Author: Bancroft, Thomas
Biography:
BANCROFT, Thomas (1756-1811: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born in Manchester to Thomas and Mary Bancroft and baptised on 25 Jan. 1756. His father was a thread maker. Bancroft was educated at Manchester Grammar School before going to Brasenose College, Oxford (matric. 8 Apr. 1778, BA 1781, MA 1784). He was ordained in Sept. 1783 and appointed to be headmaster of Henry VIII’s school in Chester where William Parr Greswell (q.v.) was his undermaster. In Dec. 1793 he was made vicar in Bolton-le-Moor, Lancashire. There he proposed marriage to Elizabeth Bennett, daughter of an alderman. Her father opposed the match and the pair eloped, pursued by Alderman Bennett who shot and wounded Bancroft in the leg. Despite Bancroft’s injury, a second attempt at elopement was successful and they were married at Trinity Church, Chester. They had two daughters, Elizabeth and Ann. Bancroft served as one of the Commissioners of the Peace for the county and in 1807 he was also made a King’s Preacher for Lancashire. In 1809 he had a stroke while in the pulpit and he died on 5 Feb. 1811. He was buried at the church in Bolton where a tablet commemorates him, his father, and his wife Elizabeth who died in 1846. (ancestry.co.uk 13 Nov. 2022; CCEd; Alumni Oxonienses; J. C. Scholes, History of Bolton [1892]; Admission Registers of the Manchester School [1866]) SR