THOMLINSON, Matthew (1617-81), of Ampthill Gt. Park, Ampthill, Beds.

Thomlinson was a posthumous child. His father, John Thomlinson, was buried in St Michael-le-Belfrey in York on 3 August 1617, seven weeks before his younger son was born.20The Regs. of St Michael Le Belfrey, York ed. F. Collins (Yorks. Par. Reg. Soc. i), 134; Par. Regs. of Holy Trinity Church ed. Cook, 14; Clay, Dugdale’s Vis. Yorks. i. 202. The family was originally from Whitby and it was there that Matthew’s elder brother, John, would subsequently settle.21Clay, Dugdale’s Vis. Yorks. i. 202-3; Ward, Fam. of Twysden and Twisden, 142-3. Roger Dodsworth (1585-1654), the Yorkshire antiquary, was their uncle.

One hostile source asserted that Matthew Thomlinson had begun his career as ‘a gentleman usher to a lady’.22The Mystery of the Good old Cause Briefly unfolded (1660), 26, E.1923.2. Perhaps more reliable is the statement by Edmund Ludlowe II* that in 1642 Thomlinson joined the troop of lifeguards raised by Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, many of whom had been among the ‘young gentlemen of the inns of court’ who had been training at the London Artillery Ground in Bunhill Fields.23Ludlow, Mems. i. 39. This need not mean, as has sometimes been supposed, that Thomlinson had been a student at one of the inns. By early 1644 he held the rank of captain in the Eastern Association regiment of the 2nd earl of Manchester (Edward Montagu†).24SP28/12, f. 281; BHO, Cromwell Assoc. database. That spring some of his men were based in Huntingdonshire, in and around St Ives, protecting East Anglia from the threat of royalist attacks.25SP28/20, ff. 207, 216; SP28/21, f. 77; SP28/23, ff. 206, 266, 270; SP28/26, f. 117. By early February 1645 they had moved to Great Brickhill in Buckinghamshire.26Luke Letter Bks. 126. Later that month men under Manchester’s command were among those sent to replace the mutinous soldiers in the garrison at Henley-on-Thames.27CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 323, 324, 331. That May Thomlinson was ordered to join Sir Samuel Luke* at Newport Pagnell.28Luke Letter Bks. 542.

With the creation of the New Model army, Thomlinson was promoted to major under Sir Robert Pye II* in the eighth regiment of horse, a somewhat controversial position.29Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 128. It was obtained after a tussle between the Commons and the Lords involving proposed appointments in the regiment for Nathaniel Rich* and John Alford*; the latter’s decision that Thomlinson should serve under Pye with his existing rank of captain was reversed by the Commons.30Temple, ‘Original officer list’, 65-5n, 66, 73; Wanklyn, Reconstructing the New Model Army, i. 53, 63. Thomlinson probably then fought with this regiment at Naseby (14 June 1645) and at Bristol (Sept. 1645). From February 1647 he was stationed at Holdenby as part of the guard for the captive Charles I, and he was present on 4 June when George Joyce removed the king. Questioning Joyce’s authority, Thomlinson attempted to block the king’s departure, but found that his men were unwilling to support him.31LJ ix. 251a. The following month he attended the meetings of the general council of officers in Reading.32Clarke Pprs. i. 151, 176. On 16 July he was included on the committee appointed to receive proposals from the army agitators and two days later he was one of the six officers appointed to advise Sir Thomas Fairfax*.33Clarke Pprs. i. 183, 217.

Following Pye’s disgrace, resulting from his support of the Presbyterians in Parliament, Thomlinson replaced him as regimental colonel in early August 1647. His first action in this new role was to join the march by Fairfax into London on 6 August in support of the Independent MPs.34Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 130-1; Wanklyn, Reconstructing the New Model Army, i. 83, 95. Three months later he was present during the talks between army officers and agitators in Putney Church. On 28 October he was among those appointed to engage in further discussions about the Agreement of the People. On 8 November Thomlinson was among officers appointed to prepare the declaration justifying the order that the agitators return to their regiments.35Clarke Pprs. i. 279, 413, 415.

