Edmund Wylde

Monument to Edmund Wylde's father, Sir Edmund Wylde, who died aged 32 when High Sheriff of the county with his sons Edmund and Walter kneeling before it, church of St Mary the Virgin, Kempsey
Sir Edmund's effigy's nose was flattened by Cromwell 2 July 1646

Edmund Wylde or Edmund Wilde (10 October 1618^[1] – 1695^[2]) was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1646 to 1653.

Wylde was the son^[3] of Sir Edmund Wylde of Kempsey and his wife Dorothy Clarke daughter of Sir Francis Clarke of Houghton Conquest Bedfordshire.^[4] He matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford on 29 November 1635 aged 15. He was called to the bar at Inner Temple in 1644. In 1646, Wylde was elected Member of Parliament for Droitwich as a recruiter for the Long Parliament. He was a commissioner for the Navy in 1650.^[5]

Wylde was a particular friend of William Petty and is described as a "great fautor (favourer] of ingenious men for merit's sake".^[6] Wylde became a Fellow of the Royal Society on 20 May 1663. He claimed to have a method of softening steel without the use of fire, but refused to demonstrate it because he considered it a secret.^[7]

There is no record of marriage or (legitimate) children. He is reported to have died in 1695 at his residence in Glazeley Shropshire aged 77. His 8-page will asked for burial in the chancel at Glazeley (where he was buried on 7 January 1695/1696)^[8] leaving property in London, manors in Essex, Norfolk, Bedfordshire, Worcestershire and Shropshire and 5 bullaries^[9] in Droitwich to his kinsman Robert Wylde the elder of The Commandery and his lawful heirs male — in the event Thomas Wylde later MP for Worcester. A number of pages of this will are concerned with provision for Mrs Jane Smith als Pike "now living with me for some years". She was to receive in addition to £2000 cash all his most personal possessions, gold, silver, prints, pictures, library etc. and "the house in which I now live in the Great Square Buildings in Bloomsbury in the parish of St Giles-in-the-Fields Middlesex formerly leased to my late uncle George Wylde of Gressenhall Norfolk". His executors are asked to display his coat of arms on the front of the house while she lives there.^[10]

References

1. Register of baptisms, Houghton Conquest, Bedfordshire - Transcription
2. Will and abstracts Bedfordshire and Luton Archives and Record Service, Houghton Conquest Parish Records
3. Abstracts of wills in the Prerogative court of Canterbury at Somerset house
4. History of the County of Worcester: volume 3 Victoria County History, 1913
5. W R Williams Parliamentary History of the County of Worcester Williams gives his name as Edward Wilde and suggests he died before 1659
6. The life of Sir William Petty, 1623-1687
7. David C. Lindberg, Robert S. Westman Reappraisals of the scientific revolution
8. Glazeley parish register
9. Batteries of vats in which Droitwich spring water was boiled to extract the salt
10. Will of Edmund Wylde of Inner Temple, City of London, Date 2 January (1695/)1696, Catalogue reference PROB 11/435