Sir Henry Bedingfeld, 1st Baronet

Sir Henry Bedingfeld, 1st Baronet (1614 – 1685) was a landowner and baronet.

Life
He was the eldest son of Sir Henry Bedingfield of Oxburgh Hall (c1587–1657) by his second marriage to Elizabeth Houghton. The family were Catholics.

His father and elder half-brother, Colonel Thomas Bedingfield (c1605–1685), were both active in the royalist cause during the English Civil War and spent time in prison and with the exiles on the Continent. The family's estate was impoverished by the parliamentary exactions for their royalism and their recusancy. Following the restoration of Charles II, Colonel Thomas Bedingfield began the process of attempting to recover his estate. In a petition to the king he calculated the loss to be £60,000, of which he had been paid £21,000. Presumably it was as compensation that Henry Bedingfield was created a baronet in January 1661. (The title going to the younger half-brother as heir apparent to Thomas, who had no son.)

In 1685 Henry inherited Oxburgh from his half-brother Thomas, although the hall was too dilapidated for habitation.

Family
He married Margaret (c1619-1703), daughter of Edward Paston of Appleton, Norfolk:
 * Henry (d. 1704) married 1) Anne, daughter of Charles Howard, 2nd Earl of Berkshire by whom he had no children and 2) Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Arundell of Lanherne, Cornwall by whom he had Henry, who became the 3rd baronet and two daughters Margaret and Frances
 * John (d. 1693) married Dorothy, daughter and co-heir of John Ramsey esq.
 * Edward, a barrister, married Mary, daughter of Sir Clement Fisher bart.
 * Elizabeth married Thomas Weetenhall esq.
 * Johanna married Richard Caryll esq. of Harting, Sussex
 * Mary married Thomas Eyre esq. of [Hassop Hall], Derbyshire
 * Anne and Margaret became Carmelite nuns at [Lier, Belgium|Lierre]

He and his parents are commemorated by a monument erected by his widow in the Bedingfield chapel in St John's church, Oxborough.