Thomlinson also took part in the meetings of army officers at Windsor in November and December 1648.36Clarke Pprs. ii. 280-1. On 25 November, with the dispute over control of the king at its height, he sat on the sub-committee to decide how they should act, while he may have helped in the drafting of the declaration of 30 November which justified the army’s decision to advance on London.37Clarke Pprs. ii. 61. On 16 December, during the officers’ debates on the Agreement of the People, Thomlinson supported the proposal that Parliament’s powers over military impressment should be restricted, while two days later he was among the minority who wanted to remove the clause restricting Parliament’s right to interfere with the execution of laws. On 21 December he voted against the motion in the second vote about religion, thus helping to block the clause that would have prevented Parliament exercising control over religious questions.38B. Taft, ‘Voting lists of the council of officers’, BIHR lii. 146-8.

Once the officers had resolved to proceed against the king, Thomlinson acquired new and exceptionally delicate responsibilities. On 23 December, as the transfer of the king to Windsor was completed, the general council appointed four soldiers, headed by Thomlinson, to take charge of his imprisonment. Fairfax ordered him to Windsor to take up the duties of gaoler immediately.39Clarke Pprs. ii. 144-7. Thomlinson oversaw his prisoner until his final moments five weeks later, first at Windsor and from 19 January, at St James’s Palace. Once the trial proceedings began on 20 January, he escorted Charles to Westminster each day. After the Restoration Thomlinson was understandably keen to stress that his involvement was limited: he had only ever gone as far as Sir Robert Cotton’s house, where he had always handed the king over to Francis Hacker* and the serjeant-at-arms, Edward Dendy*.40State Trials, v. 1178. But that was a lie. On the opening day Thomlinson probably joined Hacker in escorting the prisoner into Westminster Hall. Appointed one of the king’s judges, he took his place at least once on the bench; he may have present in court on 22 January and he was certainly there on 27 January. He also attended the private meeting of the commissioners later on 27 January at which a sub-committee was appointed to make the practical arrangements for the execution.41Muddiman, Trial, 76, 88, 105, 225, 226. However, he did not sign the death warrant.

Most agreed that Thomlinson acted honourably in his dealings with his royal prisoner. Sir Thomas Herbert would praise him for being ‘so civil, both towards his Majesty, and such as attended him, as gained him the king’s good opinion’.42T. Herbert, Mems. of the Two last Years of the Reign of...King Charles I (1702), 123. Henry Seymour†, who, as a representative of the prince of Wales, was one of the king’s final visitors, seems to have made it generally known after 1660 that the king had spoken highly of Thomlinson’s character.43State Trials, v. 1179; Ludlow, Mems. ii. 286; Ludlow, Voyce, 175. There was just one dissenting voice. Edward Hyde* later disparaged Thomlinson, playing on the apparent contrast with Thomas Harrison I* by commenting that

though the officer [Thomlinson] seemed to be a man of a better breeding and a nature more civil than Harrison, and pretended to pay much respect and duty to the king in his outward demeanour, yet his majesty was treated with much more rudeness and barbarity than he had ever been before.44Clarendon, Hist. iv. 483.

Naturally enough, Thomlinson’s own defence of his behaviour, also made after the Restoration, stressed his and the king’s mutual respect. Thomlinson recalled a conversation with Charles the evening before the execution.

He told me of some legacies he had given; he told me he had prepared something that he would speak the next day; and in the close of it, he desired me that I would not leave him; (for I speak it in truth), there were many times several incivilities offered to him; and though I was upon a duty that was of a harsh and unpleasing nature to me, and did desire several times to be released from it, (as I believe it is well known to some), yet I did not admit any time that any incivility should be offered to him; people would take tobacco before him, and their hats on before him, I always checked them for it; he was pleased to have a consideration of that care that I had in that capacity I then stood.45State Trials, v. 1179.

