Ancestral Trails 2016 » William BROUNCKER (± 1620-1684)

Données personnelles William BROUNCKER 

• Il est né environ 1620 dans Castlelyons, Leinster, Ireland.
• Titre: President of the Royal Society
• Titre: 2nd Viscount Brouncker of Lyons
• Il est décédé le 5 avril 1684 dans Westminster, Middlesex.
• Un enfant de William BROUNCKER et Winifred LEIGH

Famille de William BROUNCKER

Notes par William BROUNCKER

William Brouncker was the elder son of Sir William Brouncker, a man of high importance who was closely associated with the kings of England and had fought against the Scots in 1639. He served Charles I as one of his privy chamber and acted as vice-chamberlain to his son Charles, Prince of Wales.

William Brouncker's mother was Winifred Leigh who came from Newenhan in Warwickshire. In a time in England when King and Parliament would fight the Civil War, the Brouncker family were staunch Royalist supporters.

We know little of Brouncker's early life. We have given 1620 as his date of birth but this is a guess made by historians rather than coming from any specific evidence. His place of birth is also a guess. Whether he was born in Ireland or England is even a matter of debate with no firm evidence to support either hypothesis. About the first we know for certain of Brouncker is that he entered Oxford University when he was sixteen years old and there he studied mathematics, languages and medicine.

It is doubtful whether Brouncker learned more than arithmetic at Oxford, for Wallis, giving the status of mathematics at this time, wrote:-
... mathematics, at that time with us, were scarce looked on as academical studies, but rather mechanical - as the business of traders, merchants, seamen, carpenters, surveyors of lands and the like.

This was a difficult time for Brouncker for the political situation in England was in turmoil. When his father fought against the Scots in 1639 Charles I had been ruling for ten years without a Parliament. Charles I, running low on funds with which to continue to fight the Scots, summoned Parliament in 1640 to try to raise money. The English Civil War broke out in 1642, the Scots joined the Parliament forces and Charles I suffered a series of defeats. Brouncker and his father were Royalists and were very definitely on the losing side.

On 12 September 1645 Brouncker's father became Viscount Brouncker of Castle Lyons. He had bought himself into the Irish peerage and according to Samuel Pepys, the diarist:-
... he gave 1200 pounds to be made an Irish lord, and swore the same day that he had not 12 pence left to pay for his dinner.
SOURCE: http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Biographies/Brouncker.html

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Barre chronologique William BROUNCKER

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