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 Thynne condemned to death, but Königsmark was acquitted, though strong circumstantial evidence against him was adduced. The acquittal was both unpopular and unexpected, but the court was known to favour the count, for whom some of the foreign ambassadors are even said to have interceded. It is not improbable, as Luttrell hints, that the jury, half of whom were foreigners, were corrupted; and Reresby expressly states that he himself was offered a bribe before the sitting of the grand jury. The assassins were executed on 10 March on the spot where the murder was committed (near the site of the present United Service Club). Königsmark immediately left the country, and, after a distinguished military career, was killed at the siege of Argos in August 1686 (cf., Count Königsmark, 1890).

The murder acquired a particular significance from the political and social position of Thynne. The whigs at first endeavoured to represent the crime as an attempt on the life of Monmouth, who had only recently left Thynne's coach, and who afterwards attended his deathbed; but, notwithstanding the anxiety of the court and the somewhat partial character of the trial, there is nothing whatever to give colour to such a supposition. Some connected it with the fact of Thynne's seduction of a lady who had resisted Monmouth's advances; and others suspected of complicity the young Lady Ogle herself, who was said to have looked with favour upon Königsmark. This latter calumny was revived by Dean Swift in his 'Windsor Prophecy,' when the lady had become the powerful whig Duchess of Somerset. It is certain that Thynne did not deserve the eulogies showered upon him, much less the monument now to be seen in the southern aisle of Westminster Abbey. Underneath his recumbent figure is a representation of the crime, and a cherub points towards a florid inscription which the discretion of Dean Sprat caused to be replaced by the existing brief epitaph. An engraving of it is in Dart's 'Westminster Abbey' (vol. ii.) In strong contradiction to monument and eulogies are Rochester's lines quoted by Granger: Who'd be a wit in Dryden's cudgel'd skin, Or who'd be rich and senseless like Tom———? His wealth, attested by the popular sobriquet 'Tom of Ten Thousand,' seems to have been almost his sole claim to consideration. At Longleat he built some handsome rooms, and had a road to Frome laid down. He was succeeded in the Longleat estates by his cousin, Sir Thomas Thynne, bart. (afterwards Viscount Weymouth) [q. v.]

Portraits of Thynne, painted by Lely and Kneller, were engraved by A. Browne and by R. White.

[Botfield's Stemmata Botvilliana; Jackson's Hist. of Longleat; Luttrell's Brief Hist. Relation, i. 144, 163 et seq.; Sir J. Reresby's Memoirs, 1735, pp. 135–44; Evelyn's Diary; Echard's Hist. of Engl. pp. 865, 987, 1019; Kennett's Hist. of Engl. iii. 402; State Trials, ix. 1–126, with Sir J. Hawles's Remarks; Granger's Biogr. Hist. iii. 400; Foster's Alumni Oxon.; An Elegy on the Famous Thos. Thin by Geo. Gittos, 1681–2; The Matchless Murder, 1682; Sir R. C. Hoare's Modern Wilts, vol. i. (Heytesbury Hundred); Burke's Romance of the Aristocracy, i. 1–14; Hist. MSS. Comm. 7th Rep. pp. 479, 497.]

 THYNNE, THOMAS, first  (1640–1714), born in 1640, was the eldest son of Sir Henry Frederick Thynne (1615–1681), first baronet of Kempsford, Gloucestershire (son of Sir Thomas of Longleat, by his second wife, Katharine Howard). His mother was Mary, daughter of Thomas, lord Coventry, the lordkeeper [q.v.] His younger brother, Henry Frederick, sometime under-secretary of state, keeper of the royal library at St. James's, and treasurer to Catherine, queen of Charles II, died in 1705.

Thomas matriculated from Christ Church, Oxford, on 21 April 1657. He there became possessed of the manuscripts and coins collected by William Burton (1609-1657) [q.v.] (, Athenœ Oxon. iii. 1140), and formed a friendship with Thomas Ken [q. v.] When Ken as a nonjuror lost his see of Bath and Wells, Thynne gave him apartments at Longleat, to which at his death he left his library (, Hist. iv. 40). Thynne left Oxford without graduating, and in November 1666 went as envoy to Sweden (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1666-7, pp. 173, 268).

After his return Thynne entered parliament, representing Oxford University from 1674 to 1678, and Tamworth from the latter year till his elevation to the peerage. In 1681 he succeeded his father as second baronet, and in 1682, on the murder of his cousin, Thomas Thynne (1648-1682) [q.v.], came into possession of Longleat. On 11 Dec. in the same year he was created Baron Thynne and Viscount Weymouth. He did not take his seat in the House of Lords until 19 May 1685. Towards the end of 1688 he was in consultation with Halifax, Nottingham, and other peers and bishops opposed to the measures of James II, and was one of the four temporal and spiritual lords who were sent to convey to the Prince of Orange the 