il, and Master of the Court of Requests
of the Duke of Somerset, then Lord Protector. On the 14th of April 1548
he was sworn one of the King's Secretaries, and knighted in the
beginning of the following year. Shortly after his appointment Smith was
sent as ambassador to the Emperor Charles V., and in 1551 he took part
in the embassy to France to arrange a match for the King with the French
sovereign's eldest daughter. On the accession of Mary he lost all his
offices and preferments, but he managed to pass through this dangerous
reign in safety; and Strype says of him, 'that when many were most
cruelly burnt for the profession of the religion which he held, he
escaped, and was saved even in the midst of the fire, which he probably
might have an eye to in changing the crest of his coat-of-arms, which
now was a salamander living in the midst of a flame; whereas before it
was an eagle holding a writing-pen flaming in his dexter claw.' When
Elizabeth came to the throne, Smith returned to court, and was engaged
in several embassies to France. In 1572 the Queen conferred on him the
Chancellorship of the Order of the Garter; and shortly afterwards, on
Lord Burghley's preferment to the office of Lord Treasurer, vacant by
the death of the Marquis of Winchester, made him Secretary of State, a
post which, four-and-twenty years before, he held under Edward VI. Smith
died at his residence called Mounthaut, or Hill-hall, in Essex on the
12th of August 1577, and was buried in the parish church of Theydon
Mount, where a monument was erected to his memory. He was twice
married, but had no children by either of his wives.

Sir Thomas Smith possessed a fine library of about a thousand volumes.
He bequeathed all his Latin and Greek books, as well as his great globe,
of his own making, to Queens' College, Cambridge, or, if that college
did not care to have them, to Peterhouse. Some of his Italian and French
books he gave to the Queen's Library, and many volumes were also left to
friends. Strype gives a list of the contents of the library at Hill-hall
in 1566.

Smith was the author of several works, the principal one being _De
Republica Anglorum; the Maner of Gouvernement or Policie of the Realm of
England_, London, 1583, 4to. Between 1583 and 1640 this work passed
through ten editions, and several Latin and other translations of it
have been published.

A portrait of him by Holbein is at Theydon Mount, and another is
preserved at Queens'