Thomas Owen (died 1661)

Thomas Owen (died May 1661) was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1624 and 1640. He supported the Royalist cause in the English Civil War.

Owen was the son of Edward Owen of Shrewsbury, and entered Shrewsbury School in 1589.^[1] He became town clerk of Shrewsbury in or before January 1610.^[2] In 1624, Owen was elected Member of Parliament for Shrewsbury. He was re-elected in 1625 1626 and 1628 and sat until 1629 when King Charles I decided to rule without parliament for eleven years.^[3]

In April 1640, Owen was re-elected MP for Shrewsbury in the Short Parliament.^[3] He followed the royalist side in the Civil Wars, although he acted as a witness against Archbishop Laud.^[4] He acted as deputy to Sir Thomas Gardiner, Recorder of London, during the reign of Charles I and after Gardiner's death the King had given him an order for a grant of the office of Prothonotary of South Wales . The grant was never executed, and the order itself was destroyed by a fire in the lodgings of Sir Edward Herbert, the Attorney-General.^[1] He remained as town clerk until 1645, when the parliamentary forces captured the town. He was taken prisoner and dismissed from his position as town clerk as a delinquent on 17 November.^[2]

After the Restoration, Owen petitioned the King to grant him the office of Prothonotary of South Wales. He also petitioned to be restored to his post as town clerk. However the matter was referred to Lord Carberry who ruled in favour of a rival claimant.^[1]

Owen died in May 1661 and was buried at the old St Chad's Church, Shrewsbury, on 25 May.^[1]

References

1. Annals of Shrewsbury School
2. Hugh Owen; John Brickdale Blakeway. A History of Shrewsbury.
3. Willis, Browne (1750). Notitia Parliamentaria, Part II: A Series or Lists of the Representatives in the several Parliaments held from the Reformation 1541, to the Restoration 1660 ... London. pp. 229–239.
4. Meyricke Serjeantson Politics in Shrewsbury