GRYMES, Thomas (1574-1644), of Peckham, Surr.

Grymes’s paternal grandfather came from Cheshire to London, where he prospered as a haberdasher and was a ‘very good friend’ of Sir William Chester. At his death in 1565, his younger son and executor Grymes’s father—inherited £1,000 and property in London and Leicestershire, to which an estate in Yorkshire and another at Camberwell in Surrey were added on his marriage to the daughter of a London goldsmith. He lived in London for some years, but then planned to move to Peckham, where he was building a house when he was taken fatally ill in 1586.3PCC 20 Lyon, 1 Crymes, 63 Windsor; C142/144/84, 212/44; VCH Surr. iv. 31.

Grymes himself was only twelve at his father’s death. After attending an inn of court he made a fortunate marriage and settled down as a country gentleman. It is not clear how he came to sit for Stockbridge in Elizabeth’s last Parliament. Perhaps the connexion was through the duchy of Lancaster, which owned his property at Sileby in Leicestershire. He afterwards sat for his father-in-law’s borough of Haslemere and for his county, dying 28 Apr. 1644.4Manning and Bray, Surr. i. 96; Somerville, Duchy, i. 338-40; C142/775/22; VCH Surr. iii. 258.