Editing Thomas Sutton

{{Short description|English civil servant and businessman}}
{{Other people|Thomas Sutton}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2021}}
[[File:ThomasSutton Founder LondonCharterhouse.png|thumb|upright=1.1|Thomas Sutton, ca. 1590]]
[[Image:Tomb of Thomas Sutton.jpg|thumb|upright=1.1|Tomb of Thomas Sutton in the chapel of the [[London Charterhouse]]]]
'''Thomas Sutton''' (1532 – 12 December 1611) was an English civil servant and businessman, born in [[Knaith]], Lincolnshire. He is remembered as the founder of the [[London Charterhouse]] and of [[Charterhouse School]].

==Life==
Sutton was the son of an official of the city of Lincoln, and was educated at [[Eton College]] and at [[St John's College, Cambridge]].<ref>Venn identifies him with a student at [[St John's College, Cambridge]]. {{acad|id= STN551T|name=Sutton, Thomas}}</ref> For much of his life he held the prestigious role of Master of the Ordnance in the North, which meant that he was responsible for military supplies and fortification in the north of England. He also obtained the lease of the manors of [[Whickham]] and [[Gateshead]], just south of [[Newcastle upon Tyne|Newcastle]], in 1578, and so gained much of his early wealth from the coal mines in the area and from the sale of this lease five years later.<ref name=Shipley>{{cite journal |title=Thomas Sutton: Tudor-Stuart Moneylender |last=Shipley |first=Neal R. |journal=[[Business History Review]] |issn=0007-6805 |volume=50 |issue=4 |year=1976 |pages=456–76 |doi=10.2307/3113136 |jstor=3113136 |s2cid=144900625 }}</ref>

In 1582, he married Elizabeth, the daughter of John Gardiner of [[Chalfont St Giles]], Bucks and the widow of [[John Dudley (died 1580)|John Dudley]] of [[Stoke Newington]]. Dudley was a distant cousin of the earls of [[Ambrose Dudley, 3rd Earl of Warwick|Warwick]] and [[Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester|Leicester]], who had amassed a considerable fortune<ref>{{cite journal|title=The Dudleys of Yanworth|journal=Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Historical and Archaeological Society|first=W.|last=Jackson|volume=9|date=1888|pages=319–20}}</ref> and this marriage more than doubled Sutton's annual rent income.<ref name=Shipley/>

Sutton's connections to the Dudley family were strong throughout his life. Early in his career, Sutton had held a post under the Earl of Warwick, who then helped him to the post of Master of Ordnance in the North in 1569, and the Earl of Leicester, a favourite of [[Elizabeth I of England|Elizabeth I]], was instrumental in gaining Sutton the lease of Whickham and Gateshead.<ref name=Shipley/>

Sutton bought Howard House from the [[Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk|Earl of Suffolk]], which occupied the site of a former [[Carthusian]] Monastery on the outskirts of the [[City of London]]. Although dissolved by [[Henry VIII of England|Henry VIII]], parts of the monastery still survived.  Sutton also purchased the manor of [[Castle Camps|Castle Campes]] in [[Cambridgeshire]],<ref>{{cite journal |last=Shipley |first=N. R. |title=The history of a manor: Castle Campes, 1580–1629 |journal=[[Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research]] |volume=67 |year=1974 |pages=162–181 }}</ref> which had been in possession of the [[Earl of Oxford|de Vere]] family<ref>[[Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford]], sold Castle Campes to Thomas Skinner (d. 1596), whose son, Sir John Skinner, to pay his debts, sold it to Sutton on 2 August 1607; see Shipley 1974, pp. 173–175.</ref> for over five hundred years, and, among other landholdings, he also owned the manors of Haddock, Littlebury, and Balsham, all near [[Saffron Walden]] in [[Essex]].<ref name=Shipley/>

