THOMSON, George (1607-91), of St Olave, Southwark, and Lee, Blackheath, Kent.

Thomson was one of five brothers born into a minor Hertfordshire gentry family, who all from an early age engaged in trade. Successful commercial enterprise and very wide geographical contacts equipped them well for public service. Application to business and genuine talent made them valuable to successive governments to the extent that they could sometimes live down radical opinions at odds with the establishment. Family solidarity played an important part in nurturing and sustaining their political prominence.

Colonial and commercial apprenticeship

In 1621 Thomson’s eldest brother, Maurice, still only about 17 but already four years in the colony, obtained 150 acres in Virginia as a new planter, on the promise of transporting George and one other out of England as settlers.42Nugent, Cavaliers and Pioneers, i. 4. However, when a similarly youthful George arrived in 1623 with his eldest sister Mary and two even younger brothers Paul and William Thomson*, it was apparently at the expense of the man who became his brother-in-law, Captain William Tucker of Elizabeth City.43Hotten, Original Lists, 185, 244; E.D. Neill, Virginia Carolorum (1886), 40; Nugent, Cavaliers and Pioneers, i. 5; Encyclopedia of Virginia Biog. 192. Having run his own plantation, by 1628 he was an officer in the local militia and was probably the Lieutenant Thomson who sat in the house of burgesses at Jamestown from 16 October 1629.44Encyclopedia of Virginia Biog. 192; Neill, Virginia Carolorum, 74.

None of the family remained permanently in America: George was in Deal, Kent, in October 1631 when he addressed a pious but ardent love-letter to a Mistress Sparle, and the 1633 visitation of London described the Thomsons and Tucker as merchants of the City.45Add. 61873, f. 72; Vis. London (Harl. Soc. xvii), 282. But they continued to trade with Virginia, where they briefly held a monopoly to market the tobacco crop – over 10,000 pounds of the crop came into London in the early 1630s – and drew accusations of engrossment owing to their dominant role in supplying provisions, while at the same time developing far-flung interests elsewhere.46‘Maurice Thomson,’, Oxford DNB; H.B. Hoff, English Origins of American Colonists (1991), 167; N. Currer-Briggs, Virginian Settlers and English Adventurers (1969), 647-8; Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 183. With regular partner Jeremy or Jeremiah Blackman, in 1631 George Thomson undertook shipping services to Kent Island in Chesapeake Bay, Maryland; four years later he was involved in the foundation of the colony on Montserrat in the Caribbean.47Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 185–6. The latter also entailed dealing in tobacco, the trade probably envisaged when in February 1637 a syndicate of London merchants including George and Maurice Thomson, Tucker and Blackman secured the enormous grant of 8,000 acres in Berkeley county, Virginia; both enterprises relied on the transportation of slaves.48Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 146. While Maurice also engaged in the East India trade, George diversified into selling silver wire, for which he and others were prosecuted later in 1637.49SP16/367, f. 131. By 1640 Maurice was on the way to a substantial fortune; Paul died in 1637 leaving an estate in Northamptonshire; even if George’s personal gains were more modest – as they are certainly harder to pin down – he unquestionably advanced with his siblings.50PROB11/175/414.

Political activism and military service, 1640-4

Their colonial dealings placed the Thomsons firmly in the orbit of Robert Rich, 2nd earl of Warwick, and his associates in business and in opposition to the personal rule of Charles I. The brothers and Tucker were among the majority of major colonial merchants who at the beginning of the 1640s were, like the earl, supporters of an anti-Spanish offensive in the West Indies unpopular at court.51Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 326. In September 1640 Maurice headed a delegation of Londoners which went to York, where the king had established a summer base from which to campaign against invading Scots, to present him with a petition seeking the calling of a Parliament.52‘Maurice Thomson’, Oxford DNB. On 23 December 1641 George signed a petition objecting to the royal appointment of Colonel Thomas Lunsford as lieutenant of the Tower of London, seen by many as a signal that the king meant to seize control of his increasingly recalcitrant capital and thus sidestep Parliament.53LJ iv. 487a-b; ‘Thomas Lunsford’, Oxford DNB. With younger brother William, by now a freeman of the Salters’ Company, Maurice and George belonged to a phalanx of traders often dubbed ‘colonial interloping merchants’ who, in contrast to the more conservative established City traders, dominated the mass lobbying against the government in the winter of 1641-2 which helped Parliament defy the crown.54Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 364-5, 397. An indication that political action also had a religious aspect was given when, with Tucker, they signed a petition on 22 March 1642 for the appointment as lecturer at St Dunstan-in-the-East, London, of John Simpson, son of a local gentleman; it was sanctioned by the Commons and Simpson ‘soon became notorious as one of the leading Antinomian preachers in the City’.55‘John Simpson’, Oxford DNB; Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 414. On 16 June the three Thomson brothers were among the commissioners named under the act for an additional sea adventure to Ireland, designed by Parliament to prosecute more decisively the campaign against confederate rebels.56LJ v. 144a-b; Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 406-7. George paid a contribution of £500 in full by 7 July and more was to follow.57SP63/292, ff. 180, 184.

As early as 1628 Maurice had been a member of the Honourable Artillery Company, a recruiting ground for many parliamentarian soldiers, but with the advent of war he concentrated on military supplies and a probably supervisory role in the Tower Hamlets militia, leaving his brothers to take to the field.58‘Maurice Thomson’, Oxford DNB; SP28/1b/397, 398; Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 533. George was commissioned on 17 July 1642 as captain of a troop of cavalry; William and their youngest brother, Robert*, were officers respectively in the regiments, raised from London trained bands, of Colonel George Langham and Colonel Thomas Atkin*; all were in time promoted.59SP28/9/354; SP28/5/187; L. Nagel, ‘The struggle for London’s militia’, in London and the Civil War ed. S. Porter (1996), 81; Archaeologia lii. pt. i. 134; W. Emberton, Skippon’s Brave Boys (1984), 32. George Thomson was serving in Dartmouth, Devon, when on 9 December he signed an account of the (temporary) victory at Plymouth, read in Parliament four days later.60A True Relation of a Great and Happy Victory (1642, E.130.25).

Within a year Thomson had been promoted and was in sufficiently secure command of his troops to absent himself in London. He might have been the Colonel Thomson present at the court martial of Nathaniel Fiennes I*.61Add. 34253, ff. 17-18v; W. Prynne, A True and Full Relation (1644), 2 (E.255.1). By the beginning of 1644 he was in Southwark, where his subordinate, Thomas Roe, addressed a letter on 4 January promising to do his best to observe the orders Thomson had sent, and describing a narrow escape the regiment had had from a royalist ambush in Wiltshire.62Add. 46500, f. 98. On 4 March Colonel Thomson was summoned to attend the Committee of Both Kingdoms (CBK) to inform its investigations of troublesome London militia regiments, but by the 29th he was back serving under Sir William Waller* in Hampshire.63CSP Dom. 1644, p. 33. However, in the preliminary stages of the battle of Cheriton, conducted at Bramdean Heath, he lost a leg, according to at least one commentator ‘shot off by a cannon bullet’.64Sanderson, Compleat history, 697. The engagement proved a decisive victory for Parliament and the story reached London that Thomson was ‘so far from being discouraged that he said he had another leg to lose for Jesus Christ’.65Juxon Jnl. 49-50.

Nonetheless, although Thomson was fitted with a wooden replacement and was to live with it for another 46 years, his need for recuperation and the general success of the day seems to have been the signal for his regiment to join others raised from the trained bands in abandoning their posts, intending to return to London ‘against order’. The CBK, which on 7 April sought to find the wounded colonel employment with the Western Association, a few days later had to address the challenging task of enticing his troops ‘to return back to Sir William Waller, for if such considerable forces shall leave [Waller], they do what lies in their power to enforce him to follow, and thereby bring the enemy home to our own doors’.66SP21/18, f. 59; CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 107-8, 136, 153; K. Roberts, ‘Citizen Soldiers’, in S. Porter, London and the Civil War (Basingstoke, 1996), 107-8. Their desertion was temporary and there was no rift between Thomson and Waller: the latter wrote to the former on 23 May that he was ‘very glad to hear you are in so good a way of recovery’, reassuring him that he would ‘take care of your regiment as if you were here yourself’ and signing himself ‘your affectionate loving friend’.67Add. 46500, f. 96. Whether Thomson resumed active service is unclear – his ability to ride a horse, for instance, being significantly affected by the (unknown) extent of his amputation – but, as events were to prove, he retained an influence over the militias in and around London.

Election for Southwark

Evidence for where exactly in London Thomson had been living since his return from America is lacking, as is information on his family circumstances, and this obscures the trajectory of his connection with Southwark. His first wife Elizabeth, whose identity is uncertain – slightly different details being recorded by the heralds in 1633 and 1663 – was alive at the earlier date, but died within about a decade. Sometime between August 1640 and early 1645 – or late 1643, considering the letter previously mentioned – Thomson married another Elizabeth, widow of Southwark brewer and colonial investor Richard Tuffnayle*. This Elizabeth already had seven children from two marriages, but in their name she had property interests at Clapham in Surrey, Highgate and Islington in Middlesex, and Deptford in Kent, as well as in the City, and on her own account was an investor in the Irish venture.68E.B. Tufnell, Fam. of Tuffnell (1924), 9; F.W. Steer, Samuel Tufnell of Langleys (1960), 2-3; St Olave, Southwark par. reg.; PROB11/184/6 (Richard Tuffnayle); CSP Ire. Adv. 1642-59, pp. 107, 224, 344. She was also a member of the godly community around Francis Taylor, vicar of Clapham, so the match probably served to consolidate the Thomsons’ commercial and religious networks, especially south of the Thames.69PROB/11/164/768 (William Humfres); F. Taylor, Selfe-satisfaction occasionally taught the citizens (1633), dedication. Like Maurice’s son and namesake in 1641, George’s two daughters and son were baptized at St Margaret, Lee, near Blackheath on the Kent-Surrey border (respectively Aug. 1645, June 1648 and January 1650 or 1651), where both brothers acquired long-term residences.70St Margaret, Lee, Kent par. reg.