As a mark of his gratitude, Charles then gave Thomlinson a gold toothpick and case.46State Trials, v. 1179; Herbert, Mems. 123.

The next morning Thomlinson escorted the king on his final walk across St James’s Park. He was then, apparently at Charles’s own request, present with him on the scaffold.47King Charls His Speech Made upon the Scaffold (1649), 3-4 (E.540.17); State Trials, v. 1179-80; Sydney Pprs. ed. R.W. Blencowe (1825), 59-60. The king’s final speech was directed first to Thomlinson and then to the bishop of London, William Juxon.48King Charls His Speech, 5. When he finished speaking, Charles took off his Lesser George and handed it to Juxon. The evidence concerning Thomlinson’s role in the fate of that George, perhaps the most romantic relic of the king’s martyrdom, is ambiguous. In October 1650 Charles Stuart wrote to Thomlinson’s sister, Jane Twisden (wife of Thomas Twisden*), making arrangements for her to deliver to him a George and some seals which had belonged to the late king. Charles, who was then in Scotland, evidently believed that Thomlinson had promised his father to do this.49Evelyn Diary ed. W. Bray (1906), iv. 200. However, the records of the sale of the late king’s goods reveal that Thomlinson had delivered a jewelled George worth £70 to the commissioners for the sale and that this was subsequently allocated by them to one of the royal creditors, William Widmor.50Inventories King’s Goods, 324. Some have speculated that Widmor then passed it back to Thomlinson.51R. Payne-Gallwey, A Hist. of the George worn on the Scaffold by Charles I (1908), 61-70. What may be more likely is that Charles had simply been misinformed.

In late April 1649 Oliver Cromwell* ordered that some of Thomlinson’s men, then stationed in Hampshire, should be moved westwards.52Abbott, Writings and Speeches, ii. 62-3. Three months later, Thomlinson was ordered to march to Canterbury to suppress disturbances there, but on 25 August the council of state decided that he should instead be sent to join Fairfax.53CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 253, 265, 290, 292. Later that year some of his horse was shipped across to Ireland to assist Cromwell.54CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 407, 556; 1650, p. 582. In August 1650 Thomlinson’s regiment was moved to Lancashire to protect Cromwell’s rear as he moved against the Scots.55CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 288, 297, 301, 306. Following Cromwell’s victory at Dunbar, Thomlinson was sent to provide reinforcements, reaching Edinburgh by mid-October.56Abbott, Writings and Speeches, ii. 327; Clarke Pprs. ii. 225. Still in Scotland, he took part in the court martial against Edward Sexby in June 1651; he and Edward Whalley* reportedly made little secret of their desire to see the accused convicted.57Clarke Pprs. v. 28, 29, 31. Later that year Thomlinson accompanied Cromwell on his march southwards in pursuit of Charles II and he and his regiment were present at Worcester (3 Sept. 1651).

Thomlinson’s regiment later returned to Scotland, but over the next few years he began to acquire civilian responsibilities in parallel to his military command. Late in 1651, he was appointed to the commission on law reform chaired by Matthew Hale†.58Cotterell, ‘Interregnum law reform’, 691. Cromwell’s dissolution of the Rump in April 1653 opened up further opportunities. Thomlinson signed the letter from the council of officers to Charles Fleetwood* in Ireland justifying the coup.59Woorych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 112n. He was included on the new council of state which filled the ensuing political vacuum, but did not attend until 19 May – he may not have been in London – and even thereafter, appeared only intermittently.60CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. xxxiv-xl. Meanwhile, in March 1653, he acquired a substantial country estate, when he bought the former royal park at Ampthill in Bedfordshire.61Gentles, ‘Debentures market’, 344.

