Thomas 1st Hooke (15??–1670) was a successful merchant and significant figure in Dublin politics from the 1640s until his death.

He appeared in Dublin's civic records first in 1637.[1] Hooke made his fortune selling herrings and cheese to the English Parliamentary army in Ireland.[2][3] He was elected Mayor of Dublin in 1654. His close connections with the Cromwellian administration in the city brought him a succession of positions of power and influence - justice of the peace, revenue commissioner, commissioner for probate of wills and farmer of the petty customs of Dublin, as well as commissioner of the Civil Survey for the county of Dublin.[4][5][6][7]

Religiously he was Independent and an elder of the congregation of St Nicholas-within-the-walls,[8] close to his house on Castle Street.[9]

Corballis House and Kilsallaghan Estate in north County Dublin was granted to him as part of the Cromwellian land settlement.[10][11] Following the restoration of Charles II in 1660, Hooke's ownership of the house, along with much of the rest of the land he had acquired, was contested. In 1666 he was eventually forced to relinquish Corballis House,[12] but not before receiving permission from Lord Deputy Ormond to remove ‘certain fittings put up by the petitioner.’[13]

He was accused of disloyalty in 1663 but escaped censure.[14]

Hooke died in 1670[15] and his will was proven in 1672.[16]

References edit

  1. ^ Herbert Wood (ed.), The registers of Saint Catherine, Dublin, 1636-1715 (London, 1908), Appendix A, ‘Extracts from subsidy roll, city of Dublin, 1637’, p. 234
  2. ^ Order of the [Irish] lords and commons in parliament assembled, Dublin, 7 April 1643 (Bodl., Rawlinson MSS A. 110, ff 45v-46r).
  3. ^ Historical Manuscripts Commission, Sixth report, part one, (London, 1877), p. 155.
  4. ^ Barnard, Cromwellian Ireland, p. 81.
  5. ^ Charles McNeill (ed.), The Tanner letters: original documents and notices of Irish affairs in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Dublin, 1943), p. 171.
  6. ^ Robert Dunlop (ed.), Ireland under the commonwealth (2 vols, Manchester, 1913), ii, 378.
  7. ^ W. H. Hardinge, ‘On manuscript mapped and other townland surveys in Ireland of a public character, embracing the Gross, Civil and Down Surveys, from 1640 to 1688’ in Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, xxiv (Dublin, 1862), p. 67.
  8. ^ Seymour, The puritans in Ireland, p. 61.
  9. ^ Séamus Pender, (ed.), Census of Ireland c. 1659 (Dublin, 1939), p. 363.
  10. ^ G. S. Cary, ‘Hearth money role for Co. Dublin, 1664’ in Journal of the Kildare Archaeological Society, xi (1930-33), p. 420
  11. ^ Simington (ed.), The Civil Survey 1654-56: volume vii, County of Dublin (I. M. C., Dublin, 1945), p. xxii.
  12. ^ Richard Cox, Hibernia Anglicana: or the history of Ireland from the conquest thereof by the English, to this present time (London, 1692), pp 12-13 of A letter to the author of a history of Ireland bound therein.
  13. ^ Thomas Hooke to James Butler, duke of Ormond, 18 May 1666, Bodleian Library Carte Ms. 154, 78v.
  14. ^ ‘Note on the conduct of certain Aldermen and Councillors of Dublin’, 1662, in C. S. P. Ire., 1663-65, p. 499.
  15. ^ Fifty seventh report of the deputy keeper of the public records and keeper of the state papers in Ireland, (Dublin, 1919), p. 561.
  16. ^ 'Twenty-sixth report of the deputy keeper of the public records and keeper of the state papers in Ireland' (Dublin, 1894), p. 428.