In 1645 Thomson followed in the footsteps of his wife’s previous husband in standing for Parliament for Southwark. The by-election, called on 21 August 1645 because of the death of John White II*, scourge of ‘scandalous’ ministers, and the delinquency of Edward Bagshawe*, was an important one given the high profile of the late Members and, even more, Southwark’s notoriously radical and unruly propensities and its strategic importance for the defence of London.71CJ iv. 249a. The return in September of Thomson, together with one of his brother Maurice’s business partners, George Snellinge*, a Southwark distiller who was a powerful figure in the local militia, represented an assertion of that independent tradition. Although both were named the same month to the Southwark classis for St Olave’s parish, they were almost certainly backed by pro-army Independents as potential counter-weights to the political Presbyterians who dominated the City militias.72LJ vii. 616.

At least one of Thomson’s preoccupations was clear before his arrival in the House. Before 6 August, when the Lords reminded the Commons of it, he had submitted a petition for his arrears – the reminder itself an indication of likely backers in the Upper House.73CJ iv. 233a. Those supporters recommended its acceptance after the Lower House had undertaken to consider it along with others from reduced officers, by a committee of which Snellinge was a member (29, 30 Sept.).74CJ iv. 293b, 294b, 295a. Given Thomson’s disability, it was perhaps a test case.

Member for Southwark, 1645-8

Like Snellinge, in an autumn when a novel national army was being hotly contested in the chamber, Thomson was rapidly propelled into the thick of raising money and troops. His first appointment, on 7 October, was to the committee to borrow £40,000 for the army of Sir Thomas Fairfax* from a ‘voluntary loan of assessments’ to be sought in the London area.75CJ iv. 299a. On the 16th he was sent with Snellinge and Colonel John Venn* (who had been instrumental in promoting an election in Southwark) to cajole the reluctant London militia into executing orders to recruit soldiers for the prospective New Model.76CJ iv. 311b. His importance in negotiating this contentious area was seen in December, when, having been among the first named to a committee to confer with the common council about the City militia, he was ordered to bring in an ordinance extending the militia’s power to search for ill-affected persons within the lines of communication (4, 6 Dec.).77CJ iv. 364b, 367a.

Meanwhile, he was added to the committee of privileges (16 Oct.), took the Covenant in company with Snellinge and other new Members (29 Oct.) and, with the royalist cause in dramatic retreat, joined five seasoned colleagues (including Sir Arthur Hesilrige* and Nathaniel Fiennes I*), all notable for their robust commitment to winning the war, in drafting a declaration relating to those contemplating surrender (22 Oct).78CJ iv. 311a, 318a, 326a, His family’s continuing commercial interest in the conduct of the war in Ireland and investment in land there – not to speak of Maurice’s role as chairman of the committee for contributions for Ireland – lies behind George’s inclusion on a deputation of three to encourage the common council to release money from the weekly assessments for the raising of forces to send to Munster (11 Oct.); a proposal of his was referred to a sub-committee by the Committee for Irish Affairs* on the 30th.79CJ iv. 304b; CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 417; SP63/292, f. 178. When the Common Council refused to comply and the Commons heard a report of an investigation by the Committee of Accounts* into the fulfilment of contracts with another supplier for the campaign, Thomson was again appointed to the relevant committees (8, 13 Dec.).80CJ iv. 368b, 376a. Thereafter his periodic appearances in the Journal in connection with Irish matters may hide a greater involvement than initially meets the eye. With William Wheler*, Robert Reynolds*, Snellinge and others he was named to consider a petition from Irish Protestant refugees (20 Apr. 1646); he was part of a deputation sent to seek a further advance of money for Ireland from the treasury at Weavers’ Hall (30 July); and he brought in an ordinance for loans for expenses in Ireland charged on the receipts of the excise (14 Aug. 1647).81CJ iv. 516b, 629b; v. 275a. Although not recorded as a member of the Committee for Irish Affairs, he was referred to as holding reports relating to its business (8 Mar. 1648).82CJ v. 499b.

In the spring of 1646 Thomson was a member of key committees related to the prosecution of the war at home, including those for funding forces in the Thames valley and Hampshire to support the final onslaught on royalist Oxford and its outlying garrisons (3 Mar.), to maximise excise revenues (11 Mar.), and for discovering which Members also held offices and places of profit and might thus fall foul of the Self-Denying Ordinance (16 Mar.).83CJ iv. 461a, 472b, 477a. In the last case he was evidently among those who thought the ordinance was a price worth paying to secure an effective military force. In the context of negotiations over the Independent-sponsored Newcastle Propositions, which proffered stiff peace terms to the king, Thomson was one of seven Members appointed to bring in an ordinance for martial law to quell pro-royalist demonstrations in London (26 Mar.).84CJ iv. 490a. The same day he may be numbered among the hard-line majority of the committee chosen to join with the Lords to treat with the Scottish commissioners.85CJ iv. 491a.

As tension increased with the king’s flight from Oxford to take refuge with the Scottish army at Newark, Thomson was on committees to consider intelligence of potentially seditious activity, on the second occasion supplied by himself (1, 26 May); Southwark, with its renowned confluence of persons wishing to escape close surveillance, was no doubt a prime place for gathering it.86CJ iv. 529a, 555b. When, in the aftermath of Charles’s command to his supporters to lay down their arms, Presbyterian-inclined City authorities presented a remonstrance to Parliament seeking an expeditious peace, Thomson revealed starkly the fear of Independents that Charles would deal separately with the City and cut the ground from underneath Parliament’s feet. A report from Alderman Isaac Penington* (of the radical minority and the alderman of the Southwark ward of Bridge Without) that the lord mayor had refused to hand over a communication from the king, ‘and not to open it, in regard it came from the enemy’, provoked Thomson to say that ‘if such a thing had been done by the lord mayor a year backwards [i.e. presumably, at a more critical point in the conduct of war] he would have given his vote to have him sent for to the House, and then to the Tower, and last to Tyburn’. Some MPs were outraged, according to diarist Thomas Juxon, but others seconded his comment, ‘and it was judged only a piece of zeal as a true Englishman’.87Juxon Jnl. 124.

Thomson’s stance on the committee which subsequently investigated the ‘framers of the City Remonstrance and such as labour to disaffect people and City from Parliament’ may easily be imagined (11 July).88CJ iv. 615b. Appointed to committees to curb publications attacking the Scots (14 Aug.) and to raise money to pay off their army (21 Aug.), he was clearly among those who at this juncture wished them to depart swiftly, leaving Parliament to deal with the king.89CJ iv. 644b, 650b.

The 21 August nomination involved temporary membership of the Committee for Compounding*, of which his brother William was already a member.90‘Committee for Compounding’. Thomson’s business experience had already been harnessed on committees related to delinquents’ debts and lands (6 July, 6 Aug.) and was to be so here and on the CC before he was finally added to the latter on a regular basis in February 1647.91CJ iv. 603a, 641b; v. 74a, 78a; SP23/3, pp. 219-361; SP23/4, pp. 1, 8, 13. Beyond a committee appointment relating to a detail of the sale of episcopal lands (19 Aug. 1647), there is no sign in the Journal that he was regularly associated with fining royalists or confiscating their property, but he attended the CC often from February to May 1647 and ten times between February and July 1648; absent from August to October, he reappeared in November.92CJ v. 278b; SP23/4, ff. 19-97; SP23/4, ff. 166-212; SP23/5, ff. 19-28. Whether this uneven pattern reflected his wider priorities or the shifting political context is unclear; it may have been driven by his fluctuating perceptions of the need or efficacy of raising money by this means. In August he was added to a committee apparently specifically to help regulate abuses in sequestrations, and in November received a rare nomination to prepare an ordinance for sequestering the estates of new delinquents in Essex.93CJ v. 662b; vi. 67a. Meanwhile, he was added in October 1647 to a committee managing revenue assigned to Charles Louis, elector palatine, but it was not until 5 January 1648 that he was added – once again with Snellinge – to the committee for excise, of which he was later to be an important member.94CJ v. 346a, 416b; LJ ix. 639b. The same month he was named to consider an ordinance for the equal rating of counties for assessment purposes.95CJ v. 434a.

In just over three years between his election to Parliament and Pride’s Purge, Thomson averaged fewer than two committee appointments a month, despite only two prolonged absences from the Journal (15 Oct. 1646-13 Jan. 1647; 29 Aug.-1 Nov. 1648). Although, as will be seen, he made reports, he was never a teller; on two out of three occasions when he took messages to the Lords, they had some connection to Southwark business. Like other Members, committees on individual petitions occasionally came his way, as did miscellaneous other matters like compensation to those whose incomes were affected by the abolition of the court of wards (20 May 1646).96CJ iv. 552a, 658b, 662a; v. 327b. Much less than might be anticipated was he on committees concerned with trade – exceptions being those dealing with petitions from adventurers to Barbados and the Caribbean relating to delinquents in office there (4 Mar. 1647) and from the Weavers’ Company, where he was listed first (27 May), and the punishment of soap monopolist Sir Henry Compton (14 Dec.).97CJ v. 106a, 187a, 383a.