On 5 July 1653 the new Nominated Assembly, soon to be transformed into a Parliament, voted to co-opt John Lambert*, Thomas Harrison I, John Disbrowe* and the much less substantial figure of Thomlinson to join its ranks.62CJ vii. 281b; TSP i. 338-9. Three days later he was also re-appointed to the council of state.63CJ vii. 283a; CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 16. His main contributions to the proceedings of this Parliament seem to have concerned Scotland. On 5 August 1653 he headed the list of those added to the committee on Scottish affairs, doubtless because that same day the council had appointed him to its sub-committee on the payment of the army there.64CJ vii. 295b; CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 75, 76. Then, on 9 August, the council asked him to draw Parliament’s attention to some documents which had been submitted from Edinburgh and Leith.65CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 82. Thomlinson waited until 21 September to raise the matter, and then persuaded Members to refer the documents back to the aforesaid committee on Scottish affairs.66CJ vii. 322b. He may have been even more tardy in acting on a conciliar request to raise business concerning Hatfield Chase in Lincolnshire, as there is no evidence that the Nominated Parliament ever considered it.67CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 166. The week’s leave of absence he was granted on 29 September may have prevented him from fulfilling another request of the 26th, to present to Parliament a petition from Switzerland: those may well have been proffered instead by Henry Lawrence I* when the following week he sought Parliament’s approval for a letter to be sent to the Protestant Swiss cantons.68CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 166, 170; CJ vii. 326a, 329b. Thomlinson’s only other committee appointment during this Parliament was that concerning law reform (20 July), when he was named along with all the other former members of the Hale commission in the House.69CJ vii. 286b. It would be said that, as an MP, Thomlinson had been in favour of the maintenance of a preaching ministry.70Woorych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 432. He had stopped attending the council in late September, at the same time as he had been granted his leave of absence from Parliament, and this may explain why he lost his seat on the council in the new elections held on 1 November.71CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. xxxix-xl.

Thomlinson accepted the new protectorate of Oliver Cromwell and the following year was given a new civilian role. In mid-August 1654, when Fleetwood became lord deputy of Ireland, Thomlinson was one of six men appointed to the council of state created to assist him.72Clarke Pprs. v. 201; Ire. under the Commonwealth, ii. 437-8, 443; TSP ii. 545; CSP Dom. 1654, p. 453. Special arrangements were made to allow him to pass his accounts as a regimental colonel before departing.73CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 303, 318. Doubts as to the regiment’s loyalty prompted George Monck*, as commander-in-chief in Scotland, to take over as its colonel.74Wanklyn, Reconstructing the New Model Army, ii. 96. Thomlinson reached Dublin with two of his new colleagues, Robert Hammond* and Robert Goodwin*, by mid-September.75TSP ii. 602. The small size of the Irish council inevitably meant that Thomlinson was closely involved in most of its decisions, many of which were very routine.76Ire. under the Commonwealth, ii. 529, 536, 578, 655; TSP iii. 18; iv. 308, 668, 673, 701, 707; v. 121, 159, 238, 309; vi. 96, 210; CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 589, 614, 617, 619, 644, 669, 835. When Richard Hampden* and William Barton wanted to petition the council for Irish lands, they used him as their intermediary.77Henry Cromwell Corresp. 338. However, tensions between Fleetwood and Henry Cromwell* as major-general of the Irish army soon split the council, and persisted after Fleetwood had returned to England. Thomlinson sided with Fleetwood, and Henry Cromwell came to view Thomlinson as one of the more religiously suspect members of his government. When a Fifth Monarchist plot was uncovered in Ireland in the spring of 1657, Cromwell linked this to efforts by Thomlinson to visit England, believing that Thomlinson had intended to spread the plot there. Cromwell therefore warned his father, the lord protector, that ‘in him [Thomlinson] also appears the like spirit more than his sly carriage is able to conceal.’78TSP vi. 222-3.

