Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 30.djvu/55

 William III. He died in 1700, leaving a considerable property. His son, also named Thomas, was born in Liverpool in 1664, being baptised at St. Nicholas' Church on 27 Nov. of that year, and owing to the influence of his father occupied a prominent position in the town from a very early age. He was bailiff in 1689, and the mayoralty devolved on him in 1695, after one month's tenure of the office by his father. He was elected to parliament for Liverpool in 1701, together with William Clayton, and continued to represent the town in ten successive parliaments. Like his colleague, Johnson supported the whigs, although in December 1702 he voted against the annual grant of 5,000l. to the Duke of Marlborough. His interests in parliament were, however, almost exclusively local, and his correspondence with Richard Norris [q. v.] shows that he paid far more attention to Liverpool's trade in Virginia tobacco than to the war of the Spanish succession. Johnson was knighted by Queen Anne in 1708 on the occasion of his presenting a dutiful address from Liverpool in view of a threatened invasion by the Pretender, and he was re-elected to parliament in 1708, when his former colleague, Clayton, was thrown out. Meanwhile he was successfully conducting several schemes for the benefit of Liverpool. He effected the separation of the parish of Liverpool from that of Walton-on-the-Hill; he obtained from the crown, with great difficulty, a grant to the corporation of the site of the old castle, where in 1707 he planned an adequate market for the town; he took the leading part in the construction of the first floating dock at Liverpool in 1708 and in the erection of St. Peter's and St. George's Churches. ‘There is everything here to confirm the traditionary reputation of this person as the founder of the modern town, and also the no less firm belief that he was one of the most diligent of those smugglers who called themselves Virginia merchants, and who at this time comprised every principal trader in Liverpool’ (Norris Papers, ed. Heywood, Chetham Soc., p. 48). In 1715 Johnson undertook to convey 130 Jacobite prisoners to the plantations for 1,000l. In spite of his inherited wealth, his frequent speculations left him chronically needy, and in 1723 he suddenly resigned his seat in parliament and accepted the office of collector of customs on the river Rappahannock in Virginia, whither he retired in the same year. He died in Jamaica in the early part of 1729.

A street leading from Dale Street to Whitechapel, Liverpool, and called Sir Thomas Buildings, alone commemorated his connection with the town, until 1873, when a marble tablet was erected in the municipal offices by Sir James Picton to Johnson's memory. ‘Being of an active and enterprising mind,’ says Picton (Memorials of Liverpool, i. 148–9), ‘Johnson was very closely mixed up with the town's affairs at a period of transition when the latent capabilities of the port were just being discovered, and to no one was the town more indebted for its early development.’

Johnson was twice married, and by his second wife left two daughters, Anne, who married Richard Gildart (d. 1770), mayor of Liverpool on three separate occasions, and member of parliament for the borough from 1734 to 1754, and Ellen, who married William Morland of Lamberhurst, Kent.

[Picton's Memorials of Liverpool, vols. i. ii.; Baines's Liverpool, pp. 344, 355; Norris Papers and the Moore Rental (Chetham Society's Publications); Le Neve's Knights, p. 499; information kindly supplied by Francis Nevile Reid, esq.] 

JOHNSON, THOMAS? (1772–1839), smuggler and pilot, was in 1798 made prisoner in an affray with the revenue officers on the coast of Sussex, and confined in the new gaol in the Borough in London, from which he made his escape ‘in a most daring way.’ A reward of 500l. was offered for his apprehension, but nothing was heard of him till, in the following year, he offered himself as pilot to the expedition to Holland. His offer was accepted; he received a free pardon, and performed the duty to the great satisfaction of the officers in command, especially, it is said, of Sir Ralph Abercromby. He is described as then launching out into an extravagant way of living and contracting debts to the amount of 11,000l. This was no doubt a gross exaggeration; but in 1802 he was imprisoned for debt in the Fleet prison. At the same time he was charged with having again been guilty of smuggling, and fearing to stand his trial he effected his escape, succeeded in reaching the coast, and in getting a passage to Calais, and thence to Flushing, where he seems to have remained an outlaw, till in 1809 he again offered his services to pilot the Walcheren expedition. For the second time he received a free pardon, and after the satisfactory performance of the duty he was granted a pension of 100l. a year, conditional on his abstaining from his evil practices. He died in Vauxhall Bridge Road, London, in March 1839, aged 67. He is spoken of as ‘Captain’ Johnson.

[Gent. Mag. 1802 pt. ii. p. 1156, and 1839 pt. i. p. 553.] 

JOHNSON, THOMAS BURGELAND (d. 1840), writer on field-sports, was a printer in Liverpool, who after taking to literary