Samuel Nicholson (merchant)

Samuel Nicholson (1738–1827) was a London wholesale haberdasher, known as a Unitarian and associate of radicals. He is remembered for his social connections with William Wordsworth in the early 1790s.

Earlier life

Nicholson was born on 4 September 1738, the son of George Nicholson, and grandson of the nonconformist minister George Nicholson (1636–1690) of Kirkoswald, Cumberland.[1][2] He was in business in London as a wholesale haberdasher, in Cateaton Street.[3] His warehouse was adjacent to his home.[4]

In the 1780s, Nicholson was a member of the Society for Constitutional Information.[5]

Relationship with Wordsworth

Wordsworth met Nicholson through a family connection, Elizabeth Threlkeld, who had been Dorothy Wordsworth's foster mother (1778–1787) in Halifax, Yorkshire.[6][7] Elizabeth married William Rawson in 1791; they were both Unitarians. They moved to London from Halifax, knew Nicholson, and introduced William to him.[8]

The period when Wordsworth dined regularly with Nicholson has tentatively been placed in spring of 1793.[9] They went together to hear Joseph Fawcett preach.[5] Nicholas Roe has suggested that Wordsworth's further engagement with radical English reformers may trace back to his connection with Nicholson.[10] It has been inferred, by Roe, that Nicholson probably introduced Wordsworth to Joseph Johnson the publisher.[11] Keay places Wordsworth's own radical beliefs in the context of a period 1793–5 and contact with the views and milieu of the Society of Constitutional Information, to which Johnson also belonged: the Norman Yoke, and the Tory Bolingbroke's arguments on capital and corruption.[12]

Nicholson, in any case, is credited with Wordsworth's introduction into the London group of radical dissenters, including William Godwin. They played a significant part in his thinking, until the middle of 1795.[13] "Mr Nicholson" was referenced in the notes to The Excursion.[14][15]

Later life

Nicholson was a founding partner of the Glasgow Bank in 1809.[16] He acted as trustee of Dr Williams's Library from 1815 to 1827.[17] He died on 26 October 1827, at Ham Common.[18] In the last year of his life he had donated to the orphan school on City Road.[19]

Family

Nicholson married Mary Haydon.[1] Their eldest daughter Caroline married in 1804 Thomas Hockin Kingdon, Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford.[20] Harriet, the fourth daughter, married John Vowler of Parnacott in 1817.[21]

The only son of the marriage was George Thomas Nicholson.[1] He studied at Manchester Academy from 1803 to 1805.[22] In 1806 he matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating B.A. in 1809. That year he entered the Inner Temple.[23] He became a barrister,[22] and was President of the National Life Assurance Society; it was founded in 1829, was a mutual insurance company from 1847, and merged with the Mutual Life Assurance Society in 1896 to form The National Mutual Life Assurance Society.[24][25]

Waverley Abbey House, 1850 engraving

Later in life Nicholson was owner of Waverley Abbey, which he bought from John Poulett Thomson.[1] It had been damaged by fire in 1833, and he rebuilt it.[26] He was High Sheriff of Surrey in 1833,[27] and was elected a Fellow of the Geological Society in 1835.[28]

Nicholson married Anne Elizabeth Smith, daughter of William Smith.[29] Of their children, Marianne, the elder daughter, married Douglas Strutt Galton in 1851.[30][31] Laura Maria, the younger daughter, married in 1848 John Bonham Carter.[32]

The sons were:

