LUCY, Sir THOMAS (1532–1600), owner of Charlecote, Warwickshire, was son of William Lucy (d. 1551), by his wife Ann, daughter of Richard Fermor, of Easton Neston, Northamptonshire.
Dugdale traces the family to Thurstane de Cherlecote (fl. 1150), whose son Walter was given the village of Charlecote by Henry de Montfort about 1190. Walter married one Cecily, possibly of the Anglo-Norman family of Lucy, and their son William seems to have assumed his wife's surname. William fought with the barons against King John, and his estates were confiscated at the beginning of Henry III's reign. They were restored on his returning to his allegiance, and in 1233 he was knighted. In the same year he was appointed steward of all the landed property of Walter de Lacy, who conferred on him and his heirs the constableship of the castle of Ludlow. Henry III employed him in surveying the castles of Warwickshire, and he was much occupied in 1241 and 1243 in compounding with Walter de Lacy's Jewish creditors. He inherited the property of his brother Stephen; founded in 1214 the priory of Thelesford, to which his grandson and great-grandson were benefactors (cf. Dugdale, Warwickshire, i. 498), and he placed a chapel in Charlecote manor-house. He died in 1248, having married (1) Ysabell, daughter of Absalon de Aldermonestone; (2) Maud, sister and co-heiress of John Cotele. Both his wives added to his property, which his son William increased by a marriage with Amicia, daughter of William de Fourches, and heiress of William Fitzwarine.
Fulk Lucy (d. 1303), the son of this marriage, joined Simon de Montfort in the barons' struggle with Henry III in 1263, and although deprived of his estate after the battle of Evesham, was regranted it in accordance with the Dictum de Kenilworth. Fulk was ‘a special lover of good horses.’ He was one of the justices of the gaol delivery at Warwick in 1286 and 1289, and in 1286 was one of four knights appointed to secure observance of the peace in Warwickshire, according to the Statute of Winchester. He died in 1303. His son (by his wife Petronilla), Sir William Lucy (b. 1277), was knighted and represented Warwickshire in four successive parliaments between 1313 and 1337. Sir William's grandson Sir William, and his great-grandson Sir Thomas (d. 1415), were both retainers of John of Gaunt, and both represented Warwickshire in parliament. The latter was also sheriff of Warwickshire and Leicestershire in 1406, and inherited the large estates of his wife Alice, daughter of Sir William Hugford, in Bedfordshire and Shropshire.
Sir Thomas's son William (1398–1466), sheriff of Warwickshire and Leicestershire (1435 and 1449), was of Yorkist sympathies; while his grandson Sir William, created knight of the Bath at the coronation of Elizabeth, Henry VII's queen, in 1485, was a prominent actor in the government of his county; made over all his ancestral rights in the priory of Thelesford to the monks, and left many legacies to ecclesiastical foundations. Both Sir William and his second wife Alice were buried in the church of Stratford-on-Avon. A son by his first wife, Edmund, was present at the battle of Stoke in 1487; took part in the war in France in 1491, was knighted in 1502, and made many bequests to Thelesford, where he was buried. Edmund's son, Sir Thomas Lucy (d. 1525), sewer to Henry VIII, was knighted in 1512; was sheriff of Warwickshire and Leicestershire, 1524–5; and lies buried in Grey Friars Church (Christ Church, near Smithfield), London, leaving a son William, the father of the subject of the present notice.
Thomas was educated at his father's house at Charlecote by John Foxe [q. v.], the martyrologist, whose puritan sentiments he adopted. In 1552 his father's death made him master of his family's great Warwickshire estate which soon included, besides Charlecote, the neighbouring properties of Sherborne and Hampton Lucy, the former a grant of Edward VI, and the latter of Queen Mary in 1556. While still young he married Joyce, daughter of Thomas Acton, of Sutton Park, Tenbury, Worcestershire, and his father-in-law's land became his and his wife's property. In 1558–9 he rebuilt his manor-house at Charlecote. By way of compliment to the reigning sovereign, the ground-plan was designed to represent the letter E. The architect is said to have been John of Padua, alias
