Relhan Collection : 174 Haslingfield church. Altar tomb of Dr Thomas Wendy

Relhan, Richard, 1782-1844

Relhan Collection

Thomas Wendy, 1500 –1560, was educated at Cambridge, studied medicine in Europe and graduated from Ferrara. He was royal physician to <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_VIII_of_England'>Henry VIII</a>, attended him on his deathbed and witnessed his last will. He was also physician to Queen Catherine Parr, <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_VI_of_England'>Edward VI</a>, attending him on his deathbed too, and <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_I_of_England'>Mary I</a>, and was an ecclesiastical visitor for Elizabeth I. He became an MP for St Albans and then Cambs, and was a member of the King's <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privy_Chamber'>Privy Chamber</a>. He was also involved with University life, was President of Gonville Hall, to which he was a generous benefactor, and a good friend of John Caius, was churchwarden and had other responsibilities at Great St Mary’s church and for civic functions, and he had a house in Market Hill. He married Margaret, widow of Thomas Atkins. She died 1570 after her third marriage, to William Worthington. Wendy did well out of monastic properties dissolved by Henry VIII and purchased Scales manor in Haslingfield in 1541, then acquiring as many estates in the parish as he could. His widow also bought land in neighbouring Wimpole. He died in London where he was given an elaborate funeral before being brought to Haslingfield for burial. His altar-tomb stood N of the altar but was disgracefully ‘mislaid’ when the church was restored by William Fawcett, 1875–9. Unfortunately altar tombs, often with brasses on top of them, were notorious for blocking chancels, unlike brasses in the floor which need take up no space. It must have been a relief to many clergy when architects simply removed them. In 1929 Palmer commented with regard to the Wendy monuments ‘Broken pieces of some of the later monuments are lying loose in the chancel, and the fine monument to the founder of the family AD1560 has disappeared’. This tomb was sketched by Cole as well as Relhan. See (177) for details of heraldry on this tomb. Palmer 1932; VCH 1973