Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn, 5th Baronet was a Welsh landowner and Tory politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1794 to 1840.
Background
Williams-Wynn was the son of Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn, 4th Baronet and his second wife, Charlotte, daughter of George Grenville, a former Prime Minister, through whose sister Hester"s marriage to William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham, Williams-Wynn became cousin to Pitt the Younger. He succeeded his father in the baronetcy on 29 July 1789.
Education
He was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford.
Career
He received Honorary Doctorate.C.L. at Oxford in 1793 and was Lord Lieutenant of Merionethshire from 1793 to 1840 and Lord Lieutenant of Denbighshire from 1796 to 1840. In 1819 Williams-Wynn was admitted to Magdalene College, Cambridge and was awarded Master of Arts in 1819. He declined several offers of a peerage.
In later years, Williams-Wynn would return to Westminster School every Saint David"s Day where he presented all the Welsh boys that he knew with a guinea, and his godson Stapleton Cotton (later Viscount Combermere) with two.
He held the seat until his death in 1840. He served as Mayor of Oswestry in 1800 and 1831, and of Chester in 1813.
As the largest landowner in North Wales, and controller of many parliamentary seats, he was referred to, at least by himself, as the "Prince in Wales". and had a keen interest in military affairs He commanded them until they disbanded in 1800, after Williams-Wynn unsuccessfully requested they be deployed on foreign service.
Colonel of the Denbighshire Militia since 1797, he deployed with a battalion of them under his kinsman the Marquess of Buckingham for service in France from March to June 1814.
Originally intending to link up with the Duke of Wellington"s army who had come from Spain before the French armistice intervened, they were garrisoned in Bordeaux where he was known among local people as "le gros commandant Whof Whof Whof". He also became Colonel commanding the Denbighshire Yeomanry Cavalry in 1820 and was Welsh Militia aide-de-camp to King William IV from 1830 to 1837 and to Queen Victoria from 1837 until his death. He grew to be a portly man of seventeen and half stone (238 pounds (108 kg)), which sometimes caused chairs to collapse under him, and Lady Holland, in her Journal (volume I, page 238), commented: "Sir Watkin is a Grenville in person and manner all over him.
His tongue is immensely too big for his mouth and his utterance is so impeded by it that what he attempts to articulate is generally unintelligible." From the winter of 1826-1827, when he contracted erysipelas, he was affected by varying degrees of deafness at their worst in 1831.
He died at Wynnstay Hall, aged 67, on 6 January 1840, and was buried at Ruabon, Denbighshire. Williams-Wynn married Lady Henrietta Antonia Clive, eldest daughter of Edward Clive, 1st Earl of Powis, and the former Lady Henrietta Herbert, on 4 February 1817.
Views
In 1794 he raised a cavalry regiment called the "Ancient British Fencibles" and took part in the suppression of the Irish rebellion of 1798, when they were known as "Sir Watkin"s lambs" and "a terror of the rebels", acquiring a reputation that he had to defend from charges of cruelty among the Irish.
Membership
1st United Kingdom Parliament. 2nd United Kingdom Parliament. 3rd United Kingdom Parliament.
4th United Kingdom Parliament.
5th United Kingdom Parliament. 6th United Kingdom Parliament.
7th United Kingdom Parliament. 8th United Kingdom Parliament.
9th United Kingdom Parliament.
10th United Kingdom Parliament. 11th United Kingdom Parliament. 12th United Kingdom Parliament.
13th United Kingdom Parliament.
17th Parliament of Great Britain. 18th Parliament of Great Britain.