Thomas Guy

Thomas Guy (1644 – 27 December 1724) was an English merchant and politician who is best known for founding Guy's Hospital in London.

Thomas Guy (1644 – 27 December 1724) was an English merchant and politician who is best known for founding Guy's Hospital in London.

Early life

Thomas Guy was born in Horselydown in Southwark, in south London, the eldest child of a lighterman and coalmonger. Thomas Guy (senior) was a citizen and Carpenter of the City of London and was an Anabaptist dissenter. His mother, Anne, was the daughter of William Voughton, from a respectable family of the borough of Tamworth in Staffordshire. Thomas Guy (senior) died in 1652¹, whereupon his widow returned to Tamworth with her children, Thomas (junior), John and Anne, and it was probably in the free grammar school there that the younger Thomas received his education.

London publisher

Thomas returned to London in 1660 and served for eight years as the apprentice of John Clarke the younger of Cheapside, a bookseller and bookbinder. His term of service therefore spanned the age of the Restoration (1660), the Plague year (1665) and the Great Fire (1666). In 1668, he was admitted into the Stationers' Company and made a freeman of the City of London. In the same year he opened a bookstore at the corner of Lombard Street and the Cornhill. At first, Guy illegally imported bibles printed in the Netherlands, as they were of higher quality than those printed in England. His imprint appears in the fourth edition of James Howell's Epistolae Ho-Elianae, Familiar Letters, Domestic and Forren (1673), and the third edition of John Ogilby's translation of Virgil (1675) was published by him jointly with the London publisher Peter Parker, with whom he shared lists. Parker and Guy were the sellers for John Bond's edition of Horace (1678), and were among the sellers of school-books printed at the Theatre in Oxford, editions of classical texts by Pliny, Homer, Theocritus, Herodian, Cornelius Nepos, Sallust, Quintilian and Maximus Tyrius, and also Thomas Lydiat's Canones Chronologici. Books sold by them printed in London included Elisha Coles's Latin and English Dictionaries, the Colloquia Familiaria of Erasmus, H. Robinson's Scholae Wintoniensis Phrases, Thomas Godwyn's Antiquities, Martial's Epigrams, works of Quintus Curtius, Lucius Florus, Valerius Maximus, Caesar, etc., and also Sir Robert Stapylton's translation of Juvenal's Satires and Thomas May's translation of Lucan's Pharsalia (though these also appear under other imprints). In most of these publications Guy's name is linked with that of Peter Parker, and in the 1677 edition of Coles's Dictionary John Guy, Thomas's brother, is shown in partnership with him. After the first English Bible to be printed at Oxford was issued in 1673–1675, in 1679¹ Thomas was contracted by the University of Oxford to produce bibles under their licence. With Parker and Moses Pitt, he was licensed to sell the Oxford 1683 edition of the Book of Homilies, and an Oxford Bible was published under his name in 1679, 1680, 1682, 1683, 1685-1686 and 1687–1688, in various formats. The Oxford prayer-book published by him in 1689¹ included the forms of prayer and collects for 5 November (for deliverance from the Gunpowder Plot, and also for the Happy Arrival of King William III), for 30 January (martyrdom of King Charles I) and for 29 May (Thanksgiving for the end of the Great Rebellion and Restoration of King Charles II). His later publications include a Theodore Beza bible of 1705. A fuller account of his publications is given by Wilks and Bettany.

Tamworth benefactor and M.P.

A frugal bachelor, after nine years of business, in 1677, he paid for new facilities at the Tamworth free grammar school, where he had been educated before his apprenticeship. The next year, he built an almshouse in Tamworth. He was elected as MP for Tamworth in 1695 and commissioned a new Tamworth Town Hall in 1701. However, when the voters of Tamworth rejected him in 1707, he angrily refused to help them any further.

Sponsor of hospitals

]] In 1704, Guy became a governor of St Thomas' Hospital, in London. He gave £1000 to the hospital in 1707 and further large sums later. In 1721, having quintupled his fortune the previous year, he decided to found a new hospital "for incurables." Work on what became Guy's Hospital began in 1721. Thomas Guy died unmarried on 27 December 1724. Having already spent £19,000 on the hospital, his will endowed it with £219,499, the largest individual charitable donation of the early eighteenth century. He also gave an annuity of £400 to Christ's Hospital as well as numerous and diverse other charitable donations. The rest of his estate, some £75,589, went to cousins, friends, and more distant relatives. On 24 March 1725, George I gave royal assent to a bill incorporating the executors of Guy's will and formally thanking Guy for helping "the Honour and Good of the publick". In 1995, 271 years after his death, a new dual carriageway by-passing Tamworth was named Thomas Guy Way in his honour.

Bibliography

A True Copy of the Last Will and Testament of Thomas Guy, Esq. (London, 1725) John Noorthouck, 'Book 3, Ch. 1: Southwark', in A New History of London Including Westminster and Southwark (R. Baldwin, London 1773), pp. 678–690, at p. 684 (British History Online, accessed 31 May 2022). John Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, 6 vols (Nichols, Son, and Bentley, London 1812), III, p. 599 (Google). Charles Knight, Shadows of the Old Booksellers (Bell and Daldy, London 1865), pp. 3–23 (Google). Samuel Wilks and G. T. Bettany, A Biographical History of Guy's Hospital (Ward, Lock, Bowden & Co., London/New York 1892); read at Google. Copy of the Last Will and Testament of Thomas Guy Esq. with an ACT for incorporating the Executors of the said Will (London, printed for the Governors of Guy's Hospital, 1815); read at HathiTrust. Jane Bowden-Dan, 'Mr Guy's Hospital and the Caribbean', History Today, Vol. 56 issue 6 (June 2006); read at History Today archive (subscription required).

References

Text derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1353491186 under CC BY-SA 4.0; modifications have been made.