Thomas Estcourt Cresswell

Thomas Estcourt Cresswell (12 July 1712 – 14 November 1788) was an English politician.[1]

Biography

He was the son of Richard Cresswell and his wife Elizabeth Estcourt, daughter and heiress of Sir Thomas Estcourt Knt; of Pinkney Park, near Malmesbury in Wiltshire and inherited the heavily encumbered Pinkney Park estate in 1743 from his father.

Cresswell was elected Member of Parliament for Wootton Bassett (1754–1774). He died at his seat in Pinkney Park on 14 November 1788.

He had gained a degree of notoriety as a bigamist after his marriage in February 1744 to a wealthy heiress, Miss Anne Warneford, granddaughter and eventual heir of Sir Edmund Warneford of Sevenhampton and Bibury, Gloucestershire. Anne had married Cresswell in good faith and had borne him two children but another woman, Miss Elizabeth Scrope sued on the grounds of bigamy, claiming a prior Fleet Marriage. Miss Scrope's suit was successful, the Cresswell-Warneford marriage was declared null and void, and the children (a son, Estcourt, and a daughter) were bastardized. However, a third marriage was revealed by another search through the Fleet records that antedated the others; thus Cresswell's last two "marriages" were bigamous.[2] It was stated that he endeavoured to keep possession of both wives at the same time by a "base and unmanly contrivance". For a considerable time Miss Scrope retained a deep sense of her injuries; in 1749 she published a pamphlet in her own name, called Miss Scrope's Answer to Mr. Cresswell's Narrative.[3]

Thomas Estcourt Cresswell had at least another four illegitimate children with a Miss Catharine Jenkins between 1749 and 1755, the three survivors of whom received substantial bequests from their father on a par with their half brother Estcourt, who was MP for Cirencester from 1768 to 1774.

References

"CRESSWELL, Thomas Estcourt (1712-88), of Pinkney Park, Wilts". History of Parliament Online. Retrieved 19 June 2016.
Lawrence Stone, The Road to Divorce: England, 1530-1987 [Oxford University Press, 1990], p. 119.
Notes and Queries No 12, 19 January 1850

Parliament of Great Britain
Preceded by Robert Neale Martin Madan	Member of Parliament for Wootton Bassett with John Probyn 1754–1761 Henry St John 1761–1774 1754–1774	Succeeded by Henry St John Robert Scott

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[1] "CRESSWELL, Thomas Estcourt (1712-88), of Pinkney Park, Wilts". History of Parliament Online. Retrieved 19 June 2016.

[2] Lawrence Stone, The Road to Divorce: England, 1530-1987 [Oxford University Press, 1990], p. 119.

[3] Notes and Queries No 12, 19 January 1850