Thomas Sutton

Thomas Sutton (1532–1611) was an English civil servant and businessman, born in Knaith, Lincolnshire. He is remembered as the founder of the London Charterhouse and of Charterhouse School.

Sutton was the son of an official of the city of Lincoln, and was educated at Eton College and at St John's College, Cambridge. For much of his life he held the prestigious role of Master of the Ordnance in the North, which meant that he was responsible for military supplies and fortification in the north of England. He also obtained the lease of the manors of Whickham and Gateshead, close to Newcastle, in 1578, and so gained much of his early wealth from the coal mines in the area and from the sale of this lease five years later.

In 1582, he married Elizabeth Dudley, the widow of John Dudley, who was a distant cousin of the earls of Warwick and Leicester, and this marriage more than doubled Sutton's annual rent income.

Sutton's connections to the Dudley family were strong throughout his life. Early in his career, Sutton had held a post under the Earl of Warwick, who then helped him to the post of Master of Ordnance in the North in 1569, and the Earl of Leicester, a favorite of Elizabeth, was instrumental in gaining Sutton the lease of Whickham and Gateshead.

Sutton bought Howard House from the Earl of Suffolk, which occupied the site of a former Carthusian Monastery on the outskirts of the City of London. Although dissolved by Henry VIII, parts of the monastery still survived. Sutton also purchased the manor of Castle Campes in Cambridgeshire, which had been in possession of the de Vere family for over five hundred years, and, among other landholdings, he also owned the manors of Haddock, Littlebury, and Balsham, all near Saffron Walden in Essex.

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