Thomas Lovell - Under Henry VIII

Under Henry VIII

Henry VIII continued to employ Lovell. He was reappointed chancellor of the exchequer, was made Constable of the Tower of London in 1509, and surveyor of the court of wards, and steward and marshal of the household. On 3 September 1513 he was commissioned by Catherine of Aragon to levy men in the Midlands for service against the Scots, and on 12 May 1514 either he or his nephew Thomas, who had been knighted at Tournai in 1513, landed at Calais with a hundred men, and was shortly afterwards joined by three hundred more.

The rise of Thomas Wolsey's power seems to have affected his position. Ambassador Sebastiano Giustiniani wrote on 17 July 1516 that Lovell had withdrawn himself from public affairs. On Ascension day 1516 Margaret, queen-dowager of Scotland visited him at Elsing, near Enfield, in Middlesex, a house he had inherited from his brother-in-law, Edmund de Ros, 11th Baron de Ros, in 1508.

On 14 May 1523 he was reported to be very ill, and he died at Elsing on 25 May 1524. He was buried in a chantry chapel he had built at Holywell Priory, Shoreditch, a religious house of which he was regarded as a second founder. His funeral was very magnificent. His portrait was formerly in a stained-glass window in Malvern Priory.