Author: Thompson, Edward
Biography:
THOMPSON, Edward (1738-1786: ODNB)
In earlier accounts, Thompson’s paternity, marriage, and near relations are recorded as obscure or uncertain. He was however born near Winstead, Yorkshire, and was baptized 6 Dec. 1738 at St Mary, Lowgate, Hull, a son of Richard Thompson (1711-1750), a prominent merchant, and his second wife, Rebecca (Bagwell) Thompson. It is not clear why Edward was raised by his uncle Henry Musgrave (husband of Ann Bagwell), who tutored him before paying to have him educated at Dr Cox’s Hampstead academy. Having obtained a position as midshipman aboard an Indiaman, he spent two years in India. Upon his return to England, in 1755 he was pressed into the Royal Navy. By the influence of David Garrick (q.v.), he was promoted captain in 1772. His “popularity in the service” was said to have been “almost unparalleled” (Warner, 173). In 1766, he successfully solicited Parliament for an increase in the half-pay of supernumerary officers. To the literati, he was “Rhyming Thompson.” His poem The Meretriciad (1763) and his Whig principles endeared him to the satirist Charles Churchill and to the radical politician John Wilkes (qq.v.). Besides poetry, he wrote several plays; in 1767 he published Sailor’s Letters; and, in 1770, the Works of John Oldham. He co-founded the Westminster Magazine (1773-85); in 1788 he edited the Muse’s Mirror; and he contributed to the London and Universal magazines. His most important literary contribution is the first-ever attempt at a complete works of his fellow Yorkshireman Andrew Marvell (1776). On 17 May 1766 at St Paul, Covent Garden, he married Mary Rigden (b 1739) of Wingham, Kent. Their childless marriage was unhappy; in his will he refers to her as his “ungrateful wife.” Upon the death of Richard Bolden (alt Boulden), the husband of Thompson’s sister-in-law Sarah Rigden, he informally adopted their son Thomas (1766-1828), later, vice-admiral Sir Thomas Boulden Thompson (ODNB). Thompson died aboard the ship he was commanding, the Grampus, off the coast of Guinea on 17 Jan. 1786. He was buried at sea. He left the bulk of his estate to his partner, Emma Powell. (ODNB 16 June 2023; findmypast.com 16 June 2023; ancestry.com 15 June 2023; PROB 11/1141; Historical, Biographical, Literary, and Scientific Magazine [1800], 79-94; Naval Chronicle [1801-2], 6:437-62, 7:93-106; R. Warner, Literary Recollections [1830], 1:173; Diary of Abraham de la Pryme [1870], n.p.; Oxford Companion to Andrew Marvell [2019], 1727-30, 1750-53) JC