Thomlinson’s duties in Ireland made it impractical for him to seek election to Parliament in either 1654 or 1656, but he soon had cause to regret not seeking a seat on the latter occasion. In late November 1656 the aging and childless Sir John Brooke* (styled Lord Cobham) presented a private bill to Parliament seeking to break the entail on his estates. Thomlinson had a direct personal interest in this as his wife, Pembroke, was a daughter of the late Sir William Brooke† and thus Sir John’s first cousin twice removed. With her three half-sisters, she claimed to be the co-heiress to those lands under the complex entail created by the 1610 Act which had reversed the attainder of her great-uncle, the 11th Baron Cobham (Henry Brooke alias Cobham†). Sir John Brooke’s bill progressed smoothly through its initial stages and on 9 December Parliament ordered that it be ingrossed.79CJ vii. 459a, 462b, 464a, 465b. But on the 13th Thomlinson’s three sisters-in-law counterattacked, submitting a petition against the bill on behalf of themselves and Thomlinson’s wife. The House agreed to hear from counsel representing the various parties on 20 December.80CJ vii. 467b. The arguments of the lawyers who then appeared for the three sisters, including Sir Peter Ball* and Edward Turnor*, prevailed and, after lengthy debate, the House voted to reject the bill. Initially unaware of these developments – it was alleged – when he was belatedly informed, Thomlinson persuaded Henry Cromwell to write to the secretary of state, John Thurloe*, on 24 December asking that the bill be blocked.81Burton’s Diary, i. 184-90; CJ vii. 471b; TSP v. 729-30. That was already unnecessary, and when Sir John Brooke died in 1659, the Thomlinsons would therefore have inherited their share of his estates.

In November 1657 Thomlinson was confirmed as an Irish councillor with the creation of the new council under Henry Cromwell as lord deputy.82Ire. under the Commonwealth, ii. 672. With a certain degree of deviousness, Cromwell gave him the job of administering the oaths to the new council. As he explained to Thurloe, he had nominated Thomlinson because he was ‘no ways famous for his formal affection to me’ and to show

how really willing I was to obliterate the memory of that division conceived to have been among the members of the former council; and to give this as a public act of reconciliation even with those that were most concerned in that breach.83TSP vi. 632-3.

To mark the occasion, he had then knighted Thomlinson.84TSP vi. 633; Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 224. Cromwell was probably being ironic when he told Fleetwood that he had done so ‘upon account of his old kindness for me, as his own worthiness’.85TSP vi. 634. A further honour soon followed, for within weeks Thomlinson had been summoned to sit in the new upper House at Westminster.86HMC Lords, n.s. iv. 504; TSP vi. 668, 680, 732. As he only received his writ just over a fortnight before Parliament reassembled on 20 January, there was little possibility of him reaching London in time for its opening.87TSP vi. 732. But on 2 February the House was told that he had been ‘detained by sickness’.88HMC Lords, n.s. iv. 522. Meanwhile he was talking about setting out for England in late February.89TSP vi. 762. The abrupt dissolution of this Parliament soon made that unnecessary and he temporarily abandoned those travel plans.

That he therefore remained in Ireland only caused his relations with Henry Cromwell to deteriorate even further. By March he was complaining that his letters were being opened.90TSP vi. 857. By June Cromwell suspected William Steele* and Thomlinson of trying to stir up trouble among the religious Independents. He told Thurloe that he thought that Thomlinson was ‘hard at work’.

He hath had several private meeting[s] with some that are soonest enflamed. But they cool so fast, especially if they leave the air of the town, that I know not whether he can make a flame; and if he do, unless fuel be sent from England, it will soon die.91TSP vii. 199.

It may thus have been with some relief that Henry Cromwell accepted Thomlinson’s request in July to be allowed to travel to England, apparently on private business.92TSP vii. 291-2. Early the following month he was granted permission to stay there for three months.93CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 578. Oliver Cromwell’s death then made it necessary to extend that period, as Thomlinson attended the lord protector’s funeral on 23 November. He and John Hewson* carried the banner of England in the procession to Westminster Abbey.94Burton’s Diary, ii. 527. In December 1658 he delayed his planned return to Ireland a second time as he was still engaged in litigation against an agent to whom he had entrusted the management of his lands in England.95Henry Cromwell Corresp. 433.