Thomson’s social agenda can only be glimpsed: having been nominated first to a committee chaired by Miles Corbett* to prepare an ordinance to relieve the poor and punish vagrants (23 Nov.), it was Thomson who reported and carried it to the Lords (16 Dec.).98CJ v. 366b, 388b. There is slightly more evidence of commitment to religious reform in the shape of appointments to committees for the regulation of the university of Oxford (13 Jan., 14 May 1647), for the investigation of disaffected persons and the use of the Book of Common Prayer at the university of Cambridge (12 Oct.) and to enforce the payment of tithes (15 Sept.).99CJ v. 51b, 174a, 302a, 331b. At this stage his circles still included religious Presbyterians. He conveyed an invitation to Southwark minister Jeremiah Whitaker, at this juncture ‘a high-profile Presbyterian’, to preach to Parliament (7 June 1647) and was deputed to thank him for another sermon (31 May 1648).100CJ v. 201b, 580a; ‘Jeremiah Whitaker’, Oxford DNB.

Overall, the impression is that Thomson remained what he had been at the outset – a reliable ally of the Independents and the army – but that, at least compared with his later career, during this period much of his activity was conducted behind the scenes, perhaps because of commercial commitments: he was, for example, trading in beer in Southwark in February 1647.101Bucks. RO, D/W/45/1. His political contribution was probably no less valuable and effective for that. With a case of his own case for arrears of pay or provision of goods proceeding slowly through the House – awarded £200 in January 1646, he was granted £2,205 3s 6d when he presented accounts a year later – he may have had genuine consideration for others seeking their dues.102CJ iv. 395a, 410a; v. 57a, 62b; CCC 801. He sat on several committees addressing the claims of maimed or disbanded officers and soldiers and of military widows (including potentially false ones, 1 Oct. 1647), as well as discussing the ordinance for indemnifying officers from action taken with parliamentary authority (15 Oct. 1646).103CJ iv. 455a, 596a, 694b; v. 322a, 356a, 485a. Subsequently named to the Committee for Indemnity* (21 May 1647), he attended at least 20 meetings between 10 June and 14 April 1648, but was not one of the frequently active core.104A. and O.; SP24/1, SP24/2.

When it came to the confrontations of 1647, there is no doubt that the sympathies he brought to committees dealing with the ‘tumults’ (23 Apr., 11 June, 13 July) lay with the army and in opposition to City Presbyterians; conceivably his involvement was pivotal.105CJ v. 153a, 207b, 243a. Absent from the Journal in late June and most of July, he was a member of the committees set up to investigate the failed Presbyterian coup (6 Aug.), repeal all the votes and ordinances passed during it (11 Aug.) and examine a goldsmith who had cut a new (and in the wrong hands dangerous) privy signet seal (19 Aug.).106CJ v. 265a, 272a, 278b. He and Snellinge were instructed to convey the thanks of the House to the Southwark militia, of whom the latter was a long-standing stalwart, for the vital part they had played in defying their City colleagues and crushing insurrection. It is plausible that the pair had masterminded the show of force. Thomson’s wholehearted participation is underlined by the fact that this was one of the rare occasions when he carried an order to the Lords (11 Aug.).107CJ v. 268b, 271a, 271b, 272a. When Parliament gave the Southwark militia amplified powers, to run anywhere in the country according to need, Thomson was named first to the local committee (9 Sept.) and a few weeks later he had sole responsibility for bringing in an ordinance to strengthen them further (15 Oct.).108CJ v. 299b, 334b; LJ ix. 431a.

If this marked him out as partisan, it also contributed to an enhanced standing in the House. On 9 October, for instance, he was named second, after veteran Member John Selden*, to a large committee to investigate absent MPs.109CJ v. 329a. Indeed, over the summer he suddenly emerges as an important figure in the Committee of Navy and Customs (CNC). There is no record of his being a member before 19 August 1647, when he reported from it in connection with a seizure by customs searchers at Gravesend, but this was no isolated involvement: his signature appears on numerous scattered committee orders until November 1648.110CJ v. 278a; Severall Orders of the House of Commons and Committee of the Navie (1648), 5; SP16/509, ff. 119, 121, 132; SP16/528, ff. 5, 114, 152; Add. 22546, f. 19. In June 1648 he was referred to specifically as CNC chairman.111CJ v. 606a. Meanwhile he was formally added (with Snellinge) to the Committee for the Admiralty and Cinque Ports (4 Mar. 1648) and named to discuss an ordinance regulating the admiralty court (20 Mar.).112CJ v. 476b, 505b; LJ x. 88b.

The eruption of pro-royalist riots in London in April 1648 and subsequent royalist insurrection saw Thomson organising yet another ordinance for the Southwark militia (12, 13, 14 Apr.).113CJ v. 527b, 528b, 531a. Added to the committee of the Tower (13 Apr.), he gained approval for his and Snellinge’s action in ordering the transfer of ordnance at risk in Woolwich Yard to this more secure location (26 May).114CJ v. 529a, 574b. He and Snellinge joined with Westminster residents Sir Robert Pye I*, William Wheler* and Michael Oldisworth* to review the Westminster militia (27 May) and liaised with Major General Philip Skippon* to help ensure that, in contrast with the previous year and in circumstances of more widespread insurrection, London and its suburbs were not at serious risk of being overwhelmed (3 June).115CJ v. 575b, 583b; R. Ashton, ‘Insurgency, Counter-Insurgency and Inaction’, London and the Civil War ed. Porter, 58-60. His mercantile networks doubtless supplied useful intelligence – as they apparently had at a previous moment of crisis at the beginning of the year – and he was perhaps riding high as he thanked Jeremy Whitaker of Bermondsey for another sermon to Parliament (31 May).116CJ v. 414a, 580a.

Already very busy, he has also been identified as the ‘George Thompson’ who wrote from Maidstone early on the morning of 2 June with an eye-witness account, probably directed to Speaker William Lenthall* and subsequently published without his name, of the previous night’s taking of the town from the rebels by Fairfax’s forces.117R.K.G. Temple, ‘Discovery of a Manuscript’, Arch. Cantiana, xcvii. 209-220. Both the public anonymity and the tone lend plausibility to the ascription. ‘Having been up all night and wanting time’, the author was brief, but clear in his object – ‘only I desire God to make you see how the old quarrel is revived by the same parties with more violence than formerly’ – and loyal in his praise of Fairfax – ‘his Excellency from the first minute to the last could not be drawn off from his personal and hazardous attendance in this service’.118Arch. Cantiana, xcvii. 211. While the unusual spelling of his name may be dismissed as a transcription error in the surviving manuscript copy, some doubt arises as to the disabled MP’s ability to cover sufficiently swiftly the 35 miles between Westminster and Maidstone to allow such a brief interruption of his presence in the House and around London, but there is no doubt of his close involvement in counter-insurgency. As the summer progressed he was a regular presence on committees related to military matters and to the fall-out from rebellion.119CJ v. 597b, 631b, 652a, 662b, 692a. His position on the CNC, as rival fleets manoeuvred in the Thames estuary, made him well-placed for the latter.120CJ v. 606a, 659a, 665a.

Once the danger was safely passed, however, and peace negotiations with the king had been renewed from a position of relative strength, he was among those reported to be publicly hostile. The unsympathetic commentator Clement Walker claimed that victory over the Scots

did work like bottled ale with [Thomas] Scot [I]*, Thomson, Cornelius Holland*, Sir Henry Mildmay* and many other of the lighter-headed saints, who were so puffed up with the windiness of it, that they began to swell with disdain and malice against the personal treaty, and to threaten and insult over all that had either petitioned for it from abroad, or spoke for it in the House, as the only means for peace and a settlement.121C. Walker, Anarchia Anglicana (1649), 10 (E.570.4).

Absent from the Journal in September and October, Thomson was once again visible in November, albeit in connection with the relatively routine matters of sequestrations, assessments and maimed soldiers.122CJ vi. 67a, 72a, 88a. On 1 December he was one of a trio of MPs ordered to prepare an ordinance arising from a CNC report regarding trade to France.123CJ vi. 92b.

Rump 1649-53: politics, religion and social policy

Although as one of the ‘lighter-headed saints’ Thomson might be supposed to have been sympathetic to the purge of Parliament on 6 December, there is no sign of his active participation in the chamber until after the king’s execution. With others who were to be prominent in the new republican order, he was added on 6 January 1649 to the Committee for Compounding (CC) and on 2 February to a committee for Westminster and Southwark militias, but it was only on 3 February that his dissent to the peace-making vote of 5 December was registered (after a report from Thomas Boone*, a late dissenter who had sat in the meantime) and he was re-admitted to the House.124PA, Ms CJ xxxiii, p. 639; CJ vi. 107b, 113b, 129b, 131a; CCC 137. He did not re-appear at the CC until at least the middle of April.125SP23/5. Here, as at other critical points in his career, it seems possible that, even though capable of expressing uninhibited opinions, he fought shy of actively endorsing political change, especially when it was sponsored by powerful and ambitious elements, preferring pragmatic action informed by commercial interest and an independent religious conscience.

Thomson had only two more committee nominations until May, but after this slow start, his appearances in the Journal resumed the regular pattern characteristic of the Long Parliament, if with somewhat greater frequency. There was only one month with no reference to him (June 1651) until the spring and early summer of 1652, when his naval preoccupations provide a partial explanation for absence, and then the final weeks of the Rump. He proved a notable member of a powerful and cohesive ‘merchant nexus’ who worked together on a range of business, yet, even more than previously, his significance lay in his influential role on certain key committees rather than on the sheer number or variety of nominations or mentions he received.126Worden, Rump Parliament, 31, 256.

