THOMSONE, William (d. 1675), of Newmilnes, Haddingtonshire, and the City of Edinburgh.

William Thomsone, who rendered his name with a final ‘e’, was the son of a ‘flesher’ and burgess of Edinburgh who had risen to the position of deacon of the burgh in the years before the civil wars.15Sig: NRS, B56/16/16. As an insider, Thomsone was rapidly promoted. Elected as burgess and guild-brother in 1644, in just over two years he became ‘conjunct’ (or joint) clerk of the burgh, serving with the much older Alexander Guthrie.16Recs. Burgh Edinburgh, 1642-55, 83, 211. In the late 1640s, Thomsone became an important figure in Edinburgh affairs: in June 1647 he was chosen to attend Charles I to defend the burgh’s right to pursue a criminal prosecution; and a year later he led negotiations which secured the superiorities of West Port and Potteraw for the burgh from Sir Adam Hepburne of Humbie. In fact, Thomsone’s influence was sufficiently great that when the burgesses needed a scapegoat on the collapse of the royalist Hamiltonian faction following the second civil war, they turned on their clerk. On 19 October 1648 the burgh dismissed Thomsone because of ‘his accession to the late unlawful Engagement … whereby needlessly and unusually both the guilt of that sinful Engagement and the displeasure of God was drawn on the good town by him’. As town clerk, Thomsone did not enjoy the extensive powers over the corporation claimed by his enemies, but it may have been his personal standing and his identification with the royalist faction within the burgh, which was the cause of animosity in the closing months of 1648.17Recs. Burghs Edinburgh, 1642-55, 126, 151, 176-7. Ironically, Thomsone’s estrangement from the burgh during its later dealings with Charles Stuart in 1650-1 allowed him to re-emerge in 1652 as one of the few prominent burgesses acceptable to the new Cromwellian government of Scotland.

Thomsone’s return to influence in Edinburgh began in February 1652, when he was chosen as one of the two deputies sent to Dalkeith to negotiate the tender of union with the English authorities. On 4 March Thomsone and his fellow deputy, John Milne, sent official assurances of the ‘town’s protection’ and a charter allowing burgh elections, and on the next day they returned to Edinburgh with the tender of union itself. A week later, in the burgh elections, Thomsone was re-appointed sole clerk for the burgh, the council acknowledging his ‘faithful service to the town’.18Recs. Burgh Edinburgh, 1642-55, 269-71, 274; Cromwellian Union ed. Terry, 46, 55. His return was controversial – he was attacked by the ministers of Edinburgh for his apostasy in swearing obedience to the English commonwealth - but such criticism could not prevent Thomsone from dominating the corporation for much of the 1650s.19Nicoll, Diary, 88. His position was based on three factors. First, he was one of the wealthier merchants, apparently unaffected by the general state of indebtedness in the burgh, and able to advance substantial loans to individuals.20Edinburgh Archives, Moses’ Bundle 42, no. 1805; 43, no. 1863. Secondly, he enjoyed great influence within the city’s council, not least with the provost from 1655 onwards, Andrew Ramsay*, who owed his election to Thomsone’s influence.21Baillie Lttrs. and Jnls. iii. 389. Finally, Thomsone was the most active politician in the burgh, willing and able to negotiate concessions from the Cromwellian governments in England as well as Scotland. It was this role that took up most of his energies in the early 1650s.

In July 1652 Thomsone was commissioned by the Edinburgh council ‘to repair to London or elsewhere to agent the particular business of the burgh’, with expenses paid by the burgh, including authorisation to draw from the treasurers ‘the whole money they presently have’.22Recs. Burgh Edinburgh, 1642-55, 285, 294. Thomsone was kept in London until May 1654, entering lengthy negotiations to protect the rights of the Edinburgh council over the port of Leith, and receiving periodic instructions on pressing matters, such as the ‘unexpected change of the election of magistrates’ threatened in September 1653.23CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. 333, 350, 376; 1653-4, pp. 82, 113, 203-4. In a final victory in March 1654, and after much lobbying of the protectorate council’s committees and the Nominated Assembly, he was able to secure a grant of an impost on beer and ale, which was to cover the interest payments on the burgh’s debts. This made up in part for the £1,316 (sterling) which the burgh had had to find to cover his expenses and fees over the two-year period.24Recs. Burgh Edinburgh, 1642-55, 313, 322, 330, 334, 342; CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 203-4; 1654, p. 69. Thomsone was also receiving instructions – and payment – from the convention of royal burghs, which had appointed him as its general clerk in August 1652 and also appointed him as agent to assist ‘such commissioners of burghs as shall be appointed to go to attend the Parliament’ in the same month.25Recs. Convention of Royal Burghs, 362, 364. This second appointment was not in conflict with his Edinburgh duties: the convention was also worried at the proposed changes to burgh elections, and its instructions to Thomsone to promote trading rights and lobby for an abatement of burgh assessments were of obvious benefit to Edinburgh.26Recs. Convention of Royal Burghs, 368-9.

