Thomas Kitson was the son of Robert Kitson of Warton, Lancashire. His mother's name was Margaret Smyth, daughter of Sir William Smyth and Lady Margaret Cornwall. His sister, Margaret Kitson, married John Washington, ancestor of George Washington.
Career
Kitson came to London as a youth, and was apprenticed to the London mercer and Merchant Adventurer, Richard Glasyer. He was admitted a freeman of the Mercers' Company in 1507, and served as Warden in 1525-6 and 1533-4 and as Master in 1534–5. He served as Sheriff of London in 1533–4, and was knighted on 30 May of that year, an honour not conferred on his co-sheriff, William Forman. In May 1534 he was associated with Rowland Lee, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, in taking oaths of fealty from priests and monks. Kitson had financial dealings with the Crown on a large scale. By 1509 his mercantile transactions were already extensive, and by 1534-5 only ten other merchants exported cloth in larger quantities. He was a member of the Company of Merchant Adventurers until his death, and traded at the cloth fairs or staples held by the company at Antwerp, Middelburg, and elsewhere in Flanders. Kitson had a house in London on Milk Street with a chapel, a garden on Coleman Street, and a house and chapel in Stoke Newington. Like other wealthy London merchants he had a house in Antwerp. He also purchased properties in the counties of Devon, Dorset and Somerset, and in 1521 acquired from Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, for £2340, the manors of Hengrave in Suffolk and Colston Bassett in Nottinghamshire. On the Duke's attainder and execution in the following year, Kitson was for a time deprived of the estates, but they were restored to him, confirmed by an Act of Parliament of 1524. He obtained a licence from Henry VIII to build an embattled manor house at Hengrave on a magnificent scale. The building was begun in 1525, and finished in 1538. A later inventory of the furniture and goods at Hengrave shows its extent and elegance. Kitson subsequently purchased several other manors in Suffolk from the crown. Besides Hengrave, he had houses at Westley and Risby in Suffolk. Kitson died 11 September 1540, and was buried in Hengrave Church. In the north-east angle of the chapel is an ornate monument to the memory of his widow, Margaret, Countess of Bath, and her three husbands.
Marriages and issue
Kitson married twice:
First marriage
Firstly to an unknown woman by whom he had two daughters:
*Lady Frances Kytson married John Bourchier, 5th Baron Fitzwaryn and had descendants.
*Elizabeth Kytson, the first wife of Edmund Croftes of Westow Hall, Little Saxham, Suffolk, son and heir of Sir John Croftes, who was in the service of Mary Tudor. Elizabeth Kitson bore Edmund Croftes two sons:
**Alice Spencer, who in 1579 married Ferdinando Stanley, 5th Earl of Derby. The three Spencer sisters were 'Phyllis, Charillis, and sweet Amaryllis' in the poet Edmund Spenser's Colin Clout’s Come Home Again.
*Frances Kitson, who married firstly on 11 December 1548 her step-brother John Bourchier, Lord FitzWarin, eldest son of John Bourchier, 2nd Earl of Bath, by whom she had a son, William Bourchier, 3rd Earl of Bath, and secondly she married William Barnaby of Great Saxham, Suffolk. Her monument with recumbent effigy exists in the south chancel aisle built by her father-in-law and step-father in Tawstock Church, Devon, next to the Bourchier seat of Tawstock Court, and is covered by the earliest six-columned canopy in Devon.
