SKINNER, Thomas (1662-1732), of Dewlish, Dorset.

Skinner’s father, of Devonshire origin, was responsible for transmitting money to the exiled Richard Cromwell after the Restoration; in the following century the two families intermarried. He bought Dewlish in 1663 for £7,500, entailing it on the children of his second marriage. Skinner’s half-brother, who inherited property in Tiverton, is probably the ‘Mr. Skinner of the West, a gentleman that has several hundreds a year’ who was ‘carried down to the West to be tried there’ in February 1686, presumably for complicity in Monmouth’s Rebellion; while Skinner himself joined the Green Ribbon Club at an early age.2CSP Dom. 1671, p. 340; Hutchins, ii. 607, 609; iv. 377; CSP Dom. 1680-1, p. 165; R. Morrice, Entering Bk. 1, p. 527; C5/555/75.

Skinner was described as a dissenter in April 1688, when he was approved as court candidate for Dorchester, and at about the same time placed on the commission of the peace. But by September he had transferred his attention to Wareham. There is no evidence to show whether he stood for either constituency in the general election of 1689, but on the death of George Ryves a few months later he was returned at a by-election at Wareham. He was named to the committee for the toleration bill, but otherwise left no record of his activities in Parliament. He did not vote for the disabling clause in the bill restoring corporations. He contested Wareham again in the general election of 1690, but was defeated by William Okeden. On the rejection of his petition, he apparently withdrew from politics. He became a director of the South Sea Company, and at the time of his death on 21 Oct. 1732 was a coal meter in London.3CJ, x. 428; Gent. Mag. ii. 1031.