THOMSON, Robert (1622-94), of Newington Green, Mdx.

Robert Thomson has been confused with a namesake, because both served with the parliamentarian armies during the 1640s.15‘George Thomson’, Oxford DNB. One of the two was a member of the Clothworkers’ Company, who took a commission in the London militia in 1642 and who, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel and as a Presbyterian, was removed from his command in 1647, but continued to be a prominent London citizen in his parish of St Mary Woolchurch, until his death around 1660.16L. Nagel, ‘The Struggle for London’s Militia in 1642’, in London and the Civil War ed. S. Porter (1996), 81; A Paire of Spectacles for the Citie (1648, recte 1647), 9 (E.419.9); LMA, P69/MRY 14/B/006/MS01013/001; P69/MRY 14/B/001/MS01013/001; T. Liu, Puritan London (1986), 59, 60, 167n. The other, the subject of this biography was a Hertfordshire man, the youngest brother of a number of distinguished siblings, George Thomson*, William Thomson* and perhaps more prominent than either, the merchant Maurice Thomson. Their father, Robert Thomson senior, was a minor gentleman who in 1638 sold a small property in St Albans, some 20 miles from his home parish of Watton-at-Stone.17Coventry Docquets, 728. Like his elder brothers, Robert Thomson must surely also have been intended for a career as a merchant. Before he was 18, however, he had emigrated to Boston, Massachusetts. There, he bought the land on which the old Boston church stood, but his sojourn in America must have been brief. Even so, it gave him an interest in the affairs of New England which was to endure during the rest of his life. He seems never to have joined the Independent or Congregationalist church at Boston.18J. Savage, Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England (4 vols., Boston, Mass. 1862), iv. 287-8.

Thomson had returned to England by 1641, but did not sell up in Boston, and later in his life was awarded 500 acres in Massachusetts by the governing body there.19Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, iv. 287-8. With his brothers, he was active in trade in London in 1641, and with George and Maurice (all as ‘Thomson’) signed a petition of ‘merchants and citizens’ requesting Parliament to hasten a settlement of a legal case between two merchants over tobacco duties.20PA, Main Pprs. [1641], ‘Petition of divers merchants and citizens of London’. At some point after the outbreak of civil war, and certainly before the summer of 1643, he joined the parliamentarian army. Three of his brothers were prominent managers of the ‘Sea Adventure’ to Ireland, planned in the autumn of 1642 as the delayed response to the rising in the country which had broken out a year earlier. There seems no convincing evidence, however, to support the statement that Robert Thomson was the rear-admiral of this expedition, or indeed, that he played any part in it.21A True Relation of the Passages of Gods Providence (1642), 4 (E.242.15); ‘George Thomson’, Oxford DNB; Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 553n. Thomson did, however, supply the expeditionary force in Munster with supplies between 1644 and 1646, in conjunction with his brothers and their trading partners.22CJ vi. 596b, 597a.

Intriguingly, George Thomson served as a captain in the army of Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, at Dartmouth in the early months of the civil war, the first noted connection between the Thomson family and what was later to be Robert Thomson’s constituency.23Devon RO, DD 62706. Either Thomson or his London namesake was required to seize the horses of a Roman Catholic recusant in January 1643, and either could also be the Captain Thomson who had been released from the king’s bench prison to take up his military commission, to the chagrin of its notorious keeper, Sir John Lenthall, brother of the Speaker, William Lenthall*.24CJ ii. 946a; But it was surely he who appeared before the Committee for Examinations in August 1643, with the rank of captain. He had heard the Hertfordshire royalist, Sir John Butler, speak against Parliament and the county militia in Watton-at-Stone, home to both Butler and the informant against him, Thomson.25CJ ii. 946a, iii. 85b; Impact of the First Civil War on Herts. ed. A. Thomson, 153. By March 1644, he had acquired the rank of major, and continued to be known as Major Thomson until his death nearly half a century after the end of the first civil war.26SP28/13/10. He was still in the military service in July 1648, when he was required by the committee of both Houses to make an arrest.27CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 188.

