Sir Thomas WINDSOR of Princes Risborough

Born: ABT 1523, Princes Risborough, Buckinghamshire, England

Died: 1552

Buried: Bradenham

Father: William WINDSOR (2° B. Windsor of Bradenham)

Mother: Margaret SAMBOURNE (B. Windsor of Bradenham)

Married: Dorothy DACRE 29 Nov 1544

Children:

1. Anne WINDSOR

The details in this biography come from the History of Parliament, a biographical dictionary of Members of the House of Commons.

Born by 1523, second son of William Windsor, 2nd Lord Windsor, by his first wife, Margaret Sambourne. Educ. M. Temple. Married 29 Nov 1544, Dorothy, dau. of William, 3rd Lord Dacre, by whom he had one dau. KB 20 Feb 1547. Feodary, duchy of Lancaster, Beds. and Bucks. in May 1544, in Feb. 1548.

Thomas Windsor probably spent some time at the Middle Temple, where his father and grandfather had both been benchers, but the loss of the admission records for the period in question leaves this uncertain. He doubtless obtained the feodaryship of the duchy of Lancaster at the suit of his father, who held the office before him. His marriage late in 1544 to a daughter of Lord Dacre may mean that he took part in the Scottish campaign of the previous summer, in which Dacre had fought, and he was probably the Thomas Windsor who accompanied the embassy to France in 1546. With a number of other peers’ sons he was knighted at the coronation of Edward VI. At the court festivities at Christmas 1551, the last he was to see, he was one of the eight councillors to the lord of misrule, George Ferrers.

It was death of Sir Anthony Lee in Nov 1549 which left vacant the knighthood of the shire filled by Windsor. His choice is not hard to explain. As a peer's son he was a suitable colleague for young Francis Russell, he was doubtless favoured by the sheriff, Russell's father-in-law Sir John St. John, and if the Earl of Warwick, newly come to power, interested himself in the matter he may have looked kindly on the grandson of the 1st Lord Windsor, his own father's associate and brother-in-law. The election writ is dated 24 Dec 1549 and the indenture 8 Jan 1550, so that Windsor entered the House halfway through the third session. Nothing is known of the part which he played there.

Windsor was a sick man when he drew up his will on 8 Nov 1552 and he died in the following month. He is thought to have been buried at Bradenham: a year later his ‘month's mind’ was held in the county with fitting pomp of heraldry. By his short will Windsor left to his wife his lease of Princes Risborough and that of Darlington, Durham, which he had obtained early in 1549: after her death they were to pass to his daughter and sole heir Anne. His executors, his wife and uncle Edmund Windsor, proved the will on 16 Jan 1553.

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