Thomas Fludd

Sir Thomas Fludd (about 1530 – 1607), the son of Welsh parents, became a landowner in Kent, where he held several public offices. His youngest son was the scientist Robert Fludd.

His father was John Fludd, the surname an English form of the Welsh Llwyd, from the village of St Martin's in Shropshire, who married Agnes from the neighbouring village of Weston Rhyn. Her father was Meredith Bonner, whose surname is probably an English form of the Welsh ap Ynyr. A brother, Richard Fludd, settled in Ireland, where the surname is spelled Flood, while two of his sisters married Kent landowners.

After an unknown education, around 1560 Thomas acquired Milgate House at Thurnham in Kent and became active first in local and then in national affairs.

In 1568 he secured the post of Surveyor of Crown Lands for the county of Kent and the cities of Rochester and Canterbury. In 1572 he had a grant of arms, his shield being Vert, a chevron between three wolves heads, erased, argent, and around 1579 became a Justice of the Peace for Kent. In 1582 he was appointed to the Exchequer as Receiver of Revenue for the counties of Kent, Surrey and Sussex. At the request of the inhabitants, he was in 1588 put on a special commission to examine the affairs of the town of New Romney. The next year he was knighted and appointed a paymaster to the English forces fighting in France under Lord Willoughby, a post changed after much bureaucratic in-fighting to Treasurer at War in 1597. In 1591 he was commissioned to supervise the renovation of Dover Harbour, being treasurer of the project in 1603.

In 1593 he was elected MP for the borough of Maidstone and was one of the Kent gentlemen selected by the county to compound with the Commissioners for Purveyance. In the House of Commons, he sat on the Subsidy Committee and the Committee on Kerseys. Re-elected as Maidstone's MP in 1597, he was admitted to Gray's Inn in 1601 and was elected for the third and final time to the Commons in 1601, where he sat on a committee to consider the abolition of gavelkind.

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