TOMKINS, William (1599-1640), of Garnstone, Weobley, and Monnington-upon-Wye, Herefs.

The Tomkins family were in possession of the estate of Garnstone by 1553, and rebuilt their seat there around that time. William Tomkins first served with his father in the 1628 Parliament, when Weobley was enfranchised. He left no mark on that assembly. Weobley was little more than a decayed village, and Tomkins and his brother were returned on their own interest to the first Parliament of 1640. William and Thomas Tomkins are impossible to distinguish in their modest contribution to this assembly. Either he or Thomas was named to one committee, for a bill to remedy abuses in conveyancing by common recoveries (21 Apr.).5CJ ii.8a. One of them interjected (28 Apr.) in a debate on the report of the privileges committee on the Bere Alston election, and one called for a bill to exempt the four English shires from the jurisdiction of the council in the marches of Wales.6Aston’s Diary, 78, 87.

Tomkins was returned again to the Long Parliament, and also supported the election of Sir Robert Harley and Fitzwilliam Coningsby at the county election on 4 October.7C219/43/1/207. Returned on this occasion without his brother, he must therefore have been the Mr Tomkins given two weeks’ leave on 17 December to attend to business concerning a ward of his. He never returned to Westminster, and died later that month, as the writ for a fresh election was moved on 2 January 1641.8CJ ii. 53a, 62a. He had made his will in October 1639, bestowing two manors on his wife, but the bulk of his estate, said to be worth £1,000 a year, passed to his brother, who also succeeded to Tomkins’s seat in Parliament.9PROB11/185/371; Robinson, Mansions and Manors, 293