Portrait of Sir Thomas Monson (1563/4-1641), half-length, in a slashed white doublet, girdled with a sword, holding a falcon and his wand of office

The eldest surviving son of Sir John Monson (d. 1593), of South Carlton, the sitter experienced a 'meteoric rise and calamitous fall' from favour at the Court of James I (see A. Bellany, 'Monson, Sir Thomas', Oxford DNB online). By the end of Elizabeth I's reign, in 1603, Monson was an established figure in Lincolnshire, having served as High Sheriff between 1597 and 1598, been elected M.P. in 1597 (and knighted the same year), and been appointed surveyor of royal lands in Lincolnshire and the city of Lincoln in 1599. During the first decade of the reign of James I, he set about acquiring office closer to the centre of power, under the patronage of Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton. He became chancellor to Queen Anne of Denmark and Master Falconer to the King, a position celebrated in this portrait, and was appointed Keeper of the Armoury at Greenwich and Master of the Armoury at the Tower of London the following year. His fortunes changed dramatically in 1615 however, when he was implicated in the most sensational scandal of the age - the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury in the Tower two years earlier. Monson was imprisoned in the Tower until October 1616, nearly five months after the Earl and Countess of Somerset had been convicted of Overbury's murder, and was eventually cleared of any involvement in 1617, but politically and financially he never recovered from the Overbury affair.