Papers relating to Thomas Thompson and family

This small collection includes handwritten notes and letters relating to various Thompson family members including Thomas Thompson, his father Francis Thompson, his son Thomas Perronet Thompson and his daughter-in-law Philothea Thompson. There is also an account of the life of John Vincent Thompson, poems written on the death of Captain Charles William Thompson, two pedigrees of the Perronet-Briggs-Thompson family and a manuscript copy of the will of Thomas Thompson.

Thomas Perronet Thompson was born in Kingston upon Hull on 15 March 1783. His father, Thomas Thompson, was working in the mercantile house of William Wilberforce (grandfather of the anti-slavery campaigner) when his eldest son was born. His father had a very successful career as a merchant and banker and was able to build, from the proceeds, a vast castellated gothic Georgian house, known locally as 'Cottingham castle'. Thomas Thompson entered parliament in 1807 as Tory MP for Midhurst in Sussex and worked closely with William Wilberforce (the younger) to get the African slave trade banned by act of parliament later that year.

The Thompson family was Methodist. T. P. Thompson's mother, Philothea Perronet Thompson nee Briggs had received letters from John Wesley as a child because both her parents, William Briggs and Elizabeth Briggs nee Perronet, and her maternal grandfather, Vincent Perronet, were friendly with John Wesley. Thomas Thompson, himself a Methodist preacher, was advised by Wesley to marry Philothea (Johnson, pp.10-11).

For more biographical details of Thomas Perronet Thompson, please see U DTH.

Access will be granted to any accredited reader

Donated by Arthur Robinson (great great great grandson of Thomas Perronet Thompson)

Papers of Thomas Perronet Thompson [U DTH]