Thomas Edmondes

Sir Thomas Edmonds (1563 – 20 September 1639) was an English diplomat and politician who served under three successive monarchs, Queen Elizabeth I, Kings James I and Charles I, and occupied the office of Treasurer of the Royal Household from 1618 to 1639.

He was the fifth son of Thomas Edmonds (d.1604) of Plymouth in Devon and of Fowey in Cornwall (eldest son of Henry Edmunds of Salisbury in Wiltshire), Customer of Plymouth in 1564, by his first wife Joane de la Bere, a daughter of Anthony De la Bere of Sherborne in Dorset.

He is said to have been introduced at court by another namesake, Sir Thomas Edmonds, Comptroller of the household to Queen Elizabeth I, where he received the rudiments of a political education from Sir Francis Walsingham.

In 1592 the queen appointed Edmonds as her agent in France concerning the affairs of the king of Navarre and the Protestants, in which office he continued until 1596, when the queen appointed him her "secretary of the French tongue". He then returned to Paris in 1597. In 1597 he was elected as a Member of Parliament for Chippenham in Wiltshire, but as he was abroad the seat was occupied by a proxy. In 1600 he was the queen's ambassador at Brussels and one of the commissioners for the peace conference at Boulogne-sur-Mer. In 1601 he was appointed a clerk of the Privy Council, but returned to Paris as minister soon after. He was elected an MP for Liskeard, Cornwall, in 1601.

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