Thomsone’s ability to wear several hats at once also characterises his activity in the first protectorate Parliament, when he represented three distinct constituencies. He was elected as MP for the Peebles (or Haddington) Burghs – a group of seven burghs to the south and east of Edinburgh – and he may have received specific instructions from them: he was certainly paid £100 ‘for his entertainment in attending their affairs there’.27C219/44, unfol.; NRS, B56/16/15; Recs. Convention of Royal Burghs, 391. The Edinburgh council was at first uneasy about the probity of its town clerk serving for other burghs, and on 22 August consulted the sheriff of Berwickshire, the burgh of Haddington and the Cromwellian authorities, ‘craving their advice how to behave’; but the burgesses were soon happy to consider ‘that it is a great providence that the clerk (whom it was necessary to send howsoever for soliciting and informing the commissioners) is called to sit for Parliament’ and ordered that he be ‘dispatched away with all haste’ with a generous allowance of £500 sterling ‘for prosecuting the town’s affairs at London’.28Recs. Burgh Edinburgh, 1642-55, 343-4. When another agent – Andrew Ramsay, the future provost – was sent to London on 11 December, the burgh stipulated that he ‘shall act or do nothing without advice and consent of William Thomsone their clerk’.29Recs. Burgh Edinburgh, 1642-55, 359. Letters were duly sent to Thomsone with further instructions two days later.30Edinburgh City Archives, SL1/1/18, f. 142. Equally important was Thomsone’s continuing role as the agent of the convention of royal burghs, who ‘entrusted several of their affairs’ to him in their meetings in early November 1654, and paid him £100 for his expenses. The convention’s programme was extensive. Thomsone was called upon to liaise with the other burgh MPs on such issues as the need to oppose restrictions on export of wool, hides and salt, and to preserve ‘the liberty of their trading and privilege of the burghs’. Alongside the usual calls for the abatement of assessments and the safeguarding of creditors’ interests, the burghs were ambitious in their demands that ‘for their encouragement [they] may have their wonted proportion as a third in relation to the representative of the government in Parliament’ – in other words, that the burghs should not suffer a reduction in their representation at Westminster.31Recs. Convention of Royal Burghs, 392-5, 397, 424.

Thomsone’s activity in the 1654 Parliament scarcely registers in the official records, and the Journal shows him as named to only three committees, including the committee of Scottish affairs on 29 September.32CJ vii. 371b, 374b, 381a. Yet we know from other sources that he was very active at Westminster. His report to the Edinburgh council (made on his eventual return to the city in Sept. 1655) listed his achievements since August 1654, including reversing the decision to withhold free elections in burghs, the staying of measures against the burgh ‘in lieu of money owed by the burgh to the late lords of session’ and ensuring that the excise bill ‘should in no ways diminish or infringe’ the impost on beer and ale allowed by the protector only a few months before.33Edinburgh City Archives, SL1/1/18, f. 208v. A surviving letter from Thomsone to the royal burghs of 29 December 1654 reveals still more of his involvement in Scottish affairs at Westminster.34NRS, B56/16/16; P. Little, ‘Scottish Affairs at Westminster: a letter from the Union Parliament of 1654-5’, SHR lxxxiv. 247-56. In it, Thomsone apologised for his slow progress, caused partly by being ‘overweighted with business’ and partly because ‘things were not come to that ripeness as that I could give thereof any rational account’. His main achievement had been in resisting bills hostile to the burghs, including ‘the business of the election of magistrates’ and ‘the business of assessments’, which ‘was a great deal more dangerous’, and he may have been instrumental in forcing the changes to the franchise article in the new constitution on 27 November and the reduction of the Scottish assessments on 5 December. As a further safeguard, Thomsone, with the other burgh commissioners, ‘contrary to all opposition, have passed an addition and clause for the liberty and privileges of burghs’ as part of the union bill which received its first reading on 22 December. Thomsone commented that the struggle to maintain the burghs’ position had been ‘the hardest task that ever I undertook in my life’, and his job was not made any easier by the Scottish shire MPs, who bitterly opposed the convention of burghs’ attempts to keep their share of the northern seats, and tried to reduce it to eight. This debate took place in the committee for Scottish affairs, where ‘all these who are for the burghs did faithfully withstand and oppose’ the shire members, and in protest ‘did dissent and desert the committee’ when the burghs were unfairly treated over the ‘sub-proportioning’ of the assessments.35NRS, B56/16/16; Little, ‘Scottish Affairs at Westminster’, 255-6; CJ vii. 391b-2a, 395a, 407a. In all these disputes Thomsone comes across not only as the most influential burgh member, but also the co-ordinator of a small but significant Scottish bloc within the House.

