William Frederick Wyndham

Wyndham was the fourth and youngest son of Charles Wyndham, 2nd Earl of Egremont and Hon. Alicia Maria Carpenter, daughter of George Carpenter, 2nd Baron Carpenter and Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Charlotte.^[1] He served briefly as a commissioned officer in the Coldstream Guards, but had resigned his commission by 1784.^[2]

From 1794 to 1814, Wyndham was the British ambassador to Tuscany. By the 1790s, he already had a reputation for being a difficult and radical character, and Lady Holland recorded surprise at his appointment as ambassador:

I went to supper at Lord Elgin's. Nobody would credit that W. Wyndham was appointed Minister to Florence; "Comment done, ce petit polisson (rascal), ce petit Jacobin." He passed last winter here, and belonged to the Jacobin Club at Paris, and was very much slighted here. Lord Elgin frankly told me he doubted my story, it was impossible that such a man could be employed [...] W. Wyndham's appointment is not much relished, as the Court want a steady, reasonable man, disposed to soothe matters, and, God knows, poor Wyndham is not capable of filling that post.^[3]

Wyndham arrived in Florence on 20 March 1794 with instructions from the British government to win the support of the traditionally neutral Grand Duchy against France. He soon after had a disagreement with a Florentine count, Carletti, owing to Wyndham's Jacobin principles, which damaged his reputation.^[2]

In anticipation of the French capture of Livorno in 1796, Wyndham advised British merchants to evacuate their goods from the territory. In August of that year he travelled to Naples in an attempt to win Neapolitan support for the war against France. In 1799 he monitored the armed counter-revolution in Tuscany against the French occupation, but in May 1800 the rebels were defeated by the French and Wyndham left Italy for Vienna with the exiled Tuscan government. He remained in Vienna until his retirement in 1807.^[2]