ANDREWS, Thomas I (d.1585), of Bury St. Edmunds, Suff.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1558-1603, ed. P.W. Hasler, 1981
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

1st s. of Thomas Andrews of Bury St. Edmunds by Amy, da. of Thomas Heyward of Oxborough, Norf. educ. Oxf. 1535-8; Camb. 1538-42, LLB 1542; M. Temple by 1552. m. Susan, da. of Thomas Allein of London.1

Offices Held

Servant of Sir Nicholas Bacon; dep. (to Duke of Norfolk) steward of Bury St. Edmunds 1567; j.p.q. Suff. from c.1573; solicitor to Camb. Univ. 16 Dec. 1578-81; steward of the ct. of dean and chapter of Ely.2

Biography

Of two namesakes, both Middle Templars, the likelier to have been the 1563 Sudbury MP was a Bury St. Edmunds lawyer who held an office in the ecclesiastical court under Bishop Parkhurst of Norwich and acted as deputy steward to the Duke of Norfolk. He was an active justice, and his conservative views in religion together with his desire to secure independence for Bury St. Edmunds, a noncorporate town, led him to support Parkhurst’s successor, Bishop Freake, in his action against the preachers who were supported by the local puritan gentry. In the course of his profession he sometimes acted for Cambridge university, and was rewarded in 1578 when, as ‘former alumnus and bachelor of civil law, now learned in the laws of England’, he was appointed solicitor to the university at 40s. a year.3

In the early years of Elizabeth’s reign. Andrews purchased considerable amount of property in Norfolk, Suffolk and Hertfordshire, and also had several wardships granted to him, one (in conjunction with William Phillips, another servant of the Bacons) being that of George, son of John Bacon and kinsman to the lord keeper. In a Chancery case Andrews called himself ‘daily orator and servant ... attending daily upon Sir Nicholas Bacon’, who in 1562 was appointed steward of the honour of Clare, in which Sudbury lay. Thus, assuming we have the right man, it is likely that Andrews was returned to Parliament for Sudbury through this connexion, but there is another possibility. In 1567 the Duke of Norfolk made Andrews his deputy as steward of Bury St. Edmunds and, as the Duke was steward of all the duchy of Lancaster lands in East Anglia, Andrews may conceivably have owed the seat to his patronage. The only reference to Andrews in the extant journals records that absence was granted him for his ‘weighty affairs’ on 19 Feb. 1563.4

Andrews died in 1585; his will was proved on 25 Apr. He asked to be buried ‘in decent and comely order according to the ecclesiastical laws of this realm’ in St. James’s church, where his ancestors lay. Most of his lands he left to the widow for her life with remainder to his brother Edmund; if Edmund died without issue the property was to go to the governors of the local grammar school to ‘find’ four scholars at Cambridge University. A list of legacies annexed to the will is missing from the copy in the register.5

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: Roger Virgoe

Notes

  • 1. Vis. Suff. 1561, ed. Metcalfe, 1; Ath. Cant. i. 510.
  • 2. C3/2/20; Camb. Univ. Grace Bk. 323.
  • 3. Collinson thesis, 889, 892-3, 895-6; Lansd. 27, ff. 52, 154-5; 66. f. 120; Ath. Cant. 510; Strype, Annals, ii (2), pp. 1867-7; iii (2), pp. 174, 177-8; Camb. Univ. Grace Bk. 365.
  • 4. CPR, 1558-60, pp. 24, 304, 426; 1560-3, pp. 331, 607; Somerville, Duchy, i. 595, 602; W. A. Copinger, Suff. Recs. and Mss, i. 443; CJ, i. 66.
  • 5. PCC 16 Brudenell.