Surrey Archaeological Collections
Surrey Archaeological Society, 2003. (updated 2023) https://doi.org/10.5284/1000221. How to cite using this DOI
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- ADS Collection: 379
- DOI:https://doi.org/10.5284/1000221
- How to cite using this DOI
SURREY ARCHAEOLOGICAL COLLECTIONS
Sir Thomas St Leger, c1439-83: the rise and fall of a royal servant during the reigns of Edward IV and Richard III
JOHN T DRIVER
Thomas St Leger was virtually an exact contemporary of King Edward IV. Quite likely he had already become attached to the House of York before 1461 and evidence suggests that he had fought at Towton in March of that year. Certainly from the beginning of Edward's reign he served in the royal household and held a variety of official posts in the south-east and south-west of England. Grants of lands and fees came his way from the Crown. In Surrey alone he was a sometime commissioner of array, a Justice of the Peace, joint sheriff of Surrey and Sussex and a knight of the shire in the parliaments of 1467-8 and 1472-5 (and possibly that of 1483). St Leger held family lands in Kent and acquired properties in Surrey and the South-West. In Surrey he had interests in such places as Chaldon, Claygate-in-Ash, Field Place in Compton, Guildford and Kennington. There was a military/diplomatic side to his career. In 1475, when still only an 'esquire of the body' (he was not to be knighted until some three years later) Thomas St Leger took part in the royal expedition to France, where he played a part in the negotiations which led to the Treaty of Picquigny. He also served for a time as constable of Rochester and Farnham castles.
In 1472 he married the king's sister, Anne, Duchess of Exeter, an event which was a cause célèbre. Unsurprisingly his career brought close relationships with several men of influence and substance from the aristocracy to the gentry: with the important family of Bourchier, of whom Thomas was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1454-86; with Edward IV's most intimate friend, William Lord Hastings; and with such local notabilities as Sir George Browne and Nicholas Gaynesford. In the political confusion and in-fighting that followed the unexpected death of Edward on 9 April 1483, St Leger remained loyal to the late king's family. His opposition to Richard Duke of Gloucester's coup to seize the throne eventually took practical shape in his involvement in the risings of October to November 1483, commonly known as 'Buckingham's Rebellion', first in Surrey and then in the South-West, where he was captured and executed at Exeter.
Sir Thomas St Leger founded a chantry in St George's Chapel at Windsor where he and his wife, the Duchess Anne, who predeceased him, are buried.