Although twice elected to the council of state (10 Feb. 1651 – after a tie-breaker – and 25 Nov. 1652, with respectively good and average attendance records), he was not often overtly involved in what might be termed the ‘high politics’ of the House.127CJ vi. 532b, 533a; vii. 220b, 221a. Among a handful of exceptional appointments in this regard were those to committees drafting the bill for setting a limit to the Rump’s sitting and electing a replacement (25 Sept. 1651), discussing the bill for uniting Scotland with England (13 Apr. 1652) and considering queries submitted by the CC regarding exceptions from the Act of General Pardon (27 July), which might be as much financial and procedural as political.128CJ vii. 20b, 118b, 158b. On 8 July 1651 he acted as a teller for only one of two occasions in his career when he joined Cornelius Holland* to marshal a majority ensuring that the tenure of John Bradshawe* as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster would be co-terminous with his position as president of the council – perhaps a rare signal as to how seriously he took the proper conduct of the commonwealth.129CJ vi. 599a.

On the other hand, there is no doubting Thomson’s central position within the regime, underpinned by his continuing strategic role in the Southwark militia and liaison with the army, expressed for example in moving the Commons for the renewal of the powers of militias during the Scottish invasion scare of 1651 (11/12 Aug.).130CJ vi. 206b, 302b; CSP Dom. 1651, p. 316. Added on 12 August to a conciliar committee of safety, he was among those deputed to secure the Tower of London, issue passes to go in and out of London, and arrange for the holding of Scottish prisoners or their transplantation to the colonies.131CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 129, 322, 374, 415, 431. Later he received conciliar orders, probably on his initiative, to bring before the House a petition from the Tower Hamlets committee (28 Nov.).132CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 39. During the interval between his own two conciliar stints he was added to the committee with oversight of Whitehall (3 Dec. 1651), having previously been assigned a role in security and catering there (Sept.).133CJ vii. 46b; CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 396, 413. Deputed from the House and from the council, he took his turn at receiving foreign ambassadors, as a councillor or not (27, 31 Dec. 1650; 19 Feb., 4 Mar., 10 Apr. 1651).134CJ vi. 516b, 517a, 560a; CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 53, 69.

Alongside this he played a modest, but not insignificant, part in the religious business of the House. John Rushworth*, in lobbying him for support for a widow with a petition to the council of state in March 1651, took care to assure Thomson that she was not only ‘a very good woman’ but also ‘a precious Christian’.135Add. 46500, f. 100. He was nominated to several committees relating to the ministry and was added to the Committee for Plundered Ministers* (5 Sept. 1649).136CJ vi. 213a, 290a, 400b, 416a; vii. 12b, 86b. His precise personal stance is unclear. In October 1650 the council of state instructed Sir Henry Mildmay*, Sir Henry Vane II* and Thomas Scot I*, Thomson’s colleagues and fellow ‘saints’ in naval affairs, to speak with him and Snellinge about composing differences the Southwark MPs had with some of their constituents over preaching in the militia hall, although whose position in this was the more radical is not revealed.137CSP Dom. 1650, p. 403. Thomson may have brought a desire for personal freedom or a conviction of the need for toleration to the committee reviewing the Directory and modifying it to accommodate ‘tender consciences’ (7 Aug. 1649).138CJ vi. 275b. However, his views were not so far from the mainstream as to alienate him from the moderate Presbyterian William Cooper, his local minister at St Olave, Southwark, who remained a friend, or the moderate Independent Joseph Caryl, whom he respectively invited and thanked for their preaching to the House at thanksgivings for parliamentary victories in the field (14 Aug. 1649; 26 Aug. 1651).139CJ vi. 278a; vii. 6a; Add. 45600, f. 102; ‘William Cooper’, ‘Joseph Caryl’, Oxford DNB.

As before the purge, Thomson demonstrated a certain engagement with wider reform or social projects, but insufficient to mark him out as a dedicated activist in this area. Included on the committees considering the case of civil lawyers (25 July 1649) and for regulating universities when its remit was extended to leading schools and colleges (22 May 1651), he was nominated not just to committees related to managing the poor in London and to establishing a new house of correction in Surrey – both issues where his local prominence alone might explain the appointment – but also to a small group chaired by the energetic Corbett which took up again from 1647 the task of a nationwide scheme for putting the poor on work.140CJ vi. 171a, 270a, 284a, 416a, 548b, 577b, However, the limits of his charity were revealed when, returning from a brief absence from the chamber, he was asked belatedly to declare his vote in a division over a proviso to the bill for discharging prisoners for debt (4 Sept. 1649). He sided with William Purefoy I* and occasional ally Cornelius Holland*, and against the more permissive Henry Marten* (who was to become something of an adversary in naval matters), in favour of excluding any who had been in arms against Parliament from its provisions, thereby ensuring their success.141CJ vi. 289b.

Rump: money, trade and the navy

Thomson’s chief contribution to the Rump undoubtedly lay in the inextricably entwined areas of finance, trade and navigation, where his wide commercial experience, constructive membership of the mercantile lobby, closeness to his talented and well-connected brothers, and his own hard work ensured that, in one aspect of business or another, he was frequently to the fore. In none was he continuously dominant – at least on the surface – but in many hours of chairing committees and reporting to the House, he was always exercising influence somewhere. Furthermore, he may be credited with an important role in two notable achievements of the Parliament – the Navigation Act and the eventual victory at sea over the Dutch.

In addition to periodic appointments to committees dealing with raising money and selling crown and other confiscated lands – of which, if he was a purchaser, he kept his acquisitions well-hidden – Thomson was called on to investigate suspected abuses in accounts.142CJ vi. 198a, 320a, 358b, 360a, 413b, 455b, 459b, 513a, 528a, 598b; vii. 159a, 191b, 245a. He was on committees reviewing the powers of the Committee for Advance of Money (28 May 1649), investigating parliamentary pensions (19 Sept.) and inspecting the public revenue (27 Nov. 1652).143CJ vi. 218b, 298a; vii. 222b. It would be unrealistic to expect that he – or through him his brothers, who funded, supplied and served the state – did not profit financially from his work, but that someone so widely involved was not apparently accused of corruption suggests that his gains were regarded as being within relatively acceptable boundaries.

Rewards came directly and indirectly from his regular involvement in trade committees considering representations from interest groups, which offered opportunities to him and others like him to promote their own agendas.144CJ vi. 216a, 351a; vii. 169b. Dealing with petitions from needle-makers (13 June 1649) and suppressing imports of hats and hatbands (2 July) may have been somewhat removed from his own business portfolio – although the former drew him into New England affairs and the latter was vital to his constituents involved in a new local industry – but the bill prohibiting the growing of tobacco in England, to which he reported amendments (1 Apr. 1652), had an obvious personal benefit.145CJ vi. 232b, 247b; vii. 112b; s.v. ‘Southwark’. Sometimes his own different interests may have conflicted, as when he was named to a committee for a bill capping the price of beer (5 Sept. 1649) – disadvantageous to the brewers prominent among his constituents, but necessary if the commodity were not to become so unaffordable as to dent collections of excise, in which, as a continuing committee member, he had a stake.146CJ vi. 290a. Generally, however, he was able to combine interests harmoniously.

An illustration of how his various functions might interact – and play to his and his family’s advantage – is provided by the act regulating garbling, the examination (ostensibly) for quality-control purposes of spices, drugs and other high-value but low-volume merchandise in the port of London.147CJ vi. 303a. Since it involved a confrontation between the official appointed for the purpose, according to tradition, by the City, to whom it might be profitable, and the growing power of the East India Company, which was coming to dominate the trade in the commodities in question, this may also serve as an example of how the Southwark-based incomer merchant and his associates took on older and powerful vested interests; insofar as it pertained to raw materials for Southwark dyers, it had a further dimension. On 4 October 1649 amendments to a bill refining a 1604 statute were reported to the Commons by Thomson and approved, but the process then stalled. The East India Company, defendant in an exchequer case brought by the garbler and the City alleging evasion of the existing regulations, submitted a petition to the Commons which was referred to the CNC. Thomson reported from that committee on 27 December their conclusion in the Company’s favour – that since 1604 the latter had taken reasonable advantage of a proviso in that act and ‘without let’ bought, sold and transported spices and drugs ‘ungarbled’ – and their recommendation that the prosecution be dropped.148CJ vi. 338b. A counter-petition from the deputy garbler led to re-committal of the case and leisurely progress, but the Company trusted that they had a strong ally, recording in its minutes on 5 April 1650 that

Colonel Thomson having declared his willingness to serve the Company in making a speedy report to Parliament about the garbler, and desiring some of the Company to be present in the House next Tuesday, when he will do his best in this matter.

As many members as possible were enjoined to attend.149Cal. Ct. Mins. E. I. Co. 1650-1654, 34. Further opportunities to assist in what proved to be a challenging and long-running dispute came in March 1652 and as he reported a navy contract with the Company for saltpetre that December.150CJ vii. 100a, 227b. Their gratitude for his efforts on their behalf was already evident in March 1651: having granted a lease at Assada to William Moore, on hearing that he was step-son to ‘Colonel Thomson, to whom the Company was so much engaged’, they ordered that, if he did not like living at Assada, he should be taken into the Company’s service at Surat at a suitable salary.151Cal. Ct. Mins. E. I. Co. 1650-1654, 96. No doubt the ‘engagement’ was part and parcel of Maurice Thomson’s transition from outsider to stalwart of the Company, of which he became governor in 1657.152Cal Ct. Mins. E. I. Co. 1644-1649, pp. xi, xxii; Cal. Ct. Mins. E. I. Co. 1655-1659, 197.

