Sir Richard Newdigate, 2nd Baronet

Sir Richard Newdigate, 2nd Baronet (5 May 1644 - 4 January 1710) was an English landowner, entrepreneur, engineer, and politician who held the title of Commissioner for assessment for Warwickshire, and served on the Warwickshire commission of the peace, as well as on the Oxford Parliament as the MP for Warwickshire for two separate terms. He also became well known for investing his estate’s wealth intoexpansions and mining ventures, and for large infrastructure projects. After losing his seat in Parliament, he had a strained relationship with his family before dying a much poorer man in 1710.

Family

Richard Newdigate, 2nd Baronet was the eighth child and third (but only surviving) son born to Richard Newdigate, 1st Baronet (1602-1678) of Arbury Hall, Chilvers Coton, Warwickshire, and his wife Juliana Leigh (1610-1685) sister of Sir Francis Leigh of Dunsmore (1595-1653). He was the grandson of Sir John Newdigate (1571-1610), and had five sisters, who he stayed on good terms with for his entire life. His first marriage was to Mary (1646-1692) daughter of Sir Edward Bargot of Blithefield, Staffordshire (1616-1660) whom he had seven surviving daughters and four sons. After relations with his family deteriorated in the final decade of his life, he married again to Henrietta (1685-1739), daughter of Thomas Wigginton (1644-1723) in 1704. There were no surviving children from this marriage. His son Sir Richard, 3rd Baronet was the father of Sir Roger Newdigate.

Early life

Newdigate was born on 5 May 1644. He was entered as a scholar at the age of ten at Gray’s Inn, as it was within walking distance of his childhood home at Holborn, and his father was appointed as a sergeant there. He learned basic knowledge in Latin and the basic tenants of the law. At the age of seventeen, he enrolled at Christchurch College in Oxford, but did not take a degree. He would however maintain lasting links with the University, particularly through his communication with the dean of Christchurch, John Fell (1625-1686. Almost a year after his twenty-first birthday, his father passed on all of his Warwickshire lands to him and enabled him to live at the estate in Arbury, which allowed him to collect rents over much of his father’s vast land holdings. He was married on the 21st of December, 1665 to Mary, the fifth daughter of Sir Edward Bagot, the baronet of Blthefield, who was said to have “excellent endowment of mind and heart”. After the family had settled at Arbury Hall, Newdigate began acting as a broker for Birmingham gunsmiths and drew up a proposal for a canal between the Severn and the Avon. He also undertook a makeover to his estate, adding on a private chapel, stables, and gardens. He was particularly confident in his love of mines and mining, and he strove to construct a waterway from Arbury to Nuneaton by pioneering the use of mining methods in modern construction, a project that was abandoned after his death.

Politics

While Newdigate declined an invitation to stand for the parliamentary seat of Lichfield following a vacancy due to death in 1678, he was appointed to the Warwickshire Commission of the Peace, which he was an active member in. However he soon began to show that his goals outweighed his position when he abortively proposed to raise a regiment of men and horses for the War with France, this request was denied and his behavior during the process led to him being charged with levying men without a warrant, a charge that he was able to have cleared.

He lost contesting general elections in 1679, finishing at the bottom of the polls twice. In November of that year, he was dismissed from the magistrate chamber and from his position as gentleman of the privy chamber, however this was brief as he regained his position and was even pressured to accept a peerage. He was elected to the Oxford Parliament of 1681 but saw his entire armory disposed after his implication in the assassination attempt that was colloquially known as the Rye House Plot. Following the Glorious Revolution, he was restored to the bench and elected to the Convention Parliament. He was defeated at the general election in 1699 and would never again serve in Parliament.

Later life

Following his departure from government, Newdigate’s debts increased as did his quarrels with his own family. He had a particularly poor relationship with his older son, whom he described in his own will as “my most inveterate and implacable enemy” His children petioned in 1701 and again in 1703 to have him declared as insane but were defeated in court, Newdigate’s outrage at this turn of events was embodied into a pamphlet that he put out that while attention-grabbing, did a poor job of turning public opinion in his favor. He remarried in 1703 to the chagrin of his family, to Henrietta Wiggington, but was not able to produce any more surviving offspring. Newdigate died on 4 January 1710 in London and was put to rest in his ancestral burial grounds at Harefield, passing all of his debts onto his eldest son.

References

• (1) Gooder, Eileen Amy. The Squire of Arbury: Sir Richard Newdigate Second Baronet (1644-1710) And His Family. Coventry: Coventry Branch of the Historical Association, 1990. Print.
• (2) Newdegate, Anne Emily Garnier. Cavalier and Puritan in the Days of the Stuarts: Compiled from the Private Papers and Diary of Sir Richard Newdigate, Second Baronet, with Extracts from Ms. News-letters Addressed to Him between 1675 and 1689. London: Smith, Elder, 1901. Print.
• (3) Larminie, Vivienne. ‘Newdigate, Sir Richard, second baronet (1644–1710)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 23, April 2015
• (4) Crisp, Frederick Arthur, ed. (1907). Visitation of England and Wales