HATCHER, Thomas (c.1589-1677), of Careby, Lincs.

This Member’s great-grandfather, a regius professor of physic at Cambridge, acquired the manor of Careby in 1560.CPR, 1558-60, p. 371. Hatcher’s marriage in 1617 confirmed his standing among the leading families of the Lincolnshire gentry. With the support of his kinsmen Sir William Armyne, 1st bt.*, and Sir Edward Ayscough*, both of whom shared his puritan outlook, he became the first member of his family to sit in Parliament, winning a seat at Lincoln in 1624. He was appointed to two private bill committees in the last Jacobean Parliament, one of which was to confirm an exchange of lands between his colleague, Sir Lewis Watson* and Prince Charles (9 April 1624).CJ, i. 758b. Although he does not appear to have stood for Parliament in 1625 or 1626, Hatcher was returned at the general election in 1628 for Grantham, ten miles north-west of Careby, presumably backed by Armyne, who had some influence in the borough. Hatcher was appointed to two committees in the first session, on bills to reform abuses in the winding of wool (23 Apr. 1628) and to make the Medway navigable (12 May).CD 1628, iii. 44, 367. His only appointment in the brief second session was to consider a private bill concerning the endowment of the London Charterhouse by the executors of the late Thomas Sutton (20 Feb. 1629).CJ, i. 931b. (Sir) John Eliot* described Hatcher as one of ‘the honest sons of Lincolnshire’, and after the dissolution Hatcher visited the Members imprisoned in the Tower, and tried to speak to Benjamin Valentine*.HMC Cowper, i. 383. He later proofread Eliot’s ‘Monarchy of Man’, which he praised for the ‘excellency of the matter, the exquisiteness and beauty of the form’.C. Holmes, Seventeenth-Cent. Lincs. 78, 109.

Hatcher’s father, who was named as a Ship Money defaulter in 1636, died in 1640, leaving Hatcher the manor of Careby and substantial adjoining estates.CSP Dom. 1635-6, p. 289; 1636-7, p. 397; Lincs. AO, Holywell ms H97/22/1. Having fought with the Parliamentary army during the Civil War, Hatcher refused to sit in the Rump, but he did represent his county in the Protectorate Parliaments.M.F. Keeler, Long Parl. 208. He died in 1677, apparently intestate, and was buried at Careby on 11 July. His only son, John, represented Stamford in 1660, but with this the family parliamentary record came to an end.