Sir Thomas Monson, 1st Baronet
English politician and courtier
Sir Thomas Monson, 1st Baronet, of Carlton (1565 – 29 May 1641) was an English politician and supporter of King James I.
Background
Sir Thomas was the son of Sir John Monson of South Carlton, Lincolnshire, a past High Sheriff of Lincolnshire. Sir Thomas's younger brother was Admiral Sir William Monson. Thomas was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, matriculating at the age of fifteen in December 1579, and at Gray's Inn, where he was admitted a student in 1583.
Career
Sir Thomas was appointed a Justice of the Peace in 1592 and High Sheriff of Lincolnshire for 1597 and probably knighted the same year. He then served as a Member of Parliament for Lincolnshire (1597–1598), Castle Rising (1604–1611), and finally Cricklade in 1614.
Under James I Monson thrived. He was made Chancellor of the English jointure lands of the king's wife Anne of Denmark in 1603. He was made Keeper of the Armoury at Greenwich, Master of the Armoury at the Tower of London, and Master Falconer to the King.
He was created a hereditary baronet in 1611, one of the first in the Baronetage of England. But in 1615 his position of trust at the Tower of London brought about a situation which led to his arrest as one of the participators in the 1613 murder of Sir Thomas Overbury.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 21, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7529213. VIAF identifies the subject as 17142168. The Library of Congress control number is nr99013355. None of the 3 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1565, 1641, 1579 and 1583.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sir Thomas Monson, 1st Baronet” 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.