Thomas Fownes

Thomas Fones (died 1638) (later Fownes) of the parish of St Andrew's in the City of Plymouth in Devon, was a merchant who served as Mayor of Plymouth in 1610 and 1619. He was the first of his family to have settled in Devon, and his descendants rose to prominence as members of the Devonshire gentry and as Members of Parliament. In 1746 his great-great-great-grandson Henry Fownes Luttrell (c.1722-1780), High Sheriff of Somerset from 1754 to 1755, and a Member of Parliament for Minehead from 1768 to 1774, married the heiress Margaret Luttrell, and inherited Dunster Castle in Somerset with the extensive Lutterell estates and added his wife's name to his own to comply with the terms of her father's will. He built almshouses near the Great Hill in Plymouth. Origins He was born in Bridgwater in Somerset, the 4th son of Richard Fones of Bristol in Gloucestershire by his wife Joane Tindall, whose family was from the Isle of Axholme, as reported by Thomas Fownes himself in his return to the 1620 Heraldic Visitation of Devon. He mentions in his will 5the "daughters of Humpry Fownes deceased" but no mention is made in the Heraldic Visitation pedigree of Humphrey Fownes, JP, Mayor of Plymouth in 1588/9 and 1596/7, who married in 1574/5, who is mentioned in Worth's History of Plymouth. A monument to Humphry Fownes, dated 1589, was in St Andrew's Church, Plymouth (but may not have survived World War II damage) and in the same church was another dated 1624 recording how another John Fownes and his wife had been killed by the fall of a chimney. He further declared that his grandfather was John Fones "of Dodford" in the parish of Bromsgrove in Worcestershire, whose ancestor another John Fones, according to Habington's Survey of Worcestershire (1600), had acquired Dodford Priory in 1540 from Andrew Dudley, following the Dissolution of the Monasteries. He declared that previously the Fones family had been settled for at least 5 generations at "Saxby", all with the gentry status of "esquire". The 1603 "Bluemantle Pedigree", produced in 1603 for Thomas Fones by the Bluemantle Pursuivant herald, stated that "Sir Wm Fones, a Norman, came into England with the Conqueror" and married the daughter of Sir Robert Saxby of Saxby. Such pedigrees, produced for wealthy clients by mercenary heralds at this period are known to be largely fictitious. Mercantile career He was a successful merchant.