Family and Education

b. ?1721, 2nd surv. s. of Sir Holland Egerton, 4th Bt., of Heaton by Eleanor, da. of Sir Roger Cave, 2nd Bt., M.P., of Stanford, Leics. by Mary. sis. of William Bromley, Speaker of the House of Commons. educ. B.N.C. Oxf. 28 Nov. 1740, aged 19. m. 14 June 1748, Catherine, da. of Rev. John Copley of Batley, Yorks., fellow of the collegiate church at Manchester and rector of Thornhill and Wakefield, Yorks., 2s. 1da. suc. bro. Sir Edward Egerton, 5th Bt., 16 Feb. 1744.

Offices Held

Biography

Egerton, a Tory country gentleman, was returned by Peter Legh of Lyme. In November 1748 he and other members of the Newton Hunt were reported in the London press to have gone ‘in a body, to the Market Cross at Newton, and proclaimed the Pretender, by the style and title of James the Third’, wearing ‘white cockades’ and ‘plaid waistcoats’, and ‘riding about to drink, and to force others to drink treasonable healths’. In January he arranged for a letter to be published in the London Evening Post denying these allegations and claiming that, when he had gone to complain to a neighbouring justice of repeated attacks by a Whig mob from Wigan on the Newton gentlemen’s houses, he was merely told to ‘repel force by force’. In February a friend reported,

Sir Thomas goes down in a week’s time, there being no great business for minoritarians to transact in Parliament, where they don’t let them into any great secrets, being able to manage matters and moneys without their assistance.1

He declined to stand in 1754, ‘preferring ... the satisfaction of a private station’, dying 7 Aug. 1756, aged 35.2

Ref Volumes: 1715-1754

Author: Eveline Cruickshanks

Notes

• 1. London Evening Post, no. 3315, 28-31 Jan. 1749; Remains of John Byron (Chetham Soc. xliv), ii (2), pp. 474-81, 486.
• 2. His M.I. quoted in J. Croston, County Fams. of Lancs. and Cheshire, 153.