William Windham - Legacy

Legacy

Windham was greatly influenced by Whig philosopher Edmund Burke, describing Burke's words as "the source of all good". The Foxite Whig Lord Holland considered Burke "the great god of his idolatry".

Samuel Johnson said of Windham after conversing with him: "Such conversation I shall not have again till I come back to the regions of literature; and there Windham is, inter stellas Luna minores ".

Sir James Mackintosh wrote to a friend after meeting Windham in March 1800: "His conversation is full of sense, knowledge and vivacity and his manners very gentle. We talked with equal enthusiasm of Burke and with equal abhorrence of Democrats and Philosophers". Upon hearing of Windham's death, Mackintosh said: "Had Windham possessed discretion in debate, or Sheridan in conduct, they might have ruled their age".

Sir Nathaniel William Wraxall claimed Windham was:

...one of the most accomplished orators and individuals whom we have beheld in our day...His person was graceful, elegant, and distinguished; slender, but not meagre. The lineaments of his countenance, though they displayed the ravages of the smallpox, were pleasing, and retained a character of animation, blended with spirit and intelligence. Over his whole figure, nature had thrown an air of mind. His manners corresponded with his external appearance; and his conversation displayed the treasures of a highly cultivated understanding. Ardent in his love of civil liberty, for the preservation of which blessing, I believe, he would as cheerfully have shed his blood as did Hampden or Sidney; it was constitutional freedom that he venerated, not a republican and impracticable emancipation from limited monarchial government...To Burke, Windham unquestionably bore some analogy; and on his shoulders may be said to have descended the mantle of Burke...Windham's talents, brilliant and various as they were, always however appeared to me more adapted to speculative, than to practical life.

Henry Brougham said of Windham:

...a lively wit of the most pungent and yet abstruse description, a turn for subtle reasoning ... familiarity with men of letters and artists as well as politicians...a singularly expressive countenance—all fitted this remarkable person to shine ... he was too often the dupe of his own ingenuity; which made him doubt and balance ... His nature ... was to be a follower, if not a worshipper, rather than an original thinker or actor ... Accordingly, first Johnson in private and afterwards Burke on political matters were the deities whom he adored.

The Whig historian Thomas Macaulay, in his essay on Warren Hastings he wrote in 1841, praised Windham: "There, with eyes reverentially fixed on Burke, appeared the finest gentleman of the age, his form developed by every manly exercise, his face beaming with intelligence and spirit, the ingenious, the chivalrous, the high-souled Windham".

Lord Rosebery edited Windham's papers in 1913, and said Windham was:

...the finest English gentleman of his or perhaps of all time. Had he lived in the great days of Elizabeth, he would have been one of the heroes of her reign...He was a statesman, an orator, a mathematician, a scholar, and the most fascinating talker of his day...A noble gentleman in the highest sense of the word, full of light, intellect, and dignity, loved and lamented. His best qualities, no doubt, as is often the case, he carried almost to excess; for his cherished independence he led to a morbid craving for isolation. But to the charge of vacillation in public affairs he was not obnoxious; he was always true to his faith. But he chose his masters well, Johnson and Burke; the one gave him his religious, the other his political creed. In life he was brilliant and successful. In oratory, in parliament, in society, he was almost supreme. But he can scarcely be said to survive. He left no stamp, no school, no work. To those, however, who care to disinter his memory he displays character and qualities of excellence, rare at all times, rarest in these.

F. P. Lock has described Windham as "a Norfolk squire of uncommon intellectual gifts and great personal charm. His great failing was chronic indecision". Boyd Hilton said Windham "was the first in a line of brilliant but maverick right-wing politicians—Lyndhurst, Randolph Churchill, F. E. Smith—who operated too far outside the consensus to be effective. He had a scintillating personality, and political convictions so strong that they belied his otherwise scholarly and discriminating characteristics, but he lacked judgement and had a streak of melancholic instability".