(1679 - 1739), s. of Sir Richard Dereham; suc. fa. 1710 as 4th Bt.; FRS 1720; d. Rome.
1701 - 39 Florence, Rome [England summer 1703 and May 1725]
Thomas Dereham was taken to Florence as a child in 1686 by his cousin and benefactor Sir Thomas Dereham, Kt. (d. 1697), envoy to the Tuscan Court in Florence until 1689. A Catholic and a Jacobite, he was brought up in Florence, where he spent nearly all his life and attended the Medici interest.1 'He is a tool to this Court, and joyned with other frenchifyed English here, doe thwart my Negotiations in her Majties: service very much', complained the British envoy, Lambert Blackwell,2 for whom, nevertheless, Dereham (as Ecuyer de Salle) gave a grand dinner on his recall in February 1705.3 The Duke of Shrewsbury had frequently seen Dereham in Florence in 1701,4 and Humphrey Chetham met him there in March 1705, on the occasion of Henry Newton's offical entry as British envoy in Tuscany.5 Dereham returned to England in the summer of 1703 (with the marchese Rinuccini) and again in May 1725,6 but he habitually wintered at Rome,7 where he became a favourite of Pope Clement XII.
Dereham was a cultured man with an interest in the visual arts. On 25 April 1709 he was elected to the Accademia del Disegno.8 In 1716 he offered to help with the Duke of Kent's commission to Soldani, 'the Care of seeing [the bronze reliefs] well performed and Finisht and of sending them'.9 In 1715 a medal with his portrait was made by A.F. Selvi (BM)10 and he was the subject of a caricature (dated 1725) by his friend P.L. Ghezzi, who described him as a gifted and generous man with collections of rare books and silver (Sotheby's, 10 Dec. 1979). In 1722 he commissioned in Florence a pietra dura and marble heraldic monument to the Dereham family for the church of West Dereham in Norfolk.(11)
In April 1734 Dereham appeared with the Pretender and the duc de Saint-Aignan on the balcony of the French embassy watching the Carnival.(12) During his final illness 'the Pope was deeply grieved ... and continually sent to inquire about his state'.(13) Stosch reported his death in Rome in February 1739 and described his Will. The prelate Acciaioli was his executor and received his books and silver; he bequeathed a fund to maintain two Englishmen and two Scotsmen in perpetuity in the college of Propaganda Fide; he left pictures to the chevalier St George [the Pretender] and Cardinal Corsini, and furniture and jewels to his friends.14 P.L. Ghezzi recorded the bequest of a gold-handled walking stick to Count Giacomo Bolognetti. Dereham's elaborate monument by Filippo della Valle is in the chapel of the English College at Rome, S.Tommaso degli Inglese;15 the inscription explains that 'For the love of the true Religion' Dereham became 'A fugitive from his Country to Catholics' and that he 'Abstained from marriage Lest loyalty to God and to his lawful King, so faithfully maintained by himself, should be endangered by his posterity'.16
1. See Fr. Goldie, Norfolk Archaeology, 18[1914]:1 - 22. 2. SP 98/20 (21 Jul. 1703). 3. HMC Buccleuch, 2:707. 4. Shrewsbury Jnl. (30 Oct., 6, 7, 9, 10 Nov. 1701). 5. Chetham jnl.MSS (29 May 1705). 6. SP 98/20 (Blackwell, 21 Jul. 1703), SP 98/25 (Colman, 11 May 1725). 7. BL, Sloane MSS 4049, f.85 (Dereham, 10 Jan. 1728). 8. Wynne 1990, 537. 9. Wrest Park MSS (Gerard, 15 Aug. 1716). 10. See C. Avery, The Medal, 24[1994]:19 - 20. 11. H. Honour, CL, 15 Jun. 1967, 1503 - 4. 12. Goldie (at n1), 4. 13. Ibid., 18. 14. SP 98/42, ff.265, 271 (Walton, 16, 23 Feb. 1739). 15. H. Honour, Connoisseur, 144[1959]:173, 176. 16. Goldie (at n1), 2.