Thomas Snagge, MP

Family and Education b. c.1564, 1st s. of Thomas Snagge I by his w. Elizabeth. educ. G. Inn 1582. m. Agnes or Anne, da. of George Rotheram, 2s. suc. fa. 1593. Kntd. 1603.

Offices Held J.p. Beds. temp. Jas. I, sheriff 1607-8.

Biography It was not unusual for a borough to return a young man of local connexions who was already in London. Such a person was Snagge, who was busy leading ‘a very bad and loose life’ and borrowing from ‘divers cozening and wicked persons’ on the expectation of his inheritance. But if his father, who was knight of the shire for Bedfordshire in the 1586 Parliament, hoped to inculcate in him a sense of responsibility, he must have been disappointed, for the situation had not changed when the father made his will in 1591, and the son came within an ace of being disinherited. Still, he settled down in the end, enough at least to become a justice of the peace and sheriff of his county, and at his death he was in possession of his inheritance, the larger part of which came from his mother. James I knighted him and he unsuccessfully claimed the right to act as almoner at the coronation. He also attempted to prove his right to a part of the castle and barony of Bedford, which his father had held. He died early in 1627, and was buried at Marston Moretaine on 2 Feb.

Vis. Beds. (Harl. Soc. xix), 140; VCH Beds. iii. 13, 298; Beds. N. and Q. ii. 2 seq., 12; C142/241/111; PCC 38 Nevell, 70 Skinner.

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603 Author: N. M. Fuidge