WATERTON, Thomas II (by 1526-75).

It was clearly to his father, who was sheriff of Yorkshire at the time, that Thomas Waterton owed his election for Thirsk to Mary’s second Parliament. The nomination was probably made by the 3rd Earl of Derby, lord of the borough, with whom Waterton could claim a family relationship through the Fleetwoods, and court influence could have been brought to bear through another of his kinsmen by marriage, Sir Edmund Peckham. Waterton’s membership of Gray’s Inn and marriage to Beatrice Restwold of Buckinghamshire may have given him a southern domicile at the time of his election, although after his father’s death he was to appear on the pardon roll of 1559 as of Corringham, Lincolnshire, and Walton, Yorkshire. To judge from his religious outlook in later life he is likely to have welcomed the Marian restoration. He was not to sit in Parliament again until a few years before his death on 5 Nov. 1575.4VCH Yorks. (N. Riding), ii. 63; VCH Bucks. ii. 256; iii. 188; Vis. Bucks. (Harl. Soc. lviii), 153; CPR, 1558-60, p. 149; J. T. Cliffe, Yorks. Gentry, 168; C142/173/55.