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- Mayor of Exeter 1540-41. MP for Exeter 1542. Receiver-General to the Earl of Devon and to the Marquess of Exeter.
Following the 1620 visitation of Devon, the History of Parliament (citation details below) makes him a son of John Spurway and Agnes Sherron, this John a son of John Spurway and Florence Worth. However, John Blythe Dobson (citation details below) notes the existence of a manuscript by Brice Clagget that makes Thomas Spurway a son of the earlier couple.
He was married first to a woman whose birth surname was Lewis, daughter of Geoffrey Lewis, an earlier mayor of Exeter, and second, the Amy Gale of Crediton who survived him and subsequently married Walter Staplehill, MP. It is not known which of these wives was the mother of his daughter Julian.
"He was born at Tiverton, of a gentle family with a tradition of service to the Courtenay earls of Devon, and this he followed until 1539 when the Marquess of Exeter was arrested for treason. His 'great credit' with the marquess did not harm him, for he was put in charge of the forfeited estates; he was also given the administration of some of the lands of two queens [Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr]. It was after his marriage to the daughter of a former mayor of Exeter that Spurway was made a freeman, and on his father-in-law's death he went to live in Lewis's house in St. Martin's parish. For a number of years he reconciled the demands of a civic career with his position as the marquess's representative, but he was no longer filling the second when he was elected to Parliament. [...] He may have had a hand in the election for Exeter to the next Parliament of his colleague in Catherine Parr's service John Grenville." [History of Parliament, citation details below]
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Nielsen Hayden genealogy
1483 - 1548 (~ 67 years)