Notes |
- He was one of the knights and gentlemen who were servitors at the coronation of Anne Boleyn in 1533.
From a post to soc.genealogy.medieval by Don Stone, 8 Oct 1997:
Sir Richard's THIMBLEBY's father was Sir John Thimbleby, 1482-1550, lord of the manor of Irnham. He was a recusant (i.e., one of those who remained loyal to the Roman Catholic Church after the establishment of the Church of England), and in 1536 he led a group of Lincolnshire men in the ill-fated Pilgrimage of Grace, the only substantial resistance to Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries. At the Roman Catholic Church of Corby, Lincolnshire, there is a typed manuscript by Brigadier Trappes Lomax entitled "The Owners of Irnham Hall" (this from the bibliography of David I. A. Steel's A Lincolnshire Village: the Parish of Corby Glen in its Historical Context). This manuscript is on my list of things to see when I visit England next summer.
From Edward Stafford, Third Duke of Buckingham, 1478-1521 by Barbara Jean Harris (Stanford University Press, 1986), page 141:
Whatever the early Tudors' feelings about being dependent on private retinues of this sort, they had little choice, given the limited financial resources of their government. As late as 1536, Sir John Thimbleby "assembled all his tenaunts, frendes and servantes together under the colour to do the kinges service," and then employed them in the Pilgrimage of Grace.
From The Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, With Elucidations by Thomas Carlyle, 1845, chapter III, "Of the Cromwell Kindred":
Richard or Sir Richard Cromwell, great-grandfather of Oliver [the] Protector, was a man well known in his day; had been very active in the work of suppressing monasteries; a righthand man to Thomas the Mauler [Thomas Cromwell, called Malleus Monachoroum, Mauler of Monasteries]: and indeed it was on Monastic Property, chiefly or wholly, that he had made for himself a sumptuous estate in those Fen regions. Now, of this Richard Cromwell there are two Letters to Thomas Cromwell, 'Vicar-General,' Earl of Essex, which remain yet visible among the Manuscripts of the British Museum; in both of which he signs himself with his own hand, 'your most bounden Nephew,' -- an evidence sufficient to set the point at rest. Copies of the Letters are in my possession; but I grudge to inflict them on the reader. One of them, the longer of the two, stands printed, with all or more than all its original misspelling and confused obscurity, in Noble: it is dated 'Stamford,' without day or year; but the context farther dates it as contemporary with the Lincolnshire Rebellion, or Anti-Reformation riot, which was directly followed by the more formidable 'Pilgrimage of Grace' in Yorkshire to the like effect, in the autumn of 1536. Richard, in company with other higher official persons, represents himself as straining every nerve to beat down and extinguish this traitorous fanatic flame, kindled against the King's Majesty and his Reform of the Church; has an eye in particular to a certain Sir John Thymbleby in Lincolnshire, whom he would fain capture as a ringleader; suggests that the use of arms should be prohibited to these treasonous populations, except under conditions; -- and seems hastening on, with almost furious speed; towards Yorkshire and the Pilgrimage of Grace, we may conjecture.
[Carlyle's footnote to the above:] This first letter is in the Harley MSS. (vol. 283, f. 156). It is clearly written in a clerk's hand, and the only "obscurity" about it is that a good many contractions are employed, but they are used quite regularly. From its connexion with other letters of the same period, it must have been written on October 14, 1536. Sir John Thimbleby did not need capturing, as he had "come in" a day or two before.
About the Pilgrimage of Grace:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilgrimage_of_Grace
From Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, Vol. V, by Henry Foley, S.J. (London: Buyrns and Oates, 1879), footnote, page 600:
Mr. Peacock in his Yorkshire Catholics, pp. 12, 13, mentions several of this family as recusants (1604). He says of Mr John Thimbleby [Thimelby] of Normanton parish: "This was a member of an old Lincolnshire family. They were originally of Poolham manor, near Horncastle; but subsequently, by the marriage of Richard Thimbleby with Elizabeth, sister and co-heiress of Sir Godfrey Hilton of Irnham, that estate came into the family. They were always Roman Catholics. At the restoration of the old faith under Mary, Mrs. Elizabeth Thimbleby, a nun, lent a cope and a chasuble to the church of Irnham, which were reclaimed by Mr. John Thimbleby on the accession of Elizabeth. The John Thimbleby mentioned in the text was probably the grandson of the above. The male line of the Lincolnshire Thimblebys ended in 1712, on the death of another John Thimbleby of Irnham. His heiress, Mary, had married Thomas Clifford [Gifford] of Chillington, county Stafford. The estate passed out of her descendants' hands by sale a few years ago."
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