Thomas Vachell V of Coley (1642–1679)

Thomas Vachell V belongs to the last phase of Vachell ownership of Coley. Born in 1642, he was the son of Colonel Thomas Vachell and Margaret Meverell. His maternal grandfather, Othowell Meverell, was a distinguished physician and president of the Royal College of Physicians, while his paternal line descended from the earlier Stuart Vachells who had steered the family through the Civil War period.

Thomas came of age during the Restoration. He studied at Queen's College, Oxford, and was admitted to Gray's Inn, reflecting the family's continued association with legal education and service. His parents' generation had held Coley and associated manors, but intricate settlements and life interests meant that Thomas did not gain full residential control of Coley House until the early 1670s, after the death of his kinswoman Rebecca Leman, widow of his cousin Tanfield Vachell. Once in possession, Thomas undertook repairs and modest improvements to a house that had suffered from wartime neglect and long leases. Surviving inscriptions—such as a stable pillar dated 1679 and the bell in the clock-tower dated 1681—associate his initials and those of his wife Anne (née Taylor) with building work at Coley. He served as High Sheriff of Berkshire in 1671 and, in 1679, stood unsuccessfully as a royalist candidate for Reading in a fiercely contested parliamentary election during the Exclusion Crisis.

Financially, Thomas's position was difficult. He inherited debts and complex obligations from earlier generations and was eventually forced to authorise the sale of outlying property to meet creditors. His will, made in 1680, envisages the disposal of household goods, art and lands, while expressing the hope that his heir might one day recover some family possessions. Through his daughter Françoise, who married the Swedish diplomat Christoffer Leijoncrona, the bloodline of the Coley Vachells passed into a Swedish noble branch. In the present Lord of Coleys own genealogy, Thomas Vachell V is therefore both the last of the direct-line Vachell lords actually resident at Coley and a bridge into the Scandinavian nobility. For the present Lord of Coley, Thomas Vachell V of Coley is a nine-times great-grandfather.

Sources (selected)

• Ounsley, M. (2025). "Thomas Vachell V, 1642–1679: Inheritance and waiting." Coley Notebook (blog).
• Ounsley, M. (2025). "Thomas Vachell V: The 1679 election and after." Coley Notebook (blog).
• Brod, M. (2006). Urban governance in Reading, 1640–1690. (discussion of the Exclusion elections).
• Crawfurd, G. P. (1893). "The Vachells of Coley." Berkshire Archaeological Journal, 3, 87–92.