Maurice Thomson

Maurice THOMSON was a wealthy Puritan merchant of good family.

family

He was the oldest son of Robert (more often seen as Ralph) Thomson (Thompson) & Elizabeth Harsnett (or Harfleet). He married first to Ellin Owen, and to Dorothy Vaux (daughter of John Vaux, of Pembrokeshire) as his second wife.

Children

Sons

• 1st son, died young
• John was b. c.1648, 2nd but 1st surv. s. of Maurice Thompson, merchant, of Bishopsgate Street, London and Worcester House, Mile End Green, Mdx. by his 2nd w. Dorothy, da. of John Vaux of Pemb. Sir John was long a prominent member of the House of Commons, and created, May 4, 1696, Baron Haversham, a title which expired with him.

Daughters (given in will order)

• Katherine Wittewrong, oldest daughter, deceased in 1676
• Mary Oldfield, deceased in 1676
• Martha Corsellis
• Elizabeth Alston

Will

(4) 1676, 9 May: The will of Maurice THOMSON, Haversham, Buckinghamshire, was proved. To be buried in Haversham chancel by my dear wife. To 100 poor silenced ministers. To Helena, Elizabeth and Arthur THOMSON, children of my dear son Sir John THOMSON, Baronet; to Katheline, Anne and Helena WITTEWRONG, children of my eldest daughter, Lady Katherine WITTEWRONG, late wife of Sir John WITTEWRONG, Knight and Baronet. My grandchildren William and Samuel OLDFIELD at 21; my brothers George, Sir William and Robert THOMSON to be trustees for daughter Martha CORSELLIS. Her son Nicholas CORSELLIS at 26. Daughter Elizabeth and her husband Joseph ALSTON, Esq., and their three sons, Joseph, Edward and Maurice ALSTON. To Lady Frances, wife of Sir John THOMSON. Property in England, Ireland, Barbadoes, Antego, St. Christophers, Virginia, the Carobee Islands, England and elsewhere.

notes

Maurice went to VA in 1620, lived there 4 years, and then returned to London. After establishing a fishery at Cape
Ann, he built a sugar mill in Barbados in 1641, and began trading between there and VA. It also states that he was 'an intimate' of Cromwell, and that he went to Holland to collect money for distressed Protestants in Ireland. ....

• (4) He was a supporter of CROMWELL's Government. Upon the Restoration his connection with CROMWELL was looked upon with suspicion.
• (4) 1660: He was pardoned by the king. 
• (4) 1661: He and his brother Robert were charged with giving information to the Dutch of the English Fleet.

'Maurice THOMPSON was always violent against kingly government, he was intimate with the Protector, sat at the High Court of Justice, and sentenced some of the beheaded lords ... he was once a poor fellow in Virginia, but got a great estate in the wars, mostly rent out of the bowels of the King's party.' Nothing came of the charge.

• (4) 1672: He bought property known as the 'Vinegar Yard, Grand Alley' in Stepney.

Maurice Thomson's War

From Anderson, Perry. "Maurice Thomson’s War." Rev. of Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict and London’s Overseas Traders 1550-1653 , by Robert Brenner and The Nature of the English Revolution, by John Morrill. London Review of Books 15.21 (1993): 13-17. 23 June 2015 <http://www.lrb.co.uk/v15/n21/perry-anderson/maurice-thomsons-war>.

The narrative is an analytic one. Rather than plotting the movements of individual actors, or the evolution of political factions, Brenner’s account reconstructs the trajectory of the social forces that led to the Civil War and its aftermath. It does so through the prism of one particular, hitherto largely unnoticed, but crucial player in the drama: that sector of the London merchant community which made its fortunes in the Americas, rather than in trade with Europe or Asia, under the early Stuarts. By focusing on this pivotal group, and its development within the wider constellation of power and property in the first half of the century, Brenner rearranges the whole look of the time. The upshot – the third achievement of the book – is the most powerful social explanation of the breakdown of the Caroline monarchy we now possess. Merchants and Revolution connects structure and event in a continuous tale of pointed historical meaning.

