Thomas Walmsley (judge)

Sir Thomas Walmsley (also Walmesley and Walmisley) (1537–1612) was an English judge and politician.

He was the eldest son of Thomas Walmsley of Showley in the township of Clayton-le-dale and of Cunliffe in the township of Rishton, Lancashire, by his wife Margaret (born Livesey). He was admitted on 9 May 1559 student at Lincoln's Inn, where he was called to the bar on 15 June 1567, and elected bencher in 1574, autumn reader in 1576, Lent reader in 1577, and autumn reader again in 1580, in anticipation of his call to the degree of the coif, which, despite suspicions that he was a Catholic, took place about Michaelmas.

In 1583 Walmsley made before the Court of Common Pleas an attempt to sustain the validity of papal dispensations and other faculties issued during the reign of Mary I. He represented Lancashire in the parliament of 1588–9, and served on several committees. On 10 May 1589 he was created justice of the common pleas.

Walmsley early showed his independence by allowing bail in a murder case, contrary to the express injunctions of the Queen conveyed through the lord chancellor; his temerity provoked a reprimand. Southampton voted him its freedom on 6 February 1595. In 1597 he was assistant to the House of Lords in committee; he was placed on the ecclesiastical commission for Chester on 31 January 1598. He was also a member of the special commission before which Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex was arraigned at York House on 5 June 1600, and assisted the peers on his trial in Westminster Hall, 19–25 February 1601.

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