More important than Thomson’s rather slight military activity in the field was his membership of the committee of November 1645 which questioned those soldiers deserting the king and coming to London and over to Parliament.28A. and O. Thomson’s membership of this body, along with Independents such as Richard Salwey* and his own brother Maurice, was an indication of his political inclinations and his associations with the ‘new merchant’ group. There can be no question but that his family connections and sympathy towards the Independents secured him first a post in January 1649 among the commissioners for regulating the navy and customs, the so-called ‘regulators’, and then, a little over six months later, an appointment as a navy commissioner. Thomson was active in this last role by April 1649.29CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 96. The post of navy commissioner was both central to the management of the navy and extremely demanding, as the many references to it among the state papers make clear. As early as June 1649, Thomson had prepared the financial estimates for the navy for the forthcoming year and laid them before Parliament.30CJ vi. 230a. It is therefore inconceivable that in 1650 he could have been the Robert Thomson who commanded an ‘ill-contrived’ ship to the island of Assada, off Madagascar, and to other ports in Persia and East Africa.31Oxford DNB, ‘George Thomson’; The English Factories in India, 1646-1650 ed. W. Foster (Oxford, 1914), 318; 1651-1654 (Oxford, 1915), 11. Thomson’s career in the 1650s was more prosaic, and was spent inspecting ships, recommending officers for naval posts, and dealing with accounts and stores.32CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 431; 1653-4, p. 488; 1655-6, p. 421; 1656-7, p. 228. In Thomson’s particular case, he developed a particular expertise in victualling matters, often writing from the victualling office.33CSP Dom. 1656-7, pp. 539, 546; 1657-8, pp. 383, 389, 414, 423, 439; 1658-9, pp. 397, 408; 1659-60, p. 435. He transferred his loyalty readily to the Cromwellian protectorate, and from May 1654 served as a trustee for a hospital established for sick and wounded sailors.34CSP Dom. 1654, p. 485. Indeed, after 1660 it was said of him that had been for a time a prospective son-in-law to Oliver Cromwell* himself, but this seems inherently unlikely.35CSP Dom. 1665-6, p. 457.

While a sea-going sideline to this activity was out of the question, Thomson did participate in trade on his own account, his employment in the state’s service notwithstanding. Here, again, he was much in the shadow of his older brothers. He was involved in the affairs of the East India Company by August 1649, with trading interests in calico, linen, and saltpetre.36Cal. Ct. Mins. E. I. Co. 1644-9, pp. 342-3. His purchase of East India Company supplies at a number of Kentish ports showed how his own interests and those of the state could easily become blurred.37Cal. Ct. Mins. E. I. Co. 1650-4, p. 199. It was in the early 1650s, too, that Thomson’s involvement in Irish land allocations began. For his work in supplying the army in Ireland during the 1640s he was awarded land in Leinster worth £1,323 in 1651, and in 1654 acquired a share in the barony of Dunluce on the Antrim coast, which he quickly sold on.38CJ vi. 597a; CSP Ire. Adv. p. 171. While in office as a navy commissioner, Thomson became friendly with Edward Hopkins*. The two men had in common a connection with New England and Independency. In 1655, both were awarded a gratuity each of £150 for their naval work in despatching the fleet to sea.39CSP Dom. 1655, p. 200. They were also both shareholders in the East India Company, though no suspected family connection between the pair can be confirmed.40PROB11/243/261; Waters, Genealogical Gleanings, 66. When Hopkins drew up his will, he named Thomson, his ‘loving friend’, as a trustee in a bequest he was making to New England.41PROB11/263/523.

Edward Hopkins died in March 1657, and Thomson was quickly in touch with the Navy Office in his efforts to straighten out his late friend’s affairs.42CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 529. It was doubtless because of his position in the navy and because of his closeness to Hopkins, who had represented Dartmouth in the 1656 Parliament, that Thomson appeared as a candidate there in 1659. At the election, early in January, Thomson was returned for the first seat, ahead of Colonel John Clerke II. Clerke and Thomson were well known to each other, as colleagues in naval administration during the protectorate. Another indenture was returned to Parliament, however, in which Thomson’s name was substituted by that of John Hale*, a minor gentleman with an estate in the Dartmouth area. The double return was investigated by the privileges committee, but its recommendation was not accepted by the House, and before a resolution had been achieved, the Parliament was dissolved. Thomson’s political path may then have diverged from that of his brothers. Robert Thomson and Clerke were among the 23 named on 26 October by the council of army officers to be a committee of safety after the military had once again turned out the Rump.43Mercurius Politicus no. 592 (20-27 Oct. 1659), 727 (E.771.27). There seems no evidence that Thomson accepted the nomination; in May 1660 he was still writing from the victualling office, preferring to bury himself in navy business rather than to chance his arm in the riskier political situation.44CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 435, 443-4.

