Florence Wadham

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Florence Wyndham (died 1596) was the daughter of Sir John Wadham of Merifield and sister of Nicholas Wadham founder of Wadham College, Oxford.

Buried alive

Her fame rests on a remarkable escape from a horrific death and her singular importance to the survival of the Wyndham family.

In 1556 she married Sir John Wyndham of Orchard Wyndham and a year later was taken ill and thought to have died. She was buried in the Wyndham family vault in St Decuman’s church at Watchet, Somerset and that same night a covetous sexton opened her coffin in order to remove her rings and cut one of her fingers in the process. She had in fact fallen into some sort of cataleptic trance, and was now awakened by the pain and rose from her coffin. The sexton fled leaving his lantern behind him; and with its aid she made her way home across the fields to her astounded family.

Soon afterwards she gave birth to her only son, Sir John Wyndham, from whom every member of the Wyndham family is descended (apart from a branch of the family in the United States whose progenitor is Vice Admiral Sir Thomas Wyndham, Henry VIII's distinguished naval commander).

Her remarkable survival and importance is celebrated in the family by successive generations naming the eldest son Wadham Wyndham, most especially by the Salisbury branch of St Edmund's College founded by Sir Wadham Wyndham.

Lady Wyndham's Return

A poem about her remarkable escape, called 'Lady Wyndham's Return', was written by Lewis H. Court, a vicar of St Decuman's church, and includes the following verses:

He seized the slender fingers white
And stiff in their repose
Then sought to file the circlet through;
When, to his horror, blood he drew,
And the fair sleeper rose

She sat a moment, gazed around,
Then, great was her surprise,
And sexton, startled, saw at a glance
This was not death, but a deep trance,
And madness leapt to his eyes.

The stagnant life steam in her veins
Again began to flow:
She felt the sudden quickening,
For her it was a joyous thing ,
For him a fearsome woe.

References

  • Wyndham, the Hon H A, "A Family History, The Wyndhams of Somerset, Sussex and Wilstshire", 1950.

External links

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