and minister plenipotentiary to Switzerland in February 1822; the appointment was criticised in the House of Lords on 26 March 1822, and in the commons on 15 and 16 May (ib. vi. new ser. pp. 1287–1307, and vii. 608–70). He was transferred to a like position at the court of Würtemberg in February 1823. In September 1824 he was sent in a similar capacity to Copenhagen, remaining there until early in 1853. He was created a privy councillor on 30 Sept. 1825, made a Knight Grand Cross of Hanover in 1831, and K.C.B. on 1 March 1851. He died on 28 March 1856. On 30 Sept. 1813 he married Hester Frances, sixth daughter of Robert, lord Carrington. She died on 5 March 1854, having had issue three sons and three daughters. His favourite son was killed in the Crimea in 1854 (Memorials of Charlotte Williams-Wynn, p. 206).
Letters from Wynn are in the Duke of Buckingham's ‘Court of George IV’ (i. 225, 261, 284, ii. 86, 117, 172) and his ‘Court of William IV’ (i. 52). Letters to him from Lady Hester Stanhope from the Desert in 1813 are in Frances Williams Wynn's ‘Diaries’ (pp. 320–7).
[Burke's Peerage; Foster's Baronetage; Foster's Alumni Oxon.; Gent. Mag. 1856, i. 516; Duke of Buckingham's George IV, pp. 232, 282–327, 399–410.]
WYNN, Sir JOHN (1553–1626), antiquary, born in 1553 at Gwydir in Carnarvonshire, was the eldest son of Maurice (or Morris) Wynn (son of John Wynn ap Meredith ap Ieuan), by his first wife, Jane, daughter of Sir Richard Bulkeley of Beaumaris. He was thirteenth in direct lineal descent from Owen Gwynedd, son of Gruffydd ap Cynan (who was the founder of the chief royal tribe of Wales), and his ancestors had been for generations notorious for the number of their progeny, both legitimate and illegitimate. The first to settle at Gwydir was Meredith, to whose sons the surname of Gwyn or Wynn (Anglicè White) appears to have been first commonly attached, presumably because of their fair complexions.
Meredith's great-grandson, (Sir) John Wynn, became a student of the Inner Temple in October 1576, and probably supplicated for B.A. at Oxford on 10 June 1578. He is supposed to have also travelled abroad in his youth, as he is referred to by his kinsman and neighbour, Archbishop Williams, as having seen ‘multorum mores hominum et urbes.’ On the death of his father on 10 Aug. 1580 he succeeded to the Gwydir estate, to the development of which and the advancement of his own family he thereafter devoted himself almost exclusively. He served as sheriff for Carnarvonshire in 1588 and 1603, and for Merionethshire in 1589 and 1601, and was M.P. for the former county from October 1586 to the following March. He was knighted on 14 May 1606, and created baronet (on the introduction of that dignity) on 29 June 1611. He was sworn in as member of the council of the marches at Ludlow in 1608 (Clive, Ludlow, p. 273).
In 1609 Wynn was involved in a dispute with his tenants at Dolwyddelan, refusing to renew the twenty-one years' leases which he had been ordered to grant them, and evicting those who petitioned the crown for protection (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1603–1610, pp. 588, 640, 643; cf. Yorke, p. 6, n. 2). The exchequer eventually decided in the tenants' favour (Exchequer Decrees, 11 James I, 4th ser. i. fol. 278; Welsh Land Commission, 1896, Evidence, v. 383–5, 391, Report, p. 140), but Wynn did not change his treatment of them. Some time after, the president and council of the marches were requested by the crown to proceed against Wynn for ‘various flagrant acts of oppression.’ In December 1615 they fined him a thousand marks, imprisoned some of his servants, and recommended that he might be dismissed from their body and from the lieutenancy of Carnarvonshire. Wynn himself had gone to London, instead of appearing before the council, and there he petitioned the king (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1611–18, pp. 336, 353). A bribe of 350l. to a groom of the bedchamber appears to have procured him both remission of his fines and pardon for his offences (Yorke, pp. 7, 154), to facilitate the granting of which he also made a voluntary ‘submission to the censure of the court’ (Hist. MSS. Comm. 13th Rep. App. pp. 14, 85 b).
Wynn did not, however, neglect less questionable means of advancing his own interests. He purchased from the crown lands, with coal mines, in North Wales (Cal. State Papers, 1611–18, p. 241); he worked a lead mine near Gwydir, and appears to have been interested in the copper mines of Anglesey. He suggested and perhaps attempted the introduction of Irishmen for the manufacture of Welsh friezes in the vale of Conway. He urged Sir Hugh Myddelton [q. v.] to undertake (along with himself) the reclamation of the extensive sands between the counties of Carnarvon and Merioneth, a work which Myddelton declined, but which was carried out nearly two hundred years later by William Alexander Madocks [q. v.]
