# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Johnson, Thomas (1664-1729)

​JOHNSON, Sir THOMAS (1664–1729), founder of the modern town of Liverpool, was the son of Thomas Johnson of Bedford Leigh, Lancashire. The father, born about 1630, took up his freedom at Liverpool as apprentice to Alderman Hodgson, 17 Oct. 1655; was elected a town councillor in 1659 and bailiff in 1663, in which capacity he is noted by Edward Moore in his rental as ‘one of the hardest men in the town.’ He was elected mayor in 1670, but being a staunch whig he retired from the town council during the last days of Charles II's reign, and remained in seclusion until 1695, when he was nominated mayor under the new charter granted by ​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.
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