John Tunstall (usher)
John Tunstall or Tonstal was a servant and gentleman-usher to Anne of Denmark, wife of James VI and I in England, and Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I. In the summer of 1615 Anne of Denmark visited Bath twice for her health to bathe in the warm spring water. John Tunstall was later paid £105-10s-9d for fitting up her lodging in Bath and some expenses of her journeys. He married Penelope Leveson, a daughter of Walter Leveson of Lilleshall in Shropshire. She was a cousin of the Fittons and Newdigates. Tunstall was a godparent  to the children of Anne Newdigate, and may have arranged an invitation for her and daughter Mary Newdigate (1598-1643), to attend a masque at court in 1617. Mary Newdigate later married Edmund Bolton, whose sister may have been the Elizabeth Bolton who took part in Robert White's "Masque of Cupid's Banishment" at Ladies Hall, Deptford. One of Anne Newdigate's daughters, Lettice Newdigate (1604-1625), attended the Ladies Hall school in 1620. Her portrait, aged 2, at Arbury Hall, includes one of the earliest depictions of an English knot garden. In February 1618, Tunstall was sent to  the Lady Elizabeth, Electress Palatine in Heidelberg. He carried a gift of £100 for her nurses and midwives, following the birth of Charles Louis. Tunstall helped organise the performance of a masque "Gargantua and Gargamella" at Somerset House, then known as Denmark House, to celebrate the birthday of Henrietta Maria, on 16 November 1626. In the performance, the court dwarf Jeffrey Hudson fenced with a giant, the Welsh porter William Evans. Tunstall had a house at Edgcome or Edgecombe (later Addiscombe) by Croydon, and the flowers he grew for Henrietta Maria, including "Colchicum variegatum" and "Myosotis arvensis" were mentioned  and illustrated by the botanists John Gerard and John Parkinson. In the 1630s he objected to commissioners taking saltpetre from his pigeon-house or dovecote for making gunpowder and had it demolished.