By the Rev. J. E. Jackson. 285 
Sir John haying thus some introduction to Court, rose to fill the 
office of Secretary to the Earl of Hertford, who was afterwards 
Duke of Somerset, and Protector of the realm. In protecting the 
realm the Duke certainly did not forget to take care of himself. He 
had, it is well known, enormous grants of confiscated church lands 
in this county, and having satisfied himself, he rewarded with a few 
crumbs the gentleman who had the good luck to be his Secretary. 
A volume is, I believe, preserved in this house, which contains 
an account of all the estates successively acquired by Sir John 
Thynne. By comparing the several dates of the purchases, as they 
are given in Sir Richard Hoare’s printed abstract of the deeds, I 
- find that the very first purchase Sir John Thynne made in this 
county was the actual site on which we are assembled. It was then 
a very humble bargain, consisting only of the old mansion house 
with the offices of the priory, an orchard, a garden, and a few fields 
about it, not much above 100 acres in the whole. In the following 
year, 1541, he bought the outlying lands in other parishes that had 
also belonged to the ex-canons of the Cell of Longleat: and during the 
ten years following, ending a.p. 1550, he had succeeded in forming 
the greater part of this estate. He was knighted in 1547, after 
the battle of Musselburgh against the Scots; and in 1548 further 
improved his worldly circumstances by marrying the only daughter 
and heiress of Sir Richard Gresham,’ one of the prince merchants 
of the day, a lady with a very handsome fortune in possession, and 
a great deal more in prospect as soon as the said prince merchant 
should have no longer use for it. During the reign of Queen Mary 
Sir John was made by her sister, the Lady Elizabeth (afterwards 
Queen), chief Comptroller of her household; but the times being 
awkward, and the air of courts not good for his health, he quitted 
the eminence of public life and retired into the country. His good 
1 With some part of the Glastonbury estates: to which grant the old local 
distich refers; 
‘Horner, Popham, Wyndham, and Thynne, 
When the Abbot came out, then they came in.” 
2 The picture at Longleat commonly called that of Sir Thomas Gresham, (which 
it certainly is not) is probably that of Sir Richard. 
2P 
