Gleanings of Major Robert Thompson (also known as Major Robert Thomson) Namesake of Thompson CT Assembled December 25, 2016 Thompson CT Editor: Joseph Iamartino On Behalf of the Thompson Historical Society © 2016 Thompson Historical Society, Joseph Iamartino – Editor Note: Permission granted by Professor Alan Thomson to use his Thomson document for purposes of this manuscript. Major Robert Thompson The Thompson Historical Society Foreword by Joseph Iamartino: In Book I, Professor Alan Thomson has assembled a remarkable biography of Major Robert Thompson. The Major was involved in many of the principal events in one of the most dramatic centuries in recorded history. However, the information about Robert Thompson had to be found, piece by piece, like a jigsaw puzzle scattered after a tornado. In our Internet age, it is easy to “Google up” information on a person but Prof. Thomson’s effort came the old fashioned way, laboriously finding and then reading the dusty texts, with one clue leading to another, assembling piece upon piece of a puzzle. The challenge for readers is to understand that many elements of the life of such a complex man as Robert Thompson, with activities in the American colonies, on the European continent, even in India, remain hidden to us even with Professor Thomson’s insights. It is up to us to assemble the story knowing there are huge gaps but, at least we now have a chance of understanding his story thanks to Professor Thomson’s labor of love. My son Christian, who was attending college in the UK at the time, and I visited Professor Thomson in London when Alan so generously donated his text to the Thompson Historical Society. I had caught a terrible infection and wanted nothing more than to go to the nearest hospital and throw myself at any doctor who would take my carcass. My son Christian insisted that this was a chance of a lifetime to meet Professor Thomson and that I could hold out a bit more. Not sure which lifetime he was referring to, his or the one that was likely nearing its end near the Thames River that day, I was half-carried to the meeting and once there, thoroughly enjoyed myself discussing the Major’s life with Alan and Christian. I am sure I infected half of London with whatever disease I had carried with me from China. I did end up at the hospital with pneumonia but, I had the priceless compact disk containing the Professor’s text in my pocket. Finally, I would like to explain the structure of this book. Book I is the Prof. Alan Thompson text in its entirety. Book II is a collection of articles written by me or others clarifying some of the Major Robert Thompson story. There has been no attempt to harmonize any of the articles in Book II with the text in Book I. Some of the articles pull from similar sources. Book I even points to certain elements in the articles in Book II, but we have been careful to avoid a circular reference problem. While I have attempted to clarify any confusing sections, this document needs more scholarly work in the future to better flesh out the real Major Robert Thompson. May some researcher decide to do so! I am sure the Major is very pleased to be remembered by the town or people who carry his name to this day. Christmas Day - December 25, 2016 Joseph Iamartino Major Robert Thompson The Thompson Historical Society Index: Book 1: Professor Alan Thomson – Life of Major Robert Thomson Book 2: Document 1: Sketch of Major Robert Thompson – Marcella Pasay From Echoes of Olde Thompson Volume 1 Document 2: Major Robert Thompson – Joseph Iamartino From Echoes of Olde Thompson Volume 2 Document 3: Genealogical Gleanings in England – Henry Fitz-Gilbert Waters Major Robert Thompson The Thompson Historical Society 1 Robert Thompson 1622 ‐1694 Bestride three worlds: London, New England, and the East Indies By Alan Thomson Copyright Alan Thomson, Ware 2013 Permission granted by Professor Alan Thomson to reprint this document for the benefit of the Thompson people by the Thompson Historical Society The Life of Major Robert Thomson by Prof. Alan Thomson 1 2 Robert Thompson 1622 ‐1694 bestride three worlds: London, New England, and the East Indies Forward A reader of this book might ask why study the life of the fifth son of a minor country gentleman from Hertfordshire, UK, of whom few have heard except those who live in the town of Thompson Connecticut and who have seen and remembered a programme about the ancestors of the actor Kevin Whately? One answer is that he, like the eponymous hero Forrest Gump, happened to be there at key moments in History. For example he was in Boston Massachusetts in the first few years of its existence; he fought in the English Civil War; he knew Oliver Cromwell and attended his funeral; he met the British King Charles II and negotiated with him on behalf of the East India Company; he and other Company members founded modern Mumbai when they planned and established the fort and port at Bombay; he and members of the political elites of Massachusetts and Connecticut helped expand those colonies by engaging in speculative deals in Indian land; and he and other members of his family helped bring about the Glorious Revolution both in England and in the American Colonies. An academic researcher might ask some other key questions to which the reader might want to find answers. For example: what is significant about his life and achievements; what contribution did he make to the history of Britain, The East India Company and the American colonies; what do his life and activities reveal about the nature, ideas and relationships generated between the American colonies and the British Government; and what does an analysis of his activities reveal about other people with whom he came in contact: the bureaucrats, the speculators, the nonconformist clerics, the international traders, merchants, politicians and even the Kings of England? Further questions also arise such as: does knowledge of him help to explain events the causes of which we would otherwise not know? Could some of his activities be seen as morally reprehensible today whereas at the time they seemed normal and acceptable? And finally what were his failings as well as his achievements, and was he in any sense typical of his age? I hope in this book to answer some of the questions and to link together his activities across three continents and two oceans and to see what kind of impact he had on the last three quarters of the 17th century and to explain why a small town in the north east corner of Connecticut, which he never visited, was named after him. Introduction In the middle of the 17th century, it would normally have been difficult for a fifth son of a minor landed gentleman from a village in Hertfordshire in England to make his way in the world. He would have inherited little if any property, money or prospects, and the most he might have hoped for was marriage into a wealthy family. Not so Robert Thompson, who came to bestride three worlds, that of Cromwellian and Restoration London, the East India Company and the developing colonies of New England. How did he do this and what risks did he take and what commitments did he make to become an influential member of the post civil war non‐conformist community and a major land speculator in North America? One answer is family. His eldest brother was Maurice Thomson, international entrepreneur, trading interloper and by 1658 Governor of the reorganized The Life of Major Robert Thomson by Prof. Alan Thomson 2 3 East India Company. Another brother George was MP for Lambeth in the 1640s and ‘50s who provided an opening in naval administration for his youngest sibling. A third brother William was MP for London at the Restoration, thus easing the transition for his brothers, who had supported the Republican regimes and Protectorates of the 1650s. A second answer was the colonial ‘big bang’, the opportunities that arose across the world in the second half of the 17th century, not only for opening up trade across the Indian Ocean but also for acquiring land overseas and establishing colonies in the Caribbean and in the North East of the North American continent. Historians on both sides of the Atlantic have rightly focused their attention on Maurice Thomson, as the quintessential merchant interloper and international entrepreneur of the mid 17th century, and ever since Robert Brenner’s seminal work Merchants and Revolution1, Maurice has taken centre stage. However Maurice had four younger brothers, one Paul, died young and, of the others, George made a name for himself domestically in the Commonwealth, and William after the Restoration, but the youngest, Robert, has been neglected. Eighteen years Maurice’s junior, Robert’s career covered nearly 55 years from his emigration to Boston in the late 1630s to his death in 1694. Returning to England by 1642 he fought for Parliament in the First Civil War, rising to the rank of Major by 1645, a title by which he was known for the rest of his life. He always signed his surname without a ‘p’ as did Maurice, but his brothers and his contemporaries and the later founders of Thompson, Connecticut, whose town was named after him, often inserted it and it was spelt as such in the register of baptisms. As spelling was not standardized until the next century it did not matter.