Thomas Thynne (1647/8–12 February 1682) was an
Englishlandowner of the family that is now headed by the
Marquess of Bath and politician who sat in the
House of Commons from 1670 to 1682. He went by the nickname "Tom of Ten Thousand" due to his great wealth. He was a friend of the
Duke of Monmouth, a relationship referred to in
John Dryden's satirical work Absalom and Achitophel where Thynne is described as "Issachar, his wealthy western friend".
Thynne was the son of
Sir Thomas Thynne, and his wife Stuarta Balquanquill, daughter of Dr. Walter Balquanquill.[1] His father was a younger son of
Sir Thomas Thynne of
Longleat,
Wiltshire. In 1670 Thynne succeeded to the family estates at Longleat on the death of his uncle
Sir James Thynne without issue. He also succeeded his uncle as
Member of Parliament for
Wiltshire, and sat until his death in 1682.
Thynne was murdered on 12 February 1682 after the
Swedish Count
Karl Johann von Königsmark began to pursue his wife. Count Karl von Königsmark was the brother of Count
Philip Christoph von Königsmarck who disappeared under mysterious circumstances in the state of Hanover in Germany in 1694, possibly murdered by order of the future British monarch
George I, with whose wife,
Sophia Dorothea of Celle, he was having a notorious affair.
Thynne was shot while riding in his coach in
Pall Mall,
London, by three men, Christopher Vratz, John Stern and Charles George Borosky. It was strongly suspected that they were acting on the orders of Königsmark and the four were soon arrested, Vratz being captured by
Sir John Reresby hiding at the house of a Swedish doctor in Leicester Fields (modern Leicester Square).[2] Königsmark however was acquitted of the charge of being an
accessory before the fact (due to the corruption of the jury according to diarist
John Evelyn) but Vratz, Stern and Borosky were hanged on 10 March 1682.
Thynne's remains were interred in a marble tomb in
Westminster Abbey. The tomb which was sculpted by
Arnold Quellin, is decorated in part with a representation of the murder of Thynne in 1682. A popular ballad summed up the episode in form of a mock epitaph:
Here lies Tom Thynne of Longleat Hall
Who ne'er would have miscarried;
Had he married the woman he slept withal
Or slept with the woman he married.
^Pugh, R. B.; Crittall, Elizabeth, eds. (1957). "Parliamentary history: 1529–1629".
A History of the County of Wiltshire. Vol. 5. London: Victoria County History – via British History Online.