The premature dissolution of Parliament in January 1655 left Scottish business unresolved, but the convention of burghs was more than satisfied by Thomsone’s performance at Westminster, and on 9 February they renewed his commission as their agent in London, confident of his ‘fidelity, diligence, care and affection’.36Recs. Convention of Royal Burghs, 397. By this time, the Edinburgh council had already instructed Thomsone and Ramsay to deal with the protector directly about the Leith business, and at the end of February the council went to the extraordinary lengths of issuing their agents with blank papers, ready-signed by the provost and leading burgesses ‘to the effect the same may be penned there by advice of friends and presented to his highness’.37Recs. Burgh Edinburgh, 1642-55, 365-6. As the council minutes stated, ‘the subscription of blanks [is] a business of great trust’, and nothing better demonstrates Thomsone’s standing in Edinburgh, or the burgh’s dependence on him.38Recs. Burgh Edinburgh, 1642-55, 366. Thomsone returned to the city at the end of August, and shortly afterwards his accounts were approved, and his mission declared ‘very successful’ in safeguarding the rights of the burgh.39Recs. Burgh Edinburgh, 1642-55, 385-6. On 28 November Thomsone was again commissioned as Edinburgh’s agent, with instructions to settle the dispute over Leith and defend the impost, and in December 1655 and January 1656 he was busy attending the Leith commissioners and the newly appointed Scottish council on behalf of the burgh.40Recs. Burgh Edinburgh, 1642-55, 393, 394-5; Recs. Burgh Edinburgh, 1655-65, 2, 6.

Thomsone was not returned to the second protectorate Parliament in 1656, although his ally, Andrew Ramsay, was elected as MP for the city of Edinburgh, alongside the president of the Scottish council, Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle*). Nevertheless, Thomsone followed these men south as agent of the convention of burghs, with instructions to make sure burgh interests were not harmed by government concessions to Scottish debtors. On 25 October 1656 Thomsone wrote to the convention from London saying that the burgh MPs had agreed to negotiate a compromise over the issue ‘by the advice of the Lord Broghill’.41Recs. Convention of Royal Burghs, 434. In the spring of 1657 he had returned to Scotland, and over the next two years he was employed to attend George Monck* about the convention of burghs and Edinburgh concerns, including the status of Leith.42Recs. Burghs Edinburgh, 1655-65, 53, 95, 126, 146; NRS, B58/17/8/1. But by the autumn of 1658, Thomsone had become a controversial figure in Edinburgh. In the run-up to the municipal elections at Michaelmas, he fell out with his former ally, Andrew Ramsay, who tried to have Thomsone removed as clerk. In return, Thomsone ‘wrought underhand’ to choose a new provost to replace Ramsay, and succeeded in having a leading Protester, Sir James Stewart, elected instead. His actions angered the Resolutioner party in the Kirk. Robert Baillie ‘railed’ at Thomsone, whose ‘private spite and spleen against Ramsay … had betrayed the public interest into the hand of a Protester’; and later Baillie likened Thomsone to Judas, warning James Sharp and others not to trust him.43Baillie Lttrs. and Jnls. iii. 389-90, 399-400.

