (2) Dixie (1672–1743), who was scholar of Westminster, fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, member for that university in six successive parliaments, and brother-in-law of William Shippen [q. v.] (Welch, Queen's Scholars, p. 221); (3) Ursula, who married in 1703 Thomas Johnson of Walthamstow; and (4) Elizabeth, who married Sir Francis Dashwood, bart.
By his first wife Plymouth had issue a daughter, Elizabeth, and a son, Other Windsor, styled Lord Windsor from 1682 till his death on 11 Nov. 1684; his son Other (1679–1727) succeeded his grandfather as eighth Baron Windsor and second Earl of Plymouth (cf. Luttrell, Brief Relation, passim; Burnet, Own Time, 1766, iii. 376). His grandson, Other Lewis, fourth earl (1731–1777), maintained a voluminous correspondence with Newcastle, extant in British Museum Additional MSS. 32724–982. The earldom became extinct on the death of Henry, eighth earl, on 8 Dec. 1843. The barony eventually passed to Harriet, daughter of the sixth earl, who married Robert Henry, grandson of Robert, first lord Clive [q. v.]; her grandson, fourteenth Baron Windsor, was created anew Earl of Plymouth in 1905.
[Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1650–72, America and West Indies, 1661–8, passim; Brit. Mus. Lansd. MS. cclv. 112; Addit. MSS. 5504 f. 106, 5530 f. 82, 6707 f. 55, 12514, 29550–61, passim; Hist. MSS. Comm. 1st Rep. App. pp. 27, 56, 2nd Rep. App. p. 15; Lords' and Commons' Journals; Hatton Corresp. and Savile Corresp. (Camden Soc.), passim; Luttrell's Brief Relation; Pepys's and Evelyn's Diaries; Peacock's Army Lists; Dalton's Army Lists, i. 76, 298; Chester's London Marr. Licences, col. 1488; History of Jamaica, 1774, 3 vols. 4to; Tracts relating to Jamaica, 1800, 4to; Nash's Worcestershire; Tickell's History of Hull; J. M. Woodward's Hist. of Bordesley Abbey; Foxcroft's Life of Halifax, passim; Lodge's Peerage of Ireland, ed. Archdall; Burke's Peerage and Extinct Peerage; Doyle's Official Baronage; G. E. C[okayne]'s Complete Peerage.]
WINDSOR, Sir WILLIAM de, Baron Windsor (d. 1384), deputy of Ireland, was the son of Sir Alexander de Windsor of Grayrigg, Westmorland, and of Elizabeth (d. 1349), his wife. No connection has been proved between this family and that of the