Maurice, who was appointed a navy regulator under the act of January 1649 and who was an adviser to both commonwealth and protectorate governments, has been identified as the chief draftsman of the Navigation Act of 1651, by which goods could be imported into territories of the commonwealth only by English ships or ships of the country where the goods had been produced. Although the Act was directed principally against trading rivals the Dutch, after attempts to negotiate an alliance had failed, it had a very wide vision and application, and this is what may have weighed heaviest with Maurice (a natural Dutch sympathiser) and his associates. In this George, a councillor of state at the critical moment, was almost certainly an indispensable lieutenant, if not a coadjutor, and his brother Major Robert Thomson, also a navy regulator, a likely second.153J.E. Farnell, ‘The new act of 1651’, EcHR n.s. xvi. 444, 446; B. Capp, Cromwell’s Navy (1989), 48. On George’s watch at the CNC, it formulated complementary provisions prohibiting trade with colonies controlled by royalists and the export of bullion, which he reported to the House respectively on 3 October 1650 and 9 January 1651.154CJ vi. 408b, 478a, 522a; J. Langford, A Just and Cleere Refutation of Babylons Fall in Maryland (1655), 6 (E.853.25). It was he whom the council of state ordered to brief the House on the trade in Scottish pells (17 Oct. 1651).155CSP Dom. 1651, p. 435.

As already suggested, George Thomson’s interlocking service on the parliamentary committees of the navy and of the excise and the conciliar admiralty committee, together with family solidarity, provided a base from which to wield wide influence. Only rarely did the different spheres overlap overtly, as when he chaired joint sessions of the two committees of the House to discuss amendments to the excise bill (14 Aug. 1650), but their constant inter-dependence is clear.156CJ vi. 455a. While the CNC – on which Thomson came to prominence in August 1649 and of which he was named in the Journal as chairman or reporter 5 times that year, 18 times in 1650, and 6 times each in 1651 and 1652 – was less powerful by 1651 than it had been, perhaps that mattered relatively little at that point to someone who had fingers in other pies, especially with Robert Thomson also active in navy affairs.157Bodl. Rawl. A.224, ff. 31seq.; CJ vi. 281a-vii. 225b; s.v. ‘Committee of Navy and Customs’. A signatory to excise committee orders on 9 November 1649, the first day of record, George Thomson, whose colleague Snellinge and brother Maurice were appointed excise commissioners in September 1650, dominated proceedings until the latter part of December 1651. He then abandoned his hitherto almost unbroken attendance, fading out in the spring of 1652, but that April he was appointed a commissioner of customs.158Bodl. Rawl. C.328, passim; An Account of the Commrs. of Customs (1913), 14. Present at the conciliar committee for the admiralty on 3 December 1650 before he was a councillor, once he joined it officially on 1 March 1651 he was a regular attender during his first conciliar stint (to November), occasionally thereafter (12 Dec. 1651; 13 Feb. 1652) and an assiduous attender again during his second conciliar stint from 27 December 1652 to 17 May 1653, when he was dismissed from his various offices.159Bodl. Rawl. A.225, ff. 24v, 70-158; A.226, ff. 1-82v; A.227, ff. 1-88; Capp, Cromwell’s Navy, 45.

Although it was once thought that the scope of CNC business narrowed in this period, concentrating on financial matters, Thomson’s reports to Parliament constitute part of the evidence that demonstrates otherwise.160s.v. ‘Committee of Navy and Customs’. While the navy may have come second to the army in terms of its size, its budget and its effect on politics, the ramifications of managing it reached into many areas of national life and thus a range of matters were referred to its consideration. In March 1651 the council of state sanctioned Thomson’s moving Parliament to debate a bill for the repair of highways around London – something in which he had been involved the previous autumn, apparently to little purpose – specifically in order to forward the service of the navy.161CSP Dom. 1651, p. 112; CJ vi. 486b. Timber for ship-building took the committee into the realm of forest law and fund-raising into the sequestration of delinquents and papists.162CJ vi. 459b, 533b. It discussed an invention for salt refinery, opined that the prohibition of imports from France depressed essential returns from customs, and went further into the territory of foreign policy in discussing the redemption of captives from north African pirates, suggesting a fleet to ply in the Mediterranean to quench the problem at source.163CJ vi. 272a, 387b, 389a; vii. 45b, 69a. Even when Thomson described what appeared to be the inconsequential minutiae of CNC business – as on 19 October 1649 when he related a recommendation for increasing the wages of artisans in Woolwich rope yard because they were spinning an additional number of threads per man per day, ‘which was never done in that yard heretofore, wherein the commissioners conceive the state will save as much as the increase of wages’ – the detailed and lengthy accounts in the Journal, as in this case, testify to the seriousness with which it was viewed; they also reveal some sophisticated economic thinking.164CJ vi. 310b. Similar foresight, breadth of vision and seemingly personal powers of persuasion were evident in March 1650 when Thomson convinced MPs to accept the committee’s refinement of a plan to increase payments to ‘carpenters, caulkers [those who kept ships watertight], scavelmen [cleaners of waterways] and labourers belonging to the navy ... whereby they might be enabled honestly to subsist in these times of great scarcity’.165CJ vi. 381b, 382a. Self-interested charity prompted the CNC to distribute £20 to the poor at Greenwich, an action approved by the House on 7 June 1650 as they ordered Thomson to make another report.166CJ vi. 421a.

Clearly, such initiatives might come from the committee itself, as well as from the admiralty commissioners or the council of state. A letter of 4 October 1649 from the CNC, signed by Thomson, Snellinge and three others, asked the commissioners for clarification of the identity, patron and salary of the minister at Chatham, a matter of moment in both inspiring and controlling the sailors.167Add. 18986, f. 5. On 29 November 1650 the council of state referred to the admiralty committee proposals ‘propounded to the council by Colonel Thomson and others concerning the numbers of men to be employed in the summer and winter fleets’; the admiralty men were ‘tomorrow morning to advise with Colonel Thomson and the rest of the committee who came with him’.168SP25/14, f. 1. That in addition to acting as a conduit of ideas from others, Thomson himself was capable of originating policies is suggested by a Commons Journal entry of 22 August 1650 and indicated by a reference in council papers to his making a verbal proposition about the import of wines from Bordeaux (16 Oct. 1651).169CJ vi. 458a; CSP Dom. 1651, p. 479; 1651-2, p. 9.

Thomson’s prominence was not constant through the Parliament. As implied earlier, it was potentially at its greatest from mid-1649 to late 1651 and again from late 1652, partly overlapping with his stints on the council. It was arguably at its most evident on 29 May 1651, when he presented to the Commons the navy budget for the ensuing year.170CJ vi. 580a. Placed on the council’s admiralty committee on 1 March 1651, he was an assiduous attender; possibly its chair by mid-May, he was publicly known as such by September.171Bodl. Rawl. A.225, ff. 70-158; A.226, ff. 1-51; CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 66, 204, 259; Langford, A Just and Clear Refutation, 6. That avenue of influence was closed in December when he was not re-elected to the council, in itself an indication of political eclipse. There is evidence for a simultaneous retreat from the CNC: having been a near-constant presence since mid-1649 and for prolonged periods to mid-December 1651 seemingly an indispensable signatory to all its orders, Thomson appended his name to only two of 20 (3, 16 Mar.) in an order book of January to August 1652.172Bodl. Rawl. A.224, ff. 31 seq.; SP18/5, SP18/12, SP18/17, SP18/30, ff. 159, 161; Add. 22546, ff. 19, 28, 30, 35; Add. 18986, ff. 5, 15; Add. 63788, ff. 90-93v. Furthermore, that winter he was not re-elected to the council of state. But that is not the whole story. He reported in the usual form to the Commons from the CNC on 14 January, 16 April and perhaps at least one other occasion in February, though not again until 9 September and 4 November.173CJ vii. 69a, 84a, 122a, 175b, 209b. Before his elevation to the council he had attended the admiralty committee (3 Dec. 1650), and he did so again on 13 February 1652.174Bodl. Rawl. 225, f. 24v; A.226, f. 82v. This was, however, hardly on a par with previous unrelenting activity.

Thus far, Thomson’s pattern of service appears to run in parallel with that of Sir Henry Vane II*, and to mark him out as an ally, as do many of his preoccupations and perspectives. Continuously a member of the council and its admiralty committee, and ubiquitously engaged in naval and excise affairs from the spring of 1649, Vane lost ground late in 1651 to political rivals including Henry Marten and Thomas Chaloner*.175s.v. ‘Sir Henry Vane II’; Capp, Cromwell’s Navy, 47. Thomson, who mirrored Vane’s workaholic tendencies and his developed familial piety, and was thus a plausibly congenial colleague, saw through the Commons the arrangements for settling compensation on Vane when the latter signalled his intended resignation of the navy treasurership from the end of 1650 (16, 18 July 1650).176CJ vi. 440b, 441a, 442a.

But the match is not exact. While Vane distanced himself from the Chaloner-Marten sponsored war against the Dutch Republic in the summer of 1652, Thomson was intimately involved, in practice if not in conception. His appointment as a commissioner of customs on 8 April, like his report to the Commons from the CNC eight days later, demonstrates his durability, and he had his own nexus of contacts, who included Charles Longland, the English agent at Livorno, a source of valuable intelligence and support from the Mediterranean.177CJ vii. 118a; 122a; CSP Dom. 1651, p. 342; 1651-2, pp. 317-18, 436, 451. It is not clear what input he had, if any, to the supply or direction of initial engagements with the Dutch fleet in May, but he was called on 7 June to attend the conciliar committee for foreign affairs, and from the following day he was immersed with occasional ally Thomas Scot I and Harbert Morley* as the council’s liaison officers with the fleet, with contractors, with the CNC and with commissioners during a month of preparations.178CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 283, 286, 293, 295, 299, 317-19; Letters and Pprs. of the First Dutch War ed. S.R. Gardiner (Navy Rec. Soc.), i. 334-6, 341, 346; Add. 18986, f. 21. Following an official declaration of war on 8 July, Thomson’s lodgings in Whitehall were a rendezvous for the party, including Thomson, sent with extensive discretionary powers to oversee and direct events in the Downs.179CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 324-5 ; Letters and Pprs. of the First Dutch War, i. 356-7.

