Sir Thomas Palmer ‘the Travailer,’ was an English knight and politician.

Life

Palmer was the third son of Sir Henry Palmer of Wingham, Kent

Wingham, Kent

Wingham is a civil parish and English Kent village situated along the ancient coastal road, now the A257, from Richborough to London and close to Canterbury. It has existed since the Stone Age but only became established as a village in Roman times. The Domesday book tells us that during Saxon...

, by his wife Jane, daughter of Sir Richard Windebank of Guisnes, and was nephew of Sir Thomas Palmer (died 1553). He was high sheriff of Kent

High Sheriff of Kent

The High Sheriff is the oldest secular office under the Crown. Formerly the High Sheriff was the principal law enforcement officer in the county but over the centuries most of the responsibilities associated with the post have been transferred elsewhere or are now defunct, so that its functions...

 in 1595, and in the following year went on the expedition to Cadiz

Cádiz

Cadiz is a city and port in southwestern Spain. It is the capital of the homonymous province, one of eight which make up the autonomous community of Andalusia....

, when he was knighted.

He was created a baronet on 29 June 1621. He died on 2 Jan. 1625–6, aged 85, and was buried at Wingham. He married Margaret, daughter of John Pooley of Badley, Suffolk, who died in August 1625, aged 85. Of his three sons, all knighted, Sir Thomas died before his father, and was himself father of Herbert Palmer

Herbert Palmer (Puritan)

Herbert Palmer was an English Puritan clergyman, member of the Westminster Assembly, and President of Queens’ College, Cambridge. He is now remembered for his work on the Westminster Shorter Catechism, and as a leading opponent of John Milton's divorce tracts.-Biography:He was a younger son of Sir...

. The second son, Sir Roger, was master of the household to Charles I, and the third son was James Palmer (died 1657).

Works

In 1606 he published ‘An Essay of the Meanes how to make our Travailes into forraine Countries the more profitable and honourable,’ London, 4to. Here Palmer discussed the advantages of foreign travel, and some of the political and commercial principles which the traveller should understand. The book is dated from Wingham, where the author is said to have kept, with great hospitality, sixty Christmases without intermission.

Others of the name

The ‘Travailer’ must be distinguished from Thomas Palmer or Palmar, a Roman Catholic scholar, who graduated B.A. from Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1553, but who subsequently became a primary scholar of St. John's College, and was in 1563 appointed principal of Gloucester Hall. He was a zealous catholic, and, after a steady refusal to conform, he had in 1564 to retire from his headship to his estates in Essex, where persecution is said to have followed him. Wood describes him as an excellent orator, and ‘the best of his time for a Ciceronian style’.