Sir Thomas ARUNDELL

Born: ABT 1500

Died: 26 Feb 1551/2

Father: John ARUNDELL (Sir Knight)

Mother: Eleanor GREY

Married: Margaret HOWARD

Children:

1. Matthew ARUNDELL HOWARD (Sir)

2. Charles ARUNDELL (d. 1587)

3. Dorothy ARUNDELL

Second son of Sir John Arundell of Lanherne, Cornwall, by his first wife, Eleanor Grey, daughter of Thomas Grey, 1st Marquess of Dorset, by his second wife, Cecily Bonville.

Was a gentleman of the Privy Chamber to Cardinal Wolsey and served as Sheriff of Dorsetshire in 1531-32. Sir Thomas Arundell of Wardour married, by settlement dated 20 Nov 1530, Margaret Howard, the daughter of Lord Edmund Howard and Joyce Culpeper. Margaret was a sister of Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII, and a first cousin of the King's second wife, Anne Boleyn. He was knighted at the coronation of Anne Boleyn in 1533.

Sir Thomas Arundell is said to have arranged the marriage of his half sister Mary with Robert Radcliffe, 1st Earl of Sussex, and at the same time to have entered into negotiations with Thomas Cromwell, who wished to marry his son, Gregory, to Sir Thomas Arundell's sister, Jane Arundell (d. 1577). In the end, Jane did not marry, but served as a gentlewoman in the household of Queen Mary, and eventually returned to Lanherne, her father, Sir John Arundell, having provided for her financially.

In 1535 he was appointed to a commission for the supression of religious houses, a post with much opportunity for profit as the monasteries were broken up and their lands transferred to private hands. In 1545 Henry VIII granted him a church at Trescoe in the Scilly Isles.

Both his cousin, Henry Grey, 3rd Marquess of Dorset, and Henry Percy, 6th Earl of Northumberland, employed Arundell in the management of their estates. He also served as receiver to Anne of Cleves, and Chancellor of the Household to Catherine Parr.

In 1550 he was made receiver-general of the Duchy of Cornwall, another patronage plum, but that year he and his elder brother were committed to the Tower on suspicion of being involved in the rising in Cornwall in support of "the old religion". Released in 1551, he was almost immediately recommitted, this time a victim of the politics surrounding the fall of the Protector Somerset in the first years of the reign of Edward VI.

Brought to trial with Sir Ralph Vane, he was acquitted of treason but convicted of felony and sentenced to be hanged. The sentence was commuted to beheading and was carried out on Feb 26 1552, the same day that Sir Ralph Vane, Sir Miles Partridge, and Sir Miles Stanhope were likewise executed at the Tower.

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