Thomas Stanley (Royal Mint)
Thomas Stanley (died 15 December 1571) was a goldsmith and a senior official at the Royal Mint in Tudor England. He became Under-Treasurer of the Mint at the Tower of London during Queen Elizabeth I’s reign.
He was the third son of Thomas Stanley of Dalgarth, Cumberland, and Margaret Fleming. He married Joyce Barrett of Aveley, Essex, who had previously been married to Sir James Wilford. Their daughter Mary married Sir Edward Herbert, the second son of the Earl of Pembroke; Mary’s son William Herbert, 1st Baron Powis, was Lord High Steward to Elizabeth I and is sometimes linked to Shakespeare’s Sonnets.
Stanley began as an Assay Master of the Mint in March 1545, during Henry VIII’s expansion of the Mint to support a policy of coin debasement. The debasement continued under Edward VI, but after Somerset’s fall the Earl of Warwick pushed reforms to curb inflation. In 1551 Stanley helped a group of Mint officials advise the government on new coin standards. A Mint restructuring in 1552 led to Thomas Egerton becoming Under-Treasurer and Stanley being promoted to Comptroller. Egerton was dismissed by Mary I in 1555, and Stanley then controlled the Tower Mint.
When Elizabeth I took the throne, Stanley was confirmed as Comptroller in August 1559 and officially appointed Under-Treasurer on 14 July 1561, a post he held until his death. He headed the Elizabethan recoinage, planned at the start of the reign and carried out from December 1560 to October 1561. Later disputes with Comptroller John Bull and assay-master William Humfrey led to a 1565 attempt by Bull and Humfrey to steal money under Stanley’s watch. The plot was uncovered, but questions about his management continued.
Stanley’s earlier financial problems from Mary I’s time led to the confiscation of his properties on 2 October 1571. He died two months later, on 15 December 1571.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 15:12 (CET).