Thomasine, Lady Percival, née Thomasine Bonaventure (c. 1470-c. 1530), was an English benefactress and founder of a school.

Biography

The story is of a woman tending sheep when she was approached by a London merchant and asked whether she would care to work in his house in London. Agreeing she found herself working for him and then marrying him; and after him a second citizen of London and then a third, who had the honour of being elected Lord Mayor. This third was Sir John Percival, Lord Mayor in 1498. As his widow Thomasine, Lady Percival, devoted her considerable wealth to supporting charitable works.

The story is reported by Richard Carew in his Survey of Cornwall (1602), when writing of the parish of Week St Mary

Week St Mary

Week St Mary is a civil parish and village in northeast Cornwall, United Kingdom. It is situated south of Bude close to the River Tamar and the border between Cornwall and Devon in the Hundred of Stratton....

 in northern Cornwall. It is given fuller treatment in Davies Gilbert's

Davies Gilbert

Davies Gilbert FRS was a British engineer, author, and politician. He was elected to the Royal Society on 17 November 1791 and served as President of the Royal Society from 1827 to 1830....

 Parochial History of Cornwall (1838). Both authorities state the young woman's name as Thomasine Bonaventure, though the surname might refer to her good fortune rather than her ancestors. A legacy in her will to a brother, 'John Bonaventer', suggests it was her name. Both emphasize her charm and intelligence. Thomasine was a native of Week St Mary, and is said to have paid for the repair of a bridge. There is no dispute that she founded a school and library there around 1510, which was much used by the people of Cornwall and to some extent Devon, until it was suppressed in the reign of Edward VI

Edward VI of England

Edward VI was the King of England and Ireland from 28 January 1547 until his death. He was crowned on 20 February at the age of nine. The son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, Edward was the third monarch of the Tudor dynasty and England's first monarch who was raised as a Protestant...

. A copy of her will, with which she endowed the school, was bound for overseas in 1972, when it was purchased for the British Library

British Library

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...

.

Thomasine's first husband had the name Thomas Bumsby and her second Henry Gall, in one account. William Galle, tailor, and Henry Bumpstede, mercer, described as bridge masters of London Bridge, in records, were also business partners until Bumpstede died in 1486.

On the Great Western Railway

Great Western Railway

The Great Western Railway was a British railway company that linked London with the south-west and west of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament in 1835 and ran its first trains in 1838...

, locomotive no. 3354 (later no. 3342) of the 3300 class

GWR 3300 Class

The Bulldog and Bird were classes of 4-4-0 steam locomotives used for passenger services on the Great Western Railway. These two classes were broadly similar, so are treated together here. Twenty locomotives were rebuilt from Duke Class locomotives; the rest were built new...

was named Bonaventura after Thomasine; it ran from 1900 to 1938.