Thomas Fownes.

About Thomas Fownes

Thomas Fones of the parish of St Andrew's in the City of Plymouth in Devon, was a merchant who served as Mayor of Plymouth in 1610 and 1619. He was the first of his family to have settled in Devon, and his descendants rose to prominence as members of the Devonshire gentry and as Members of Parliament. In 1746 his great-great-great-grandson Henry Fownes Luttrell (c.1722-1780), High Sheriff of Somerset from 1754 to 1755, and a Member of Parliament for Minehead from 1768 to 1774, married the heiress Margaret Luttrell, and inherited Dunster Castle in Somerset with the extensive Lutterell estates and added his wife's name to his own to comply with the terms of her father's will. He built almshouses near the Great Hill in Plymouth.