Thomas Somerset, 1st Viscount Somerset (1579[1]–1651) was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1601 and 1611. He was raised to the Peerage of Ireland in 1626.
Portrait of Sir Thomas Somerset, Viscount Somerset
On 1 January 1604, he danced at Hampton Court in The Masque of Indian and China Knights.[7] In November 1604, Somerset fought with a Scottish aristocrat John Stewart, Master of Orkney in the Baloon or "balowne" Court at Whitehall Palace. Stewart was confined to his chamber but Somerset was sent to the Fleet Prison.[8] Their argument followed on an incident when Somerset accompanied the Duke of Holstein and the Master of Orkney to the Queen's apartments, and as the gentlemen were at the door of her Privy Chamber, accused each other of pushing and shoving.[9]
^John Nichols, Progresses of James the First, vol. 1 (London, 1828), p. 37.
^Linda Levy Peck, Court Patronage and Corruption in Early Stuart England (Routledge, London, 1993), p. 70: Edmund Lodge, Illustrations of British History, vol. 3 (London, 1791), p. 209.
^Maurice Lee, Dudley Carleton to John Chamberlain, 1603-1624 (Rutgers UP, 1972), p. 35.
^Martin Butler, The Stuart Court Masque and Political Culture (Cambridge, 2008), p. 63.
^Edmund Lodge, Illustrations of British History, vol. 3 (London, 1838), pp. 108-9; vol. 3 (London, 1791), pp. 245-6. "Ballon" was a kind of ball game.
^HMC Salisbury Hatfield, vol. 16 (London, 1933), pp. 391-3.
^John Maclean, Letters of George Lord Carew to Sir Thomas Roe (London, 1860), p. 41.