[An elaborate account of Wriothesley is given in Anstis's Order of the Garter, i. 369–73; a pedigree and notes on Wriothesley are extant in Ashmole MS. 1115 ff. 90, 256; see also Harl. MS. 1529 f. 31b; Rawlinson MS. 384 ff. 93–4, B 333 f. 52, B 314 f. 87; Tanner MSS. cvi. 14, ccxxxvi. 40; Brewer and Gairdner's Letters and Papers of Henry VIII; Noble's College of Arms; Ashmole's Order of the Garter; Hamilton's Preface to Charles Wriothesley's Chronicle (Camden Soc.), vol. i. pp. iii–ix; Cat. Brit. Mus. Addit. MSS. and Bodleian, Ashmole, Rawlinson, and Tanner MSS.; Dallaway's Heraldry in England, 1793; Greenfield's Wriothesley Tomb, Titchfield (Hampshire Field Club Proc. 1889).]
WRIOTHESLEY, Sir THOMAS, first Baron Wriothesley of Titchfield and Earl of Southampton (1505–1550), lord chancellor of England, was eldest son of William Writh or Wriothesley, York herald, who, like his brother, Sir Thomas Wriothesley (d. 1534) [q. v.], adopted Wriothesley as the spelling of the family name. His mother, who survived until 1538, was Agnes, daughter of James Drayton of London; and Drayton's notes recording his own and his grandchildren's dates of birth are still extant (Brit. Mus. Add. Charters, 16194). Thomas, the eldest son, was born on the feast of St. Thomas the Apostle, 21 Dec. 1505; his sisters, Elizabeth and Anne (who married Thomas Knight of Hook in Hampshire) in 1507 and 1508, and his brother Edward in 1509. At Edward's christening the godfathers were Edward Stafford, third duke of Buckingham [q. v.], and Henry ‘Algernon’ Percy, fifth earl of Northumberland [q. v.] Two other sisters, whom Wriothesley names in his will, were born subsequently.
Thomas was educated at King's Hall or St. John's College, Cambridge, but seems to have left the university without a degree, and sought employment at court. In a document dated 12 Feb. 1523–4 he refers to Cromwell as his master, and after that date documents in his handwriting are frequent. In 1529, however, he is described as servant to (Sir) Edmund Peckham [q. v.], who, like Wriothesley, married a Cheyne of Chesham Bois, and on 4 May 1530 he appears as clerk of the signet; on that date he was granted in reversion the office of bailiff in Warwick and Snitterfield, where Shakespeare's father lived (Letters and Papers, iv. 6600 [11]). He probably ingratiated himself with Henry by his ‘labour in the king's great business,’ i.e. the divorce (ib. xiv. i. 190), and on 26 Jan. 1530–1 he received a pension of 5l. from the lands of St. Mary's Abbey, York. In December 1532 he was sent abroad, probably as bearer of despatches for some foreign ambassador. A similar mission followed in the autumn of 1533. In October he was at Marseilles in financial straits, ‘apparel and play sometimes, whereat he was unhappy,’ having ‘cost him more than 50 crowns.’ Apparently he went on to Rome, where he vainly endeavoured to obtain papal bulls for his friend John Salcot, bishop-elect of Bangor. He had returned by the summer of 1534, and in that year was admitted a student of Gray's Inn. On 2 Jan. 1535–6 he was granted in reversion the lucrative office of coroner and attorney in the king's bench (ib. x. 12), and in the same year was appointed ‘graver’ of the Tower. In the autumn he was required to supply twelve men for service against the rebels in the north, and to attend the king thither in person. He remained, however, with Henry at Windsor, doing an increasing amount of secretarial work, and using his growing influence to secure large grants out of the lands of the dissolved monasteries. Early in 1537 he was given various manors previously belonging to Quarr Abbey in the Isle of Wight (ib. xii. i. 539 [45], 662, ii. 1150 [77]). On 30 Dec. in the same year he acquired the site of the monastery of Titchfield, on the east side of Southampton Water, and on 29 July 1538 that of Beaulieu Abbey, on the opposite side of the water (ib. xiii. i. 1519 [67]). Wriothesley had previously owned houses near both these monasteries, with which he appears to have been officially connected, possibly as steward, and also at Micheldever, where his family resided. He was likewise seneschal of Hyde Abbey, near Winchester, of which his friend Salcot had been abbot; and when the abbey was surrendered, Wriothesley naturally obtained a grant of its site and of many of its manors. He ‘pulled the abbey down with amazing rapidity and sold the rich materials’ (Liber Mon. de Hyda, Rolls Ser. Introd. pp. lxxi–lxxiii; Leland, Itinerary, iii. 86). With the grant of these abbeys he also received numerous manors, chiefly in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, and his acquisition of landed property was naturally followed by his inclusion in local commissions of the peace and of oyer and terminer, to visit monasteries and to pull down images and shrines. His active participation in measures of this character, especially at Winchester, brought on him the hostility of the bishop, Stephen Gardiner [q. v.], who was his wife's uncle, but Cromwell's patronage made him secure for the time.
In September 1538 Wriothesley was sent as ambassador to the regent of the Netherlands, Mary, queen of Hungary, to propose marriage between Henry VIII and the Duchess of
