Thomas Stanley was the eldest son of Sir George Stanley and Joan Strange, daughter and heiress of John Strange, Lord Strange of Knockin, by his first wife, Jacquette Woodville, daughter of Richard Woodville, 1st Earl Rivers. He was the grandson of Thomas Stanley, 1st Earl of Derby, and Eleanor Neville, fourth daughter of Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury, by Alice Montagu, the daughter and heiress of Thomas Montagu, 4th Earl of Salisbury. After the death of his first wife, Eleanor Neville, Thomas Stanley's grandfather married Margaret Beaufort, widow of Edmund Tudor, 1st Earl of Richmond, and mother of King Henry VII.
Stanley had four brothers, Anthony, John, Sir James and George, and five sisters, Elizabeth, wife of Sir Edward Stanley, Eleanor, Katherine, Joan, who married Sir Robert Sheffield, and Margaret, wife of John Osbaldeston, esquire.
As a result of his marriage to Joan Strange, Thomas Stanley's father, George, had been summoned to Parliament by writs directed to Georgio Stanley de la Strange, by which he became Lord Strange. George Stanley died at Derby House, London, on 4 or 5 December 1503, predeceasing his father. He was said to have been poisoned at a banquet.
A year later Thomas Stanley's grandfather, the 1st Earl, died at Lathom in Lancashire on 9 November 1504, and Thomas succeeded to the earldom of Derby and the barony of Stanley. When his mother died at Colham Green, Middlesex, on 20 March 1514, Derby inherited the baronies of Strange and Mohun.
Derby was at the Battle of the Spurs in 1513. Both he and his wife were in attendance at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in June 1520, and Derby attended the King at his meeting with the Emperor Charles V at Dover later that year. In the same year, Derby became a member of Gray's Inn.
Derby died at Colham Green, Middlesex, on 23 May 1521, and was buried at Syon. His widow, Anne, died at Colham Green, and was buried 17 November 1550.
Derby's line failed with the death of James Stanley, 10th Earl of Derby in 1736, when the earldom passed to a descendant of his younger brother, Sir James Stanley, ancestor of the Stanleys of Bickerstaffe.
