George Wyndham, 1st Baron Leconfield

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George Wyndham, 1st Baron Leconfield (5 June 1787 – 18 March 1869), was a British soldier and hereditary peer.

A direct descendant of Sir John Wyndham, he was born in 1787, the eldest natural son of George Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont, and Elizabeth Ilive. His parents were married in 1801 but had no sons after their marriage.

Wyndham entered the Royal Navy in 1799 as a midshipman on HMS Amelia. In 1802 he transferred to the Army as a cornet in the 5th Dragoon Guards, promoted in 1803 to lieutenant in the 3rd Dragoon Guards. In 1805 he was a captain in the 72nd Highlanders and ADC to Sir Eyre Coote who was Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica. In 1807 he was DAAG to Earl Cathcart at the Bombardment of Copenhagen; in 1809, as captain in the 1st Foot Guards, he took part in the Walcheren Expedition; in 1811 he was a major in the 78th Regiment and the 12th Light Dragoons; and in 1812 he was lieutenant-colonel commanding the 20th Light Dragoons at the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo.

The earldom of Egremont became extinct on the death of the 4th Earl in 1845 and this George Wyndham was adopted as the heir to the substantial Egremont estates, including Petworth House in Sussex. In 1859 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Leconfield, of Leconfield in the East Riding of the County of York.

During the Great Irish Famine, Wyndham was often in residence in his County Clare estate near Ennis where he assisted tenants who wanted to emigrate to Canada. This was a continuation of his father's improving policies in Sussex. In late 1849 and early 1850, a series of seven anonymous essays and illustrations concerning the famine appeared in The Illustrated London News under the title "Condition of Ireland: Illustrations of the New Poor Law." Here the narrator (likely the journalist and philanthropist Sidney Godolphin Osborne) writes of Col. Wyndham that "Colonel Windham . . . is not tired of his fellow-creatures, and does not seek to exterminate them. Not a roofless house did I see here." His property was a "little oasis of humanity in the desert of misery."^[1]

Wyndham married Mary Fanny Blunt, daughter of Reverend William Blunt, in 1815. They had nine children:^[2]

• Mary Wyndham (3 March 1816 - 24 May 1823)
• George William Wyndham (27 Feb 1817 - before 1869)
• Hon Fanny Charlotte Wyndham (20 September 1820 - 27 January 1893)
• Helen Caroline Elizabeth Wyndham (11 May 1823 - 19 March 1852)
• Hon Blanche Julia Wyndham (21 November 1826 - 31 January 1918)
• Hon Caroline Sophia Wyndham (10 September 1829 - 19 March 1852)
• Henry Wyndham, 2nd Baron Leconfield (31 July 1830 - 6 January 1901)
• Hon Percy Scawen Wyndham (30 January 1835 - 13 March 1911)
• Hon Constance Elizabeth Wyndham (1837 - 21 January 1920)

Lord Leconfield died in March 1869 at the age of 81 and was succeeded in the barony by his eldest surviving son Henry.

His third son, Percy, was the father of the politician and man of letters George Wyndham. His daughter, Caroline, married Colonel Sir Nigel Kingscote on 13 March 1851 at Petworth, Sussex. She died giving birth and is buried with her still-born child in the family vault at Bartons Lane Cemetery, Petworth, West Sussex.

• Earl of Egremont

• Charles Mosley (ed.), Burke's Peerage & Baronetage, 106th edition, 1999, entry "Egremont"