Sir Thomas Metham

Sir Thomas Metham

A knight, confessor of the Faith, died in York Castle, 1573. He was eldest son of Thomas Metham, of Metham, Yorkshire, and Grace, daughter of Thomas Pudsey, of Barford, and was twice married; first, to Dorothy, daughter of George, Lord Darcy and Meinill, and then to Edith, daughter of Nicholas Palmes of Naburn. He was dubbed a knight of the carpet, 2 Oct., 1553, the day after Queen Mary's coronation. Through his second son hy his first wife, George, he was grandfather of Father Thomas Metham, S.J., one of the Dilati. By 16 August, 1565, he and his second wife had been sent to gaol "for contempt of Her Majesty's ordinances concerning the administration of divine service and the sacraments". On 6 Feb. 1569-70 an unknown correspondent writes to Sir William Cecil from York — "We have here Sir Thomas Metham, a most wilful papist, who utterly refuses to come to service, receive the Communion or read any books except approved by the Church of Rome, or to be conferred with at all. He refuses to be tried before the Commissioners for causes ecclesiastical; he uses the corrupt Louvaine books, and maintains at Louvaine two of his sons, with whom he corresponds. It is four years since he and Dame Edith, his wife, were first committed to ward, since which he has daily grown more wealthy, and wilful, and now seems utterly incorrigible. He does much hurt here, and is reverenced by the papists as a pillar of their faith. I caused him to be committed to the Castle, where he remains and does harm, yet would have done more if he had lived at large. If you would be a means of his removal, you would take away a great occasion of evil in these parts." In 1587 Lady Metham was still a recusant.

GREEN, Cal. State Papers Dom. Add. 1547-65 (London etc., 1870), 571; Cal. State Papers Dom. Add. 1566-79 (London etc., 1871), 224; FOSTER, Glover's Visitation of Yorks (London, privately printed, 1875), 253; STRYPE, Memorials (Oxford, 1822), III, ii, 181; IDEM, Annals (Oxford, 1824), III, ii, 597; POLLEN, English Martyrs 1584-1603 (London, 1908, privately printed for Cath. Rec. Soc.), 193.

JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT.