Thomas Osborne, 1st Duke of Leeds, (20 February 1632 – 26 July 1712), was a prominent English politician. Under King Charles II (and known at the time as Lord Danby), he was the leading figure in the government for around five years in the mid-1670s. He fell out of favour due to corruption and other scandals, and was impeached and eventually imprisoned in the Tower of London for five years until the accession of James II of England in 1685. In 1688 he was one of the Immortal Seven group that invited William III, Prince of Orange to depose James II as monarch during the Glorious Revolution. He was again the leading figure in government, known at the time as the Marquess of Carmarthen, for a few years in the early 1690s. Early life, 1632–1674 Osborne was the son of Sir Edward Osborne, Baronet of Kiveton, Yorkshire, and his second wife Anne Walmesley, widow of Thomas Middleton; she was a niece of Henry Danvers, 1st Earl of Danby. Thomas Osborne was born in 1632. He was the grandson of Sir Hewett Osborne and great-grandson of Sir Edward Osborne, Lord Mayor of London, who, according to the accepted account, while an apprentice to Sir William Hewett, clothworker and lord mayor in 1659, made the fortunes of the family by leaping from London Bridge into the river and rescuing Anne (d. 1685), the daughter of his employer, whom he afterwards married. Osborne's father was a staunch Royalist who served as Vice President of the Council of the North. Thomas's elder half-brother Edward was killed in an accident in 1638, when the roof of the family home collapsed on him; according to a family legend, Thomas survived because he had been searching for his cat under a table at the time of the disaster. Their father, a loving parent, is said never to have fully recovered from the loss. Osborne, the future Lord Treasurer, succeeded to the baronetcy and estates in Yorkshire on his father Edward's death in 1647, and, after unsuccessfully courting his cousin Dorothy Osborne, married Lady Bridget, daughter of Montagu Bertie, 2nd Earl of Lindsey, in 1651. Introduction to public life, 1665–1674 Osborne was introduced to public life and to court by his neighbour in Yorkshire, George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham. In 1661 he was appointed High Sheriff of Yorkshire and was then elected MP for York in 1665.