Sir Thomas VAVASOUR
of Skellingthorpe, Knight
Born: 1560, Skellingthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Died: 1620
Father:
Henry VAVASOUR
Mother: Margaret
KNYVETT
Married: Mary DODGE
(dau. of John
Dodge of Copes) (w. of Peter
Houghton)
Children:
1. Son VAVASOUR
2. Son VAVASOUR
3. Son VAVASOUR
4. Son VAVASOUR
5. Dau. VAVASOUR
6. Dau. VAVASOUR
Thomas Vavasour of Skellingthorpe
c.1585;
Attributed to Hieronymus Custodis
The details in this biography come from the
History of Parliament, a
biographical dictionary of Members of the House of Commons.
First son of Henry Vavasour of Copmanthorpe by
Margaret, dau. of
Sir Henry Knyvett of Charlton, Wilts.
Educated Eton; Caius, Camb., fellow-com.
1576. Married Mary, dau. and
heiress of John Dodge of Copes, widow of
Peter Houghton,
alderman
of London, 4s. 2da. Kntd. bef. Aug 1595. Capt. in the Netherlands Aug 1585 - May 1591, Feb -Oct 1598; gent. pens.
1586-1603; butler of port of London from 1603; knight marshal of Household
1604-18; farmer of alnagership of old draperies, Yorks. 1606; forester, Galtres,
Yorks.
Thomas Vavasour came of a family which, long settled in Yorkshire, had also
spread into Lincolnshire. Forbears of his had been returned to Parliament from
both counties, the most recent of them being his grandfather, Sir William, one
of the
knights for Yorkshire in Mary's first Parliament. The family was to remain
Catholic and some of its members were to be troubled on this score from the time
of the northern rebellion onwards.
As nephew to Sir Henry Knyvett of Charlton and his younger brother
Thomas Knyvett, gentleman of the privy chamber, Thomas Vavasour would doubtless have
found his way to court even without the example of his sister Anne, who became a
gentlewoman
of the bedchamber about 1580; but Anne Vavasour's dissolute career was to
impinge considerably on her brother's. She began as she was to end as the
mistress of Sir Henry Lee, the
Queen's champion and jouster-in-chief, and it is
as a runner
against Sir Henry at the tilt of 6 Dec 1584 that
Thomas is first mentioned. By
then, however, he was doubtless already involved in the feud between
Thomas
Knyvett and the
Earl of Oxford, by whom
Anne had had a child in Mar 1581; and
it was
this scandal which led him in Jan 1585 to challenge
Oxford to a duel in a
letter beginning: If thy body had been as deformed as thy mind is dishonourable,
my house had been as yet unspotted and thyself remained with thy cowardice
unknown.
Vavasour may have been influenced by the example of
Sir Henry Knyvett who five
years earlier had fought a duel which nearly cost him his life, but his proposed
meeting with Oxford at Newington evidently did not come off.
Vavasour's hostility towards
Oxford perhaps owed something to the
Earl's
conversion to Catholicism and subsequent accusations against leading Catholics.
Coming as he did from a Catholic family, Vavasour must have had many ties with
members of
that Church; there was, for example, his namesake who was imprisoned about 1583
in the Gatehouse and who was later in trouble as a servant of Sir Thomas Tresham.
Vavasour's own career, and his connexion with the strongly protestant Knyvetts,
make it unlikely that he retained his family's religious allegiance, and he died
believing in the merits of Christ's Passion.
At the time of his challenge to
Oxford,
Vavasour was sitting in Parliament
for the first time, as senior burgess for Wootton Bassett; he was returned again
in that capacity in 1586 and for the neighbouring borough of Malmesbury to the
Parliament of 1589. He owed his election on all three occasions to
Sir Henry
Knyvett, who exercised influence at Wootton Bassett for upwards of 25 years, and
at Malmesbury for 15; and it was doubtless a tribute to
Knyvett's standing rather
than
to his own that he was styled The Worshipful in the return of 1584. His name
does not appear in the records of any of these Parliaments, and it is possible
that he was an absentee Member during at least part of the second, for in Aug
1585
he went over to the Netherlands as captain of also foot from Yorkshire, and he
retained this command until 1591. He distinguished himself on two occasions,
once in an attack on a sconce near Arnhem in Oct 1585, and again two years
later
when he went out with Lord Willoughby to fight the Marques del Guasto.
