Esmond, Sir Thomas (d. 1674), soldier and confederate, was the only son of Lawrence, Lord Esmond (qv) (d. 1646), of Limerick, Co. Wexford, and Margaret, daughter of Murrough O'Flaherty of Connacht. His parents separated over the issue of his religious upbringing but, despite being raised as a catholic by his mother, he remained on good terms with his father from whom he held land at Farrellstown. In 1627 he served as serjeant-major of the ‘Irish regiment’ which Sir Piers Crosby (qv) took to the Île de Rhe to reinforce the expeditionary army of the duke of Buckingham and was in command when it returned to Ireland in September 1628. The regiment had played a heroic part during the army's retreat and Esmond's contribution was rewarded with both a knighthood and a baronetcy in 1629. By 1641 he had conformed to the established church and, in June of that year, he was elected to parliament as member for Enniscorthy. During the early months of the 1641 rebellion, Esmond remained neutral, initially defending his father's house against the rebels. In 1642, however, reverting to catholicism, he joined the rebellion and on 22 June he was indicted and expelled from the Irish house of commons.
Throughout the 1640s Esmond was an active supporter of the confederate cause. He was a member of the confederate general assembly and in 1643 he captained a troop of horse at the battle of New Ross. In 1645 he was present at the siege of Duncannon where, on a number of occasions, he negotiated with his father, Lord Esmond, then governor of Duncannon fort. Careful not to admit his son into the garrison, his father met him at locations away from the fort. Lord Esmond died shortly after the surrender of Duncannon in March 1645, having excluded his son from his will in 1642, unless he returned to loyalty to the king. After his father's death, soldiers from the Duncannon garrison made a complaint to General Thomas Preston (qv), accusing Esmond of seizing them while he searched for, and removed, his father's papers and money. Lord Esmond's second wife, Elizabeth, wrote to Ormond (qv) in June 1645 complaining that he had left several estates to his son, whom she claimed was illegitimate.
In 1646 Esmond was appointed to the Leinster army and, being closely allied to the Ormondist faction within the confederate association, he adhered to the peace of that year. In May 1647 his cavalry troop was cessed on land in Co. Wexford, as a means of forcing the county receiver to pay overdue money. The following month he was appointed major general of the Leinster army, for which he received 18s. per day. Esmond supported the confederate peace treaty with Ormond in 1648 and he commanded a force that suppressed the Kavanaghs, strong opponents of the treaty. He also captained a cavalry troop in Sir Piers Fitzgerald's regiment and Ormond appointed him governor of Wexford. His selection as governor was unpopular, not only with leading royalists such as Viscount Muskerry (qv) and Richard Bellings (qv), but also with the people of Wexford, who petitioned Ormond against his appointment. In 1649–50 he campaigned against the Cromwellian army in Wexford and, in October 1649, he burned his father's house at Limerick to prevent it falling into the hands of Oliver Cromwell (qv).
After Ormond's departure to France, Esmond supported Clanricarde (qv) as lord deputy. He surrendered to the Cromwellians in 1653 and was transplanted to Galway, where he received 673 acres of land as a final settlement in 1657. Following the restoration of Charles II, he failed to regain his land holdings in Wexford, Waterford, Wicklow, Carlow, Tipperary or Kilkenny. As he had been transplanted to Connacht, Esmond was not entitled to restoration of his estates under the 1662 Act of Settlement, though he petitioned both Ormond and the king, stressing his loyalty to the royalist cause and his lack of involvement in the rising. Under the 1665 Act of Explanation, he was one of fifty-four people who were restored to their main seat with 2,000 acres of land, provided that the Cromwellian landholder, in this case George Monck (qv), duke of Albemarle, was not displaced. He failed to secure his right to the title of Lord Esmond, however, and died in 1674.
In 1629 he married, as his first wife, Ellis Fitzgerald, former wife of Thomas, baron of Caher, and, some time after 1644, he married Joan, daughter of Walter Butler, Lord Ormond. He had two sons, Lawrence and James, and a daughter, Elizabeth.