Author: BOND, Thomas
Biography:
BOND, Thomas (fl 1799)
There is a mystery about this author. Lachrymae Hiberniae is identified by ECCO as by Thomas Bond on the basis of an inscription in one copy (not seen and it is not clear where this copy is located). In 1795-1806 a Thomas Bond in Dublin published numerous pamphlets on the Irish economy and politics; the subject of Lachyrmae Hiberniae fits with those works although that Thomas Bond published no other verse. The pamphlets’ title pages give his name as “Sir Thomas Bond” but the prefaces are signed “Thomas Bond.” He was a merchant on Bride Street, Dublin, who became bankrupt in Feb. 1785—the same year that he married Sophia White of Dublin on 3 Nov. The first of his pamphlets, Digest of Foreign Exchanges (1795), has an extensive subscription list that includes Sir James Bond, Bart.—father of another Thomas Bond who inherited the baronetcy in 1820 and died in 1823. The preface to The Prosperity of Ireland (1802), one of Bond’s pamphlets, states “as the old Family Title affixed to my name, has not been accompanied by any emolument, I have been obliged (ever since my bankruptcy) to appear as a Writer.” No record confirming his right to a title has been located but he could not have been Thomas Bond, son of Sir James Bond. That Thomas Bond was born in 1776, making him just nine when Thomas Bond of Bride Street became bankrupt and was married. (irishgenealogy.ie 5 Jan. 2022; George Edward Cokayne, Complete Baronetage 5 [1906] 432-33; Saunders’s Newsletter 6 Oct. 1794, 24 Feb. 1785, 12 Feb. 1787; Dublin Correspondent 6 Mar. 1823)