Sir Thomas Tipping, 1st Baronet


Sir Thomas Tipping was a late 17th-century English baronet and Member of Parliament.

Family

Tipping was the second son, but tenth child, of Sir Thomas Tipping of Wheatfield, Oxfordshire by his wife, Elizabeth, daughter and co-heiress of Sir White Beconshaw of Moyles Court at Ellingham, Hampshire. Thomas Senior was the nephew of the Puritan writer, William 'Eternity' Tipping.
Tipping Junior's wife, Anne the daughter of Thomas Cheke, had inherited Pyrgo Park at Havering-atte-Bower in Essex in 1659. The Dame Tipping school in Havering-atte-Bower was founded in 1724 and endowed from her death in 1728 by a legacy from her will.
The couple inherited Wheatfield Park in 1693. They had two daughters – Letitia wife of Samuel Sandys, 1st Baron Sandys and Catherine wife of Thomas Archer, 1st Baron Archer – and a son, Thomas.

Biography

Tipping entered Trinity College, Oxford in 1669, and Lincoln's Inn where he studied law in 1672.
Tipping became a notorious whig and was elected a Member of Parliament for Oxfordshire and then Wallingford. He was known for promoting for a proviso to the bill for preserving James II's person which allowed clergymen to speak out against Roman Catholicism. Later, however, he became infamous for having contrived to marry his ward to a prostitute of his acquaintance. He fled to the Netherlands for a while. He was listed as being opposed to the King in 1688 and joined William III upon his landing in England. Tipping then became an outspoken opponent of Jeffreys who had condemned to death, his maternal aunt Dame Alice Lisle. He did not seek re-election to Parliament in 1701 and May 1713 he and his brother were reported to have "turned Tory".
Besides his political activities, Tipping was also a military officer as Lieutenant-Colonel in Lord Mordaunt's regiment of foot between 1688 and 1691.
He was made a baronet in 1698. In February 1704, he was given permission by the House of Lords "to sell the Manor of Ickford, in the County of Bucks, for the Payment of a Debt charged thereon". He died in debt, in prison, in Southwark on 1 July 1718, aged 65.