Provenance:
(Presumably) Sir Francis Warre, 1st Bt (c. 1659–1718), Hestercombe House, Kingston, Somerset.
John Bampfylde (1691 – 1750), Somerset, acquired through marriage to Margaret Warre (1694 – 1758); thence by descent.
Their sale; unknown saleroom, The Property of Hestercombe House, Somerset, 8-11 Nov. 1872.
Private Collection, Surrey.
Anon. Sale; Hamptons, Godalming, 25 Nov. 1998, lot number unknown.
Private Collection, London.
The family of Warre was a collateral branch of the family of the Barons de la Warre. They were of great antiquity in the County of Somerset, having resided at Hestercombe since a John la Warre married the Hestercombe heiress Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Meriet, in the late 14th Century.
According to Collinson’s Somerset (1791, vol III, p. 262) Roger Warre II of Hestercombe was the youngest of the nine sons and thirteen children of Roger Warre Snr. (1547 – 1616) of Hestercombe, Somerset and Eleanor, daughter of Sir John Popham of Wellington, Somerset and Littlecote, Wiltshire. He was a pupil of his elder brother Thomas at the Middle Temple in 1605, and called to the bar by 1615. He was married first to Sarah, daughter of Alexander Popham of Huntworth, Somerset, and by her had one daughter. He married, as widower on 25 December 1628, Martha, herself widow of Roger Chaplin of Taunton, Somerset, but had no further children and he died by 9 November 1641. Although he was from a wealthy family of established landowners, he received only an annuity of £20 in his father’s will, the family’s 1,000 acre estate passing by primogeniture to his eldest brother.
Warre had a career in the law and in parliament. He was elected MP for Bridgwater in the parliaments of 1621 and 1624, where he promoted the interests of his constituents in the West of England cloth trade. His brother inherited the great house, which subsequently passed by inheritance to the landscape artist Coplestone Warre Bampfylde whose father John Bampfylde of Poltimore married the last Warre of Hestercome, Margaret Warre (1694 – 1758).
