Thomas Staveley

Thomas Staveley
Oil painting of Thomas Staveley. Staveley is painted from the knee up, in an oval frame. He sits to the left, placing his left elbow on a velvet-covered table, and faces towards the viewer. He wears a cloak, with a lace cravat, and large chestnut wig, clutching a scroll in his right hand.
Portrait of Thomas Staveley, 17th century (Leicester: New Walk Museum)
Born
East Langton, Leicestershire, England
Baptised26 November 1626
Died2 January 1684 (aged 57)
Leicester, Leicestershire, England
Signature

Thomas Staveley (bapt. 26 November 1626 – 2 January 1684) was a Stuart antiquary, magistrate, anti-Papist, and Church historian. He spent most of his life researching the antiquities of his home county, Leicestershire.

Born in East Langton, Staveley attended Cambridge University from 1644 to 1654. Here he studied law, that being the profession he would later take on, serving as a Lancashire Justice of the peace. He was described by contemporaries as a just and even-tempered magistrate, but was most renowned for his manuscripts of Leicestershire history, which were instrumental in the later histories of John Nichols. Staveley published only one work in his lifetime, The Romish Horseleech (1674), a political tract protesting James II's Catholicism, later held up as a "no-Popery classic". Staveley died on 8 January 1684 in Friar Lane. Posthumously, two lesser-known historical treatises of Staveley were published, on the English monarchy and Church history, respectively.