Having been absent from the Journal since 16 April except for two committee nominations on 27 July and one on 26 August, Thomson appeared in the Commons on 9 September to report amendments to a bill for calling home English mariners for war service.180CJ vii. 175b. He received only one more appointment before 4 November, when he reported from the CNC a detailed estimate supplied by the navy commissioners of the funds needed for the service at sea until Lady Day; the same day he was nominated to a committee to consider how to encourage merchants to fit up and contribute ships at their own charge.181CJ vii. 191b, 209b, 210a. But in the interim – during which the navy had won a victory over the Dutch at Kentish Knock (28 Sept.) – he had been the council’s point of reference on various naval matters.182CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 401, 416-18, 427, 436, 469, 473. Apparently he had been found efficient, or a supplier of indispensable resources, or both. It seems likely that he was an ally of Vane, who had returned to the Commons in early September, Richard Salwey* and others in the campaign to reform the navy executive and replace incompetent administrators, which was gaining ground by early October.183e.g. CJ vii. 188b. On 24 October he was a joint signatory with Vane, Salwey, George Monck* and John Langley* to a committee of the admiralty and navy, indicating that the initiative had already slipped away from Marten and Chaloner; perhaps Thomson had never have been in their camp.184Add. 63788, f. 112.

On 25 November, the second day of voting, Thomson was re-elected to the council of state – a sign that his star had risen again, if hardly meteorically.185CJ vii. 220b, 221a. His reputation seems to have emerged unscathed from the naval defeat at Dungeness a few days later. On 4 December, with Vane, Salwey and John Carew, he was appointed to a new admiralty commission to take overall charge of naval matters (confirmed on 10 Dec.) and the same day he delivered one of his regular financial reports from the CNC.186CJ vii. 225b, 228a; Capp, Cromwell’s Navy, 80. By all accounts the commission worked intensively, constructively and often on the move, receiving the endorsement of the House for its ‘exceeding great care and pains’ on 8 February 1653 and contributing much to Admiral Blake’s victory over the Dutch at Portland Bill on the 20th.187CJ vii. 256a; Capp, Cromwell’s Navy, 80. With 68 out of a possible 76 attendances at the admiralty commission between 17 December 1652 and 18 April 1653, Thomson ran Vane and Carew a close third, and was usually the second signatory to orders; naval preoccupations, together with new conciliar responsibilities, would account for his relatively low profile in the Journal in the winter and early spring – just two other references from 10 December until 15 April, five days before the dissolution of Parliament, when he reported from the commissioners.188Bodl. Rawl. A.227; CJ vii. 227b, 245a, 279a; CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. 8, 9, 59, 76, 145-6, 153-4, 276, 497, 506, 520, 527-8, 546; Letters and Pprs. of the First Dutch War, ed. Gardiner, iii. 334, 340, 403, 407, 417, 427, 447; iv. 67, 136, 230, 289, 295; V.A. Rowe, Sir Henry Vane the Younger (1970), 184, 259, 274.

‘Retirement’, 1653-58

The forcible dissolution by the army prompted Vane to retire rapidly to the country. Thomson too objected strongly to the new regime. He noted later that when naval commander and regicide Richard Deane, who had a major part in the declaration of April 1653 by the generals at sea acquiescing in the coup, was killed in an engagement two months later, the right hand that had signed was shot through his body.189Capp, Cromwell’s Navy, 123. Briefly Thomson absented himself from the admiralty office – a move reported by his colleagues – yet within a day or two returned to continue more or less as before for another four weeks.190Bodl. Rawl. A.227, ff. 1-88. Following his involvement in petitioning for the restoration of the Rump, however, on 18 May he was disabled from being a commissioner of the navy (and army) and of customs.191Bodl. Rawl. A.227, ff. 70-88; Capp, Cromwell’s Navy, 122-3; SP25/69, f. 94; Clarke Pprs. iii. 6. Forbidden to act in these capacities, he seems to have spent much of the next four and a half years on his property at Lee; his lodgings in Whitehall were, like those of Vane, assigned to others.192CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 412.

Nonetheless, there are signs that he quietly resumed some functions during this period. Major Robert Thomson continued as a navy commissioner and Maurice became an advisor to Oliver Cromwell* – circumstances which no doubt helped to keep alive both the issue of George’s salary arrears and his naval credentials – while the fraternal partnership between Maurice and George continued to be expressed in Irish land ventures.193Clarke Pprs. iii. 74, 96, 376, 397, 430; iv. 99, 131, 176, 217, 297; v. 96, 236; CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. 392, 437, 455, 457; 1655, p. 189; SP63/283, f. 176; SP63/300, f. 172; Cal. Ct. Mins. E. I. Co. 1655-1659, passim; ‘Maurice Thomson’, Oxford DNB. A letter addressed to ‘Colonel Thompson’ in October 1654 suggests that the latter’s professional link with the commissioners was still active, while in a 1655 publication his signature appeared among commissioners of customs.194SP18/76, f. 179; Rules and directions given by Coll: Edmond Harvy, and the rest of the Commissioners for the Customs (1655), 13. The protector paid him £50 in September 1657 for some service rendered.195TSP vi. 596. Meanwhile, between 1654 and 1658 he was regularly, though not invariably, named as a local commissioner and in 1654 placed on the committee for ejecting scandalous ministers in Kent.196C181/6, pp. 14, 60, 90, 125, 146, 171, 220, 258, 259, 263, 306, 373, 386 ; C231/6, pp. 47, 327, 328; A Perfect List (1660), 54; A. and O.

It may be that Thomson’s stance in these years has been obscured by the existence of a namesake, who had also served in the army but who was of inferior rank. That George Thomson was committed to the Tower with others on 13 August 1653, accused of treason against the state.197CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 87, 432. This man may well have been the officer who served under royalist commander and insurgent Sir Henry Slingsby at Hull mentioned in a charge of October 1656 and the lieutenant examined in May 1658 about his dealings with Slingsby.198The several tryals of Sir Henry Slingsby (1658), 4; TSP vii. 113. Confusion as well as malice may have coloured the assertion of the post-Restoration informer that the MP participated in millenarian demonstrations after the dissolution of the Rump.199SP29/159, f. 128. There is nothing else to link Colonel Thomson with more radical or sectarian forms of Protestantism. The moderate Presbyterian William Cooper of St Olave, Southwark, wrote to him at Lee on 30 March 1654 in the friendliest of terms, heralding a visit en route for a meeting at Whitehall of the triers and ejectors, something of a detour.200Add. 46500, f. 102.

Third protectorate Parliament 1659

Thomson was not a candidate in the hotly contested Southwark election of 1654 or, it seems, in 1656. However, in what the diarist Thomas Burton* later described as ‘a very foul election’ in January 1659 he was returned with the obscure Grocer, Andrew Brewer* of St Saviour parish, plausibly on expectations of his promoting local commercial interests.201Burton’s Diary, iv. 467.

During the short life of the Parliament he received five committee appointments, dealing with a variety of matters but all linked to previous experience. His inclusion with Vane II and Scot I among 12 Members named to a committee for naval accounts and papers (17 Feb.) might seem a foregone conclusion, except that according to Burton his brother ‘the Alderman’, William Thomson, a novice MP, was first suggested.202CJ vii. 605a; Burton’s Diary, iv. 311. He was also on larger committees for Irish Affairs (1 Apr.) and to consider petitions from Elizabeth, widow of Colonel John Lilburne the Leveller (5 Feb.) and from many receiving military pensions regarding their arrears (7 Apr.).203CJ vii. 600a, 623a, 627b. Alleged injustices done by the regime to radicals seem not to have been among his priorities. When Major-general Robert Overton petitioned for release from captivity in Jersey (16 Mar.), Thomson and Sir Richard Temple* moved that the cases of ‘other gentlemen’, who argued that their imprisonment on warrant from the protector was illegal, should not be debated, since they had not been tabled.204Burton’s Diary, iv. 160. It is likely that local, commercial issues interested him more: like Scot he moved to have representations in a dispute between the brewers and the farmers of excise heard fully in the house (11 Apr.) and he was one of a small group ordered to supervise the reporting of bills of mortality in London and its environs (15 Apr.).205Burton’s Diary, iv. 399; CJ vii. 640a.

Overall, Thomson’s contribution to the Parliament marked him out as a moderate, pragmatic man, not overly enamoured either of the protectorate or the radical fringe, yet not wholly part of a conservative opposition. As proceedings commenced on 27 January, he was prepared to adjourn the House until all those elected were in attendance – a sign perhaps that he opposed any weeding out of Members supposed disloyal to the government – but only provided that some progress was first made with at least one of two bills already tabled: ‘you spoil the game if you run not one out first’.206Burton’s Diary, iii. 5. It is not clear whether he had in mind the potentially time-consuming bill for settling the government or the less contentious bill from the previous Parliament presented by newly-elected Speaker Chaloner Chute I* relating to fish exports which, as was customary, might pass speedily. Named the next day to the privileges committee, he took a measured approach to dealing with strangers and alleged delinquents in the chamber.207CJ vii. 594b. There were already ordinances to exclude them ‘not only from sitting here but also from all other places of trust’ yet ‘a bare accusation’ was ‘not enough’ ground for suspension, and where it was one man’s word against another, if the accused ‘find himself innocent, it will be his wisdom to sit’; the principle for Thomson was ‘I would do as I would be done by’ – naively generous or calculated to advantage the putative delinquent according to how the man is read (12 Feb.).208Burton’s Diary, iii. 80, 234, 237; iv. 3.

