Sir Thomas Grantham’s family originated as wool merchants in Lincoln, regularly holding municipal office from 1425 and first represented the city in the Reformation Parliament.

In the early 16th century, Vincent Grantham, Thomas’s grandfather purchased an estate at Goltho, a small hamlet 9 miles east of Lincoln and after the Dissolution of the Monasteries he also acquired St Katherine’s Priory in the city. He also had a son, Vincent.

Thomas, the son of Vincent Graham and his wife Elizabeth Ayscough of South Kelsey was born on 10 July 1573 at Goltho. Thomas’s father died when he was a minor and his wardship was granted to Sir Thomas Cecil, later 1st Earl of Exeter, who arranged his education at Christchurch, Oxford University and he was awarded his degree on 9 May 1589, aged 16. His legal training at Lincolns Inn was completed in 1592 and was followed by tour of the Continent and election to Parliament in 1597.

He was appointed a Freeman of Lincoln in 1597, served as a Justice of the Peace (1598-1628) for the Lindsey and Kesteven Bench, and served as Sheriff in 1600.

Dubbed by James 1 at Belvoir Castle on 23 April 1603 as the new monarch passed through Lincolnshire, Sir Thomas Grantham was returned for Lincoln to the first Jacobean Parliament.

He actively participated in all the parliamentary issues of the day and some of the key issues in which he was involved during his career are detailed.

In the first session he was appointed to consider bills concerned with the conversion of woodland into pasture (28 April 1604) and fen drainage in Cambridgeshire (12 May) always a subject of interest to Lincolnshire Members.

In the second session, he was appointed to a further two committees, on bills to protect leaseholders (23 January 1606) and to strengthen the law against usury (3 April).

In the third session he was appointed to consider a bill to naturalize Dr Peter Baro, a noted resident of Boston (6 December 1606) and one to consider a bill on fen drainage (9 May 1607). He was also among those instructed to draw up a petition for sterner action against recusants and non-resident clergy (18 May).

In 1610, his committee appointments included bills on clerical non-residence (16 April), unseasonable hawking (17 April), prison keepers (10 May) and the suppression of idleness (19 April). He left no records of the fifth session.

He invested in the recently founded Virginia Company, and in May 1610 he joined with Sir George Manners, to present a tender to manage the Lincolnshire farms established by recusancy fines. Though his prospective business partner’s elder brother, the 5th Earl of Rutland was a well-known adherent to the Church of Rome, Sir Thomas Grantham promised to increase takings by £2,000 a year. When the Earl of Rutland entertained the king at Belvoir Castle in 1612, he contributed to a present of game, but he didn’t attend in person.

Re-elected for Lincoln on 1614, his first appointment was to the conference with the Lords on the Palatine marriage bill (14 April). He was appointed to consider bills concerning the export of iron ordinance (11 May), and debts (31 May). When the Bishop of Lincoln attacked the Commons for discussing impositions contrary to King James wishes he was quick to assure the House that ‘all they of that county, (Lincolnshire) disavow the bishop’s action and wish he may be punished (25 May). He was one of the Members appointed three days later to hear the king’s answer to their decision to forbear all business until the matter had been resolved.

Travelling to Scotland in 1617, King James visited Lincoln and lodged at Sir Thomas Grantham’s house at St Katherines. He was subsequently appointed as Commissioner for the Preservation of Game – Ancaster Heath (1619).

On the death of his cousin Robert in 1618, he inherited a further estate in Lincoln at Black Monks.

He remained zealous against recusants, and in December 1618 he went to the king to denounce Sir Edward Carr’s widow as a strong papist.

Recommending his friend and kinsman, Sir Edward Ayscough to Lincoln Corporation at the next general election, whilst he himself stood for the county, together with Sir George Manners and were all returned.

During the 1621 Parliament, he was appointed to two conferences with the Lords on recusancy (15 February) and the better observation of the Sabbath (24 May). In a debate about reforming the courts of justice (15 March), he suggested ‘that there may be no injunction granted out of Chancery, after judgement given in other courts.’ He also participated in the inquiry into the abuses alleged against the Warden of the Fleet. (3 March).

In the second session his only intervention was when he spoke on the petition of the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln against Sir Francis Popham (24 November).

Re-elected to the last Jacobean Parliament for Lincoln, his departure for Westminster was delayed by a dispute between Boston and the County over sluice repairs, which the Privy Council ordered him to investigate. In mid-March 1624 he was appointed to seven bill committees including those for building and regulating inns (1 April), altering erroneous judgements in the Courts of Equity and restraining the abuses of the Clerk of the Markets (14 April). After attending the recusancy conference with the Lords, he identified the 6th Earl of Rutland as a Papist, perhaps in the hope of undermining the Manners’ influence in both the borough and the county.

In the 1st Parliament of the new reign, Sir Thomas Grantham was elected at Lincoln and appointed to the Privileges Committee (21 June 1625) and the Limitation of the Benefits of Clergy (25 June) He spoke against the Duke of Buckingham’s proposals for additional supply in support of the kings demands for money (8 July). According to another Member, Sir John Eliot, the motion ‘forthwith died and perished, though from the dust thereof more troubles did spring’ and commended him as ‘a worthy gentleman of Lincolnshire, who was never wanting to the service of his country’.

