Wynne was born on 23 December 1801 in
Denbighshire, Wales, and educated at
Westminster School and
Jesus College, Oxford. He married Mary Slaney, daughter of Robert Aglionby Slaney MP, and had a son named
William Robert Maurice Wynne. He was
Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for
Merioneth from 1852 to 1865. He also served as
High Sheriff of Merionethshire in 1867 and became constable of
Harlech Castle in 1874. He inherited a collection of manuscripts in 1859, known as the Hengwrt collection, from his kinsman
Sir Robert Vaughan, 2nd Baronet. The collection had been assembled by the 17th-century antiquarian
Robert Vaughan and it contained an early version of the
Canterbury Tales,
mystery plays in
Cornish and many early Welsh manuscripts, including twelve manuscripts of the Welsh laws of
Hywel Dda. Wynne catalogued the manuscripts, publishing the result in
Archaeologia Cambrensis between 1869 and 1871, and allowed scholars to examine and copy them. ==References==