SEMYS, Thomas (d.1603), of Gloucester.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1558-1603, ed. P.W. Hasler, 1981
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

?s. of John Semys of Gloucester (d.1540). m. 1da.

Offices Held

Sheriff, Gloucester 1558-9, 1563-4, alderman, mayor 1565, 1578, 1599.

Biography

Semys, a clothier, leased a considerable portion of the site of the Greyfriars in Gloucester. He was active in civic affairs, and is frequently mentioned in the city’s records. In 1565 he was appointed to survey and repair the ‘walls, ditches, banks and weirs ... By the coast of the sea’, a subject reflected in his membership of a Commons committee about the ‘inning’ of salt marshes (6 Mar. 1576). Another of Semys’s committees concerned cloth (4 Feb. 1581). That April he was paid £17 6s.0d. for his service in Parliament.

Semys died in 1603, leaving his property to his daughter Margaret, to her heirs, and to the mayor and burgesses of Gloucester, to be employed in ‘charitable uses’.

W. R. Williams, Parl. Hist. Glos. 191; Gloucester Recs. 66-7, 445, 448, 449-50, ed. Stevenson; CJ, i. 111, 122; HMC 12th Rep. IX, 454; Gloucester Guild Hall ms 1450, H 73, 154; Gloucester Wills, ed. Phillimore and Duncan.

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: J.J.C.

Notes