Thomas King of Stamford Hill

Thomas King merchant of Stamford Hill whose will was proved 18/02/1824 and who left £120,000 was the owner of several estates in British Guiana, including Friendship, Sarah and Schoonhoven or Schoonhaven in Essequibo or Demerara. Father of William King (q.v.). He was the Thomas King of the merchants, slave-traders and Third Fleet contractors Camden, Calvert & King, originally a slave-ship captain before becoming a partner with Anthony Calvert in 1783. Although the Thomas King of this firm is most often associated with Greenwich and Blackheath rather than Stamford Hill, there is no doubt from his will that this was the same man.

1. Thomas King's son Thomas Harper King died of Lyde House in Bath in 1864 leaving £30,000. Thomas Harper King (1822-1892), the English architect who helped disseminate the Gothic Revival in continental Europe by translating Pugin into French and who was active in Bruges in the late 1840s and 1850s, was the nephew of Thomas Harper King (d. 1864) and son of William King (q.v.).

2. Under his will, Thomas King left £100 each to Trinity House and to the Foundling Hospital of which he had been a governor 'for many years', and monetary legacies of £100-£1000 to friends and nephews and £2000 to an Eliza Sarah Hunter [possibly a natural daughter] 'late at school at the misses Exeter in Cumberland Street.' He named his sons as Anthony Calvert and Henry (to each of whom he left £18,000), George (to whom he left £4000), Thomas Harper and William, the latter two among his executors. The will shows Thomas King's father as Newark King. He had settled £10,000 on his son Thomas Harper King on the latter's marriage to Elizabeth Catherine Hall, and provided that the balance he had not already advanced be paid; and he directed £6000 be added to the £8000 he had settled on his daughter Sarah Amelia ahead of her marriage to Thomas Pendawes Smith surgeon of Stoke Newington in 1815. He left £12,000 in trust (the trustees were his sons William and Thomas Harper King) for the benefit of his son George with discretion for the trustees as to how to dispense it and sanctions (the loss of the capital) on George if he was declared bankrupt. All the legacies were to be paid five years after his death, and bear interest until then. He left an annuity of £1500 p.a. to his wife Sarah, with the use of his house at Stamford Hill. His residual legatee and trustee was his son William King (q.v.). In a series of codicils he reflected the death of his son-in-law Thomas Pendawes Smith and made provision for his widowed daughter Sarah's children (Sarah Amelia Smith remarried, to Godfrey Greene Downes, in 1824).

Gary L. Sturgess and Ken Cozens, 'Managing a Global Enterprise in the Eighteenth Century: Anthony Calvert of the Crescent, London, 1777-1808', Mariner's Mirror no. 99 (2013) pp. 171-195; Ken Cozens, 'Politics, patronage and profit: A case study of three eighteenth century London merchants' (unpublished MA thesis, University of Greenwich (October 2005), http://www.merchantnetworks.com.au/guides/cozensthesis.pdf PROB [accessed 01/05/2015]; PROB 11/1681/303.

1. National Probate Calendar 1864; Jean Van Cleven, 'Thomas Harper King', Nationaal Biografisch woordenboek, Volume XI, col. 420-425.

2. PROB 11/1681/303.