A Dictionary of the Booksellers and Printers who Were at Work in England, Scotland and Ireland from 1641 to 1667/Thomason (George)
THOMASON (GEORGE), bookseller in London; Rose, or Rose and Crown, St. Paul's Churchyard, 1627-66. Thomason will always be remembered as the collector of the literature of the Civil War and Commonwealth periods. Nothing is known as to his antecedents before the record of his freedom as a member of the Company of Stationers on June 5th, 1626. [Arber, iii. 686.] His first book entry is recorded in the Registers on November 1st, 1627, and shows him as sharing the copyright with James Boler and Robert Young [ibid., iv. 31, 188, 419]. He is next found in partnership with Octavian Pulleyn, a connection which was apparently dissolved about 1643, when Thomason moved to the Rose and Crown in St. Paul's Churchyard. At the time of the opening of the Long Parliament on November 3rd, 1640, Thomason conceived the idea of collecting and preserving, as far as he could, all the pamphlets printed during the next few years. Not only did he steadfastly carry out the task he had set himself, but he also arranged the collection in the best possible way, that is, chronologically, and made the chronology as precise as possible, by writing on almost every tract the day on which he received it. Thomason failed to get everything, thus many Royalist pamphlets and sheets printed at Oxford are only represented in his collection by a London reprint, and the same remark applies to other provincial or secret presses. It is matter for wonder that he should have collected so much rather than that he should have lost so little. Mr. G. K. Fortescue, Keeper of the Printed Books at the British Museum, gives the figures of the Thomason collection as follows: Pamphlets, 14,942; Manuscripts, 97; Newspapers, 7,216; total, 22,255 pieces, bound in 2,008 volumes. During the Civil War, Thomason sent his collection first into Surrey, afterwards into Essex, and at one time contemplated sending it into Holland, but was fortunately persuaded to give up that idea, and concealed it in his own warehouses, arranging the volumes as tables, and covering them over with canvas. At the Restoration the King commanded his stationer, Samuel Mearne, to purchase the collection, but apparently afterwards went back on his bargain, and not only did not take it into the royal library, but did not repay Mearne for its purchase. Mearne's widow, in 1684, was permitted by the Privy Council to sell it, and the volumes passed into the possession of a relative, Mr. Henry Sisson, a druggist on Ludgate Hill. They were eventually bought for King George III for the paltry sum of £300 and presented by him to the nation in 1762. In 1645-6 Thomason bought up the whole impression of a pamphlet called Truth's Manifest, which the Committee of both Houses considered libellous. In 1648 the House of Commons agreed to pay him £500 for a collection of Eastern books, but he had great difficulty in getting the money. In 1651 he was imprisoned for seven weeks in consequence of his complicity in the Love conspiracy, but was released on giving bail for £1,000. George Thomason died on April 10th, 1666, and Smyth in his Obituary, p. 71, adds "buried out of Stationers Hall (a poore man)." His will was proved on the 27th April. By this it appears that he had four sons, George, Edward, Henry, and Thomas, living at the time of his death. Negotiations were then on foot for the sale of his collection of pamphlets, which he bequeathed to Dr. Thomas Barlowe, Provost of Queen's College, Oxford, Thomas Lockey, principal librarian of the "public library," at Oxford, and John Rushworth, of Lincoln's Inn, in trust for the benefit of his three children, Edward, Henry and Thomas, but by a codicil he directed that the sum obtained for them, which he anticipated would be Twelve Hundred Pounds or more, was to be divided equally between his daughter Grace and his son Thomas. [D.N.B.; Bibliographica, vol. 3, pp. 291-308; Information kindly supplied by Mr. G. K. Fortescue; P.C.C. 64 Mico.]