"Honest Tom" Martin

Thomas Martin (8 March 1696/7 – 7 March 1771), known as "Honest Tom Martin of Palgrave", was an antiquarian and lawyer.

Martin was born at Thetford in the school house of St. Mary's parish, which is the only parish of that town situated in the county of Suffolk. Hе was son of William Martin, rector of Great Livermere, Suffolk, and of St Mary's, Thetford, by his wife Elizabeth, only daughter of Thomas Burrough of Bury St. Edmunds, and aunt to Sir James Burrough, master of Caius College, Cambridge.

Martin was largely self-taught, having had a neglected education. For many years he was the only pupil at the Thetford free school, being left to read on his own. He took an early interest in antiquities. In 1710 Thetford was visited by the elderly Peter Le Neve, Norroy King of Arms and first President of the revived Society of Antiquaries. Le Neve sought a guide to the many antiquities of the town only to be told that no-one knew more than thirteen-year-old Master Martin. This began a close friendship between the learned old man and the teenage boy lasting until the death of the former in 1729.

Martin soon afterwards became clerk in the office of his brother Robert, who practised as an attorney in that town. According to notes by Martin, dated 1715, he disliked this employment, and regretted that want of means had prevented him from going to Cambridge University.

In 1722 he was still at Thetford, but in 1723 he was settled at Palgrave, Suffolk, where he passed the remainder of his life. He was a student of topography and antiquities, became a member of the Spalding Gentlemen's Society, and was admitted a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, at the same time as Martin Folkes, on 17 February 1720. Cole, who often met him at Sir James Burrough's lodge at Caius College, and who had also been at his house at Palgrave, said, "he was a blunt, rough, honest, downright man; of no behaviour or guile; often drunk in a morning with strong beer, and for breakfast, when others had tea or coffee, he had beefsteak or other strong meat. . . . His thirst after antiquities was as great as his thirst after liquors". His great desire was not only to be esteemed, but to be known and distinguished by the name of "Honest Tom Martin of Palgrave". For many years his "hoary hairs were the crown of glory for the anniversary of the Society of Antiquaries," of which he was so long the senior fellow (Gent. Mag. 1779, p. 411).

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