Thomas Estcourt Cresswell

Biography

The son of Richard Cresswell and his wife Elizabeth Estcourt, daughter and heiress of Sir Thomas Estcourt Knt; of Pinkney Park; Cresswell gained a degree of notoriety as a bigamist after his marriage in February 1744 to a wealthy heiress, Miss Anne Warneford, granddaughter and eventual heir of Sir Edmund Warneford of Sevenhampton and Bibury, Gloucestershire. Anne had married Cresswell in good faith and had borne him several children but another woman, Miss Elizabeth Scrope sued on the grounds of bigamy, claiming a prior Fleet Marriage. Miss Scrope's suit was successful, the Cresswell-Warneford marriage was declared null and void and the children were bastardized. However, a third marriage was revealed by another search through the Fleet records that antedated the others; thus Cresswell's last two marriages were bigamous. It was stated that he endeavoured to keep possession of both wives at the same time by a "base and unmanly contrivance." For a considerable time Miss Scrope retained a deep sense of her injuries; in 1749 she published a pamphlet in her own name, called Miss Scrope's Answer to Mr. Cresswell's Narrative.

Cresswell was elected Member of Parliament for Wootton Bassett (1754–1774) and his son Estcourt Cresswell, from his marriage to Anne Warneford, was MP for Cirencester (1768–1774). Estcourt inherited the former Warneford estate at Bibury, and also the heavily encumbered Pinkney Park estate from his father. The Gentleman's Magazine was later to report: "His late Majesty George the Fourth, when Prince of Wales, honoured Mr [Estcourt] Cresswell with a visit of several days at his seat at Bibury during the races there."

Thomas Estcourt Cresswell had at least another four illegitimate children with a Miss Catharine Jenkins between 1749 and 1755, the three survivors of whom received substantial bequests from their father on a par with their half brother Estcourt.

Cresswell died at his seat, Pinkney Park, on 14 November 1788.