THOMAS, John (1597-1675), of Tremayne, St Martin-in-Meneage, Cornw.

There were several branches of the Thomas family in Cornwall, and at the beginning of the seventeenth century Carew used them to illustrate his point that when it came to surnames ‘where the Saxons have not intruded their newer usances, they [the Cornish] partake in some sort with their kinsmen, the Welsh’.14Carew, Survey, 54v-55. John Thomas was the son of a minor gentleman from the south west of Cornwall, and was baptised in the parish of Constantine on the same day that his mother was buried. His father remarried into the Pendarves family. Thomas appears to have been close to his extended family, being overseer of the will of his uncle, also John Thomas, in 1634, and executor of his half-brother, Samuel Thomas, in 1659.15Vivian, Vis. Cornw. 449-50. Nothing is known of John Thomas’s upbringing or education, but he was obviously a man of some reputation locally, as in 1639 he was appointed as the crown’s bailiff for the Cornish hundreds.16E315/311, p. 42. His record during the civil wars is also sketchy, although he was reimbursed in November 1646 and again in March 1647 for money he had advanced for the ministers of St Mawgan and St Mabyn.17Bodl. Walker c.10, f. 87. Thomas’s local standing presumably helped him to secure the parliamentary seat of Helston in the recruiter elections in 1647, and his later career suggests that he may also have had the backing of the Presbyterian gentry of the area.

John Thomas’s performance as a Member of the Commons was unimpressive. His first mention in the Journal was on 2 September 1647, when he was allowed leave to go into the country, and on 9 October his excuse for absence from the call of the House was refused.18CJ v. 288b, 329a. A week later, however, his absence was approved, and his attendance at the next call, on 3 November, was ‘dispensed with’.19CJ v. 336a. It is possible that he was the ‘Mr Thomas’ named to the committee to consider the business of the Committee of Accounts on 20 November 1647, and he was one of three Cornishmen ordered to go into the county to help with the collection of the assessments in December.20CJ v. 364b, 400b. This last reference suggests that Thomas’s main role during this period was in local government, rather than Parliament. He had been appointed to the assessment commission in Cornwall in June 1647, and in February 1648 he was named as a commissioner for the Irish assessment to be raised in the county.21A. and O. Thomas does not seem to have attended Parliament in the latter year, and in April 1648 he was again excused for his absence from the Commons.22CJ v. 543b. He was secluded at Pride’s Purge on 6 December 1648.23A Vindication (1649), 28 (irregular pagination) (E.539.5).

Thomas’s activities during the commonwealth are obscure, and he was appointed to no more local commissions during this period. During the protectorate, however, he was again active in Cornish affairs. He was appointed to the assessment commissions of June 1654 and 1657, to the August 1654 commission for ejecting scandalous ministers, and to the commission of the peace in March 1657.24An Ordinance for an Assessment (1654); A. and O.; Coate, Cornw. 342; C231/6, p. 361. In the elections for Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament in January 1659, Thomas was returned for Tregony.25Western Antiquary, vi. 120. During the rancorous debates of March and early April, he worked closely with leading Presbyterians, especially the MP for Launceston, Thomas Gewen. On 23 March he seconded Gewen’s attack on the Irish Members, agreeing that their right to sit undermined the ‘rights and liberties’ of the English people. Thomas argued that

[there is] no man here but is sworn, by Covenant or otherwise, to maintain the privileges of the Parliament. How does that consist with our privilege, to admit strangers? I would gladly hear what legal right they have. I never knew any admitted upon a prudential right.26Burton’s Diary, iv. 241.

On 28 March Thomas joined the attempt to limit the scope of the Other House, arguing that if any bills concerning the protector’s powers were sent to the upper chamber, ‘they may have no negative in them, and especially in that bill of recognition by you’.27Burton’s Diary, iv. 282. In mid-April, he was eager that the Commons should be robust in its condemnation of Major-general William Boteler*, and in this he was supported by Gewen and also Lambarde Godfrey.28Burton’s Diary, iv. 406. On 16 April, when the Presbyterians pushed for a declaration against the Quakers, and their ‘tumultuous assembling together, and their contempt for magistracy’, Thomas proposed that they should also be castigated for their attacks on ministers, and Gewen, who spoke immediately afterwards, demanded that the wording of the declaration must not be toned down.29Burton’s Diary, iv. 445. These brief interventions show that Thomas was now a prominent member of the Presbyterian ‘party’ in the Commons.

The collapse of the protectorate in May 1659 brought Thomas’s political career to a swift end. At the end of December 1659 he was among the Presbyterian gentlemen who met at Truro in support of the Rump Parliament, and he continued to be named to local commissions during the early 1660s, but he does not seem to have played any significant part in public life after the Restoration.30Coate, Cornw. 308. Thomas died in September 1675 and was buried at St Martin-in-Meneage.31Cornw. RO, St Martin-in-Meneage par. regs. His children included his heir, also John Thomas, Samuel Thomas, rector of Truro, and the Inner Temple barrister, William Thomas of Lavethan.32Vivian, Vis. Cornw. 450.