Sir Thomas Barnardiston

His father died during his minority c. 1551, and in 1553 King Edward VI gave his wardship and Barnardiston estates in Suffolk and Bedfordshire to Sir John Cheke. On the death of Edward VI, his guardian sent him - being a protestant - to Geneva to "avoid the danger" of Catholicism.

He was then educated at Geneva under Calvin ‘in the miserable and most unhappy days of our Queen Mary,’ and first gave the family its puritan leanings - although in the latter part of his life he "attached little to the Geneva system."

He was knighted in Bury in 1578. In his time the Barnardiston family was at its greatest affluence - the estate being as much as 4000 pound sterling a year.

He married first, Elizabeth Hanchet of Hamells in Braughing, Herts. Secondly Ann Bigrave.