Wendy, Thomas, Sir (1613 -1673)

Thomas Wendy was born 10 Februray 1613 at Lillinstone Lovell, Oxfordshire, the second child, but eldest son, of Francis Wendy, and Elizabeth Wentworth, of Wolston, Warwickshire. He enetered Balliol College Oxford as a Fellow Commoner in 1631. He inherited ancestral estates at Haslingfield in Cambridgeshire, and in 1638 was appointed Sheriff of Cambridgeshire. He was also appointed one of the commissioners responsible for the collection of taxes for the shire. At the Coronation of Charles II on St George’s Day in 1661, Wendy was one of sixty-eight men created Knights of the Bath. He married Letitia Willoughby, eldest daughter of Sir Francis Willoughby of Wollaton Hall, Nottinghamshire. This marriage (the date of which is unknown) broadened Wendy’s circles of friends and intellectual interests. He was one of the subscribers to Brian Walton’s edition of the Polyglot Bible of 1657. His library of 2,000 books reached Balliol College, Oxford in 1677 immediately increasing its size by one third, and as Anthony Wood wrote “by which addition, consisting chiefly of choice books, this Library is accounted one of the best in Oxon”. Books are not mentioned in his will, but Balliol was his residual legatee. A list of the books given occupy some 113 pages of the Donor’s Book. His portrait hangs in the library at Balliol.