Windham, William ___ 1750-1810 ___ British ___ politician

BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY
Windham was born at Felbrigg, near Cromer in Norfolk, an estate owned by his family for centuries, and educated at Eton and University College, Oxford. During the 1770s, he made several tours of European countries. In the first half of the 1780s, he went to Ireland as chief secretary to Lord Northington, and entered Parliament as MP for Norwich. He stood for the Whigs, and was one of those involved (along with his friend Edmund Burke) in the impeachment of Warren Hastings, a Governor of India. On the outbreak of the French Revolution, Windham sided with William Pitt. In 1794 he was appointed Secretary-at-War, and a privy councillor. Four years later, he resigned with Pitt when the King prevented Catholic emancipation, and, in 1802, he lost his seat because of his opposition to peace with France. He was again returned to Parliament as member for St Mawes, Cornwall, in 1804, and again served as Secretary of State for War and the Colonies between 1806 and 1807. In 1798, he married Cecelia Forest, but they had no children. His diary is considered an important political record.
A biography link
Wikipedia bio
The Diary Review - Windham's love of Johnson

DIARY DATES, CONTENT DESCRIPTORS
1769-1810 ___ political social travel art France Italy Norway

WEB TEXT LINKS
one quote
etext
googlebooks

ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT LINKS
The Baring Archive - 1784-1810
Wigan Archives Service - 1779-1780

SOME PUBLISHED TITLES
The Diary of the Right Honorable William Windham
 

May 2005, August 2008, April 2013
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IMPORTANT NOTES AND CAUTIONS: 1) The first line of basic information may be incomplete in several ways: some historical figures have different names (titles, pen-names); their birth and death dates may be unknown or uncertain (g - guess, c - circa); similarly, their occupations may be unknown, or they may have had other jobs; and, for early diarists, I've used 'British' a bit too freely. 2) The biographical summary may not be accurate. It was compiled quickly from various sources, mostly on the internet, and the facts were not checked anywhere near as rigorously as they would have been if they'd been intended for publication in a printed form. 3) The journal dates and descriptors (which are in no particular order) must be treated with caution: since I have not examined the diaries myself, the descriptors are only guesses based on bibliographies, anthologies and internet biographies. 4) For the biography and etext links, I have ignored any sites with charges, and I have avoided, wherever possible, those with pop-ups or too much advertising. I have limited myself to providing three etext links where there is some variety between them. 5) For the original manuscript links, I have limited myself to providing a maximum of two (although, for a few diarists, their original diaries are held in more than two places). 6) I have provided the titles - chosen randomly - for up to three printed editions of the diaries.