Thomas Northmore (politician)

[4] He was the 4th son of John Northmore (d.1671) of Well in the parish of South Tawton and of Okehampton and East Ash,[5] all in Devon, an Attorney of the Court of King's Bench and Forester of Dartmoor, by his wife Joan Stronge (d.1686) a daughter of John Stronge of Torr Hill[6] (alias Thornhill[7]).

[13] Following the defeat of the Monmouth Rebellion, he supervised the Bloody Assizes of Judge Jeffreys, commencing on 25 August 1685.

He was ordered by Jeffreys to arrange for the whipping of prisoners "only in the greater and more general markets", to economise on expenditure.

[14] He married three times:[15] He died on 25 July 1713, leaving no sons, and was buried in St. Thomas's Church, Exeter, where survives his monument,[18][19] displaying the arms of Northmore, of his first wife, of Andrew of Dorset (Sable, a saltire argent between four crosses crosslet or[20]) and of St Aubyn of Clowance (Ermine, on a cross gules five bezants).

[21] He named as his heir his nephew and son-in-law William Northmore to whom he bequeathed the manor of Cleve and several other properties in Devon and elsewhere, mortgages on the estates of Christopher Monck, 2nd Duke of Albemarle, a fellow Devonian, and two-thirds of Topsham Quay in Exeter.