Willoughby declared that he loved Vavasour as himself.
His service in the Netherlands also advanced Vavasour at home. Since Dec
1585 his company had come under the
Earl of Leicester's command and pay, and in
the following Mar he was sent by Leicester with letters and messages to the
Queen.
His selection for, and discharge of, this delicate duty for
Elizabeth was
still angry with Leicester alike earned the
Queen's commendation, and he
presumably consolidated his position on subsequent visits. In Mar 1590 he
received a
ten-year licence to import 8,000 lasts of cod and ling, and when he resigned his
captaincy in May 1591 it was in respect of his attendance on the
Queen, probably
a reference to his appointment as a gentleman pensioner, a capacity in which he
was eventually to attend the monarch's funeral. His services earned for him in
Jul 1591 a respite at the instance of the Privy Council of a lawsuit which was
plaguing him. This was a form of protection of which he evidently stood in
regular
need; in Jul 1587 he had sought it from Walsingham and ten years later he asked
the same favour from
Robert Cecil.
In 1591 Elizabeth Southwell, a maid of honor, suffered from
lameness in her leg she was pregnant. Thomas Vavasour
took the blame for her condition and was
imprisoned for misconduct. What happened to Elizabeth is unclear, other than
that she gave birth to a boy named Walter (b. 1591 - d.1641) who was given to
Lettice, Countess of Essex and Leicester, to be raised at Drayton Bassett. She
may have returned to court, but more likely she was simply still referred to
as a maid of honor. In May 1595, the Queen learned that the father of young
Walter was not Thomas Vavasour but rather Robert Devereux,
Earl of
Essex.
Queen Elizabeth was furious, not only because the child had been fathered by Essex, her on and off again favorite, but because she had been
deceived.
Where Vavasour's allegiance lay in the struggle between
Cecil and
Essex is
not wholly clear. The matter is complicated by the obscurity surrounding his
knighthood. If he was the Thomas Vavasour who accompanied
Essex on the Azores
expedition,
was knighted in the course of it, and was sent abroad on its return with its
news, he may be thought to have attached himself, at least ostensibly and for
the time being, to Essex; and this view would not be inconsistent with the
phrasing of a
letter of Aug 1595 to
Cecil containing the assurance that he inwardly wished most honour to
Cecil and styling
Cecil master. Since, however, this
letter was endorsed as coming from Sir Thomas Vavasour, while there exists
another letter
to
Cecil of probably earlier date and similarly endorsed,
Vavasour may have
obtained his knighthood in the early 1590s and the man so honoured by
Essex have
been his relative and namesake.
Between Feb and Oct 1598 Vavasour again commanded 150 men at
Flushing; he took over their captaincy from his brother-in-law Sir Thomas Shirley and in his turn passed it on to his brother
John. This was the close
of his active
service; the remainder of his career was passed at court. Until the
Queen's
death he was simply a gentleman pensioner, but with the new reign he was first
made butler of the port of London, an appointment whose revocation earned him
£1,000
compensation, and then knight marshal of the Household, an office which was
confirmed to him for life in 1612 but which he sold for £3,000, according to John Chamberlain in 1618, two years before his death. The improvement in his
finances
was reflected by his erection in 1610 of the fine house at Ham which, added to
by later owners, remains his most lasting memorial.
Sources:
E. K. Chambers, Sir Henry Lee
Read, Burghley
J. T. Cliffe, The Yorks. Country on the eve of the Civil War (London
Univ. PhD thesis, 1960)