Thurstan Tyldesley, MP

Family and Education b. by 1495, 1st s. of Thomas Tyldesley of Tyldesley and Wardley Hall by Anne, da. of Sir Alexander (?William) Radcliffe of Ordsall. m. (1) Parnell, da. of Geoffrey Shakerley of Shakerley, at least 2s. 1da.; (2) Jane, ?da. of Sir Richard Langton of Newton, ?wid. of Thomas Rigmayden of Wedacre, 1s. 3da. suc. fa. 1495.1

Offices Held

Commr. subsidy, Lancs. 1512, 1523, ?1543, relief 1550; other commissions 1526-d.; j.p. 1523-d.; receiver, 3rd Earl of Derby’s lands in Cheshire, Cumb., Flints., I. o. M., Lincs., Westmld., Yorks. and the Welsh marches by 1523-d., receiver-gen. I. o. M. by 1532; trustee, Manchester g.s. 1525; dep. master forester, Amounderness and dep. keeper, Myerscough by 1531-d.2

Biography The Tyldesley family had been seated at Tyldesley since the early 13th century and had acquired Wardley Hall about a hundred years later. Thurstan Tyldesley is said to have rebuilt Wardley Hall during the reign of Edward VI. As his father before him, he entered the service of the Stanley earls of Derby. He is first noticed as the earl’s receiver in several counties in 1523, during the minority of the 3rd Earl, but his will shows that he had been in the family’s service since 1516 or earlier. He served under the earl’s command in the suppression of the Pilgrimage of Grace, when he led a band of 224 of his own tenants. In September 1537 the earl told Cromwell, that he had left his servant Thurstan Tyldesley in London to be his suitor in various causes and asked the minister to be Tyldesley’s ‘good lord’ in a dispute with Sir Richard Brereton. Six months later Tyldesley was still, or again, about Cromwell, seeking the stewardship of the lands of Whalley abbey for his master: either for his own purpose or else the earl’s he had compiled a survey of the abbey’s property shortly after its suppression. His application in 1538 for one of the abbey’s manors failed but in 1540 he bought some of its lands, and three years later he acted as feoffee to Robert Holt of Studley, Lancashire, with regard to other former Whalley lands.3

Tyldesley’s election as a knight for Lancashire in 1547 was presumably sponsored by the Earl of Derby, with a kinsman and neighbour of his, Sir Alexander Radcliffe, the sheriff, acting as intermediary. Nothing is known of his part in the work of the House but it is likely that he followed his master in opposing the bill for uniformity during its passage through Parliament in the winter of 1548-9. (His brother Richard had been a Carthusian at Sheen.) His name appears incorrectly on the list of Members revised for the final session in 1552 as ‘Tristram Tyldesley miles’. He had made his will on 1 Sept. 1547, presumably in anticipation of being returned to Parliament, providing for his wife and family and naming his wife and son Edward executors and the Earl of Derby and Sir William Paget among the supervisors. He confirmed the will on 24 June 1552 and died two years later. An inventory of his goods was taken on 4 July 1554 and his son and heir Thomas had licence to enter on his inheritance in the following December.4

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558 Author: Alan Davidson Notes 1. Date of birth estimated from fa.’s death. Vis. Lancs. (Chetham Soc. lxxxi), 44; (lxxxii), 101; J. B. Waton, ‘Lancs. gentry 1529-58’ (London Univ. M.A. thesis, 1959), 517. 2. LP Hen. VIII, iii; Watson, 518; Statutes, iii. 87; Lancs. and Cheshire Rec. Soc. xxxv. 7, 177-8; lxvii. 117; CPR, 1553, p. 360; Somerville, Duchy, i. 506-7; R. Cunliffe Shaw, R. Forest of Lancaster, 198, 200; NRA 13506, p. 185. 3. Chetham Soc. xix. 51n; Watson, 117-18, 123; LP Hen. VIII, iii, xi, xiii, xv, xvi, xviii, add. 4. LJ, ii. 80; C. Haigh, Ref. and Resistance in Tudor Lancs., 65; Hatfield 207; Chetham Soc. xxxiii. 97-114; CPR, 1554-5, p. 1