Wingfield to the king as their speaker. According to Chapuys, the king 'conferred on him the order of knighthood' on this occasion. He is styled 'Sir' in a petition of this year, and frequently afterwards, though, according to the list in Metcalfe's 'Book of Knights' (p. 71), he was not dubbed before 1537. During his speakership were passed the acts severing the church of England from the .Roman obedience and affirming the royal supremacy. There can be little doubt that Wingfield was in full sympathy with Henry's policy. He appears to have received from the crown a salary of 100l. a year 'for attendance,' an addition, doubtless, to the 'wages' found by his constituency.
Parliament was dissolved on 4 April 1536. On the outbreak of the northern rebellion in 1536 Wingfield was one of the Suffolk gentry upon whom the government relied for aid. He justified Cromwell's opinion of him by his zeal to suppress the seditious incitements of the friars and other disaffected ecclesiastics. He was nominated in 1536 a commissioner for the valuation of the lands and goods of religious houses in Norfolk and Suffolk. For these services he was rewarded by a grant in tail male, dated 29 June 1537, of the manors of Netherhall and Overhall in Dedham, Essex, and all the lands in Dedham belonging to the suppressed nunnery of Campsie, Suffolk, also of the manor of Crepinghall in Stutton, Suffolk, and all lands there belonging to the late priory of Colne Comitis (Earls Colne) in Essex. According to a letter written by him to Cromwell soon after this grant he could, but for it, 'have had to begin the world again,' having 'lost half his living by his wife's death.' On 4 July 1538 he was nominated upon a special commission of oyer and terminer for treasons in six of the eastern counties. He was also commissioned to survey the defensive points of the coast when in 1539 there were apprehensions of an invasion. He was among the knights appointed to receive Anne of Cleves in January 1540. After the conviction of the Marquis of Exeter he received a grant of a lease of his lands in Lalford Says, Ardelegh, Colchester, and Mile-End, in Essex and Suffolk.
Wingfield died on 23 Oct. 1545 (Inq. port mortem, 16 Jan. 1546). He married between 1502 and 1512 Anne, daughter and heiress of Sir John Wiseman of Essex, and widow of Gregory Adgore, Edgore, or Edgar, serjeant-at-law. His son and heir, Robert, married Bridget, daughter of Sir Thomas Partiger, knt., alderman and lord mayor of London in 1530. His daughter Anne married Sir Alexander Newton. Wingfield's arms are still in the fourth window on the north side of Gray's Inn Hall.
[Brewer and Gardner's Cal. of Lettens and Papers, For. and Dom. Hen. VIII, vols. i-xvi.; Metcalfe's Visitation of Suffolk (1882), 1561 p. 80, 1612 p. 176; Visitation of Huntingdonshire, 1613 (Camden Soc. 1849); Anstis's Register of the Garter (1724), ii. 230; Lodge's Peerage of Ireland, ed. Archdall, 1789, v. 268; Manning's Lives of the Speakers (1850), pp. 177-82; Douthwaite's Gray's Inn (1886), pp. 47, 127, 131; Official Return Memb. Parl.; Powerscourt's Wingfield Muniments.]
WINGFIELD, Sir JOHN (d. 1596), soldier, was the third son of Richard Wingfield of Wantisden in Suffolk, and Mary, daughter and coheiress of John Hardwick of Derby, sister of Elizabeth (Talbot), grand-countess of Shrewsbury [q. v.] (Visitation of Huntingdon, Camd. Soc. p. 129). His brother Anthony, reader in Greek to Queen Elizabeth, is separately noticed. Having apparently for some time previously served as a volunteer against the Spaniards in Holland, he was appointed captain of foot in the expedition conducted thither by the Earl of Leicester in December 1585 (Cal. Hatfield MSS. v. 240), and, being wounded in the action before Zutphen on 22 Sept. 1586 (ib. vi. 570), he was for his bravery on that occasion knighted by Leicester (Stow, Annals, p. 739). He was one of the twelve knights 'of his kindred and friends' that walked at the funeral of Sir Philip Sidney on 16 Feb. 1587, and, returning to the Netherlands, was appointed governor of Gertruydenberg, His position, owing to the jealousies existing between the English auxiliaries and the States, and the mutinous condition of the garrison for want of pay, was neither an easy nor an agreeable one. Nevertheless, with the assistance furnished him by his brother-in-law, Peregrine Bertie, lord Willoughby de Eresby [q. v.], he managed to hold out successfully during 1588, and even to assist materially in forcing Parma to raise the siege of Bergen in November. But a rumour early in the following year that he intended to hand over the place to the Spaniards brought Maurice of Nassau before the town with a demand for its surrender. Wingfield indignantly denied the intended treason imputed to him, offering to prove its falsehood with his sword against any man and in any place whatever. Nevertheless, either because he had not the will or the power to prevent it, Gertruydenberg was on 10 April 1589 delivered up to the Spaniards (Motley, United Netherlands, ii. 389, 517, iii. 97; Markham, Fighting Veres, pp. 138-40).
