RANDOLPH, THOMAS (1523-1590), English diplomatist, son of Avery Randolph, a Kentish gentleman, was educated at Christ Church, Oxford, and in 1549 became principal of Pem broke College, Oxford, then known as Broadgates Hall. During the reign of Mary, Randolph, who was a zealous Protestant, sought refuge in Paris, where he cultivated the society of scholars. Returning to England after the accession of Elizabeth, he was employed as a confidential diplomatic agent of the English queen in Scotland. Randolph's despatches from Scotland between 1560 and 1585 supply important materials for the history of the politi cal intrigues of that period. In 1568 he undertook a mission to Russia which resulted in the concession by Ivan the Terrible of certain privileges to English merchants; and in 1570 he returned to Scotland. After carrying through certain diplomatic business in France in 1573 and 1576, Randolph returned in January 1581 to Scotland, where the earl of Morton, the regent, had been ar rested a few days previously. Randolph, acting on Elizabeth's
instructions, intrigued with Angus and the Douglases in favour of a plot to seize the person of the young King James, and to save Morton by laying violent hands on the earl of Lennox. Douglas of Whittingham made revelations which imperilled Randolph, who withdrew to Berwick before the execution of Morton in June 1581. In 1585, when he next visited Scotland, he helped to arrange a treaty between England and Scotland. For the next four years he was chancellor of the exchequer in England, and he died in London in June 1590.
See Calendar of State Papers relating to Scotland (1509-1603), 2 vols., ed. M. J. Thorpe.