• General Notes

  Thomas Moyle was Speaker of the House of Commons between 1542/3-1546. He purchased Eastwell Manor from Sir Christopher Hales about 1550.
  
  Thomas was sent to Ireland by Henry VIII with Sir Anthony St. Leger and was knighted on 18 October 1537.
  
  Thomas enlarged his estates by securing monastic property, and soon became a rich and prominent official. Some say he "pursued heretics zealously" to get property.
  
  =============================================
  Sir Thomas Moyle and the story of Richard Plantagenet, from "The King's England".
  Arthur Mee
  
  The Very Strange Story of Richard Plantagenet.
  
  The story is that Sir Thomas Moyle, building his great house here, was much struck by a white-bearded man his mates called Richard. There was a mystery about him. In the rest hour, while the others talked or threw dice, this old man would go apart and read a book. Now there were very few working-men who could read in 1545, and Sir Thomas on this fine morning did not rest till he had won the confidence of the man and got his story from him.
  
  Richard told Sir Thomas that he was brought up by a school-master. From time to time a gentleman came who paid for his food and schooling and asked many questions to discover if he were well cared for. One day when the boy was in his early teens the gentleman said he was going to take Richard on a visit. It must have been a very exciting journey, made on horseback across 15th century England to an unknown goal. At length they came to a vast camp all a-buzz with knights and bowmen. The boy was brought to a tent, where he saw a stately man in a rich suit of armour.
  
  He put his hands on the boy's shoulders, and gazing at him, said,"Richard, I am your father, and if I prevail tomorrow I will provide for you as befits your blood. But it may be that I shall be defeated, killed; that I shall not see you again." The boy asked, stammering; "Sir, Father, who are you?"
  
  "I am King of England today, " said the man; "but only Heaven knows what I may be tomorrow, for the rebels are strong. If the Earl of Richmond wins the day he will seek out Plantagenets and crush them. Tell no one who you are unless I am victorious."
  
  The next day a man came riding from the battle crying "The King has lost". The reign of the Plantagenets was over. The Tudors had begun. It was the end of the long civil wars. Each time the crown had changed hands there had been wholesale murder among all the boys and men related to the king just dead. So Richard went in terror of rope or axe, poison or dagger. He obeyed his father's bidding. Never did he breathe a word of his birth. He described himself as a poor orphan. He had been happy. He had been able to earn, by honest toil, enough money to give him lodgings and bread; he had found much consolation from reading; and he had gained truer friends than princes usually have.
  
  Sir Thomas Moyle, listening to this wonderful story, determined that the last Plantagent should not want in his old age. He had a little house built for him in the park, and instructed his steward to provide for it every day. Richard was able to spend his last years in reading and in walking about the lanes of Eastwell. He is lost in history, but he is in the register of burials here.
  =============================================
  "England's Heritage, Then and Now":
  Entry for Eastwell:
  Eastwell; Estwelle; Hugh de Monfort. Eastwell Park. The ruined church has a tomb reputed to be that of Richard Plantagenet, son of Richard III. He is said to have escaped after the Battle of Bosworth to the Eastwell Estate, where he became a bricklayer.
  
  The parish register does, however, state Richard Plantagent was buried at Eastwell on 22nd December 1550 although it has been suggested that this entry was added at a later date.
  =============================================
  
  Sir Thomas Moyle, speaker of the House of Commons, was third son of John Moyle, who in 1488 was one of those commissioned in Cornwall to raise archers for the king's expedition to Brittany. Thomas Moyle, like his grandfather, entered Gray's Inn, probably before 1522. He became Lent reader there in 1533.
  
  In 1537 the court of augmentations was erected to manage the vast property flowing in to the treasury on the suppression of the abbeys. Of this Moyle and Thomas, father of Sir Waiter Mildmay, were appointed receivers.
  
  Moyle was afterwards promoted to the chancellorship of the same court. But the augmentation office was temporarily deprived of his services in the same year, 1537, when he was sent to Ireland on a special commission with St. Leger, Paulet, and Berners. He was knighted on 18 Oct. 1537.
  
  The work of the commission in Ireland was very important, as Lord Grey had made enemies of the English officials. Hence the selection of the experienced St. Leger in the work of trying to restore order. Moyle returned to England at the end of the year, and soon made himself conspicuous as a zealous servant of Henry, rather after the manner of Audley.
  
  He enlarged his estates by securing monastic property, and soon became a rich and prominent official. In 1539 he was with Layton and Pollard in the west, and signed with them the letters from Glastonbury showing that they were trying to find hidden property in the abbey, and to collect evidence against Whiting, the abbot.
  
  The same year he was one of those appointed to receive Anne of Cleves on her arrival. Moyle was returned member for the county of Kent in 1542, and chosen speaker of the House of Commons. He addressed the king in an extraordinarily adulatory speech, but his tenure of office was made notable by the fact that he was said to be the first speaker who claimed the privilege of freedom of speech. The exact wording of his request is, however, uncertain.
  
  During his term of oftice the subject became prominent owing to Ferrar's case, in which Henry conciliated the commons. The king doubtless was glad to have a trusty servant in the chair, as during this session Catherine Howard and Lady Rochford were condemned.
  
  He was returned for Rochester in 1544, and in 1545 he was a commissioner for visiting Eastridge Hospital, Wiltshire. It is difficult to know the attitude he took up under Mary, but it seems that he proclaimed her queen, and was, like many of Henry's followers, a protestant only in a legal sense. On 20 Sept. 1553, and in March 1554, he was returned for Rochester, and on 20 Dec. 1554 was elected for both Chippenham and King's Lynn. It is hardly likely that he would have been elected so often if he had, as Manning suggests, avoided the parliaments of Mary. It Is also said that a prosecution against him was actually commenced when the death of the queen intervened.
  
  Moyle died at Eastwell Court, Kent, in 1560. He left two daughters: Katherine, who married Sir Thomas Finch, ancestor of the earls of Winchelsea, and Amy, who married Sir Thomas Kempe.
  

Details of Thomas' family with Catherine Jordeyne