What is the gist of this account? Brenner shows that, contrary to received opinion, the expansion of English trade after the acute commercial crisis of the mid-16th century was not powered by the search for new markets to sustain staple cloth exports, but was essentially import-driven. The Merchant Adventurers who monopolised the cloth trade with Northern Europe continued to dominate the City establishment in Jacobean times, but were now increasingly challenged by the Levant and East India Companies, controlled by a quite distinct group of merchants, engaged in the import of Mediterranean or Oriental delicacies and luxury goods – wines, currants, silks, spices. By the end of the 1630s, the leaders of this combine were typically wealthier than the cloth traders, and had displaced them from hegemony in London’s municipal power system. The two groupings, however, still shared a common interest in tight political regulation of their respective trades – the legal exclusion of outsiders and monopolistic price-setting within them.

By contrast, in the Americas there emerged a very different kind of merchant, accumulating capital in a zone of free competition open to new entrants. Here the valuable commodities were tobacco, sugar or furs. The growth of these westward trades spawned a third commercial interest, whose rise is Brenner’s particular concern. Forming an intricate network, tied by bonds of kinship and partnership, the merchants of the New World were a breed apart as chancers and innovators. Brenner picks out as the central figure among them one Maurice Thomson. His career makes an amazing story.

Born in the Home Counties about 1600, the eldest of five brothers, Thomson emigrated to Virginia in his teens, where he soon became a ship’s captain, acquired land, and entered the tobacco trade. Returning to London in his mid-twenties, he pioneered slave plantations in the Caribbean, and within a decade had become the major tobacco merchant in the Atlantic, with sidelines in New England provisioning and fisheries. Supply contracts for colonial ventures off Honduras, prospecting for silver in Panama, and raids on Venezuela followed. By the 1640s, Thomson and his associates were planting Barbados with sugar, and stocking it with slaves from West Africa. Soon they were embarking on another huge arc of operations, breaking into the chasses gardées of the Old World, with voyages to the Guinea Coast and then schemes for bases in Madagascar and the Celebes. On the eve of the Civil War, these interlopers were second only in wealth to the Levant-East Indies combine itself.

the business of slavery

From The Business of Slavery - Chapter 9

When the Virginia Company was dissolved in 1624, William Tucker and Maurice Thomson, partners and brothers-in-law, and were leading Virginia development. Another brother-in-law of Tucker was William Felgate. By 1626, Thomson had returned to London to organise trade for Virginia, which suggests he had earlier lived in Virginia. Given his timing, one suspects that Thomson had astutely gauged the extent to which Puritan ideology would continue to remain an ally of the production system developing in Virginia.

It is still not entirely clear that either Sir Nathaniel Rich or the powerful and puritan second earl of Warwick were fully involved in all the schemes in which Maurice Thomson became involved, yet, the schemes had a seamlessness of interest and push about them which suggests a continued high-level and successful inspiration, presumably from Warwick.

Endnote: Further notes on the trading activities of Maurice Thomson/Thompson:

By 1634 Thomson's factor in Virginia was one Thomas Stegg. For 1632-1633, Thomson dealt with William Tucker and Thomas Stone in a syndicate given a right to market the entire Virginian tobacco crop. From 1636-1640, Thomson was in partnership with Roger Limbrey in the St. Kitts tobacco trade. To the 1640s, Thomson was in trade to Massachusetts Bay with Nicholas Trerice (sic) and Joshua Foote (sic). By 1637-1638, in partnership with the Virginia tobacco and provision trade with William Harris, Thomas Deacon and William Tucker.

William Tucker had arrived in Virginia in 1610 aged 21. Born then 1589, he later married a sister of Maurice Thomson, Mary. Tucker was originally a sea captain, but by 1616 he was active with several Londoners in founding a Virginia plantation, one being Elias Roberts, whose son Elias married Dinah Thomson, another sister of Maurice. Another participant was Ralph Hamor (sic), who became a Virginia magistrate and politician. By 1619 Tucker had become a major figure in Virginia by 1621. Tucker and Ralph Hamor went to London to see Parliament for Virginia's case in opposing the tobacco contract proposed by Sir Thomas Roe and others.