Thomson’s recorded participation in the debate on the Other House, which absorbed much of Members’ time, was brief but reasoned (22 Feb.), and showed no nostalgia for the old order. Although he declined responsibility for the abolition of its predecessor, he had by now accepted it as permanent: ‘I was not at taking away the House of Lords, yet I believe they are taken away’. The advantage gained should not be reversed. Their chamber had been ‘melted down into the Commons’ and ‘most of their sand [i.e. power and influence] is run out into your glass’. If MPs revived them and ‘set them over you as high as formerly, I doubt your sand may run into their glass’. Since the Commons appeared ‘resolved of another House’, it should not be hereditary: ‘they may be unfit by poverty or want of bread and, being judges, they may be corrupted’. Furthermore, he did not want Members of the Other House to have any authority over causes between commoner and commoner, or concerning commoners, unless specifically referred to them by the Commons, because of past experience of the Lords overturning chancery decrees. Its Members should be nominated by the protector, but with the necessary ‘approbation of this House to every single person that is named to that House’.209Burton’s Diary, iii. 410.

Six weeks into the session the privileges committee was still dealing with disputed elections. On 12 March several counsel raised objections to Thomson’s return for Southwark – compelling ones as Burton learned.210Burton’s Diary, iv. 148. When more than five weeks later (19 Apr.) a verdict emerged, it was in Thomson’s favour, but the outcome was not assured. Burton gathered via committee chairman John Hewley* that, despite the election of John Lenthall* (who had anyway been returned also for Abingdon) being ‘voted null’, the whole election might be re-run owing, it seems, to the machinations on behalf of the radical Colonel Nathaniel Rich*.211Burton’s Diary, iv. 467. It seems unlikely that this marks Thomson out as a perceived loyalist, but in any case the matter proved academic with the dissolution coming a few days later.

Returned Rump May 1659–Feb. 1660

Following the re-assembling of the Rump on 7 May 1659, Thomson rapidly resumed activities which had characterized his service before April 1653 and re-occupied his visible, yet curiously unobtrusive, place in the second rank of those who ruled. On the 9th, as MPs excluded in 1648 attempted unsuccessfully to take their seats, he was among five MPs ordered to prepare a bill for settling the militias within the lines of communication; the list of officers for Southwark which he reported on 26 July, as Parliament passed a new militia act, was approved on the 27th.212CJ vii. 647a, 732b, 735a. In another 9 May appointment, he was named first to a committee empowered to inspect the commonwealth treasuries and review the public revenue.213CJ vii. 647b. Although not designated chairman, he reported from it two days later, when he also received two nominations to committees dealing with naval issues.214CJ vii. 648b, 649a. On the 14th he was roughly in the middle of the poll among those voted on to the new council of state and was soon again concerned with the accommodation of arms of government at Whitehall.215CJ vii. 654a, 656a.

Through the summer and into the autumn Thomson was regularly nominated to committees raising money through assessments and other means; individually charged with preparing a letter to be sent out by the Speaker to encourage commissioners to pay funds promptly into the public coffers (13 Sept.), he also voiced to the Commons the council of state’s desire to continue its power to control them (4 Oct.).216CJ vii. 684b, 690a, 762a, 769a, 772a, 777b, 791a. Again appointed a commissioner for the admiralty and navy (26 May), in June and July he drafted and reported a series of bills on related business including commissions for officers, the impressment of seamen and the appointment of admiralty judges.217CJ vii. 656b, 666b, 670b, 674a, 681a, 684a, 691b, 694a, 708b, 723b. Royalist intelligence (10 June) that Thomson, like Bulstrode Whitelocke*, refused to act as a commissioner for the Sound, if correct, is more likely to have arisen from consciousness of heavy existing commitments than disinclination to take on naval work.218CCSP iv. 231.

At first Thomson put in a rather modest attendance at council of state meetings, but added to its intelligence committee and given lodgings in Whitehall on 8 July, he subsequently appeared more frequently, being drawn increasingly into its naval and diplomatic activities.219CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. xxiv; 1659-60, pp. xxiii-xxiv, 10-11, 101-2, 137, 138, 144, 155. As the government sought to counter threatened royalist insurgency, he once again recruited William Cooper and Joseph Caryl to preach to the Commons on a day of public humiliation (3 Aug.).220CJ vii. 732a, 747a. When the rebellion of Sir George Boothe* erupted in August he wrote several letters to the English ambassador to Paris, Sir William Lockhart*, reporting on its progress; these survive in French, suggesting they were intercepted, copied, sent on, intercepted again and retrieved.221CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 88, 113, 136, 158 ; CCSP iv. 316, 335, 347. The interchange with a man of essentially moderate opinions but complex allegiance raises intriguing possibilities about Thomson’s own stance, but in the meantime he was approved by the council of state as colonel of a regiment of volunteers to be raised in London and was empowered to propose his subordinate officers (18 Aug.), while on 20 August he was appointed to a Commons committee to prepare a proclamation against some of the rebels.222CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 124; CJ vii. 764b. Named second to the council’s committee for Scottish and Irish affairs (29 Aug.), he was instructed to move Parliament to order the return to the exchequer of money mistakenly paid to the war treasurers in the north at Newcastle (30 Aug.).223CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 157, 160.

By September the threat on land from royalists had receded. Although his regiment was still in service on 12 September and beyond, in the autumn Thomson was preoccupied elsewhere. From the council and from Parliament he was among those delegated to meet foreign ambassadors and address international issues.224CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 208, 219, 233; CJ vii. 793b, 780b, 786b. As well as receiving more committee appointments related to customs and excise, he reprised his role as a leading co-ordinator of naval affairs, taking orders and requests, and relaying information, between the council and Parliament and between the council and the fleet.225CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 167-8, 184-5, 190, 195, 199, 235; SP25/79, f. 93; SP25/98, f. 185; CJ vii. 780b, 791a. Exactly where that placed him in the dispute between General-at-sea Edward Montagu II* and certain army grandees and leading republicans who suspected him of royalist sympathies, is unclear. Plausibly, Thomson inclined towards Montagu, who in mid-September retired with the suspicions unproven, but there is no definite confirmation of this, or of how far he might have been engaged. By October Thomson was visibly in the camp of those who cultivated warmer relations with the City of London and who resisted the stance of army regiments under Major-generals John Lambert* and John Disbrowe* in their petitioning for arrears and for political settlement. Despatched on the 7th to convey the thanks of the House to the lord mayor and common council for hospitality the previous day, he was among ten MPs (including also Hesilrige, Vane and Scot) who prepared an answer to part of the army petition (10 Oct.) and was named first to the committee which hastily presented new commissioners to govern the army (12 Oct.), thus precipitating Lambert’s forced ‘interruption’ of Parliament (13 Oct.).226CJ vii. 793a, 794b, 796b.

Thomson attended the council of state on the 13th, 14th and 15th, but by the 18th he was reported to have withdrawn, like Hesilrige and at least six others.227CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. xxiv; Clarke Pprs. v. 318. Yet there is, and perhaps was, still some confusion as to his position, compounded by the presence of his brothers in public life. A week later Bulstrode Whitelocke* recorded a Thomson alongside himself as one of those whom the general council of officers agreed might manage political affairs.228Whitelocke, Diary, 537. This might have been Robert, but his lack of conciliar or parliamentary experience leaves room for doubt and a chance of its being George, possibly named in an attempt to broaden the basis of support.229Capp, Cromwell’s Navy, 342. There is no evidence that he acted in this capacity, but neither was he mentioned as joining Scot, Hesilrige and other former councillors in secret meetings aimed at restoring Parliament. Even if it was Robert, the brothers’ close-knit relationship might well have created an impression of George’s secret collusion.

When in mid-November representatives from George Monck, general in Scotland, came to treat with the army officers, a Thomson who must have been George was mooted with Scot as part of the civilian component of the negotiating committee.230Whitelocke, Diary, 543. Yet when that committee met at Whitehall on 24 November, ‘Mr Scot and Colonel Thompson appeared not’, perhaps because, like Vane, they wished to be sure of Monck’s full approbation.231Clarke Pprs. iv. 136. According to one testimony given nearly seven years later, Thomson adhered neither to Hesilrige’s side nor to Lambert’s, instead joining ‘thousands’ of demonstrators in St George’s Fields in Southwark, ‘with bibles under their arms and good swords also, declaring for King Jesus, which signified for what they please[d], except King Charles’.232SP29/159, f. 128. But given the context in which it surfaced, the validity of this memory may be doubted, or at least the interpretation put upon it.

Whether or not Thomson had made any false steps along the way, or had simply followed his own idiosyncratic path, after the coup had been crushed he emphatically emerged among the victors. The first entry in the Journal after Parliament resumed on 26 December appointed him with Scot as one of seven officers authorised to ‘direct ... the army and all other forces, and command [them] for the safety of Parliament and the Commonwealth, and suppress tumults, insurrections and rebellions’.233CJ vii. 797a. Nominated with Scot to a committee for a bill to indemnify those soldiers who returned to obedience to Parliament, together with Scot and John Weaver* he was entrusted with the critical task of drawing up a list of men to constitute a settlement committee (28 Dec.).234CJ vii. 798b. Ever present on money-raising committees (27, 30 Dec.), he was once again elected to the council of state (31 Dec.).235CJ vii. 797b, 800a, 800b.

