Sir

Sir

Sir is an honorific used as a title , or as a courtesy title to address a man without using his given or family name in many English speaking cultures...

 Thomas Gresham (died 1630), of Titsey Place

Titsey Place

Titsey Place is an English country house near Oxted in Surrey, England. It was successively the seat of the Gresham and Leveson-Gower families and is now preserved by a charitable trust for the nation....

 in Surrey

Surrey

Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...

, was an English

Kingdom of England

The Kingdom of England was, from 927 to 1707, a sovereign state to the northwest of continental Europe. At its height, the Kingdom of England spanned the southern two-thirds of the island of Great Britain and several smaller outlying islands; what today comprises the legal jurisdiction of England...

 landowner

Landed gentry

Landed gentry is a traditional British social class, consisting of land owners who could live entirely off rental income. Often they worked only in an administrative capacity looking after the management of their own lands....

 and Member of Parliament

Member of Parliament

A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...

.

Born about 1547, the eldest son of William Gresham (1512–1579) by his marriage to Beatrice Guybon, Gresham was the grandson of the City of London

City of London

The City of London is a small area within Greater London, England. It is the historic core of London around which the modern conurbation grew and has held city status since time immemorial. The City’s boundaries have remained almost unchanged since the Middle Ages, and it is now only a tiny part of...

 merchant Sir John Gresham

John Gresham

Sir John Gresham was an English merchant, courtier and financier who worked for King Henry VIII of England, Cardinal Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell. He was Lord Mayor of London and founded Gresham's School.-Life:...

, who was Lord Mayor

Lord Mayor of London

The Right Honourable Lord Mayor of London is the legal title for the Mayor of the City of London Corporation. The Lord Mayor of London is to be distinguished from the Mayor of London; the former is an officer only of the City of London, while the Mayor of London is the Mayor of Greater London and...

 in 1547.

On his father's death in 1579 Gresham inherited substantial estates in and around Surrey. He married Mary Leonard (ca. 1549–1620), the daughter of John Leonard (1506–1590), and their son and heir was Sir Edward Gresham.

Gresham was several times elected to represent Gatton

Gatton (UK Parliament constituency)

Gatton was a parliamentary borough in Surrey, one of the most notorious of all the rotten boroughs. It elected two Members of Parliament to the House of Commons from 1450 until 1832, when the constituency was abolished by the Great Reform Act...

 in the House of Commons

House of Commons of England

The House of Commons of England was the lower house of the Parliament of England from its development in the 14th century to the union of England and Scotland in 1707, when it was replaced by the House of Commons of Great Britain...

between 1604 and 1624.