1768 to 1771. He was ordained deacon at Westminster on 13 Jan. 1771, and priest at Chester on 2 Aug. 1772. In the following June he was licensed as headmaster of Slaidburn grammar school, and in June 1775 became master of the Clitheroe grammar school, Lancashire, and incumbent of the parochial chapel of the town. In 1779 he entered himself of Trinity College, Cambridge, and took the degree of B.D. there in 1794, under a statute now abolished. In 1807 he was appointed rector of Claughton, near Lancaster. Towards the end of the eighteenth century he formed an intimate acquaintance with Thomas Dunham Whitaker [q. v.], and joined a literary club formed by him. He was a successful schoolmaster, a ready versifier, and a social favourite on account of his amiability, genial wit, and copious fund of anecdote. His besetting weakness was punning.
He died on 3 March 1813, and was buried in the chancel of Bolton-by-Bowland church, where a tablet was afterwards erected with a Latin inscription by Whitaker, copied from a monument erected by Wilson's pupils in Clitheroe church. He married, on 29 April 1775, Susannah Tetlow of Skirden, widow of Henry Nowell, rector of Bolton-by-Bowland. She was forty-four, and he only twenty-eight. A portrait of Wilson, painted by J. Allen, is engraved in the Chetham Society's volume. Another portrait by the same artist was engraved by W. Ward in Wilson's lifetime; and a third portrait came out as a lithograph.
His only literary publication, in addition to two assize sermons (1789 and 1804), was an ‘Archæological Dictionary, or Classical Antiquities of Jews, Greeks, and Romans,’ 1783, 8vo, dedicated to Dr. Samuel Johnson; but his ‘Lancashire Bouquet’ and other occasional verses were circulated in manuscript, and were collected and printed, along with his correspondence, by Canon F. R. Raines for the Chetham Society in 1857.
[Raines's Memoir, prefixed to Wilson's Miscellanies; Gent. Mag. 1819, i. 291.]
WILSON, THOMAS (1764–1843), nonconformist benefactor, seventh child of Thomas Wilson (b. 3 Jan. 1731; d. 31 March 1794) by Mary (1729–1816), daughter of John Remington of Coventry, was born in Wood Street, Cheapside, London, on 11 Nov. 1764, and baptised on 2 Dec. by Thomas Gibbons [q. v.] His mother was a dissenter; his father became one on his marriage, and subsequently built a chapel at Derby (1784), besides assisting in opening several closed chapels in the Midlands. He was at school with Samuel Rogers [q. v.], the poet, at Newington Green under Cockburn, but had not a classical education, and never acquired any literary tastes. In 1778 he was apprenticed to his father, a manufacturer of ribbons and gauzes, and in 1785 was taken into partnership. He left business at Michaelmas 1798, having attained a moderate fortune, to which he received a considerable accession on the death (26 March 1813) of his mother's only brother, John Remington. In 1794 he succeeded his father as treasurer of Hoxton Academy, and held this post till his death; when the academy was removed to Highbury he laid the first stone (28 June 1825) of the college building. His first experiment in chapel building was in 1799, when he erected a new chapel at Hoxton (opened 24 April 1800). From this time he devoted himself for some years to the repairing or rebuilding of dilapidated and closed chapels, e.g. at Brentwood, Harwich, Reigate, Lynn, Guildford, Dartmouth, Liskeard, and elsewhere. Most of these buildings had formerly ranked as presbyterian; Wilson's efforts introduced into their management the congregational system. From 1804 he occasionally acted as a lay preacher. To meet the needs of a growing population he set himself to procure the erection of new chapels in the outskirts of London, among others at Kentish Town (1807), Tonbridge Place, Euston Road (1810), Marylebone Road, Paddington (1813), Claremont Chapel, Pentonville (1819), Craven Chapel, Regent Street (1822), the last three built at his sole cost. Besides giving largely towards the purchase or building of chapels in all parts of the country, he erected at his own expense chapels at Ipswich (1829), Northampton (1829), Richmond, Surrey (1830), and Dover (1838). In January 1837 he was chairman of a meeting which formed the ‘Metropolis Chapel Fund Association’ for the provision of further buildings. His munificence went also in other directions; there were few, if any, societies connected with his own body, or with the cause of evangelical religion generally, which did not benefit by his aid. He was one of the first directors (23 Sept. 1795) of the London Missionary Society. He was also one of the originators of the London University (now University College), and was elected (19 Dec. 1825) a member of its first council. In the Hewley case [see Hewley, Sarah] he was one of the relators in the action (begun 18 June 1830) against the unitarian trustees. He died at Highbury Place on 17 June 1843, and was buried in Abney Park cemetery, where is a monument to his memory. He