The calling of the new Parliament for early 1659 allowed Thomlinson to take his seat in the Other House for the first time. Apart from a brief gap between 21 March and 1 April, he attended its sittings almost every day.96HMC Lords, n.s. iv. 526-67. As he explained to Henry Cromwell II, ‘having received a summons, I durst not withstand my appearance thereupon, though indeed with very much hesitation in reference to my own unfitness’.97Henry Cromwell Corresp. 444. During its opening days he was named to two of its committees – those on the laws against cursing, swearing, breaches of the sabbath and drunkenness (31 Jan.) and on the bill to recognise Richard Cromwell’s* title as lord protector (1 Feb.).98HMC Lords, n.s. iv. 529, 530. As he pointed out in his letter to Henry Cromwell on 1 February, the House had done little else other than set up those two committees. He also reported that, although there had been some debate on the subject, the Commons was expected to accept that the Scottish and Irish MPs could sit. Henry Cromwell’s informant about developments in the Commons, Richard Norton*, assumed that Thomlinson was his equivalent in the Other House, but further letters from Thomlinson do not survive.99Henry Cromwell Corresp. 443-4, 446. Later in the session he was named to the committees on the grant of a general indemnity (3 Mar.) and on the bill to define the Other House’s powers (15 Mar.).100HMC Lords, n.s. iv. 544, 548.

The fall of the protectorate in the spring of 1659 made it impossible for Henry Cromwell to continue as lord deputy. On 9 June Richard Salwey* informed the restored Rump of the English council of state’s recommendation of Thomlinson as one of the commissioners who were to take over the government of Ireland for the next three months. Thomlinson was duly so named in the legislation.101CJ vii. 678a, 700a; A. and O.; CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 368; Clarke Pprs. iv. 19-20. He had sailed for Ireland by late August.102CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 472. With the political situation remaining uncertain, three of the five commissioners – John Jones I*, Miles Corbett* and Thomlinson – continued to exercise those powers even after their commission had formally expired.103Ire. under the Commonwealth, ii. 713. But their rule was terminated two months later by the coup in Dublin organised by soldiers loyal to the Rump. Thomlinson and Corbett were arrested on 13 December at a conventicle in Werburgh Street, a few minutes’ walk from Dublin Castle.104J. Nicoll, A Diary of Public Transactions (Edinburgh, 1836), 263; R. Cox, Hibernia Anglicana (1689), 2; Ludlow, Mems. ii. 186. On 5 January the reassembled Rump summoned Thomlinson to England, while Jones, Corbett and the former commander-in-chief, Edmund Ludlowe II, were ordered to attend as MPs; all were told that they would be expected to account for their actions.105CJ vii. 803b; Ludlow, Mems. ii. 199-200. Meanwhile, articles of impeachment against them prepared by the council of officers of the Irish army in Dublin were presented to Parliament by Sir Charles Coote* on 19 January.106Ludlow, Mems. ii. 202, 464-70; CJ vii. 815b; Whitelocke, Diary, 562. The intention to impeach them was soon overtaken by events, but they continued to be viewed as a potential threat. In mid-March, following the Long Parliament’s decision to dissolve itself, all four were ordered to appear before the council of state. Apart from Ludlowe, they obeyed those summons and gave undertakings that they would behave themselves.107Ludlow, Mems. ii. 253, 255; Ludlow, Voyce, 103, 104.