After the session retired to Oxford to avoid the plague, he advised the House ‘not now to give, but thus far to engage ourselves that at our next meeting in winter we will respect His Majesty’s occasions, as shall be fitting for dutiful and loving subjects’ (10 August).  The majority concurred, and since it was clear that an impasse had been reached, that Parliament came to an end.

Re-elected the following year, he was appointed to consider bills to abolish proceedings for concealed tenures (14 February 1626), the holding of secret inquisitions (14 February) and the use of nil returns by escheators (3 May). He was also named to consider several ecclesiastical bills and remove scandalous and unworthy clergymen (15 February), restrict the number of clerical magistrates (10 March), limit the use of excommunication (2 May) and to permit marriage in Lent (6 May).

His other appointments included bill committees for measures to prevent the use of the Exchequer by privileged private creditors (28 February), the procurement of judicial office for money (3 March) and the dissipation of the Crown’s revenue (7 March). On 2 March he was one of those instructed to warn the king against dangerous recusants like Tobie Matthew and was in conferences with the Lords concerning the Duke of Buckingham (4 March) and with the conduct of the war (7 March). He joined in the demand that the royal message on the supply of money, delivered orally by Sir Richard Weston should be put in writing (10 March).

He was appointed to the inquiries into the grievances of merchants trading with France (16 March) and the defects in the victualling of the Navy and was required to help draft bills to increase seamen’s wages (22 March) and to restrict the activities of pressgangs (15 April) and to prevent the spread of contagious diseases (29 April).

His first recorded speech of the 1627 Session was to propose a petition to the king against impositions on imported wine (20 February). He also petitioned for the king to provide facilities for the better defence of the English Channel (24 February).

Following Oliver Cromwell’s election as MP in 1627, there is a strong suggestion that they were early collaborators and protesters over the king’s notion ‘that he had the divine power to rule without parliament’.

He moved for the king’s charge against Sir John Eliot, who had been arrested, to be laid before the House ’whereby we may be the better judge’ (16 May). Later in the month he was appointed to consider a private bill for the 2nd Earl of Exeter (William Cecil) (24 May), and to consider the charges of his ‘abuses in purveyance’ (25 May).

Back in Lincolnshire after the dissolution of parliament, he was dismissed from the magistrates’ bench, presumably as a punishment for his zeal against recusants and his attitude to the Duke of Buckingham. He became one of the Lincolnshire commissioners for enforcing the Forced Loan – an arrangement initiated by the king as a source of supply funding. As the result of his ambivalence against those who refused either to collect or lend, the Privy Council confined him to the Gatehouse (part of the Tower of London) as punishment, followed by a spell of exile in Dorset and Kent, which he found even harder to endure than imprisonment. He was finally released in January 1628 in time for the next parliamentary election, at which he was again returned for Lincoln. Soon after taking his seat, he was appointed to the privileges committee (20 March) and lost no time in taking up one of his favourite themes moving that ‘the lack of any list of recusants from the bishopric of Durham should be supplied by the Members from the neighbouring counties’ (21 March). He reminded the House (26 March) that in 1597 it had shrunk from imposing on recusants the punishment of confinement recently inflicted on Loan refusers.

He was appointed to a conference with the Lords on the general fast (21 March) and to a committee to draft a bill to regulate the powers of the county lieutenancies (24 March).

In the ensuing finance debates over billeting, he argued (2 April) that in Elizabethan times coat and conduct money had usually been repaid, and he subsequently drafted a petition to ensure appropriate funding for the army (12 June).

Sir William Welby, a Lincolnshire Deputy Lieutenant, was accused of wrongfully arresting those who refused to pay military taxes and Sir Thomas Grantham defended him in parliament (10 May) and he was added to a committee to search for records and precedents in similar cases (21 May).

In the House, he gave information about the imposition of duty on Tyneside coal and was appointed to the committee to recommend the fittest course to be taken about Tunnage and Poundage (13 June)

His final appointment of the Session was to confer with the Lords over the title of The Petition of Rights (20 June).

During the recess he supported the residents of Axholme against the drainage schemes of Sir Cornelius Vermuyden, although their protests eventually led to serious rioting.

In the second session he was named to attend the king (28 January 1629) with an address from both Houses for a fast and was added to the committee to examine the grievances of John Rolle and other merchants over the ‘Tunnage and Poundage’ issue.

In 1629, with King Charles ruling without Parliament, he retired to his home at Goltho where he died on 30 July 1630 aged 57. In his Will dated 4 October 1628 he left Black Monk and £1,000 to his younger son and the Goltho and St Katherines estates to the elder son, Thomas. He was buried alongside his ancestors in St Martin’s churchyard, Lincoln.

His first wife was Frances Pickering, daughter of Sir John Pickering of Kew, who bore 4 sons and 3 daughters before her early death. He married Lucy, the widow of Henry Sacheverall of Ratcliffe On Trent, with whom he had a 4th daughter, Ann who married into the Morrow family and her son, Samuel, whose descendants became Governors in Australia.

His elder son, Thomas served as MP for Lincoln (1640 – 53) and died 1655.

TWC
July 2026