STRICKLAND, Thomas (c.1639-1684), of Boynton, Yorks.

Although Strickland had not yet come of age in 1659 and was hence regarded by contemporaries as an ‘infant’, he was recommended by his father, Sir William Strickland*, for Beverley, Hull and Hedon in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament. In the event, he was defeated on a poll at Hull on 10 January, but was returned for both Beverley and Hedon.9Supra, ‘Beverley’; ‘Hedon’; ‘Hull’; Add. 21427, f. 262. On 5 March, he opted to sit for Beverley, waiving his election at Hedon, but thereafter made no recorded impression on this Parliament’s proceedings.10CJ vii. 610b.

The Strickland family emerged from the Restoration relatively unscathed, although Sir William had been removed from all local commissions by 1662.11Infra, ‘Sir William Strickland’. Shortly after his father’s death in 1673, Strickland employed the ejected Presbyterian minister James Calvert as his household chaplain. In 1683, Calvert and the Stricklands helped Sir Thomas’s kinsmen Sir John Cochrane and his son, who were suspected of complicity in the Rye House Plot, escape to the continent.12CSP Dom. July-Sept. 1683, pp. 169-70, 227; J.T. Cliffe, The Puritan Gentry Besieged 1650-1700, 125-6, 224-5. A ‘melancholy, distracted man’, Strickland died on 20 November 1684 and was buried at Boynton six days later.13CSP Dom. July-Sept. 1683, p. 227; Boynton par. reg. In his will he bequeathed £20 to Calvert, ‘who at present resides in my house’.14Borthwick, Prob. Reg. 60, f. 376v. Strickland left the bulk of his estate to his eldest son William Strickland, 3rd bt., who sat for Malton in eight Parliaments between 1689 and 1724, for Yorkshire in 1708 and for Old Sarum in 1716.15HP Commons 1690-1715, ‘Sir William Strickland’.