Thomas Gresley (1552–1610) was an English landowner, High Sheriff of Staffordshire, and MP for Derbyshire in 1597. He was involved in arrangements for keeping Mary, Queen of Scots a prisoner in England.Falconer Madan, The Gresleys of Drakelowe (Oxford, 1899), pp. 69–70.Gresley, Thomas (1552-1610), of Drakelowe, The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1558–1603, ed. P.W. Hasler, 1981
Career Thomas Gresley was a son of William Gresley (died 1573) and Katherine, a daughter of Edward Aston of Tixall.Falconer Madan, The Gresleys of Drakelowe (Oxford, 1899), p. 68.
Greasley was involved in buying furnishing fabrics for the lodgings of Mary, Queen of Scots at Tutbury Castle,Arthur Clifford, Sadler State Papers, 3, p. 285. and her move to Chartley.William K. Boyd, Calendar State Papers Scotland, 8 (Edinburgh: HMSO, 1914), p. 170 no. 216. When the household of Mary, Queen of Scots, was investigated in August 1586, Thomas Gresley helped escort the Scottish queen from Chartley to Tixall.John Morris, The Letter-Books of Amias Poulet (London, 1874), pp. 326, 328, 339, 366.William K. Boyd, Calendar State Papers Scotland, 8 (Edinburgh: HMSO, 1914), p. 632 no. 726. Some members of Mary's household, including a priest Camille du Preau and the junior secretary Jérôme Pasquier were sent to lodge at Gresley's house.John Morris, The Letter-Books of Amias Poulet (London, 1874), pp. 326, 328, 339, 366.Regis Chantelauze, Marie Stuart : son proces et son execution, d'apres le journal inedit de Bourgoing son medecin (Paris, 1876), pp. 90, 477–478Samuel Cowan, The Last Days of Mary Stuart (London, 1907), p. 172. Gresley subsequently escorted Mary to Fotheringhay Castle.Gresley, Thomas (1552-1610), of Drakelowe, The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1558–1603, ed. P.W. Hasler, 1981William K. Boyd, Calendar State Papers Scotland, 8 (Edinburgh: HMSO, 1914), p. 702 no. 766.
He married Elizabeth Harvey, secondly in 1574 Catherine Walsingham (died 1585),John Morris, The Letter-Books of Amias Poulet (London, 1874), pp. 110–111, 125William K. Boyd, Calendar State Papers Scotland, 8 (Edinburgh: HMSO, 1914), p. 182 no. 235. a daughter of Thomas Walsingham of Scadbury, and thirdly Mary Southwell, a daughter of Richard Southwell of Woodrising. Thomas and Catherine had eight children, including George Gresley.Falconer Madan, The Gresleys of Drakelowe (Oxford, 1899), pp. 71-72.
Thomas Gresley was knighted by James VI and I at Worksop Manor in 1603.John Nichols, Progresses of James the First, 1, p. 88. He died in September 1610 and was buried at St George and St Mary's Church at Church Gresley near Swadlincote.
The Gresley jewel The Gresley jewel is regarded as a marriage pendant and is traditionally supposed to have been a gift from Elizabeth I,Diana Scarisbrick, Portrait Jewels: Opulence and Intimacy from the Medici to the Romanovs (Thames & Hudson, 2011), pp. 73, 76–77: Patricia Fumerton, Cultural Aesthetics: Renaissance Literature and the Practice of Social Ornament (University of Chicago, 1993), p. 74. though it may be later in date than Gresley's second wedding in 1574.Marianne Koos, "Wandering Things: Agency and Embodiment in Late Sixteenth-Century English Miniature Portraits", Art History 37:5 (August 2014), pp. 836–859. Mary Edmond, Hilliard and Oliver: The Lives and Works of Two Great Miniaturists (london, 1983), pp. 74–75.Helen Wyld, "The Mystery of the Fettercairn Jewel", Anna Groundwater, Decoding the Jewels: Renaissance Jewellery in Scotland (NMS/Sidestone Press, 2024), p. 73. The jewel includes a sardonyx cameo portrait of African woman with a white headscarf. It opens to reveal miniature portraits of Thomas Gresley and his second wife Catherine Walsingham. The portraits are by Nicholas Hilliard.Daniel Packer, 'Jewels of 'Blacknesse' at the Jacobean Court', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 75 (2012), p. 210.Emma Rutherford, Secret Faces: An Exhibition of Unseen Portrait Miniatures from Public and Private Collections (London: Philip Mould, 2008), pp. 28–31. Another portrait of Catherine Walsingham, Lady Gresley, dated 1585, shows her wearing the jewel.Falconer Madan, "The Gresleys of Drakelowe", Collections for a History of Staffordshire, 19:1 (Oxford, 1898), p. 164. An inventory of the possessions of William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke made around 1560 includes a jewel with a similar cameo portrait of a "woman morens hedde" wearing a scarf or "launde".Anna Somers Cocks, Princely Magnificence: Court Jewels of the Renaissance (London, 1980), pp. 62–63 no. 46, 132.Diana Scarisbrick, Jewellery in Britain (Michael Russell, 1994), pp. 86, 136.
The mannerist goldwork of the jewel, which includes two African archers, has been compared to designs by the Nuremberg goldsmith, Georg Wechter.Janet S. Byrne, Renaissance ornament prints and drawings (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1981): See external links. Similar cameos were supplied by a London goldsmith, John Mabbe. Kim F. Hall suggests that representations of black Africans were connected in Elizabethan culture with marketing of new kinds of profitable foreign luxury goods, and the roles of African people as household servants or slaves in colonial labour.Kim F. Hall, Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England (Cornell UP, 1996), pp. 212–219.
References
External links Céline Cachaud, Framing Renaissance portrait miniatures in Paris and London: The Frame Blog