Colonel Wadham Wyndham

Colonel Wadham Wyndham (1737–1812) was an English officer of the British Army and accomplished bon vivant.

The son of Henry Wyndham and Arundel Penruddocke, he was born at Dinton, Wiltshire, on 29 May 1737 at precisely 55 minutes past five in the morning. He was brought up in St Edmund's College, Salisbury, the house acquired by his great-grandfather Sir Wadham Wyndham, and seat of one of the county's most influential families.

His early appetite for constant and varied amusement is captured in the double portrait by Joseph Highmore of 1743, which portrays his brother Pen seeking to study while the young Wadham attempts to draw him into the garden, tennis racket in hand. This foretells the course in life for both brothers.

He joined the Coldstream Guards as a lieutenant and became a captain on 3 May 1758. On 2 July 1771 he was elevated to the rank of lieutenant-colonel and promptly retired from the army. At the time it was required that commissions were purchased and in his will his father records having paid £3,200 in total for the purpose, a not inconsiderable sum.

Wyndham's military career did not prevent him from continuing to enjoy most of his regular amusements. One evening in 1765, after one of the monthly dance assemblies at Tucket's establishment in Salisbury, he began playing cards with Edmund Hearst, father of his brother's future wife Caroline, at one in the morning and the game did not end until ten the next morning, by which time Wadham had won 15 shillings.

On 9 July 1766 he and his sister, Laetitia, organised a musical entertainment on the river at Salibsury with eight boats in all, some holding 25 people, one boat comprising the party of musicians. In the summer of 1768 he contrived to absent himself from his battalion duties at the Tower of London in order to enjoy Ascot with his cousins the William Pitts of Kingston, a few days later entertaining his aunt Barbara Wyndham by taking her to Vauxhall and Ranelagh.

However, later in the same year George III's summer review of all regiments in England prevented him from attending the Salisbury races where his cousin William Wyndham of Dinton was a steward. He reached home, however, in time to stay with the Portmans at Bryanston for the Blandford Races and to accompany his father on 12 August to their Exton estate for the shooting season.

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