Blenerhasset (Hasset, Blennerhassett), Thomas (1550?–1624), poet and undertaker in Ulster, was probably born at Horsford, Norfolk, and was a younger son of William Blenerhasset (d. 1598) and his wife Anne (née Colby), members of the Norfolk gentry. He seems to have studied at Cambridge, perhaps in St John's College, from 1571, and translated (but left unpublished) Ovid's ‘De remedio amoris’. In 1577, as a soldier stationed in Guernsey, Blenerhasset wrote twelve poems in various metres, intended as a continuation of the Mirror for magistrates, a compilation of versifed legends and early history which was then very popular. It was published in London the following year, without his knowledge, along with an autobiographical letter addressed to a friend. The work is of interest for its metrical experimentation and for its many rhetorical figures; Blenerhasset may be the earliest writer to use the term ‘iambic’ to describe English blank verse. He also published in 1582 a panegyric on Queen Elizabeth.
In 1610 he published a short pamphlet, A direction for the plantation of Ulster, recommending the removal of the Irish from that province, and became himself an undertaker. The following year (1611) he received 1,500 acres in the barony of Clankelly, Co. Fermanagh, and later shared another 1,000 acres in the same county with his brother Sir Edward Blenerhasset. In 1612 he petitioned with others for a share in 60,000 acres in Fermanagh and Sligo; at his death on 11 March 1624 at his residence, Castlehasset on Lough Erne, he owned the barony of Lurg and two proportions, Edernagh and Tullenageane, on which were to develop the towns of Ederney and Kesh. He is buried in the chapel in Castlehasset (later renamed Crevenish Castle). He married (1586) Frances Sampson of Suffolk, England. He may have married as his second wife Elizabeth Sandys of Dublin; he had three sons and two daughters. Some sources confuse him with the ancestor of the Kerry Blennerhassetts, another Thomas Blennerhassett, from Cumberland, who received forfeited lands in Kerry in 1590.