Thomas Windebank

Abt 1550 - 1607  (~ 57 years)

• Name	Thomas Windebank  [1, 2]
  Birth	Abt 1550	of St. Martin in the Fields, London, England   [3, 4]
  Gender	Male
  Alternate birth	of Haines Hill, Hurst, Berkshire, England   [5, 6]
  Death	24 Oct 1607  [1, 3, 5, 7, 8]
  Burial	St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London, England   [5, 7]
  Person ID	I36780	Ancestry of PNH, TNH, and others | Ancestor of LMW
  Last Modified	15 Nov 2021

  
  

  Father	Richard Windebank,   b. 1488, of Staunton in the Vale, Nottinghamshire, England d. Aft 1553 (Age > 66 years)
  Mother	Margaret ferch Griffith   d. Bef 10 Dec 1558
  Family ID	F21619	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family	Frances Dymoke   d. Between 11 Feb 1612 and 24 Apr 1613
  Marriage	19 Aug 1566	Scrivelsby, Horncastle, Lincolnshire, England   [7]
  SEPA	Bef 1591  [9]
  Children	1. Anne Windebank,   b. Abt 1571   d. 7 Jun 1624 (Age ~ 53 years)   2. Francis Windebank,   b. Bef 21 Aug 1582   d. 1 Sep 1646, Paris, France (Age > 64 years) + 3. Mildred Windebank,   b. 1584   d. Bef 26 Jan 1631 (Age < 47 years)
  Family ID	F21618	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	31 Jul 2022

  
  

• Notes

  Clerk of the Signet. Clerk of the Privy Seal. "In 1560 he was in Germany serving as traveling tutor and governor to Sir William Cecil's son, Thomas (afterwards 1st Earl of Exeter). In 1562-3 he served as secretary to Henry Knolles, Special Ambassador to the Holy Roman Emperor and various Protestant princes in Germany. In 1568 he was appointed Clerk of the Signet, and continued in that post until the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603. [...] On his retirement as Clerk of the Signet, he was knighted by King James I 23 July 1603." [Royal Ancestry, citation details below] The Wikipedia article on his son Francis, secretary of state under Charles I (accesed 8 Nov 2021), calls this Thomas "Sir Thomas Windebank of Hougham, Lincolnshire, who owed his advancement to the Cecil family." The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography article on Francis provides more detail about this Thomas, calling him "a long-standing client of William Cecil, Lord Burghley" and saying that Thomas "served as clerk of the signet from 1567 until his death in 1607, frequently meeting the queen and by the 1590s acting as her confidential secretary." "Sir Thomas owed his fortunes largely to his Lincolnshire neighbour, Sir William Cecil, who secured his appointment to the fourth stall in Worcester Cathedral in 1559, and sent him as travelling companion to his son Thomas (afterwards Marquis of Exeter). Many of Windebank's letters, describing his vain efforts to keep his charge straight and teach him French, and their travels in France and Germany during 1561 and 1562, are extant in the Record Office. He also took every opportunity of sending his patron lemon trees, myrtle trees, and tracts on canon and and civil law." [Albert Frederick Pollard, Dictionary of National Biography volume 62, 1900, page 162.]

  
  

• Sources

  [S6098] A Crane's Foot (or Pedigree) of Branches of the Gregg, Stuart, Robertson, Dobbs, and Allied Families by E. Stuart Gregg, Jr. Columbia, South Carolina, 1975. [S47] The History of Parliament. Some citations point to entries from the printed volumes not yet added to the online site. [S76] The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2004-ongoing., year only. [S142] Royal Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families by Douglas Richardson. Salt Lake City, 2013., place only. [S1842] John Meredith Read, "The English Ancestry of Washington." The Atheneum number 3465, 24 Mar 1894. [S53] The Magna Charta Sureties, 1215: The Barons Named in the Magna Charta, 1215, and Some of Their Descendants Who Settled in America During the Early Colonial Years by Frederick Lewis Weis. Fifth edition, with additions and corrections by Walter Lee Sheppard, Jr. and William R. Beal. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1999. [S142] Royal Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families by Douglas Richardson. Salt Lake City, 2013. [S6103] Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900. [S6518] John C. Brandon, 28 Jul 2022, post to soc.genealogy.medieval.