In 1588 Sutton contributed £100 to defend the realm against the [[Spanish Armada]], and it has been suggested he owned, and perhaps commanded, ''The Sutton'', a barque of seventy tons and thirty men out of [[Weymouth, Dorset|Weymouth]], which captured a Spanish vessel and her cargo (estimated value of £20,000).<ref>{{cite DNB|wstitle=Sutton, Thomas (1532-1611) |volume=55|first=Thompson |last=Cooper}}</ref>

Later in his career, Sutton became one of the chief moneylenders in England, securing loans worth as little as a few shillings and as much as thousands of pounds to everyone from farmers to some of the most prominent courtiers, businesspeople, and politicians of his era, including [[William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley|Lord Burghley]], [[Edward Coke|Sir Edward Coke]], [[Percival Willoughby|Sir Percival Willoughby]], [[William Compton, 1st Earl of Northampton|Lord Compton]], and the [[Earl of Sussex]], among others, generally at the standard rate of ten percent per annum.<ref name=Shipley/>

[[Image:Charterhouse Hospital, engraved by Toms, c.1770..jpg|thumb|Charterhouse Hospital in around 1770]]
[[Image:CharterhouseEC1.jpg|thumb|[[Tudor style architecture|Tudor]] buildings of Charterhouse]]
Sutton died on 12 December 1611<ref>{{cite book |first=Edward |last=Walford |author-link=Edward Walford |chapter=The northern suburbs: Haggerston and Hackney |title=Old and New London: Volume 5 |publisher=Cassell, Petter & Galpin |location=London |year=1878 |pages=505–524 |url=https://www.british-history.ac.uk/old-new-london/vol5/pp505-524 |via=[[British History Online]] }}</ref> at his house in [[Homerton]].<ref>The ''Tan House'', not the contemporaneous [[Sutton House, London|Sutton House]] built by [[Ralph Sadleir]], then known as ''Bryck Place''; the house was finally demolished in 1805 for the creation of [[Sutton Place Hackney]].</ref> He was then considered one of the richest individuals in England, with an estate worth approximately £4,836 per annum; and his accounts showed that he was personally worth over £50,000, mostly in the form of outstanding obligations and recognizances from the many people in debt to him.  This immense wealth earned Sutton the nicknames among his contemporaries of "[[Croesus]]" and "Riche Sutton".<ref name=Shipley/>

==Legacy{{anchor|Establishment of Thomas Sutton's Charities Act 1609}}==
Sutton left part of his fortune to be invested in establishing an [[almshouse]] for 80 impoverished gentlemen, combined with a school for 40 boys, on the site of his house off [[Charterhouse Square]], on the outskirts of the City of London. This institution was to be named the Hospital of King James in Charterhouse, although it later became known as [[London Charterhouse|Sutton's Hospital in Charterhouse]]. The almshouse survives on the original site; while the school, now [[Charterhouse School]], relocated to [[Godalming]], [[Surrey]], in 1872. The London buildings were badly damaged by bombs during the [[Second World War]], but were restored during the 1950s.

Sutton's personal arms, blazoned ''Or, on a chevron between three annulets gules three crescents of the field'', are still used by the school.

[[John Aubrey]] is responsible for the almost certainly spurious legend that Sutton was the original of Volpone the fox in [[Ben Jonson]]'s play ''[[Volpone]]''.

==See also==
*''[[Case of Sutton's Hospital]]''

==Notes==
{{Reflist|30em}}

==Sources==
*{{cite EB1911|wstitle=Sutton, Thomas|volume=26}}
*{{cite DNB|wstitle=Sutton, Thomas (1532-1611) |volume=55|first=Thompson |last=Cooper}}
*{{cite ODNB|first=Hugh|last=Trevor-Roper|title=Sutton, Thomas (1532–1611)|id=26806}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sutton, Thomas}}
[[Category:1532 births]]
[[Category:1611 deaths]]
[[Category:People educated at Eton College]]
[[Category:Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge]]
[[Category:English philanthropists]]
[[Category:English civil servants]]
[[Category:Founders of English schools and colleges]]
[[Category:16th-century English businesspeople]]
[[Category:17th-century English businesspeople]]
[[Category:17th-century English knights]]