Gawdy.’ This seems to be identical with the ‘historical account of Babington's conspiracy,’ which we learn from Cobbett's ‘State Trials,’ i. 1173, formed a principal part of Gawdy's speech as queen's serjeant on that occasion.
[Blomefield's Norfolk, ed. Parkin, vii. 412, 516, ix. 63; Inner Temple Books; Addit. MS. 12507, f. 79; Foss's Lives of the Judges.]
GAWDY, Sir JOHN (1639–1699), painter, born on 4 Oct. 1639, was the second son of Sir William Gawdy, bart. (d. 1666), of West Harling, Norfolk, by his wife Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of John Duffield of East Wretham in the same county, and grandson of Framlingham Gawdy [q. v.] He was a deaf-mute, and became a pupil of Lely, intending to follow portraiture as a profession; but on the death of his elder brother, Bassingbourne, in 1660, he became heir to the family estates, and thenceforth painted only for amusement. Evelyn, who met him in September 1677, speaks of him as ‘a very handsome person … and a very fine painter; he was so civil and well bred, as it was not possible to discern any imperfection by him’ (Diary, 1850–2, ii. 111). He died, according to Blomefield, in 1699. By his wife Anne, daughter of Sir Robert de Grey, knight, of Martin, Lincolnshire, he left one son, Bassingbourne, and one daughter, Anne, married to Oliver Le Neve of Great Witchingham, Norfolk. His son dying unmarried on 10 Oct. 1723, the baronetcy became extinct. Three of Gawdy's letters are preserved in the British Museum (index to Cat. of Additions to the MSS. 1854–75, p. 606).
[Blomefield's Norfolk, i. 306–7; Redgrave's Dict. of Artists, 1878, p. 169; Burke's Extinct Baronetcy, p. 216.]
GAWDY, Sir THOMAS (d. 1589), judge, is said by Blomefield (Norfolk, ed. Parkin, x. 115) to have been the son of John Gawdy of Harleston, Norfolk, by Rose, his second wife, daughter of Thomas Bennet, with which the pedigrees in the Harleian MSS. agree, except that they give Thomas as the christian name of the father. The minute in the Inner Temple register of the admission of the judge to that society also describes him as ‘son of Thomas Gawdy, senior.’ This Thomas Gawdy, senior, was identified by Foss with a certain barrister of that name, who was appointed reader at the Inner Temple in Lent 1548; was called to the degree of serjeant-at-law in 1552; was reappointed reader in Lent 1553, when he was fined for neglecting his duties; represented King's Lynn in parliament in 1547 (being then recorder of the town), and Norwich in 1553 (Hist. MSS. Comm. 11th Rep. App. pt. ii. 174); was appointed recorder of Norwich in 1563, and dying on the same day as his colleague, Serjeant Richard Catlin, in August 1566, shares with him a high-flown Latin epitaph in hexameter verse (author unknown) preserved in Plowden's ‘Reports’ (p. 180). If, however, any faith is to be placed in the pedigrees in the Harleian MSS., Thomas Gawdy the serjeant was not the Thomas Gawdy, senior, of the Inner Temple register, but his son by his first wife, Elizabeth. We learn from Strype (Mem., (fol.) iii. pt. i. 265) that Serjeant Thomas Gawdy was in the commission of the peace for Essex in 1555, and distinguished himself from his colleagues as the ‘only favourer’ of the protestants. From him descended the family of Bassingbourne Gawdy. Thomas Gawdy the younger received, according to ‘Athenæ Cantabr.’ p. 36, ‘some education’ in the university of Cambridge, ‘probably at Gonville Hall.’ He entered the Inner Temple on 12 Feb. 1549, and was elected a bencher of that society in 1551, being then one of the masters of requests. He was returned to parliament for Arundel, Sussex, in 1553, and was summoned to take the degree of serjeant-at-law in 1558, but the writ abating by Queen Mary's death he was not called on the accession of Elizabeth. He was elected reader at his inn in Lent 1560, and treasurer in 1561, and in Lent 1567 he was called to the degree of serjeant-at-law (Harl. MSS. 1177 f. 174 b, 1552 f. 161, 4755 ff. 87, 88, 5189 f. 26 b, 6093 f. 79; Addit. MSS. 27447 ff. 89, 91, 27959 f. 1; Lists of Members of Parliament (Official Return of); Horsfield, Sussex, App. 32; Dugdale, Chron. Ser. pp. 91, 93, Orig. p. 165). There is preserved among the Gawdy MSS. a draft of a curious petition addressed by him to the queen in council, begging that he might be excused contributing a hundred marks to the exchequer on the three following grounds, viz.: (1) that he had never received payment of a loan of 10l. made by him to the late queen; (2) that he was in embarrassed circumstances from having built too much on his estates; and (3) that he was ‘no great meddler in the law.’ It bears no date, but that of April 1570 has been conjecturally assigned to it (Hist. MSS. Comm., Rep. on Gawdy MSS. 1885, p. 5). Gawdy was consulted by Dr. George Gardiner in 1573 with reference to a dispute concerning the title to an advowson (Strype, Ann., (fol.) ii. pt. i. 300). In November 1574 he was appointed justice of the queen's bench, and he was knighted by Elizabeth at Woodrising, on occasion of her Norfolk progress, on 26 Aug. 1578 (Dugdale, Chron. Ser. p. 94; Nichols,
