Its use was first described in English by Thomas Coryat in a volume of writings on his Italian travels (1611), but for many years it was viewed as an unmanly Italian affectation.
"Insubria" thus denoted the core of the then extensive Duchy of Milan, as attested in the writings of Benzo d'Alessandria, Giovanni Simonetta, Thomas Coryat, Bernardino Corio and Andrea Alciato.
In the 1860s the village church was redeveloped, during which the preserved shoes of Thomas Coryat were lost.
Thomas Jefferson | Thomas Edison | Thomas | Thomas Hardy | Thomas Mann | Thomas Aquinas | Clarence Thomas | Thomas Gainsborough | Dylan Thomas | Thomas Pynchon | St. Thomas | Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands | Thomas Carlyle | Thomas the Tank Engine | Thomas Moore | Thomas Cromwell | Thomas Becket | Thomas the Apostle | Thomas Merton | Thomas Tallis | Thomas Paine | Roy Thomas | Thomas Telford | Thomas More | Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford | Ryan Thomas | C. Thomas Howell | Thomas Kean | Thomas Gage | Thomas Eakins |
Lewknor was one of Prince Henry's circle and contributed Old Wormy Age, a humorous panegyric verse, to the preface of Thomas Coryat's Coryat's Crudities: Hastily gobled up in Five Moneth’s Travels published in 1611.
Other letters appear in John Borough's ‘Impetus Juveniles’ (1643), and in Barten Holyday's ‘Juvenal.’ Farnaby prefixed verses in Greek with an English translation to Thomas Coryat's ‘Crudities,’ and he wrote commendatory lines for William Camden's ‘Annales.’ Ben Jonson was a friend of Farnaby, and contributed commendatory Latin elegiacs to his edition of Juvenal and Persius.
Notable residents of the village include Humphrey Hody, a 17th-century monk and theologian, George Strong, a 19th-century soldier awarded the Victoria Cross in the Crimean war, and Thomas Coryat, a 17th-century traveller and writer; author of Coryat's Crudities.