[3] As most of his official appointments appear to have been in Lancashire, it is assumed that he practiced law in the courts of the duchy of Lancaster.

[7] Hesketh's older brother Bartholomew was a noted recusant, who was questioned by the privy council in 1581 for sheltering the Jesuit Edmund Campion.

[8] A younger brother Richard was a cloth merchant with connections to John Dee, Edward Kelly, and William Stanley, who was executed in 1593 for treason, after attempting to incite Ferdinando Stanley to rebel against Elizabeth I.

[9] Stanley would later claim that the Richard's actions were part of a conspiracy by the family against his rule as Earl of Derby, including that Thomas Hesketh had used his official powers to oppose him.

[10] Hesketh died in 1605, and was interred in Westminster Abbey, where a memorial in the north choir aisle bears his image.