Family and Education

b. 1528/33, 1st s. of Edward Tyndale of Pull Court, Worcs. ?by 2nd w. Joan, da. of William Lawrence. ?educ. Clifford’s Inn. m. by Feb. 1556, Avice, da. of William Body of London, prob. 2s. 1da. suc. fa. by 1546.1

Offices Held

Auditor, ct. augmentations, N. Wales ?1551-4; j.p.q. Glos. 1561-d.2

Biography

Thomas Tyndale was under age at the death of his father, who had served both the crown and the abbey of Tewkesbury and who lived at Pull Court, near Upton-on-Severn, a property which he had leased from the abbey. The elder Tyndale’s brother William was the translator and martyr. Of Thomas Tyndale’s early career nothing has come to light save his brief tenure of the auditorship of North Wales for the court of augmentations. This office he had presumably acquired on the death of his brother-in-law John Perte in or shortly before 1551, and the relatively small annuity of £50 granted to him when the court was dissolved three years later thus answered to his recent recruitment.3

Tyndale’s election to the Parliament of April 1554 may not have been unconnected with that reform. Although the principle of compensation for loss of office had already been conceded, it was not until 4 May 1554, the day before the Parliament ended, that the chancellor was empowered to take surrender of the offices concerned and to fix the amounts to be paid for them. Like his fellow-auditor Matthew Colthurst and Colthurst’s deputy Henry Leke, Tyndale may have reckoned that a seat in the Commons would strengthen his hand if it came to bargaining. He also resembled Colthurst and Leke in sitting for a Wiltshire borough and in almost certainly owing his nomination to William Herbert I, 1st Earl of Pembroke. He was linked with Pembroke through the earl’s follower William Clerke, whose marriage to the widowed Anne Perte made him Tyndale’s brother-in-law. Pembroke for his part may well have persuaded Marlborough to elect Tyndale and his other nominee Owen Gwyn by promising that they would forgo their wages, something which Tyndale’s domicile in London, reflected in his recent general pardon, would have cost him little to concede.4

Tyndale was not to be re-elected under Mary or to be employed by her government, perhaps because of the Protestantism which he was to manifest in his will and which may have been strengthened by his uncle’s example. At the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign he was living at Ludgrave in Middlesex, on an estate formerly held by John Perte and since his death acquired by the Earl of Pembroke and William Clerke, but he soon returned to Gloucestershire, where between 1565 and 1568 he acquired Eastwood Park at Thornbury and other properties; his standing in the shire was recognized by his appointment to the bench. It was, however, in London that Tyndale died on 28 Apr. 1571. From his will of the previous day, in which he commended his soul to Christ ‘by whose death and passion I only trust to be saved and by none other means’, it appears that his wife Avice and their son Edward were already buried at Thornbury, where he and his daughter Elizabeth were to be laid with them under a single gravestone, and that his sole surviving child was the Thomas Tyndale, ‘now abiding beyond the seas’, for whom he provided a yearly allowance until he should succeed to the lands at the age of 30. Tyndale’s ‘mothers in law’ Joan Tyndale and Agnes Body, his brothers and sisters and a string of nieces and nephews were given legacies ranging from £10 to £100, and £10 was to go to the poor and £20 to repair the highways. The executors were Tyndale’s brothers-in-law William Clerke and Richard Trotman, his ‘trusty servant, John Davies, and Richard Stevens of Eastington. Originally buried in St. Gabriel’s, Fenchurch Street, Tyndale’s body was exhumed for reburial at Thornbury.5

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: T. F.T. Baker

Notes

• 1. Presumed to be of age at election; less than 12 on 17 Aug. 1540, PCC 21 Alen. Rudder, Glos. 756; B. W. Greenfield, Gen. Tyndale Fam. unpaginated; PCC 10 Wrastley, 19 Holney.
• 2. W. C. Richardson, Ct. Augmentations, 258, 280; CPR, 1560-3, p. 437; 1563-6, p. 22; 1569-72, p. 225.
• 3. B. W. Greenfield, Notes rel. to Fam. of Tyndale, 1-6; VCH Worcs. iv. 47; DNB (Tyndale, William).
• 4. Richardson, 254; CPR, 1554-5, p. 355.
• 5. CPR, 1558-60, p. 150; 1563-6, p. 224; Vis. Glos. (Harl. Soc xxi), 263; PCC 19 Holney; Mill Stephenson, Mon. Brasses, 155; Rudder, 756.