William Thomson and Transportation

Abstract William Thomson was the son of a prominent London lawyer of the same name who had risen to the rank of serjeant at law and had been awarded a knight hood. The young Thomson grew up in Essex, attended Brentwood school and Cambridge, and followed his father and brother to the Middle Temple and to the bar. He was early drawn into the factional politics of lpswich, allied initially with a tory who was elected recorder and who appointed Thomson his deputy in 1705, but he soon switched allegiance to the main political manager in the borough who had begun to support whig candidates for office. It was by these self-serving means that Thomson was selected recorder of lpswich in 1707, at the age of 31.