Despite growing opposition, in the winter of 1659-60 Thomsone continued to be the dominant figure in Edinburgh. When Monck marched to the English border leaving Colonel Thomas Hughes in charge of the Scottish capital, the latter made efforts to curry favour with Thomsone to keep the city peaceful.44Clarke Pprs. iv. 207. On three occasions Thomsone took Edinburgh’s assurances of support and other communications to the general in person.45Recs. Burgh Edinburgh, 1655-65, 178, 180, 181. In the spring of 1660 Thomsone was again acting as agent to the city of Edinburgh and the convention of royal burghs. In February, the royal burghs also issued Thomsone with a commission and instructions to attend Monck and Thomas Clarges* in London to pursue the usual requests.46Recs. Convention of Royal Burghs, 499, 500-2. The Edinburgh council again trusted him with signed blank letters, and dispatched him to London. Events in England were moving too quickly for Thomsone to receive approval for his next move. In early May he announced his departure to attend the king in Holland, asking for a further £300 to cover his expenses. On 10 May he wrote to Edinburgh with an account of his personal interview with Charles II at Breda, and told them that he had ‘made bold to offer a poor mite’ – £1,000 – as a gift from the various burghs.47Recs. Burgh Edinburgh, 1655-65, 187, 195, 199, 200. In retrospect, (and with ill-concealed reluctance) the convention approved Thomsone’s generous offer, and also agreed to pay his expenses, which by this time almost amounted to a further £1,000 sterling.48Recs. Convention of Royal Burghs, 504. Although he would later claim that his efforts in London and Holland had ‘not only averted the prejudice to the good town and burghs in sundry and many particulars … but also made many eminent men in and about court to be their friends’, there is little doubt that the chief beneficiary of his mission was Thomsone himself.49Recs. Burgh Edinburgh, 1655-65, 219.

Thomsone’s prominence after the restoration of the monarchy was not dependent on Monck’s favour or his standing with the burghs, but on John Maitland, 1st duke (previously 2nd earl) of Lauderdale. Thomsone’s secret connections with the Maitlands dated back to 1652, if not before. In that year, Lauderdale, facing sequestration, had granted Newmilnes, part of the Haddington Abbey lands, to Thomsone, who had then sold them on to the Hepburnes of Humbie.50Add. 23128, f. 328; 23129, f. 59. This involved him in the financial survival of Lauderdale through the 1650s, and in 1658-9 he joined the earl of Rothes, Charles Maitland and others as a ‘commissioner’ of the Lauderdale estate, with authority to deal with the demands of the earl’s numerous creditors.51Add. 23113, f. 75; CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 334; Buckminster Park Estate Office, Tollemache MSS 1004, 1023. Whether Thomsone’s involvement with Lauderdale coloured his involvement in politics during the 1650s is uncertain; but there is little doubt that it became the main influence on him during the 1660s, when the duke was the most powerful man in Scotland. It was probably Lauderdale who secured a knighthood for Thomsone in or shortly after 1660. Thomsone certainly used his connection with Lauderdale to Edinburgh’s benefit – he secured the impost on beer and ale and a confirmation of the burgh’s privileges through the earl’s influence in 1660, and in 1663 he negotiated with him over the sale of Leith Citadel.52Recs. Burgh Edinburgh, 1655-65, 219, 254, 323-4, 333, 336. But the cost of such deals was prohibitive, and Thomsone’s high-handedness further alienated his fellow burgesses, not least the provost, Andrew Ramsay, who looked for revenge for the humiliation he had suffered in 1658. In August 1664 Thomsone’s enemies struck. He was found guilty of financial irregularity and corruption, and despite his protests was sacked as town clerk, having ‘highly affronted the council and grossly malversed in his office’.53Recs. Burgh Edinburgh, 1655-65, 355-6; Recs. Burgh Edinburgh, 1665-80, 164n; Nicoll, Diary, 418, 443. Despite a protracted legal dispute (and a settlement which, through Lauderdale’s influence, robbed future clerks of most of their profits of office), ‘the great strength and violence’ of Thomsone’s enemies ensured that he was never able to regain his position in Edinburgh. Thomsone died in April 1675.54Recs. Burgh Edinburgh, 1655-65, 358, 361, 363; Recs. Burgh Edinburgh, 1665-80, 1, 81, 90, 163-4, 220; Add. 23129, ff. 13, 23. He was succeeded by his son, also William, who had married Marion Milne, daughter of Thomsone’s colleague as deputy in 1652, and the family still lived in Edinburgh in 1701.55Edinburgh City Archives, Moses’ Bundle 135, no. 5313.