Lord Chancellor Ellesmere

Thomas Egerton, 1st Viscount Brackley, PC (1540 – 15 March 1617), known as 1st Baron Ellesmere from 1603 to 1616, was an English nobleman, judge and statesman from the Egerton family who served as Lord Keeper and Lord Chancellor for twenty-one years.

Thomas Egerton was born in 1540 in the parish of Dodleston, Cheshire, England. He was the illegitimate son of Sir Richard Egerton and an unmarried woman named Alice Sparks. He was acknowledged by his father's family, who paid for his education. He studied Liberal Arts at Brasenose College, Oxford, and received a bachelor's degree in 1559. He then studied law at Lincoln's Inn and called a barrister by 1572. He was a Roman Catholic, until a point in 1570 when his lack of conformity with the Church of England became an issue when his Inn passed on a complaint from the Privy Council.

He built a respectable legal practice pleading cases in the Courts of Queen's Bench, Chancery and Exchequer. After Queen Elizabeth I saw him plead a case against the crown he was made Queen's Counsel. In 1579 he was made a Master of the Bench of Lincoln's Inn. On 28 June 1581 he was appointed Solicitor General.

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