page_title: Thomas Gage, 1st Viscount Gage
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Thomas Gage, 1st Viscount Gage / Career
caption_attribution_description: Firle Place, Firle, East Sussex
context_page_description: Thomas Gage, 1st Viscount Gage of High Meadow, Gloucestershire and later Firle Place, Sussex, was a British landowner and politician who sat in the House of Commons for 33 years between 1717 and 1754.
context_section_description: Gage was elected Member of Parliament for Minehead at a by-election on 11 April 1717, but was unseated on petition on 23 May 1717. On 14 September 1720, King George I created him Baron Gage of Castlebar in the county of Mayo, and Viscount Gage of Castle Island in the county of Kerry of the Kingdom of Ireland.
  Gage was elected MP for Tewkesbury at a by-election on 25 October  1721 and was elected again at the 1722 general election. In his first session of this parliament, he made several speeches against the special tax on Papists. In April 1727 he spoke for the motion for a vote of credit. He was returned again at the 1727 general election. He exposed the fraudulent sale of the Derwentwater estates on 31 March 1732, and was subsequently rewarded with £2,000 for this under the Greenwich Hospital Act 1735. At the 1734 general election, he was returned again as MP for Tewkesbury. He introduced a bill to prevent clandestine marriages, in 1736, but it was rejected. In 1738, it was rumoured that he was to be appointed as Governor of Barbados, but the appointment was never materialised, probably because he lacked sufficient political connections. He went into opposition with Pulteney in 1739, but in February 1741, he was one of the opposition Whigs who withdrew on the motion for Walpole's removal. He was returned to parliament again at the 1741 general election.
  On 23 April 1744, his cousin, Sir William Gage, 7th Baronet, died without children, and Gage inherited the baronetcy and the family estate of Firle Place. Sir William's late father was Gage's uncle - Sir John Gage, 4th Baronet, Sheriff of Sussex. The main line of the family, up to the 7th Baronet, had been Roman Catholic recusants who had purchased their baronetcy from King James I, and  Gage quietly resumed practising Roman Catholicism, although his children were raised in the Church of England. At the 1747 general election, he was returned again for Tewkesbury and joined the opposition. In 1747 was appointed  Steward of the Household of Frederick, Prince of Wales and held the post until 1751.
caption: Firle Place from rear
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