Samuel Nicholson (merchant)

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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[edit]

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[edit]

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][self-published source?]

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[edit]

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[edit]

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[edit]

  1. ^ a b c d 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. Vol. 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. ^ a b 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. Oxford: Oxford Historical Society. p. 161. Retrieved 30 September 2017 – via Internet Archive.
  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. ^ a b 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. ^ a b 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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