Thomas Perrot

Sir Thomas Perrot (1553 – 1594) was an Elizabethan courtier, soldier, and Member of Parliament. He campaigned in Ireland and the Low Countries, and was involved in the defence of England against the Spanish Armada. He was imprisoned several times, on one occasion to prevent a duel with Sir Walter Raleigh, and on another occasion because of his secret marriage to Dorothy Devereux, a Lady-in-waiting to the Queen, and sister of the Queen's favourite, the Earl of Essex. Perrot's only daughter, Penelope, married Sir Robert Naunton, author of Fragmenta Regalia, which claimed that Perrot's father, Sir John Perrot, was an illegitimate son of Henry VIII. Family Thomas Perrot was the son of Sir John Perrot by his first wife, Anne Cheyne (d.1553), the daughter of Sir Thomas Cheyne, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, and his first wife, Frideswide Frowyk (died c.1528), daughter of Sir Thomas Frowyk, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. By his father's second marriage to Jane Prust (d.1593), widow of Lewis Pollard (d.1563) of Oakford, Devon, and daughter of Hugh Prust (d.1559) of Thorry, Devonshire, Perrot had a half-brother and two half-sisters: William Perrot (d.1587), who died unmarried. Anne Perrott, who married Sir John Phillips, 1st Baronet, of Picton Castle. Lettice, who married firstly Walter Vaughan of Golden Grove, Carmarthenshire, secondly John Langhorne of St Brides, and thirdly, on 8 April 1605, Arthur Chichester, Lord Deputy of Ireland.