On Roe's career: Joyce Lorimer, (Ed.), Amazon, p. 37, p. 149 on his visit to Mogul India.

Later Tucker went off fighting Indians; he lived at Kecoughtan, or, Elizabeth City. By 1625, Tucker was one of only 15 men in Virginia who had ten or more servants. By 1626 Tucker had been appointed to the Virginia Council.

About 1638, Thomson was in partnership in trade to an unnamed area with William Tucker, George Thomson and James Stone. By 1638-1641, Thomas was involved in Capt. Jackson's raiding voyage to the Spanish West Indies with William Pennoyer, Thomas Frere and possibly William Tucker. By 1638, Thomson was involved in an attempted interloping voyage to Guinea with Oliver Cloberry, Oliver Reed and George Lewine. By 1638-1641, Thomson was involved in Capt. Jackson's raiding voyage to Spanish West Indies with William Pennoyer, Thomas Frere and possibly William Tucker.

Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, p. 158 has it that Capt. William Jackson was once an apprentice of William Tucker in the London Clothworkers Company.

By 1638, Thomson was involved with the Providence Island Company which had plans to use a silver mine in the Bay of Darien. Thomson in the late 1630s was also linked to the Anglo-Dutch-American trader, Nicholas Corsellis, and with a lead mine in Cardigan, Wales, the Mines Royal.

Nicholas Corsellis a Virginia trader was son of Nicholas Corsellis Senior and married a sister of Maurice Thomson. Also, Sir Thomas Cambell of Clay Hall married a Miss Corsellis. Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, pp. 89-90, p. 176. One does not however read of commercial links between Maurice Thomson and these Cambells. Burke's Extinct Baronetcies, pp. 98ff.

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• http://www.thepeerage.com/p11770.htm#i117697
• http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=adgedge&i...

Ancestry

From Abstracts of the Proceedings of the Virginia Company of London: Virginia Historical Society, 1888 - Virginia.  Page 183

The first of this family recorded was Robert Thompson, "that com out of ye North," married and had issue: 

• Maurice, of Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, who married Katharine, daughter of Harvay, and had issue: 
  • Ralph Thompson, of Walton, Hertfordshire, living in 1634, married Elizabeth, daughter of John Harsnett, and had issue: 
    • i. Maurice (of the text); 
    • ii Colonel George, as above, born 1603, came to Virginia in 1623, Burgess in 1629, and served gallantly the same year against the Indians; 
    • iii. Sir William, Governor of the East India Company in the reign of Charles II; 
    • iv. Paul, born 1610, and came to Virginia in 1628; 
    • v. Major Robert, who owned considerable property in New as well as Old England;
    • vi. Elizabeth, married Stokes, Rector of Walton. 

Captain William Tucker, of Elizabeth City county, Virginia, married Mary Thompson, his sister. In 1636 William Tucker, Maurice Thompson, George Thompson, and others, had a joint grant of land. In 1624 William Tucker had a grant in Elizabeth City, and among the "head rights" were his wife's brothers, George, Paul and William Thompson.

Also see:

• "Pedigree of Thompson, Baron Haversham" The history and antiquities of the county of Buckingham, Volume 4. By George Lipscomb. Page 188

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• Updated from RootsWeb's WorldConnect via father Ralphe Thompson by SmartCopy: Jun 20 2015, 19:49:10 UTC
• Updated from MyHeritage Family Trees by SmartCopy: Jun 20 2015, 20:03:16 UTC
• Updated from MyHeritage Family Trees by SmartCopy: Jun 20 2015, 20:05:18 UTC
• Sugar and Slavery: An Economic History of the British West Indies, 1623-1775 By Richard B. Sheridan. Page 88
• http://www.thepeerage.com/p11770.htm#i117697
• OLDFIELD (OWFIELD), William (1623-64), of Elsham, Lincs. m. (1) 13 Nov. 1655, Mary, da. of Maurice Thomson, merchant, of Mile End Green, Mdx., 2s.;
• http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/THOMPSON/2000-12/0976...