If Pope, as Warton alleges (p. 132), founded an obit for himself at Great Waltham on 24 Dec. 1558, it is probable that he was about that time attacked by the epidemic which proved fatal that winter to so many of the upper classes. He died at Clerkenwell on 29 Jan. 1559; and, after lying in state at the parish church for a week, was buried on 6 Feb. 1559 with great pomp (Machyn, p. 188), according to his express directions, in St. Stephen's, Walbrook, where Stow (London, p. 245) saw the monument erected to him and his second wife. Their remains were removed before 1567 to a vault in the old chapel of Trinity College, over which his widow (his third wife) placed a handsome monument, with alabaster effigies of Pope and herself. It is now partly concealed by a wainscot case, put over it when the present chapel was built, but is clearly engraved by Skelton (Pietas Oxoniensis and Oxonia Antiqua Restaurata, vol. ii.; cf. Wood's Life, ed. Clark, iii. 364).
Pope was thrice married, but left no issue. From his first wife, Elizabeth Gunston, he was divorced, on 11 July 1536, by Dr. Richard Gwent, dean of arches (MSS. F. Wise in Coll. Trin. Misc. vol. i.) On 17 July 1536 he married Margaret (Townsend), widow of Sir Ralph Dodmer, knt., mercer, and lord mayor of London 1529. She died on 10 Jan. 1538, leaving a daughter Alice (b. 1537), who died young. His third wife, Elizabeth, was daughter of Walter Blount of Osbaston, Leicestershire, by Mary, daughter of John Sutton. She married, first, Anthony Basford (or Beresford) of Bentley, Derbyshire, who, dying on 1 March 1538, left her with a young son, John. On 1 Jan. 1540–1 (according to Wise; but possibly later) she married Pope, with whom she is afterwards associated in various grants, settlements, &c., as also in the rights and duties of foundress of Trinity College. She carried out the founder's injunctions to complete the house at Garsington. After Pope's death she married Sir Hugh Paulet [q. v.] She was suspected of recusancy (Cal. State Papers, Dom. Add. 1566–79 p. 551, 1581–90 p. 287), and established an almshouse at her native town of Burton. She died at Tittenhanger on 27 Oct. 1593, and was buried at Oxford on 2 Nov., both the university and the college celebrating her funeral with some pomp (Warton, pp. 202–4, and App. xxx.). A good portrait on panel, which was in the college before 1613, is now in the hall. At Tittenhanger there is one of a later date, representing her in a widow's cap.
By his will, dated 6 Feb. 1557, with a long codicil of 12 Dec. 1558, Pope bequeathed numerous legacies to churches, charities, prisons, and hospitals; his wife, her brother, William Blount, and (Sir) Nicholas Bacon, to whom, as his ‘most derely beloved frend,’ he leaves his dragon whistle, were executors. The will was proved on 6 May 1559. By the settlement of 1 April 1555 nearly the whole of his Oxfordshire estates passed to the family of John Pope of Wroxton, and some of these remain with the latter's representatives, Viscount Dillon and Lord North [see Pope, Thomas, second Earl of Downe]. The Tittenhanger, Clerkenwell, and Derbyshire properties seem to have been settled on his third wife with remainder to her son, who died young, and were thus inherited by Sir T. Pope Blount (son of Pope's niece, Alice Love), whose representative, the Earl of Caledon, still owns Tittenhanger.
Portraits of Pope, differing slightly in details, are at Wroxton and Tittenhanger; both are plausibly attributed to Holbein. Two early copies of the latter are now in the president's lodgings at Trinity; they were acquired before 1596 and 1634 respectively. Later copies are in the hall, common room, and Bodleian Gallery. The Wroxton portrait was engraved in line by J. Skelton in 1821. Of the Tittenhanger portrait there is a small scarce mezzotint by W. Robins, and another, by J. Faber, from the copy at Oxford. Both in the portraits and on the tomb Pope is represented as a middle-aged man, with sensible and not unpleasing, but rather characterless, features. For his motto he used the phrase ‘Quod tacitum velis, nemini dixeris.’
[Authorities cited above, especially the Calendars of State Papers and other records from which it is possible to correct the minor inaccuracies of dates, &c., in Warton's Life of Sir Thomas Pope (1st edit. 1772; 2nd, 1780), which is expanded from an article in the Biogr. Brit. 1760. It is a most laborious work, and contains a vast amount of information on a great variety of cognate subjects derived from papers then unprinted. It is, however, full of serious, and in some cases intentional, inaccuracies. The remarkable series of fabricated extracts from Machyn is mentioned above (see Engl. Hist. Rev. April 1896). No fact which Warton states on his own authority or on that of ‘MSS. F. Wise,’ or ‘the late Sir Harry Pope Blount,’ can be accepted where not verifiable. Modern memoirs (Skelton, Clutterbuck, Chalmers, &c.) are derived entirely and uncritically from Warton. Mr. F. G. Kenyon, of the British Museum, has kindly examined the manuscripts of Machyn for the purposes of this article. All registers and original papers in the college archives, where fourteen of Pope's letters and others of his papers are still extant, have been carefully examined.]
