TALBOTT, Thomas I (1585-1642), of Gunvil’s Hall, Wymondham, Norf.

The origins of the Talbotts lay in Lancashire, but this MP’s grandfather, a merchant also called Thomas, settled in Norfolk and acquired the manor of Gunvil’s Hall at Wymondham. That Thomas’s son, another Thomas, became a successful civil lawyer and from 1619 was the official to the archdeacon of Norfolk.18B.P. Levack, Civil Lawyers of Eng. (Oxford, 1973), 275; Blomefield, Norf. iii. 660. In 1621 he was said to have ‘a great estate in lands’, as well as ‘riches besides’, although on his death in 1628 this amounted to two Norfolk manors, as well as land in Wymondham.19W. Hudson, ‘Assessment of the hundred of Forehoe, Norf. in 1621’, Norf. Arch. xxi. 287; PROB11/153/220; Blomefield, Norf. ii. 503. The MP’s younger half-brother, Clere (d.1654), followed their father in becoming a civil lawyer and from 1620 was commissary of the archdeaconry of Norwich.20Venn, Al. Cant.; Blomefield, Norf. iii. 656, 659; Levack, Civil Lawyers of Eng. 274-5.

As the eldest son, Thomas, the future MP, inherited Gunvil’s Hall.21PROB11/153/220. But, having attended Cambridge, Thavies Inn and Lincoln’s Inn, he had meanwhile pursued a career as a barrister. His clients included the dean and chapter of Norwich Cathedral, who in 1619 granted him an annuity of 40s.22Extracts from the Two Earliest Min. Bks. of the Dean and Chapter of Norwich Cathedral, ed. J.F. Williams and B. Cozens-Hardy (Norf. Rec. Soc. xxiv.), 53. Thomas Knyvett of Ashwellthorpe may also have retained him.23Knyvett Lttrs. 25. Moreover, in 1633 Talbott became recorder of Thetford.24Coventry Docquets, 69; C231/5, p. 117; C181/4, f. 152v. He also provided legal advice to the King’s Lynn corporation.25King’s Lynn Borough Archives, KL/C7/10, ff. 22, 60v. Although he never became a full bencher of Lincoln’s Inn, he became an associate of the bench there in 1636.26LI Black Bks. ii. 339. He may have been the lawyer who in 1639 made a copy of a lecture which had been given by James Whitelocke† at the Middle Temple in 1619, although this was more probably his son, Thomas, who was then a student at Lincoln’s Inn.27J.H. Baker, Readers and Readings in the Inns of Court and Chancery (Selden Soc. xiii.), 588.

Talbott had been added to the commission of the peace for Thetford on his appointment as recorder and he was soon became a justice of the peace for the county as well. In the autumn of 1635 he was among magistrates to whom some local inhabitants wrote complaining about the behaviour of saltpetremen.28CSP Dom. Add. 1625-49, p. 508-9. The following year he and his colleagues rejected the request from King’s Lynn for special assistance during the plague.29Rye, State Pprs. 214-15.

The first of his family to sit in Parliament, Talbott was elected at Castle Rising in the spring of 1640, presumably on the interest of Thomas Howard, 21st earl of Arundel. He left no trace in the records of this brief Parliament. He had ceased to be the recorder of Thetford by 1641, when he was replaced by Erasmus Earle*.30C181/5, f. 424; C 231/5, p. 431. Either Talbott or his son was appointed as a commissioner of array for Norfolk by the king in July 1642.31Northants. RO, FH133, unfol. However, he died just as the civil war was about to break out. He was buried at Tibbenham on 25 September.32Prest, Rise of the Barristers, 394. His lands then passed to his son, Thomas (d.1668).33Blomefield, Norf. ii. 503. Decendants in the male line survive to the present day.34Norf. Peds. 188-90.