Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 56.djvu/201

 member of the embassy which, with the Marquis of Northampton at its head, proceeded in June to the French king, to negotiate the marriage of Princess Elizabeth of France to Edward. To cover his expenses, he was granted imprests amounting to 300l. (ib. iii. 269, 326); and on 26 June he was despatched to England with letters to the council asking for further instructions, with which he probably returned to France (Cal. State Papers, For. 1547–53, pp. 128, 133;, i. 473, ii. 243).

While clerk of the council Thomas became a sort of political instructor to the young king, who appears to have narrowly watched the proceedings of his council, and, without the knowledge of its members, sought Thomas's opinion on their policy and on the principles of government generally (see especially Thomas's ‘Discourse on the Coinage’ in, op. cit. ii. 389). The nature of this teaching may be gathered from a series of eighty-five questions drawn by Thomas for the king, and still preserved, along with a prefatory letter, in his own writing at the British Museum (Cotton. MSS. Titus B. ii.); they were printed in Strype's ‘Ecclesiastical Memorials’ ( i. 156). Another autograph manuscript in the same collection (Vespasian, D. xviii. ff. 2–46) contains six political discourses confidentially written for the king. These were published in their entirety (in, op. cit. ii. 365–393, and in D'Aubant's edition of Thomas's works, ut supra), while that treating of foreign affairs was summarised by Burnet (Hist. of Reformation, ii. 233), and printed by Froude (Hist. of England, v. 308–10). Some further ‘commonplaces of state’ drawn up by Thomas for the king's use are also printed in Strype (op. cit. ii. 315–27). Froude suggests that Thomas's teaching, if not his hand, is also perceptible in the king's journal (Preface to Pilgrim, vol. viii.; Hist. v. 349). He also dedicated to the king as ‘a poore newe yeres gift,’ probably in January 1550–1, an English translation from the Italian of Josaphat Barbaro's account of his voyages to the east, which had been first published in Venice in 1543. Thomas's manuscript, which is still preserved at the British Museum (Royal MSS. 17 C. x.), was edited, with an introduction by Lord Stanley of Alderley, for the Hakluyt Society in 1873, in a volume of ‘Travels to Tana and Persia’ (London, 8vo).

Influential as was Thomas's position at court, it was not free from danger, and, realising this, he vainly asked to be sent on government business to Venice (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1547–80, p. 43). On the accession of Mary, Thomas lost all his preferments, including his employment at court, because ‘he had (it is said) imbibed the principles of Christopher Goodman against the regimen of women, and too freely vented them’ (Biographia Britannica, ii. 947; cf., loc. cit.; , Eccles. Mem. i. 278). He attached himself to the ultra-protestant party, and according to Bale (Script. Illustr. Brit. ed. 1557–9, ii. 110) designed the murder of Bishop Gardiner, but of this there is no evidence (but cf., i. 112). He took an active part in Sir Thomas Wyatt's conspiracy. On 27 Dec. 1553 he left London for Ottery Mohun in Devonshire, the residence of Sir Peter Carew, who was the leader of the disaffected in the west; but when Carew failed to raise the west, Thomas on 2 Feb. 1553–4 fled, going ‘from county to county, in disguise, not knowing where to conceal himself; and yet he did not desist from sending seditious bills and letters to his friends declaring his treasonable intentions, in order that he might induce them to join him in his treasons’ (indictment against Thomas printed in Dep. Keeper of Records, 4th Rep. p. 248; Froude (Hist. vi. 174) erroneously mentions him as being with Wyatt when he made his entry into London on 7 Feb.). Probably his intention was to escape to Wales (Cal. State Papers, Dom. s.a. p. 59), but he went no further than Gloucestershire, with which county he had some previous connection (, i. 522). He was arrested, and on 20 Feb. he was committed to the Tower along with Sir Nicholas Throckmorton [q. v.] (ib. p. 395;, Annales, ed. 1615, p. 623). Conscious ‘that he should suffer a shameful death,’ he attempted on the 26th to commit suicide ‘by thrusting a knife into his body under his paps, but the wound did not prove mortal’. He was put on the rack with the view of extracting some statement implicating the Princess Elizabeth, and it was probably to prevent this that he attempted suicide. The chief evidence against him, apart from his sojourn at Sir Peter Carew's house, was the confession of a fellow conspirator, Sir Nicholas Arnold, who alleged that on the announcement of the proposed marriage between Mary and Philip of Spain, Thomas ‘put various arguments against such marriage in writing,’ and finally on 22 Dec. suggested that the difficulty might be solved by asking one John Fitzwilliams to kill the queen. This ‘devyse’ was communicated to Sir Thomas Wyatt, who, when suing for pardon during his own trial, said that he had indignantly repudiated it. Throckmorton,