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Author: Mott, Thomas

Biography:

MOTT, Thomas (1773-1826: ancestry.co.uk)

He was probably the Thomas Mott baptised 6 Dec. 1773 at Holy Trinity, Cambridge, the son of William Mott, attorney, and his wife Susan Pigott, who had married in 1770. He also became an attorney and much later a Lt.-Col. in the Cambridge Volunteers. He married Rebecca Gillam on 18 Jan. 1796 at St. Edward’s, Cambridge. She was the daughter of Edward Gillam, a wealthy Cambridge banker and oil merchant. They had two children, Thomas and Caroline. Rebecca Mott died in March 1814 and when her father died the following year he made generous provision for her children’s maintenance and education although her son, Thomas, died as an Ensign in the army in America in 1816. Possibly in response to his wife’s death, Mott announced the publication of Love’s Tears, a Domestic Legend. In Two Cantos in Aug. 1814, but it does not seem to have proceeded to publication and would have been out of place added to his rather commonplace rendering of episodes in the life of Christ in The Sacred Period (1822). He had earlier announced this final volume as Shiloh to be added to his edition of Edward Ind (q.v.) in 1820 but sensibly published them separately. Mott practised as a solicitor in Cambridge and was highly critical of legal procedures relating to capital offences which allowed only the intervention of the crown and prevented judicial and jury discretion. He may therefore have been on the fringes of radical Cambridge and its Abolitionist circle. He died on 21 June 1826 at Sydney Street, Cambridge, and was buried at Holy Trinity. (ancestry.co.uk 30 Dec. 2020; findmypast.co.uk 30 Dec. 2020; GM Feb. 1796, 166; Stamford Mercury 22 Jan. 1796; Bristol Times 26 Mar. 1814; Cambridge Chronicle 19 Aug. 1814, 12 Apr. 1816, 19 Feb. 1819, 15 Sept. 1820, 13 Sept. 1822, 30 June 1826) AA

 

Books written (2):

Cambridge/ London: Deighton and Sons, Nicholson and Son, Barrett, and Thorp/ Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1813
Cambridge/ London: Deighton and Sons, and Nicholson and Son/ Lackington and Co., and Rivingtons, 1822