Thomlinson had no reason at all to welcome the restoration of the monarchy. However, there are hints that he may have had some contact with the exiled Stuarts and signs of willingness to understand his conduct in 1648-9. There is the letter from Charles II to Jane Twisden in 1650, while one royalist plotter, Roger Whitley†, had claimed in 1656 that he had an agent with access to Thomlinson himself.108CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 92. Also, Ludlowe would later insinuate that Thomlinson had been in touch with the royalist court before 1660.109Ludlow, Voyce, 175. Furthermore, during the debates on the Act of Indemnity in the Convention, Henry Seymour, MP for East Looe, made a strong defence on Thomlinson’s behalf.110State Trials, v. 1179; Ludlow, Mems. ii. 286; Ludlow, Voyce, 175. The Convention indicated as early as 17 May that its orders for the detention of the regicides were not to apply to him.111CJ viii. 34a. A special exemption in the Act of Indemnity declared that none of the penalties against any of the commissioners of the high court of justice were applicable to either Thomlinson or Richard Ingoldsby*.112SR. According to Ludlowe, Charles II thought that Thomlinson should have been punished as it would have been possible for him to have allowed the king to escape, but on this point Ludlowe is hardly an authoritative witness.113Ludlow, Voyce, 175. Several months later, on 15 October 1660, Thomlinson repaid his debt to the new government by testifying at the trials of two of the regicides, Francis Hacker and William Hulet. At Hacker’s trial, he confirmed that the accused had been one of the army officers to whom the death warrant had been addressed, but his lengthy speech to the court was probably more concerned to clear his own name than to convict his former colleague.114State Trials, v. 1178-80; Ludlow, Voyce, 255, 258. His contribution towards Hulet’s trial was much briefer. Hulet was accused of having been the king’s actual executioner. All that Thomlinson was able to offer was the observation that the masked axeman had had greying facial hair.115State Trials, v. 1190.

Almost nothing is known about the final twenty years of Thomlinson’s life, quite probably because of his deliberate withdrawal from public life. The tradition that he lived at Bradbourne House at East Malling in Kent with his sister Jane, and her husband, Sir Thomas Twisden, now one of the judges of king’s bench, is probably correct.116Ward, Fam. of Twysden and Twisden, 354. Perhaps significantly, some of Twisden’s lands there, which he had only recently acquired, had once belonged to Pembroke Thomlinson’s Brooke ancestors.117Hasted, Kent, iv. 512, 513. In 1665 Mrs Thomlinson’s three half-sisters obtained a royal warrant granting them the precedence which they would have had if their late father had been allowed to succeed as Lord Cobham. This favour was not, however, extended to her.118CP iii. 350-1n.

But Thomlinson did not cut all his ties with the capital. In 1663 he owned a house in St Peter’s Street, Westminster.119WCA, E1621, p. 31. A rare sighting of him dates from 1678 when he visited Sir William Dugdale in London on an unidentified piece of business. He was accompanied on that occasion by one of the Marshams, kinsmen of the Twisdens.120Elias Ashmole, ed. C.H. Josten (Oxford, 1966), iv. 1600; Ward, Fam. of Twysden and Twisden, 361. More mysterious is the report from 1669 by a Staffordshire justice of the peace about a local conventicle which quoted Thomlinson as saying that, ‘if liberty was not given to attend conventicles, there would soon be war, and people would have their throats cut.’ That this was the former MP seems to be confirmed by the comment that this Thomlinson was ‘an eminent officer’.121CSP Dom. 1668-9, p. 465. But Matthew Thomlinson otherwise had no known connections with Staffordshire.

Thomlinson was presumably still living with the Twisdens at East Malling when he died in November 1681 since he was then buried in the chancel of the local church.122Ward, Fam. of Twysden and Twisden, 354; East Malling par. reg. He left no will. A son, Matthew, born in 1653, had probably predeceased him.123Regs. of St Paul’s, Covent Garden, 1. Of his two daughters, only the elder, Jane, wife of Philip Owen, had married and she died childless in 1703.124Clay, Dugdale’s Vis. Yorks. i. 203. Thomlinson nevertheless left one, minor tangible legacy, for the Twisdens preserved Charles I’s toothpick and its case as relics of the king-martyr until selling them in the nineteenth century.125Ward, Fam. of Twysden and Twisden, 348n; Hatton and Hatton, ‘Notes on the fam. of Twysden and Twisden’, 46. They survive in another private collection.126S. Dicks, The King’s Blood: Relics of King Charles I (2010), 18.