The Wootton Bassett and Whiteknights Connection

The manor of Wootton Bassett was granted to Sir Francis Englefield by Queen Mary in 1555 with remainder to his brother John but after Francis decamped to France and then Spain in 1559 Wootton Bassett, like Englefield in 1563, was seized by Elizabeth I, certainly by 1571.  After the death of Sir Francis in 1596 Wootton Bassett passed to his nephew Francis, son of John.  Francis was made a Baronet in 1611 and died in 1631 to be succeeded by his eldest surviving son, also Francis, who became the second Baronet.  This Francis died in 1656 to be succeeded by his son, yet another Francis, but this Francis, the fourth Baronet, died without surviving issue in 1665.  His uncle Sir Thomas was his heir but Wootton Bassett was settled on Francis's widow Honoria for her life.  Honoria married politician and dramatist Sir Robert Howard and although on her death in 1676 Wootton Basset should have reverted to Sir Thomas Englefield, Howard had acquired the reversion from Sir Thomas when he married Honoria leading to a long legal dispute.  Howard sold Wootton Basset to Laurence Hyde, later Earl of Rochester, in the year of his wife's death and it too was lost to to the Englefields.

Francis Englefield, the first Baronet, purchased Whiteknights Park (now the main campus of Reading University) in 1606 and it remained in the family until it was sold to George Spencer-Churchill, Marquis of Blandford, by the seventh Baronet Sir Henry Englefield in 1798.  Henry had been born at Whiteknights and spent most of his childhood there but had moved to 5 Tilney Street in London, supposedly because of the anti-Catholic feeling amongst his neighbours.  Sir Henry, a renowned antiquarian, never married but conducted an affair with Milburg Allpress, wife of General Richard Crewe, by whom he had a son, born in 1802. When Sir Henry died in 1822 this son was his heir but being illegitimate could not succeed to the baronetcy which became extinct.