in prison to the end of Edward's reign. He was released on 6 August, 1553, but his debts compelled him again to leave England. Unable to return to France, he betook himself to the Emperor, and he was at Brussels in the winter of 1553-4, and served with the Imperial army at St. Omer. Philibert, Duke of Savoy, invited Stucley to accompany him to England in October of 1554, and Stucley accordingly appealed to Queen Mary for security against arrest whilst in her dominions, and this was granted to him for six months, and at the end of December he accompanied the Duke to England.
During his visit he attempted, Othello-like, to bewitch Anne, the granddaughter and sole heiress of Sir Thomas Curtis, a wealthy alderman of London, with his tales of adventure. Against her father's wishes the lady was beguiled into a secret marriage, and he retired with her to North Devon. On 13 May, 1555, the sheriffs of Devon and Cheshire were ordered to arrest him on a charge of coining false money. His house was searched, his servants questioned. There was much that was suspicious, but nothing certainly to convict. But Thomas Stucley had taken himself off before the sheriff arrived, and again took service under the Duke of Savoy, and shared in the victory of the Imperialists over the French at St. Quintin, 10 December, 1557.
Then he went into the Spanish service, but in November old Sir Thomas Curtis died, brokenhearted, it was asserted, at the match his favourite grandchild had contracted with one so disreputable and unprincipled.
Stucley at once returned to England, and a correspondent of Challoner, the Ambassador in Spain, writes of him in November, 1559: "The Alderman
