William Thompson, of Scarborough

from http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1604-1629/member/th...

William Thompson, b. bef. 1574,1 2nd s. of William Thompson2 (d.1574) of Scarborough and Anne, da. of William Langdale of Hackness, Yorks. and Scarborough, wid. of Peter Fish (d. c.1552) of Scarborough.3

Resident near Scarborough by the mid-sixteenth century, the Thompsons were apparently related to Henry Thompson of Esholt, who was granted arms in 1559 for service as a man-at-arms at Boulogne. Thompson’s father married into Scarborough’s merchant class and was bailiff when he witnessed his father-in-law’s will in 1569; the MP’s half-brother, William Fish†, represented the borough in Parliament in 1589.11 By the early seventeenth century the family were the town’s most prominent merchants.

Notes

• 1. Mentioned in his fa.’s will of 25 July 1574: Borthwick, Reg. Test. 19, f. 697.
• 2. Clay, Dugdale’s Vis. Yorks. ii. 489 and iii. 41 wrongly gives Richard Thompson, his childless uncle, as his fa.: Borthwick, Reg. Test. 28, f. 174.