Thomas Vachell II of Coley (c. 1500)

Thomas Vachell II, eldest son of Thomas I and Elizabeth Cockworthy, is the best-documented of the early Vachell ancestors and a central figure in Tudor Reading. Educated at the Middle Temple, he combined legal training with the responsibilities of a county gentleman. In 1521 he married Agnes Justice, daughter of the wealthy wine merchant and MP William Justice of Reading, uniting town and country elites and further enhancing the social position of the Coley line.

In the 1520s and 1530s Thomas held a series of local offices, collecting subsidies for Henry VIII's wars, enforcing grain and vagrancy regulations and acting as a justice of the peace. He was elected MP for Reading to the "Reformation Parliament" of 1529, which dismantled papal jurisdiction in England. Contemporary lists suggest that Thomas Cromwell initially saw him as someone to be won over; in time he became one of Cromwell's trusted local agents. During the dissolution of the monasteries Thomas played a leading role in the suppression of religious houses around Reading, including the closure of Reading Abbey and the friaries. He helped manage the transition of former monastic property into royal and civic hands, and he benefited to some extent from this process through purchases and grants of land. Later accounts portray him as a conservative man of inherited Catholic sympathies who nonetheless chose to serve the Crown and to keep his deeper convictions largely private.

By the time of his death in 1553, Thomas II had firmly established the Vachells as one of the principal gentry families of Reading and Berkshire. Coley, expanded by former ecclesiastical lands, had become a recognisable manor with a large house and dependent properties—an estate structure that endured under his descendants for nearly two centuries. For the present Lord of Coley, Thomas Vachell II of Coley is a twelve-times great-grandfather.

Sources (selected)

• Ounsley, M. (2024). "Thomas Vachell II: Cromwell's man in Reading." Coley Notebook (blog).
• History of Parliament. (n.d.). "VACHELL, Thomas I (by 1500–1553), of Coley, Reading, Berks." The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1509–1558.
• Summers, M. (2020). Reading's Greyfriars 1233–1538. Downs Way.