Thomas Tasburgh (c. 1553 – c. 1602), originally of South Elmham, Suffolk, afterwards of Hawridge and latterly of Beaconsfield and Twyford, Buckinghamshire, was a member of the English landed gentry, a magistrate, member of parliament, High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire, and officer of the Exchequer to Queen Elizabeth I. Although Thomas Tasburgh was not himself a Catholic recusant, his second marriage (to Jane West) brought him into a wide sphere of Catholic kinship and association, and some considerable debts. Jane's daughter Lettice, who married Thomas's nephew, John Tasburgh (V) of Flixton Hall, shaped the future Catholicism of the Tasburgh family. Origins The father of Thomas Tasburgh, John Tasburgh (III; c. 1495–1552) of Flixton, represented a family which took its name from the village of Tasburgh in south Norfolk, but, settling at St Peter South Elmham and at Flixton in north Suffolk and with mercantile interests in Norwich, became established by intermarriage with other gentry families. John (III) was the son of John Tasburgh (II; died 1509) and his wife, Olyve, daughter of John Everard of Cratfield and his wife, Margaret Bedyngfield, of Ditchingham. In addition to his Everard cousins, by his maternal aunt Anne (or Agnes) Everard, John (III) became the nephew of Sir Edward Echyngham of Barsham in north Suffolk, and therefore the cousin of Anne Echyngham, wife of Sir Owen Hopton of Cockfield Hall, Yoxford, and of her sister Mary, wife of John Blennerhassett of Frenze and Barsham. John Tasburgh (III), who purchased the site of Flixton Priory and settled there, made two marriages, first (in 1524) to Alice Dybney of Garboldisham, by whom he had sons John, Owen and William Tasburgh, and secondly to Elizabeth, daughter of John Davy of Norwich. Thomas Tasburgh was the son of this second marriage, and may have been born after the death of his father. He is not mentioned in his father's will (proved 1554), but began in life at least at Flixton, where his mother Elizabeth (his father's sole executor) held the two manors of Flixton late Priory and Flixton Boyse as, or with, her jointure estate. As administrator, Elizabeth Tasburgh faced suits for her husband's debts, and she soon remarried to Francis Clovell, Armiger, of Cloville Hall (Fullers) in West Hanningfield, Essex, and now of South Elmham. Clovell became imbroiled in lawsuits with the family concerning the Flixton estates, and by early 1563 was dead: by 1565 Elizabeth was again