Thomas Whorwood

Sir Thomas Whorwood (1544 – 2 November 1616) was a Staffordshire landowner, Member of the English Parliament and High Sheriff of Staffordshire. He became notorious for his involvement in election fraud. Background The family's surname had originally been Horewood, but by this time normally spelt Whorwood, taking their name from a small manor in Horewood, later known as Compton Hallows in Kinver, but in 1387 as Haulowe, probably from its late 14th century owners or overlords. Whorwood was the first son of Edward Whorwood of Compton Hallows and of Dorothy Bassett, daughter of Thomas Bassett of Hints. He was the great nephew of the great lawyer Sir William Whorwood, half of whose property he inherited. Landowner Whorwood ultimately had several properties in Shropshire, Staffordshire and Worcestershire, in addition to his ancestral estate. Some of these were derived from Sir William Whorwood, whose elder daughter Anne Whorwood, Countess of Warwick had died in 1552. Her husband, Ambrose Dudley, had a life interest in her estates, but when he died in 1590, they passed to Thomas Whorwood. The other daughter Margaret married the recusant Thomas Throckmorton of Coughton, Warwickshire. Throckmorton's estates were frequently sequestrated because of his religious principles. In 1578 he and Whorwood partitioned William's inheritance. By this means Thomas Whorwood acquired the manors of Stourton and Kinver, Broome, Dunsley (in Kinver) and Tyrley on the Staffordshire-Shropshire border, but several of these were subject to the dower of William's widow Margaret Sheldon until her death in 1589. Thus Whorwood became considerably richer when his inheritance from his great uncle came into possession in 1590. At that point he moved to Stourton Castle, where he built a new family home.