That Thomson did not actually attend this short-lived council (replaced on 23 Feb.) again raises questions as to his relationship with others in power. 236CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. xxvi. Perhaps he was again hanging back, awaiting signals from Monck; perhaps he shared his brother William’s keenness for the calling of a free Parliament.237s.v. ‘William Thomson’. His absence from the council might adequately be explained by evidence of intense activity elsewhere, although that was hardly politically neutral; he could, for instance, have been quietly pursuing his own purposes in naval administration. It may be significant that there was no sign of him in the Journal either for the first nine uncertain days of 1660: thereafter, as often previously, his appearances were less frequent than those of others of his stature, but his appointments and reports recorded were important and entailed many hours of work outside the Commons chamber; they also tended towards the implementation of the measures proposed from afar by General Monck. Thomson may not actually have turned up to the large committee appointed on 10 January 1660 to formulate an engagement to the state, but he seems to have been otherwise busy with military affairs.238CJ vii. 806b. Nominated to committees reviewing the state of the Tower of London (11 Jan.) and devising new orders for the admiralty (12 Jan.) and for the army and treasurers at war (13 Jan.), he was named first to a group instructed by the admiralty committee to confer with the Army Committee about the apportionment between them of money coming in, and he still had responsibilities for his own regiment.239CJ vii. 807a, 808b, 811a, 813a; CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 300, 517. At least one navy captain regarded him as the conduit to the council and the admiralty of his plea for further resources even before he was re-appointed an admiralty commissioner (28 Jan.).240SP18/219, f. 50; CJ vii. 825b; Capp, Cromwell’s Navy, 363. In this capacity on 6 February, the day Parliament welcomed Monck, he delivered to the Commons another detailed report about the budget for the whole of the service over the ensuing six months.241CJ vii. 835a.

Long Parliament and Restoration February-May 1660

Thomson then disappeared from the Journal, to re-appear again the day after Monck had finally asserted his authority to support the re-admittance to Parliament of Members purged in 1648. Nominated on 22 February to committees working on a bill for customs and excise and debating the qualifications to be demanded of those who would sit in the anticipated new Parliament, the next day he was again elected to the council of state.242CJ vii. 848a, 848b, 849a. This time he proved more assiduous, his attendance rate steadily increasing over the three months of its life and overall putting him among the half dozen most active members.243CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. xxvii.

In contrast, Thomson’s profile in Parliament over the remaining three weeks of its session looks more than usually sparse. According to form, he was placed on committees for settling the militia in and around the capital and for reviewing the revenue of the commonwealth (29 Feb.; 1 Mar.), and was among a small group delegated to consider a petition from the brethren of Trinity House – among them Maurice Thomson – regarding needy mariners and their dependents (1 Mar.).244CJ vii. 856a, 857a, 857b. Another report on the navy (3 Mar.) was his last recorded contribution to proceedings at Westminster before the Parliament itself ended a fortnight later.245CJ vii. 861a-862a.

Once again Thomson drew back into the shadows when he might have sought the limelight. His motives can only be guessed. Perhaps, now that Montagu was also on the council and was re-instated (nominally in conjunction with Monck) as general of the fleet, Thomson considered that he would achieve most, and put himself in the best position to weather a likely restoration of the monarchy, by concentrating his efforts on being indispensable in that area: this was, after all, Montagu’s own, pragmatic strategy.246CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 398, 539; ‘Edward Montagu, 1st earl of Sandwich’, Oxford DNB. Thomson does not seem to have sought a seat for Southwark in the Convention. He may have shared the perspective of his long-term colleague and CNC secretary Robert Blackborne, who startled Samuel Pepys at a gathering on 4 April which also included Montagu, ‘Colonel Thomson with the wooden leg’ and admiralty commissioner William Penn. Not only did Blackborne remark that the return of the king was certain but he also commended Charles ‘for a sober man’, under whose government he could be ‘quiet’.247Pepys’s Diary, i. 102-3.

At least one royalist spy regarded Thomson with deep suspicion, but he stayed close to Montagu and survived.248CCSP iv. 674; v. 224. When the latter went to Holland to escort Charles home, Thomson wrote to him from Whitehall to keep him abreast of preparations underway for the navy to receive the king and the new order (10, 14 May).249Bodl. Carte 72, f. 454; 73, f. 445. He made a declaration on 1 June from his home at Lee, claiming a free pardon by the terms of the Treaty of Breda, and was still working at the admiralty two weeks later, although his employment was presumably terminated soon after that.250Bucks. RO, D 192/16/6; Add. 4197, ff. 276, 279; SP29/3, f. 19; Pepys’s Diary, i. 176.

Later career

Despite their contribution to the Restoration the Thomson brothers – even William, who was knighted in May 1660 and elected to the Cavalier Parliament – endured several years under suspicion, principally but not exclusively because of their religious sympathies. George stood again for Southwark without success in the April 1661 election, despite, or perhaps because of the many nonconformists who turned out to support him.251‘Southwark’, HP Commons 1660-1690. William, known as a Presbyterian, resigned as an alderman in September, ostensibly on health grounds but probably to avoid failing the new religious test, while George was the same month accused of attending a seditious sermon at Lee.252‘Sir William Thompson’, HP Commons 1660-1690; CSP Dom. 1661-62, p. 97. Further allegations of his encouraging dangerous preaching led to the issue on 31 October of an arrest warrant for him in Kent.253CSP Dom. 1661-62, pp. 125, 130. Robert, known to Pepys in 1663 as a supporter of liberty of conscience, was denounced in 1666 as a hater of episcopacy, ‘bold, full of malice and embittered against the government’, while Maurice was alleged to have traitorously leaked details of the English fleet to the Dutch during that year’s naval war.254Pepys’s Diary, iv. 5; Geneal. Gleanings in Eng i. 74. ‘These two monsters of men’, the informant recalled had ‘two brothers ... almost like themselves ... and the most eminent of those that carried on the great work’; without specifying exactly what he meant, he went on to recount the story of George and the Southwark millenarians in 1659.255SP29/159, f. 128.

But this was a temporary setback and may have been partly illusory. During this period William remained in Parliament and Maurice and Robert served terms respectively as governor and deputy governor of the East India Company.256Cal. Ct. Mins. E. I. Co. 1660-1679, passim. In October 1667 William, already a member of the public accounts committee, and George were summoned to advise the treasury commissioners.257CTB ii. 99; Pepys’s Diary, vii. 305. In December Pepys noted with some surprise that ‘Thomson with the wooden leg’ or ‘some of the Thomsons’ were likely to be named among new commissioners for accounts.258Pepys’s Diary, viii. 569-71. Yet by the following February George was not only installed in the post, but ‘mighty kind’ to Pepys and ‘likely to mind our business more than any’; the diarist was perhaps not the only government servant won over by his trademark industry and efficiency, even if his expressed nostalgia for the navy office of the 1650s was disconcerting.259Pepys’s Diary, ix. 68, 254, 394; SP29/322, f. 195; CTB ii. 611; iii. 211, 669, 948, 959. Meanwhile, fraternal solidarity remained strong, as seen in 1675, when London merchant Thomas Sprigg appointed all four brothers as his executors.260Geneal. Gleanings in Eng. i. 65.

George appears less materially successful than his siblings, perhaps distracted by the daily grind of parliamentary committees; there is much less evidence as to his landed estate or personal wealth. None the less, in 1667 he beat rivals to claim Abigail Hill, widow of two of his former parliamentary colleagues, as his third wife. Originally an heiress, she brought jointures and swelled the number of his step-children.261Bucks. RO, D 192/9/9-12; Add. 46500; Som. RO, DD/X/VNL/1, p. 37; Vis. Som. 1672, 113. George’s own three children pre-deceased him, so when he came to draft his will in December 1690, the main beneficiaries apart from his wife were his grandchildren, John, George, Richard and Elizabeth South, but he also left legacies to his second wife’s son John Tufnayle and his third wife’s son John Lockey, as well as to namesakes descended from his brothers; the only property specifically mentioned was his manor at Brightlingsea on the Essex coast.262PROB11/403/100. Having died soon afterwards, he was buried, as he had wished, next to his second wife in St Olave, Southwark.263St Olave, Southwark, par. reg. The family continued to be represented at Westminster, as in the admiralty and in public accounts, by Maurice’s son Sir John Thompson†, four times Member for Gatton, Surrey, in the 1690s, and then by his son Maurice†.

Assessment

For some contemporaries, Thomson was an epitome of much that was objectionable in the parliamentarians and their puritan commonwealth – the parvenu merchant turned soldier, the uninhibited religious enthusiast, the untrustworthy political radical, who was hypocritically high-minded on occasion only to abandon his principles when self-interest intervened. His early career as a precocious colonial trader and entrepreneur, monopolising commodities and transporting slaves outside the established structures of the City of London, argues for an innovative, self-confident and even ruthless cast of mind. His reported reaction to a war wound that might easily have killed him, and his ability to live with it productively for decades thereafter, suggest toughness as well as emotional commitment to the cause. To be elected to Parliament for an ungovernable suburb and then – with Snellinge – to galvanise its militia into an effective challenge to the City forces during the Presbyterian coup hints at popular appeal, strong leadership and strategic decisiveness. The last quality probably stood him in good stead from the autumn of 1659 into the early summer of 1660, just as boldness apparently carried him from the suspected non-conformist of 1661 to a resurrected public career in 1667.

Yet for all the occasional glimpses of vehement intervention in debate, the more frequent instances of being despatched by the House on errands requiring authority and persuasive power, and the regularity at some periods of his reports to the Commons, Thomson was often an unobtrusive figure. His contribution to parliamentary business was concentrated in areas of his particular expertise, where he worked hard and, so far as can be seen, efficiently. This was closely related to his own business interests, but while the connection was doubtless profitable, he was not noticeably accused of excessive corruption. Evidence of his religious inclinations on the whole suggests a man more open, tolerant and moderate than his enemies alleged, while his very long-standing partnership with his brothers is a pointer that his prominence on the navy and excise committees rested on an ability to work collaboratively and harmoniously. How far he was an ideologue is difficult to determine, but while he was clearly more usually a pragmatist, he was still capable of sticking his head above the parapet to assert the good old cause.