ABSTRACT
James Brydges was born on 6 January 1674 at his grandmother’s family home of Dewsall Court, Herefordshire. He was the eldest surviving son of Sir James Brydges, (16421714) 3rd baronet and 8th Lord Chandos of Sudeley, Gloucestershire. The family title originated with Sir John Brydges or Bruges (1492-1557), created first Baron Chandos of Sudeley in 1554, whose principal seat was Wilton Castle in Hereford, although he also owned estates in Gloucestershire and Herefordshire.2 Brydges’ father, Lord Chandos, and his family, lived on their 4,000-acre estate at Dewsall on the modest income of £1,500 a year.3 He was a staunch Tory, and took his seat in the House of Lords in 1677. From 1680 to 1687 he lived in Istanbul, where he was ambassador for the Levant (or Turkey) Company.4 James’s mother, Elizabeth (née Barnard), the daughter of a rich merchant, kept a family ‘Register’ in which she recorded births, deaths and activities in the family.5 In October 1681, she described how she and her children travelled to Turkey to join Lord Chandos. She also recorded the return home five years later of James and his two brothers, Henry and Francis, to attend Westminster School, where they were admitted in 1686. After Westminster, James went up to New College, Oxford in 1690 and soon after finishing his studies he married his first wife, Mary Lake (1666/8-1713), in February 1696. Mary, who was eight years his senior, was the daughter of Sir Thomas Lake (d. 1673) and she brought with her a sizeable marriage settlement of £10,000.6
1 Huntington Library, Stowe Manuscripts, ST 57 Vol. 9, f. 217, a letter from the Duke of Chandos to Anthony Hammond (1668-1738), dated 4 October 1713.