Notes
  1. Burke, Sir Bernard (1871). A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain & Ireland. Harrison. p. 989. Retrieved 30 September 2017.
  2. Transactions of the Cumberland & Westmorland Antiquarian & Archaeological Society. 83. The Society. 1983. p. 73.
  3. Wordsworth, Dorothy (16 May 2002). The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals. Oxford University Press, UK. p. 190. ISBN 9780192840622. Retrieved 30 September 2017.
  4. Worthen, John (28 January 2014). The Life of William Wordsworth: A Critical Biography. Wiley. p. 154. ISBN 9781118604922. Retrieved 30 September 2017.
  5. Gravil, Richard; Robinson, Daniel (22 January 2015). The Oxford Handbook of William Wordsworth. OUP Oxford. p. 168. ISBN 9780191019654. Retrieved 30 September 2017.
  6. Curtis, Jared (2011). The Fenwick Notes of William Wordsworth. Lulu.com. p. 375. ISBN 9781847600752. Retrieved 30 September 2017.
  7. Healey, Nicola (5 April 2012). Dorothy Wordsworth and Hartley Coleridge: The Poetics of Relationship. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 129. ISBN 9780230277724. Retrieved 30 September 2017.
  8. Jones, Rodney (29 May 2014). The Pedestrian, Wordsworth. Lulu.com. p. 142. ISBN 9781291875287. Retrieved 30 September 2017.
  9. Pinion, F. B. (18 June 1988). Wordsworth Chronology. Palgrave Macmillan UK. p. 15. ISBN 9781349078899. Retrieved 30 September 2017.
  10. Bailey, Quentin (2011). Wordsworth's Vagrants: Police, Prisons, and Poetry in the 1790s. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p. 40. ISBN 9781409427056. Retrieved 30 September 2017.
  11. Wu, Duncan (29 January 1993). Wordsworth's Reading 1770-1799. Cambridge University Press. p. 3. ISBN 9780521416009. Retrieved 30 September 2017.
  12. Keay, M. (26 September 2001). William Wordsworth's Golden Age Theories During the Industrial Revolution. Palgrave Macmillan UK. p. 185. ISBN 9781403919564. Retrieved 30 September 2017.
  13. Gill, Stephen. "Wordsworth, William". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/29973. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  14. Chard, Leslie F. (1 January 1972). Dissenting Republican: Wordsworth's early life and thought in their political context. De Gruyter. p. 110. ISBN 9783111391618. Retrieved 30 September 2017.
  15. Wordsworth, Christopher (25 September 2014). Memoirs of William Wordsworth. Cambridge University Press. p. 34. ISBN 9781108075749. Retrieved 30 September 2017.
  16. Banking in Glasgow during the olden time. By G. 1862. p. 25.
  17. Library, Dr. Williams's; Jones, Stephen Kay (1917). A Short Account of the Charity & Library Established Under the Will of the Late Rev. Daniel Williams. Elsom and Company. p. 136.
  18. Urban, Sylvanus (1827). The Gentlemen's Magazine and Historical Chronicle. From July to December, 1827. p. 476. Retrieved 30 September 2017.
  19. The Congregational magazine [formerly The London Christian instructor]. 1836. p. 200.
  20. Boase, Charles William (1894). Registrum Collegii exoniensis. Register of the rectors, fellows, and other members on the foundation of Exeter college, Oxford. With a history of the college and illustrative documents. Internet Archive. Oxford: Oxford Historical Society. p. 161. Retrieved 30 September 2017.
  21. Burke, John (1846). A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain & Ireland: M to Z. Henry Colburn. p. 1481. Retrieved 30 September 2017.
  22. Oxford City, Manchester Coll (1868). Roll of students entered at the Manchester academy, 1786–1803; Manchester college, York, 1803–1840; Manchester new college, Manchester, 1840–1853; Manchester new college, London, 1853–1867. p. 1826.
  23. "Nicholson, George Thomas (NCL805GT)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
  24. The British Imperial Calendar, on General Register of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and Its Colonies (etc.). Arthur Varenham. 1849. p. 333.
  25. ReAssure, Principles and Practices of Financial Management (PDF) at p.4.
  26. Stutchbury, Howard Edward (1967). The Architecture of Colen Campbell. Manchester University Press. pp. 150 note 32. Retrieved 1 October 2017.
  27. The New Monthly Magazine. 1833. p. 536.
  28. Proceedings of the Geological Society of London. 1838. p. 240.
  29. Stearn, Roger T. "Nicholson, Sir Lothian". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/20144. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  30. Cook, Sir Edward Tyas (1913). The Life of Florence Nightingale. Library of Alexandria. p. 43. ISBN 9781465539540. Retrieved 1 October 2017.
  31. Thom's Directory of Ireland. 1874. p. 360.
  32. "Spectator Archive". The Spectator. 22 July 1848. p. 20. Retrieved 30 September 2017.
  33. "Nicholson, Samuel (NCL834S)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
  34. The Gentleman's Magazine. A. Dodd and A. Smith. 1849. p. 314.
  35. "Nicholson, George Henry (NCL837GH)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
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