Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 40.djvu/366

 lege, and graduated B.A. on 12 June 1607 (, Alumni Oxon., 1500–1714, iii. 1063). On 2 June 1615 he was knighted at Theobalds (, Book of Knights, p. 165). He was M.P. for Shropshire in 1614, Shrewsbury in 1621–2, and Shropshire in 1624–5, 1625, and 1628–9. The king, in consideration of a present of 6,000l., raised him to the peerage as Baron Newport of High Ercall on 14 Oct. 1642 (, Hist., ed. Macray, bk. vi. sects. 66–7). By March 1643 he was in the custody of the parliamentarians at Coventry (Commons' Journals, ii. 1004), and in October 1645 he was a prisoner in Stafford. On 23 Jan. 1646 he was ordered to be brought up for examination (ib. iv. 416), but in April the committee were informed that he had been long in France, and intended to remain there. A fine of 16,687l. 13s. 3d., subsequently reduced to 9,436l., was inflicted on him. The committee for advance of money assessed him at 800l. on 11 May 1647, and, on failing to get it, ordered his estate to be sequestered, but finally agreed to take 500l. (Cal. pp. 727, 813). The House of Commons, on 22 March 1648–9, expressed its readiness to accept 10,000l. as the joint fine of Newport and his son Francis (Cal. of Committee for Compounding, p. 924). Newport died at Moulins in France on 8 Feb. 1650–1, and was buried there. ‘By the malignity of the recent times,’ he wrote in his will on 12 Nov. 1648, ‘my family is dissolved, my cheife howse, High Ercall, is ruined, my howsholdstuffe and stocke sold from me for haveing assisted the king’ (registered in P.C.C. 126, Grey). By Rachel, daughter of Sir John Leveson, knt., of Halling, Kent, who survived him, he had, with six daughters, two sons, Francis (1619–1708), afterwards Earl of Bradford [q. v.], and Andrew (1623–1699) [q. v.], both of whom are separately noticed.

[Commons' Journals, vols. ii. iii. iv.; authorities in the text.] 

NEWPORT, THOMAS (d. 1522), knight of St. John of Jerusalem, possibly belonged to the family of Newport, living at Newport in Shropshire. He early entered the order of St. John, and became preceptor of Newland and Temple Brewer, and on 10 March 1502–3 he was made Bajulius Aquilæ (Bailiff of the Eagle). He was soon appointed commander of the commanderies of Dalby and Rothley in Leicestershire, and on 2 Sept. 1503 had authority given him to anticipate the revenues of his commandery for three years; he was thus enabled to borrow one hundred marks, which he duly repaid in 1505. The settlements of the knights of St. John in England were little more than rent-collecting agencies, and Sir Thomas Newport was evidently a good man of business. He secured a manor for his order of which they had lost control, and, in reward, on 28 June 1505 a lease of it was granted to his brother Richard, who also seems to have been a member of the order. For some time Sir Thomas Newport filled the very important office of receiver-general for the order in England. Hence he must have lived in London, at St. John's Gate, Clerkenwell, and was well known at court. Under Henry VIII he was often put in the commission of the peace for Lincolnshire and Leicestershire, and his name appears as one of those ready in 1513 to serve the king abroad. He was urgently needed, however, at Rhodes, and set out in the summer of 1513, travelling through Germany to Venice. With him went Sir John Sheffield. At Venice they stayed some time. They had brought letters from Henry VIII, and were received as his ambassadors. A formal audience was granted them by the senate on 3 Sept., and Troian Bollani made a formal report to the senate on 10 Sept. of the slender political information he had derived from them. Newport reached Rhodes before 15 Nov., and stayed there, owing to the directions of Fabricius de Careto, the master of the order, longer than he liked. In 1516 he captured some Turkish transports and brought them into Rhodes. He wrote home occasionally; the last letter preserved was written in 1517, and in it he reports that the Turkish fleet were only forty miles off, while the Rhodians were under four captains, of whom he was one. He subsequently returned home, and attended the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520. He set out once more for Rhodes in 1522, and was drowned on the coast of Spain (cf., Hist. of Henry VIII, i. 583).

[Letters and Papers, Hen. VIII, vols. i. ii.; Calendar of State Papers, Venetian, 1509–19; Nichols's Leicestershire, iii. 953; Rutland Papers (Camd. Soc.), p. 32; Vertot's Collected Works, vol. viii.; Porter's Knights of Malta, p. 313 and App. The suggestion that there were two contemporary Sir Thomas Newports is not adopted in this article.] 

NEWSAM, BARTHOLOMEW (d. 1593), clockmaker to Queen Elizabeth, probably born at York, carried on business in London as a clockmaker, apparently from the date of Queen Elizabeth's accession. He obtained from the crown a thirty years' lease of premises in the Strand, near Somerset House, on 8 April 1565, and there he resided through life. He was skilled in his craft, and was on familiar terms with Sir Philip