Thomson is not known to have entertained any further interest in a parliamentary career. At the Restoration of the king in 1660, he was obliged to leave his navy post, and to give up the modest parcels of bishops’ lands he had bought. He stayed in the London area. In 1667 he was living at Stoke Newington, which was probably his home during the 1650s.45London Mar. Lics. ed. Foster, 41. When Samuel Pepys† met him in 1663, he still hoped for liberty of conscience for Protestant dissenters, which in his view would secure the king more friends than adherence to the bishops would. Thomson also predicted mass migration to the colonies.46Pepys’s Diary, iv. 5. This did not happen, but Thomson himself maintained his friendships in Massachusetts, in 1663 meeting John Winthrop in London and arbitrating in a land dispute between Rhode Island and Connecticut.47C.M. Andrews, Colonial Period of American Hist.: The Settlements (New Haven, 1936), 44n; CSP Col. America and West Indies, 1661-8, p. 128; 1677-80, p. 403. He was being watched closely by the monarchical government throughout this period. A tailor who carried books from Thomson en route for New England was interrogated in 1663, and in 1666 he was informed against by a man who had heard talk that Thomson and his brother Maurice had helped the Dutch secure their naval victories over the English in the 2nd Dutch War. Thomson was said to have enjoyed an estate of over £2,000 a year in bishops’ lands, and to be ‘bold, full of malice, and embittered against government’. Some of this, including the tale that he was close to being Oliver’s son-in-law, is exaggeration, but the reports of his naval expertise and his dislike of the office but not the persons of bishops ring true.48CSP Dom. 1665-6, p. 457.

Thomson played a greater role in the affairs of the East India Company after 1660, serving at least five terms as deputy governor after 1670. His brother William*, by this time Sir William, cut an even greater figure in the company. In 1667, Robert Thomson was in negotiations at Breda with the Dutch East India Company when the Dutch navy attacked towns in the Thames, and was immediately called home.49Cal. Ct. Mins. E. I. Co. 1664-7, pp. 319-22, 341, 349-50, 354. It was doubtless his closeness to Dutch merchants that provoked government suspicion of him. The interest he had in 1649 in the trade in saltpetre, a key ingredient of gunpowder, seems to have been a lasting one. He was in correspondence with the governor of Massachusetts in the mid-1670s, expressing disappointment that they would not buy his saltpetre, and presciently predicting the conflict that became known as King Philip’s war.50[T. Hutchinson], Colln. of Original Pprs. relative to the Hist. of the Colony of Massachusetts-Bay (Boston, Mass. 1769), 448-50. He described himself to Governor John Leverett as ‘a lover of your country’.51[Hutchinson], Colln. of Original Pprs. 448-9. In 1674 he was supplying the East India Company with saltpetre.52Cal. Ct. Mins. E. I. Co. 1674-6. p. 97.

Thomson maintained his support for the cause of protestant dissenters, applying for licences for four meeting houses in the Islington area of London, where he lived, during the Indulgence of 1672.53CSP Dom. 1671-2, p. 479. He was at that time still involved in the society for propagating the gospel in New England, an interest which had begun no later than 1649, and which he had shared with Edward Hopkins.54[Hutchinson], Colln. of Original Pprs. 449-50; GL MS 8011, p. 35. Whatever his hopes of toleration under Charles II and James II, he must surely have welcomed the accession of William and Mary, as did his son-in-law, Sir William Asshurst†. Another of his sons-in-law was Sir Robert Duckenfield, son of Robert Duckenfield*. Thomson drew up his will in 1691, then apparently living at Stoke Newington, when he still had property in Guilford, Massachusetts, as well as in Suffolk and Kent. He died in 1694.55PROB11/418/508. Asshurst represented London as a whig in seven Parliaments from 1689; one of his sons, Thomson’s grandson, sat for Preston between 1698 and 1702.