Wynne, Richard
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- Wynne, Richard
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(1744 - 98), b. in Venice, e. s. of Richard Wynne (d. 1751) of Falkingham, Lincs; m. 1770 Agathe Camille de Roye [Royer] (d. 1799).
1744 - 59 Venice, with visit to England in 1751
1789 - 91 Conegliano (23 Nov. 1789 - ), Venice (13 Mar. 1790) with visits to Padua, Conegliano, Treviso; Verona (7 Oct. 1791) [Switzerland and Germany Oct. 1791 - Mar. 1796]
1796 - 8 Verona (17 - 29 Mar. 1796), Mantua, Modena, Florence (3 Apr. - 22 Jun.), Leghorn (23 - 26 Jun.) [Isle of Elba Jun. 1796 - Jan. 1797] Naples (8 Jan. 1797 - 6 Mar. 1798), Leghorn (16 - 27 Mar.), Florence (28 Mar. - 2 Apr.), Bologna (3 - 4 Apr.), Padua (6 Apr.), Verona (9 Apr.) [England May]
Having been brought up in Venice, where his father had died when he was six, Richard was taken to England in 1751 and again in 1759 when he appears to have stayed until 1788.1 He then sold the family estate at Falkingham and returned to Venice and the Veneto with his family - an ailing wife and five daughters. He was to stay abroad until 1798, his movements between Italy, Switzerland and Germany principally determined by the progress of the French armies. The family's fortunes on the Continent were described in the youthful diaries kept by his second and third daughters, Elizabeth (Betsey) and Eugenia.
For two years they moved between Venice, Padua, Conegliano and Treviso. He was presumably the 'Ricardo Cavaliere Wynne con la sua Consorte e figli' who had arrived at Venice on 13 Mar. 1790.2 For Richard Wynne this was simply a return home to his three sisters, Giustiniana, Mary Elizabeth and Teresa, their families and numerous relations. His eldest daughter, Mary, married Francesco Montalbano early in 1789. In October 1791 they left Italy to spend nearly five years in Switzerland and Germany.
Anticipating danger from the French armies, Richard Wynne, who appears in the diaries as a somewhat restless and gouty man, took his family from Ratisbon to Italy in March 1796. On 17 March they reached Verona where they met the exiled Comte de Provence (later Louis XVIII) and Betsey, then seventeen, gave a harpsichord recital for him. In April they reached Florence, but on 9 May Betsey was writing 'we begun to be very uneasy as the duced French make such progress'. On 14 June her father got 'thoroughly drunk' while discussing the best procedures with William Wyndham, the British envoy. The French were at Bologna on 20 June and on the 22nd the Wynne family went to Leghorn; 'God knows what will become of us at last', Betsey reflected. On 24 June they boarded the frigate Inconstant (Captain Thomas Fremantle) and on the 26th (as the French entered Leghorn) they sailed to the Isle of Elba. Betsey promptly fell in love with Fremantle who gave her a ring before leaving the family on 14 July. The Wynnes remained on Elba where on 11 September Betsey wrote of her father, 'it is high time he should return to England and settle himself for ever there'. Then Fremantle returned in December and advised them to sail with him to Naples, which they did, arriving on 8 January 1797.
Betsey and Fremantle were married in the Hamiltons' house on 12 January. Prince Augustus gave her away and Sir William Hamilton, Sir Gilbert Elliot and William Lambton attended. On 17 January Captain and Mrs Fremantle departed for their honeymoon at sea, and were back in Portsmouth by 2 September.
The rest of the Wynne family stayed in Naples. Richard Wynne was now suffering from gout and when they went to Caserta he travelled with 'a full draped coat, sword and bag, one foot elegantly shoed t'other in a woolen slipper' (9 Feb. 1797). They eventually sailed from Naples on 6 March 1798 and came home via Leghorn, Florence, Bologna, Padua and Verona, Eugenia noting that 'Everywhere we found traces of the fury of the French: demolished houses, profaned altars and the hatred and fear of them still living in every heart' (10 Apr. 1798). They were in England in May. Richard Wynne died at Bath in October 1798, his wife in London in November 1799.
In October 1815 Betsey returned to Italy to join her husband, by then Admiral Fremantle, who was to die at Naples in December 1719.
1. See Wynne Diaries 1: and 2:. 2. ASV is 761.