Francis Wyatt

Biography Francis was the son of George Wyatt and his Jane Finch (daughter of Sir Thomas Finch). He was born at Boxley Manor in Kent, and attended St Mary Hall, Oxford, (from 1 July 1603) and Gray's Inn (1604). He was knighted on July 7, 1618 at Windsor. Around the same time, he married Margaret Sandys, daughter of Samuel Sandys.

Virginia became a royal colony in 1624, but Sir Francis, at the request of the crown, remained on as governor until 18 September 1625, when Sir George Yeardley, whom he had succeeded, resumed the office. In 1624, Wyatt resided in Jamestown with his wife, his brother Haute (Hawte), and seventeen servants. In 1625, he received a black servant girl, named "Brass", after a court settlement from her previous employer. At the same time, Wyatt was described as an ancient planter (which entitled him to land patents), and owned at least 500 acres near Blunt Poynt.

Wyatt returned to England after his second term as governor and died in Boxley. He was buried there on 24 August 1644.

Sir Francis Wyatt organized the General Assembly which had been called in 1619. This was the first legislative body in America. Sir Francis caused its privileges to be embodied in a written constitution, the first of its kind in the New World.

Family

Francis Wyatt's grandfather was Sir Thomas Wyatt the younger, who had led the Kent faction of Wyatt's rebellion to the Spanish marriage of Queen Mary in support of Lady Elizabeth, and was executed for treason as a result. His great-grandfather Thomas Wyatt the elder, the poet, was briefly imprisoned in the Tower of London for an alleged relationship with Anne Boleyn.

Sir Francis's wife, Margaret, was the daughter of Sir Samuel Sandys and the niece of George Sandys, the treasurer of Jamestown. Francis and Margaret's children included Henry (whose daughter Frances briefly held Boxley); Francis (who was at King's College, Cambridge, in 1639); Edwin (an MP who successfully sued his niece to regain Boxley, but whose son died without issue); and Elizabeth (grandmother of Robert Marsham, 1st Baron Romney (1685–1724), who eventually inherited Boxley). Boxley remained with the barons and earls of Romney for more than two hundred years.

His younger brother, the Reverend Hawte Wyatt (1594–1638), who was the rector of Maidstone, Kent, travelled to Virginia with Francis in 1621 and returned with him to England in 1624 after their father died. Rev. Wyatt's many descendants in America include the late Duchess of Windsor, wife of Edward VIII, later the Duke of Windsor as well as 50th vice president of the United States JD Vance.