Cemetery, Dundee. A monument was erected at his grave in 1857.
Thom was a keen observer, and both his prose and his verse evince intellectual grasp and power of graphic delineation. The stronger and more characteristic of his poems, such as ‘The Mitherless Bairn,’ ‘The Maniac Mother's Dream,’ ‘The Overgate Orphan,’ and the ‘Extract from a Letter to J. Robertson, Esq.,’ reflect the author's rough and drastic experience. His various lyrics—‘The Blind Boy's Pranks,’ ‘Autumn Winds,’ ‘Bonnie May,’ ‘Ythanside,’ ‘They speak o'Wyles,’ ‘Yon Bower,’ ‘The Wedded Waters,’ and ‘Jeanie's Grave’—display quick fancy and considerable sense of natural beauty. Thom contributed a short autobiography to ‘Chambers's Journal,’ December 1841. This was embodied in the sketch published in ‘Rhymes and Recollections of a Handloom Weaver,’ 1844; 2nd edit. 1845. A new edition, with biography by W. Skinner, appeared in 1880.
[Editions of Rhymes and Recollections of a Handloom Weaver; Whistle Binkie; article by Professor Masson in Macmillan's Magazine, vol. ix.; Walker's Bards of Bon-Accord (1887).]
THOMAS, Earl of Lancaster (1277?–1322), was the eldest son of Edmund, earl of Lancaster [see Lancaster], a brother of Edward I, by Blanche of Artois, widow of Henry, count of Champagne and king of Navarre. Their marriage took place between 18 Dec. 1275 and 18 Jan. 1276, so Thomas's birth cannot be placed earlier than the latter part of 1276. But he was old enough in 1290 for abortive negotiations to be opened respecting his marriage with Beatrice of Burgundy (Rymer). In 1293 he frequently appears as one of the guests of his first cousin, afterwards Edward II (Extracts from the Issue Rolls of the Exchequer, Henry III–Henry VI, p. 109). His father died in June 1296, and, though still a minor in the king's custody, Thomas was allowed on 9 July 1297 to receive the homage of the tenants of the lands of his late father, and next year did homage and had livery of his lands in full (except his mother's dowry). He thus became earl of Lancaster and Leicester, and in February 1301 he was also styled ‘earl of Ferrers or Derby’ (Doyle). He took part in the expedition which ended in the battle of Falkirk on 22 July 1298. But though his name appears second in the list of barons who joined in the Lincoln letter of 1301 addressed to the pope on the subject of Scotland, it was not until the accession of Edward II that he began to play a leading part in affairs.
At the coronation he carried the sword called ‘curtana,’ and on 9 May 1308 received the grant of the stewardship of England as appendant to his earldom of Leicester. If Thomas was not already one of the enemies of the royal favourite Gaveston, he soon became one. Gaveston held a tournament at Wallingford in which he showed himself the earl's superior in skill in arms, thus adding gall to the bitterness with which the holder of three earldoms, cousin of one king and half-brother of another by marriage, must have regarded the foreign upstart's transformation into an earl of Cornwall (Trokelowe, p. 65). Though Gaveston was banished, Thomas and the other earls still continued distrustful of the king, and on 24 May 1309 the king had to authorise Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester, and others to assure the safety of Thomas when coming to him at Kennington (Rymer, ii. 75). After Gaveston's return from banishment in the summer of 1309, he further offended Lancaster by causing one of his particular adherents to be turned out of his office in favour of one of his own creatures (Monk of Malmesbury, ii. 161–2). Thomas and four other earls refused to attend a council summoned for 18 Oct. at York (Hemingburgh, ii. 275). In spite of a prohibition issued by Edward on 7 Feb., he and others of the barons attended the parliament which met in March 1310 in arms, and by threats of withdrawing their allegiance forced the king to consent to the appointment of twenty-eight ‘ordainers,’ by whom his own authority was to be superseded until Michaelmas 1311, and who were to make ordinances for the redress of grievances and the good government of the kingdom. Lancaster was one of the six co-opted earls on this commission, his father-in-law, Henry de Lacy, earl of Lincoln and Salisbury, being one of the two co-opting earls. The latter died on 28 Feb. 1311 (Annales Londonienses, p. 175), and Thomas added the earldoms of Lincoln and Salisbury to those of Lancaster, Derby, and Leicester, in right of his wife Alice. The story related by the annalist Trokelowe (pp. 72–3) of the old earl's last advice to his son-in-law to uphold the liberties of the church and Magna Charta and follow the advice of the Earl of Warwick is interesting as showing how the people afterwards came to look on Lancaster. He nearly came to open war with the king shortly after, by refusing to do homage to Edward at Berwick for his new lands because it was outside the kingdom, though he had journeyed north on purpose. The king yielded by meeting him a few miles within the English border at Haggerston (Chron. de
