Family and Education

b. c.1481, 2nd or 3rd s. of John Lisle of Kimpton, Hants by Christian, da. of William Tisted. m. (1) by 14 Sept. 1515, Mary (d. 24 Mar. 1539), de jure Baroness Lisle, da. of John Kingston of Kingston Bagpuze, 1s. d.v.p.; (2) disp. 25 June 1540, Margaret, wid. of Edmund Darrell, s.p. Kntd. Nov. 1525/Nov. 1526.2

Offices Held

Commr. subsidy, Hants 1523, 1524, tenths of spiritualities 1535, coastal defence 1539; other commissions 1530-d.; sheriff 1526-7, 1530-1, 1537-8; j.p. 1529-d.; esquire of the body by 1532, knight by 1538.3

Biography

Sir Thomas Lisle began his career in the household of his distant cousin Sir John Lisle of Thruxton, who being childless married Lisle to his niece and heir, Mary Kingston, ‘being one of the greatest matches then in England.’ As Mary Kingston was ‘fair but weak and silly’ and her uncle anxious to transmit the Lisle inheritance to someone bearing the name, Sir John Lisle left the reversion to her husband and ‘the heirs male of his body’, but Mary’s only child died in infancy and Lisle’s second marriage was childless. From 1523 Lisle was a figure at court and in Hampshire: he received a letter from the King in 1528 about the war effort and others in 1536 about the suppression of the northern rebellion and preserving order elsewhere. His return to the Parliament of 1542 with Sir Thomas Wriothesley might have marked the beginning of a parliamentary career but it was while staying in London, in the parish of St. Gregory near St. Paul’s, for the first session that he died on I Feb. 1542. By a will made on the previous day and witnessed by one of the knights for Berkshire, Sir William Essex, he left his place of burial to the discretion of his executors and residuary legatees, Edmund Dykes and William More I; his provision for servants included giving to his clerk Robert Estgate and the others who had accompanied him to London their horses and harness. The will was proved on 23 Oct. following, and at an inquisition at Winchester earlier in the month the heirs were declared to be three kinsmen, Thomas Denys, Thomas Philpot and John Samborne.4

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: A. D.K. Hawkyard

Notes

• 1. Did not serve for the full duration of the Parliament.
• 2. Said to be 60 on 17 May 1541, Req.2/12/100, ex inf. R. Fritze. The pedigrees given in Vis. Hants (Harl. Soc. lxiv), 52 and Berry, Hants, 173-5 are not reliable. CP, viii. 46-47; C142/29/42, 30/44, 66/72; PCC 19, 27 Bodfelde, 10 Spert; Fac. Off. Regs. 1534-49, ed. Chambers, 218.
• 3. LP Hen. VIII, ii-iv, viii, xii, xiv; HMC Bath, iv. 2; Wilks, Hants, ii. 19; Val. Eccles. ii. 1.
• 4. Oglander Mems. ed. Long, 77-79; CP, viii. 46-47; VCH Hants, iv. 159, 388; v. 204; Wilks, iii. 156; S. F. Hockey, Quarr Abbey and its Lands, 241, 254; LP Hen. VIII, iii, iv, xi-xv; C142/66/72; PCC 10 Spert.