RUTHALL, Thomas (by 1506-54 or later), of Moulsoe, Bucks.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558, ed. S.T. Bindoff, 1982
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Apr. 1554

Family and Education

b. by 1506, 1st s. of Richard Ruthall of Moulsoe by Agnes, da. and h. of William Hobbes. educ. L. Inn, adm. 12 May 1526. ?m. Elizabeth, da. of John Barnard of St. Helen’s, London. suc. fa. 1525/28.1

Offices Held

Biography

Thomas Ruthall’s father was an officer of the bishopric of Durham under his brother Thomas, who was bishop from 1509 until his death in 1523. The family came from Gloucestershire, but Richard Ruthall settled at Moulsoe in Buckinghamshire; he was escheator for Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire in 1524-5, and died at Moulsoe soon afterwards. His widow died on 20 July 1528 and her inquisition post mortem, taken a year later, records an agreement, dated 19 Aug. 1528, whereby Thomas Ruthall disposed of all his interest in Moulsoe and Stony Stratford to the father of John Marshe. Thomas Ruthall is said to have been his uncle’s heir as well, but this lacks confirmation. During his father’s lifetime Ruthall was appointed a trustee for the lands of John, 4th Lord Lumley, along with various Durham notables.2

Little else has come to light about Thomas Ruthall. He was specially admitted to Lincoln’s Inn early in 1526 and a year-and-a-half later he and two others were each fined 10s. for ravishing a woman at the Antelope in Holborn during Lammas vacation. In May 1549 he received a 21-year lease of the former endowment of St. Nicholas’s chantry at Halsall, in Lancashire, and it was presumably this interest combined with the marriage of his sister Mary into the Charnock family of Charnock Hall that accounts for his return for Preston to the second Marian Parliament. The Journal does not mention Ruthall. If he made a will it has not been found.3

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: Alan Davidson

Notes

  • 1. Date of birth estimated from age at mother’s i.p.m., C142/80/89. Vis. Bucks. ed. Metcalfe, 38; Vis. Bucks. (Harl. Soc. lviii), 208-9; Vis. Glos. (Harl Soc. xxi), 203; Recs. Bucks. iii. 167n.
  • 2. W. Hutchinson, Durham, i. 400n; LP Hen. VIII, i, iii; DNB (Ruthall, Thomas); Sheahan, Bucks. 569; C142/80/89; CPR, 1553-4, p. 157.
  • 3. Black Bk. L. Inn, i. 218; J. B. Watson, ‘Lancs. gentry 1529-58’ (London Univ. M.A. thesis, 1959), 563; Pink and Beaven, Parl. Rep. Lancs. 142; PRO Lists , xiv. 31; VCH Lancs. iii. 191n.