Thomas Docwra
Grand Prior of the English Knights Hospitaller
Sir Thomas Docwra (1458? – 1527) was Grand Prior of the Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem in England, and thus ranked as Premier Lay Baron of England.
Origins
He was a member of the Docwra family of Hertfordshire, a junior branch of the ancient Docwra family of Docwra Hall in Kendal, Westmorland. According to an old pedigree he was a son of Richard Docwra by his wife Alice Green, a daughter of Thomas Green of Gressingham in Lancashire. He may however have been a grandson of Richard and a son of Thomas Docwra. His ancestral home appears to have been Highdown House (or possibly Old Hall, an inn in 1912) in the parish of Pirton, Hertfordshire, where survives a datestone (of uncertain provenance) set into a wall of the east gable of the north courtyard (stables) range displaying the Docwra arms, inscribed "Thomas Docwra, Miles, 1504", the date he built St John's Gate, Clerkenwell. The Latin motto of the Order is inscribed below Sane Boro, interpreted by Cromwell (1828) as signifying "truly a baron" or "a baron indeed", a motto, signifying in two words so much, and that so pompously, is explained at once by the assumption of these Lords-Priors to be, not barons merely, but the very premiers of the Baronage of England.
Career
He was admitted to the Knights Hospitaller at the age of 16, spending about four years as a novitiate. In 1480 he was on the Island of Rhodes with Sir Thomas Greene during the unsuccessful siege of the Island by the Turks. He later became Preceptor of the Order's holdings at Dinmore, Herefordshire.
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This entry incorporates text from “Thomas Docwra” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.