Background
When his father died on 2 March 1675, Thomas succeeded at only 19 years of age to the baronetcy of Lamport, Northamptonshire.
When his father died on 2 March 1675, Thomas succeeded at only 19 years of age to the baronetcy of Lamport, Northamptonshire.
Though it was not uncommon for the young English gentry of the time to tour the continent for several months as part of their education, Sir Thomas and Zacchaeus stayed a full two and a half years, a large part of their time spent in Italy collecting art works. Sir Thomas is remembered mainly for a diary that he wrote in Latin from 1671 to 1673 at the command of his father. lieutenant is made up largely of one-sentence entries, with occasional longer anecdotes of local news-worthy events, as relayed to the boy by visitors.
His diary first became widely available in 1875 when it was first published, but the most readily available edition is a 1971 publication of a translation by Norman Marlow with annotations by the 12th baronet Sir Gyles Isham.
A portrait of Sir Thomas Isham painted about 1675 by Sir Peter Lely, about the time Thomas became baronet, hangs at Lamport Hall, and there is a reduced copy of Lely"s work by Mary Beale.
His diary is noteworthy in that it provides a glimpse of the everyday life of a teenage member of the English gentry, as played out in a country estate.