John Pakington ca.1649-1688

Sir John PAKINGTON 3rd bart ca.1649-1688

Biographical Note

Born at Westwood Park, Worcestershire, son of Sir John Pakington, 2nd Baronet. Matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford 1662, but did not graduate; travelled across Europe 1665-68. Commissioner for assessment in Worestershire 1673-80, Justice of the Peace 1680, alderman of Bewdley 1685, MP for Worcestershire 1685. Pakington’s family had a tradition of supporting scholarly leading churchmen; Henry Hammond stayed (and died) at Westwood in the 1650s, bishops like John Fell and Peter Gunning were visitors, and George Hickes was close both to John, who is said to have become an Anglo-Saxon scholar himself, and to his son John 4th (Baronet, 1671-1727), who helped Hickes after his deprivation. An old attribution of the authorship of The whole duty of man credits at least part of it to Dorothy, Lady Pakington (mother of this John, wife of John 2nd Baronet; d.1679) and Hickes included a dedicatory preface to John Pakington (4th Bart) to the Anglo-Saxon grammar in his Linguarum vett. Septentrionalium thesaurus (1705), acknowledging the help of both father and son.

Books

Pakington’s connections and interests raise expectations of a library beyond the average for a late 17th-century landowner, but the only reference in his extensive probate inventory is to books in the “Old Lady’s closet” valued at £20 (from a total estate valuation of £2971). The Old Lady is presumably John’s mother Dorothy (his own wife Margaret d.1690). Pakington’s will has no specific mention of books, which would have been included with “all my good chattels and personal estate”, left to his widow.

Sources

• "Pakington, Sir John, third baronet (c. 1649–1688)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
• Henning, B. The House of Commons 1660-1690, London, 1983.
• Wanklyn, M. (ed), Inventories of Worcestershire landed gentry, 1637-1786, 1998, 249.