Sir John Wildgose

born 1562

 who, alas, has no living descendants

The son of John Wildgose and Elizabeth Culpepper, John was born in 1562 in Salehurst, Sussex.  He attended Gray’s Inn, which was one of the Inns of Court in London with the exclusive right to confer the rank or degree of Barrister-in-Law, and became very successful.  In 1587 he married Grace Annesley, the daughter of Sir Bryan Annesley and a hand-maiden to Queen Elizabeth 1 and on 23 July 1603 in the Royal Garden at Whitehall he had knighthood conferred upon him by King James I prior to the King’s coronation. The couple had six children (that we know of), including Annesley who was also knighted on 22 May 1605 at Greenwich. Annesley married Margaret Lennard, the daughter of Henry, the 12^th. Lord Dacre. He died before Sir John.

John’s father, also a lawyer (and, at one time, a Catholic) was a Justice of the Peace and churchwarden at Salehurst where he purchased many tenements. He also owned the Manor of Lowden in Kent and the Manors of Moulton and Lechecastle in Wales and also amongst his holdings was the manor of Garn-llwyd in Glamorganshire. This was a medieval first-floor hall-house with additions of the 17th century and later standing on a riverside site to the N. of Llancarfan. It had a remarkable roof. The house is first recorded in 1441 as Carne Lloide, when the possible builder, Lewis Mathew, was in possession. His daughter and heiress Catherine Mathew married John Raglan, and Garn-llwyd remained in this family until ca. 1600; the estate first passed to Robert Raglan and by 1519 was in the hands of his son Sir John Raglan. In the 1570 survey of the Manor of St. Nicholas, the sub-manor of Garn-llwyd fell to Anne wife of Sir John who had remarried Edward Carne. However, about this time a bitter dispute arose about the ownership of Garn-llwyd and other property in the Llancarfan area. In 1558 Sir Thomas Raglan had mortgaged the properties for £700 to George Keynsham of London. Various proceedings relating to this mortgage, a moiety of which had been conveyed to John Wildgose, were brought before the Court of the Exchequer from 1572 to 1580.6 After the death of Sir Thomas ca. 1581 the complaints against the mortgagee were continued by his third son Egremond, both in the Court of the Exchequer and in the Star Chamber. For the duration of these disputes the Raglan family retained the tenancy of Garn-llwyd, but by the beginning of the 17th century they had been dispossessed and the house was in the hands of Sir John, the son of John Wildgose. About 1620 Sir John sold all of the Llancarfan properties to Sir Edward Lewis of Y Fan who bequeathed them to his third son Nicholas.

Upon his father-in-law’s death, Sir John Wildgose became embroiled in an infamous court case

Click here to read about The King Lear Connection

Kay’s Thought

We have not, so far, linked Sir John Wildgose with the family in Derbyshire but

Sir Bryan Annesley was born in Ruddington in Nottinghamshire….

d’you see what I’m getting at?