led £5,000. (fn. 155) The mansion, as well as the rest of the estate, continued to be let in this period. (fn. 156) By her will, dated 17 July 1712, Countess Anne left all her real estate to trustees for sale. Four years later, acting under a Chancery decree, the trustees sold the manor, mansion house and advowson of Wicken, with woods in Leckhampstead and Limes End (Bucks.), to Charles Hosier, a London merchant originally from Berwick, near Shrewsbury, for £11,500, of which £5,063 was due to the mortgagees. (fn. 157)
Hosier's only daughter and heiress Anna Maria married John Sharp of Grafton Park but both died in his lifetime, as did their son John Hosier Sharp. (fn. 158) Therefore, by his will dated 30 November 1747, Hosier left Wicken and his 9/24ths share of the Grafton Park estate to their eldest daughter and coheiress Elizabeth and her husband Thomas Prowse of Axbridge (Som.) in tail general. Thomas had already acquired the remaining 15/24ths of Grafton Park from Elizabeth's father. (fn. 159) Charles Hosier died in 1750, aged about 90. (fn. 160)
Thomas Prowse died in 1767 (fn. 161) and in 1772 his widow Elizabeth demised the Wicken estate to her daughter-in-law, also named Elizabeth, the widow of George Prowse (who also died in 1767), so long as she remained his widow. (fn. 162) At her death in 1780, the elder Mrs. Prowse confirmed the conveyance of Wicken to Elizabeth and also left Grafton Park to her daughter Mary, in both cases for their lives only. (fn. 163)
The younger Elizabeth Prowse (born in 1733), who was the daughter of Thomas Sharp, prebendary of Durham, and the sister of Granville Sharp, the philanthropist and antislavery compaigner, never remarried. On her death in 1810 the Wicken estate, under the terms of her mother-in-law's will, passed to her younger daughter and coheiress Elizabeth and her husband Sir John Mordaunt Bt. of Walton (Warws.), who had acquired Grafton Park in 1802, after the death of Mary Rogers, the other daughter and coheiress. (fn. 164)
After 1810 Wicken once again became a 