Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Talbot, Thomas (fl.1580)
TALBOT, THOMAS (fl. 1580), antiquary, was the second son of John Talbot (d. 1551) of Salebury, Lancashire, by his second wife, Anne, daughter of Richard Banaster of Altham (Cotton MS. Vespasian D. xvii. 49; Whitaker, Whalley, ii. 377). He does not seem to have been educated at Oxford, though Wood notices him and says he was called ‘Limping Talbot’ on account of his lameness. Before 1580 he had become clerk of the records in the Tower, and probably he was the ‘learned’ Mr. Talbot referred to by Dr. John Dee [q. v.] in 1582 (Diary, Camden Soc. pp. 15, 16). He was an original member of the Society of Antiquaries (Archæologia, vol. i. pp. xii, xvii), and occurs in Francis Tate's list of members in 1590 (Stowe MS. 1045, f. 2). Talbot was indefatigable in his researches into the records under his charge, and Camden wrote: ‘Not to conceal my obligations to any, I must acknowledge myself under very great ones to Thomas Talbot, a diligent examiner of records and perfect master of our antiquities’ (Britannia, ed. Gough, vol. i. p. cxlviii). None of Talbot's collections are known to have been published. The principal are: collections relating to abbeys, extracts from chronicles and pedigrees (including that of his own family) in Cottonian MS. Vespasian D. xvii.; a collection of historical and constitutional antiquities in Harleian MS. 2223; a collection of abstracts from ‘Inquisitiones post mortem’ relating to Yorkshire families in Additional MS. 26717; an account of the proceedings of the court of claims at the coronations of Richard II, Henry IV, and Henry V in Lansdowne MS. 279; a ‘Catalogus Archicamerariorum Angliæ’ in Ashmolean MS. 792; collections of pedigrees in Ashmolean MSS. 799 i. and 1107; ‘Collectanea e Rotulis in Turri Lond. servatis’ in Ashmolean MS. 799, ii.; notes from his genealogical collections are extant in Rawlinson MS. B. 103. It is probable that many other antiquarian collections, the authorship of which has not been determined, were by Talbot (cf. Cat. Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 26717).
[Authorities cited; Catalogues of the Cottonian, Harleian, Lansdowne, Additional MSS. at Brit. Mus., and Ashmolean MSS. in the Bodleian Library, Oxford; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. i. 125.]