MERES, Thomas (1634-1715), of The Close, Lincoln, and Southampton Square, Bloomsbury, Mdx.

Meres was descended from a Norman family that had settled in Lincolnshire in the eleventh century and had established its principal residence at Kirton, a few miles south of Boston, by the end of the fourteenth century.41Deacon, Descent of the Fam. of Deacon, 280-4. His father, Robert Meres, whose first wife was a niece of Lord Keeper John Williams, bishop of Lincoln 1621-41, became a leading churchman under Charles I, serving as rector of Washingborough, rector of Hougham, chancellor of Lincoln Cathedral and archdeacon of Nottingham.42Lincs. Peds. 666; Walker Revised, 254. In July 1642, with civil war looming, Robert Meres was among 75 future Lincolnshire royalists who sent a declaration to the king offering to furnish 168 horses ‘fit for war ... for the maintenance and defence of his majesty’s just prerogative [and] the Protestant religion as it is now established’.43Northants. RO, FH133; The Resolution of the Gentry of Lincoln in Setting Forth 168 Horse (1642, 669 f.5.66). Robert pledged three horses and his brother and fellow churchman Anthony Meres (Thomas Meres’s uncle) pledged one. Robert Meres was sequestered of his livings by the parliamentarians in the mid-1640s.44Walker Revised, 254.

In contrast to his father, Thomas Meres was trained in the legal profession, although there is no evidence that he practised. The clergyman who officiated at his wedding at All Hallow-in-the-Wall, London in January 1658 was John Hewitt DD – the Prayer Book loyalist and royalist conspirator who would be executed five months later for plotting against the protectorate.45All Hallows-on-the-Wall, London par. reg.; Oxford DNB, ‘John Hewitt’. Meres inherited the property of his uncle, Anthony Meres, in the cathedral close at Lincoln, which he made his principal residence, and on 23 September 1658, possibly in anticipation of the calling of a new Parliament following the death of Oliver Cromwell*, he purchased his freedom of the city.46PROB11/235, f. 57; Lincs. RO, L1/1/1/6, p. 74; Deacon, Descent of the Fam. of Deacon, 299.

In the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659, he was returned for the junior place at Lincoln. It is likely that he owed his election to the strong body of royalist sympathisers in the city that had vied for control of the corporation in the mid-1650s.47Supra, ‘Lincoln’. He was named to only two committees – for establishing a godly ministry in Wales and to consider a petition from Lincolnshire – and made no recorded contribution to debate.48CJ vii. 600b, 609a. Re-elected for Lincoln to the 1660 Convention, he was listed by Philip, 4th Baron Wharton as a likely supporter of a Presbyterian church settlement – although his contributions in debate suggest that he was a steadfast Anglican and favoured a hard-line against the servants and supporters of the parliamentary regimes.49G. F. T. Jones, ‘The composition and leadership of the Presbyterian party in the Convention’, EHR lxxix. 338; HP Common, 1660-1690, ‘Thomas Meres’. In June, he signed the loyal address of the Lincolnshire gentry; and in July, he presented Lincoln’s ‘humble address’ to the king, delivering a speech beforehand in which he declared ‘how oft and how much that city had suffered in the late war[s] and how loyal and faithful the citizens thereof do continue unto his majesty’.50The Humble Congratulation of the Nobility and Gentry of the County of Lincolne (1660); Parliamentary Intelligencer, 28 (2-9 July 1660), 446-8 (E.186.17).

Meres was returned for Lincoln to the Cavalier Parliament, of which he was one of the most active Members and prolific speakers. Despite his firm Anglicanism, he was broadly aligned with the opponents of the court from the mid-1660s through to the late 1670s – partly, it seems, out of frustrated ambition (he was in contention for the Speakership on several occasions). A firm believer in the threat from ‘popery’, he favoured the comprehension of moderate Dissenters within the church but opposed the toleration of sectaries outside it. Following his appointment as an admiralty commissioner (with a salary of £1,000 a year) in 1679, he took a cautious line in the Exclusion Parliaments and was regarded by some whigs as a turncoat.51CSP Dom. 1679-80, p. 98; HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Thomas Meres’; Oxford DNB, ‘Sir Thomas Meres’. However, he opposed James II’s religious policies and was removed from the commission of the peace in 1688.52HMC Portland, iii. 406. Having been heavily defeated at Lincoln in the elections for James II’s abortive Parliament in 1688, he does not appear to have stood again until 1701, when he was returned for the city as a country tory.53HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Thomas Meres’.

Meres died on 9 July 1715 and was buried at Kirby Bellars, Leicestershire, where he had inherited an estate from his wife.54Lincs. N. and Q. ii. 151; Deacon, Descent of the Fam. of Deacon, 299; Oxford DNB, ‘Sir Thomas Meres’. In his will, he made bequests in excess of £3,000 and divided his estate between his three surviving children.55PROB11/552, ff. 124-5. None of his immediate descendants sat in Parliament.