BURGH (BOROUGH), Thomas (by 1485-1562), of Lyme Regis, Dorset.

Thomas Burgh first appears in the records of Lyme Regis in 1506, when he was sworn to the assize. Thereafter his name occurs with some frequency down to 5 Oct. 1562 when permission was given to John, his son and heir, to succeed to his lands and tenements in the borough. Leland, visiting Dorset towards the end of Henry VIII’s reign, recorded that ‘one Borough, a merchant man, in time out of mind built a fair house in Lyme, having a goodly tower at the entry of it’: the reference was presumably to an earlier generation but Leland was probably describing the house in which Thomas Burgh lived. As Thomas Burgh of Lyme Regis, gentleman, he sold a burgage in Bridport in 1513 and in 1536 12 acres of land in Walditch, to the east of Bridport. In 1539 and again in 1542 he appeared at the musters at Lyme, being described on the second occasion as an able billman. Burgh was by then nearing the age limit of military service, but he lived on, if no longer very active, for another 20 years.3Lyme Regis ct. recs. 1437-1509, no. 18, ct. bk. 1560-74, p. 84; Leland, Itin. ed. Smith, i. 244; Bridport recs. 1827; LP Hen. VIII, add.; E36/29, ff. 1, 4v, 17.

Nothing is known of Burgh’s part in the work of the Commons. He was probably returned again in 1536, in accordance with the King’s request for the re-election of the previous Members, and he may have sat in 1539 and 1542, when the names of the Members for Lyme are lost.