Francis Wyatt - Family

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. 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, whose grandson Robert Marsham, 1st Baron Romney (1685–1724), eventually inherited Boxley. Boxley remained with the barons and earls of Romney for more than two hundred years. Sir Francis left no direct descendants in what would later become the United States of America.

His younger brother, the Reverend Hawte Wyatt (1594–1638), who was the rector of Maidstone, Kent, his sister Lady Isabel (born 1595), and her husband Sir Francis Page (1595–1678), traveled 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. Lady Isabel's daughter Lady Elizabeth Page (1625–1691) married Sir Edward Digges, one of the governors of the Virginia Colony, who founded Belle Field plantation and brought the silk industry to North America; eight of their thirteen children survived childhood. Isabel's son, Colonel John Page (1628–1692), was a successful merchant and politician whose descendants formed the Pages of the First Families of Virginia. No citation provided for Isabel Wyatt Page's birth, marriage or issue. Lady Elizabeth Page was the daughter of Sir Francis Page and his wife Mary.