CIRCA 1815

The crest, with a demi lion argent with a serpent in his mouth and twined about him and holding a damask rose is that of the Wise family of Brompton Park, later of the Priory, Warwick.
Henry Wise (1653-1738) of Brompton Park, co. Middlesex, was a successful and sought-after gardener in the French style during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. He was appointed to the post of Royal Gardener by William III, Queen Anne and George I, and as well as the royal gardens directed most of the great gardens of England, including Blenheim, Wanstead and Melbourne in Derbyshire. On his death at The Priory, Warwick, in 1738, he was said to be worth £200,000 (Dictionary of National Biography).
During the reign of Charles I the Wise family had had an estate worth around £700 per annum. Following the Civil War, under Cromwell’s Protectorate the family’s goods and effects were plundered, the estate was sequestered and sold, and Henry Wise and his family were reduced to a very low condition – though one that he evidently managed to recover during his lifetime and career.
Wise’s grandson, Henry Christopher Wise (d. 1804) of The Priory, Warwick, petitioned for the family to be granted a coat-of-arms, the crest of which adorns these chairs.