Thomas Hobson (1544 -1631) and St Bene’t’s

By Nigel Grimshaw

Thomas Hobson, the ‘University Carrier’ celebrated with affectionate humour by a young John Milton, is unquestionably Cambridge’s most famous townsperson. Today he is best known for introducing the term Hobson’s Choice into the English language and for having Hobson’s Conduit, once the main supply of fresh water into the city, named after him. Yet as well as running a successful wagon and horse hire trade and engaging in major philanthropic projects for the town, he was a consummate entrepreneur who amassed an extraordinary level of wealth. He was also the devoted head of a large family and a dedicated churchman.

Hobson was intimately involved with St Bene’t’s Church, where his eight children were baptized, and where many family members were married and buried. He secured for himself a revered final resting place near the chancel, although curiously without inscription or monument. In early January 1631, during a severe outbreak of plague, the celebrated writer, historian, and wit, Thomas Fuller officiated at Hobson’s funeral. Fuller was only 22, while Hobson died at 86.

The association of the Hobson family with St Bene’t’s was, at a simple level, because they lived in its parish, one of fourteen in Cambridge at that time. Yet there was more to it than that. Corpus Christi College, which from 1353 to 1662 used the church as its chapel, was the ‘town’ college and the only one in Cambridge or Oxford founded by local guilds. It was then more commonly called Bene’t College. The small parish lay within the heart of the burgeoning academic quarter, but was home to some prominent townspeople.

The Hobsons moved to Cambridge from Grantchester in 1568/9 after Hobson’s father, also a carrier and one of the treasurers of the Corporation at the time of his death, died. This was when his mother, Ellen or Elinor, bought a property, ‘Ye Sign of the George’, from Corpus Christi. The timing may have been fortunate as the Master, Thomas Aldrich, was then disposing of a large number of properties with which the college had been endowed. The principal purpose was to raise funds for the college to have its own chapel. The inn, acquired for 80 pounds and 4 shillings, was opposite Corpus Christi on the other side of Trumpington Street. It adjoined the White Swan, where the Carrier’s kinsman Cornelius Archer lived. The abutment of the two inns formed the boundary between the parishes of St Bene’t’s and St Botolph’s. On the other side of the George was the Bull Inn, controversially bequeathed to St Catharine’s in 1626 by Dr John Gostlin, Master of Gonville & Caius College. Next along the street and on a corner plot that afforded a discreet back door was the White Horse, where prominent English Protestant reformers may have met from the 1520s to debate Lutheran ideas. The George Inn frontage onto Trumpington Street was relatively modest at 60 feet (about 18.3 m), but the property stretched back some distance and was home to an extended Hobson family, including cousins and aunts. The population of the town grew fast during Hobson’s long lifetime but was still essentially limited to the historic core; over-crowding and sub-division of tenements became a major concern. In contrast, the Hobson property presents as a bucolic retreat. Overlooking the college dovecote (a source of food for members), the barns, stables, garden, and orchard of the property were situated in the area where the Chapel of St Catharine’s sits today.

In 1636, six years after Hobson had died, the George Inn was sold by the Carrier’s grandson and namesake for £430 of ‘lawfull money’. The purchaser was Ralph Brownrigg, Doctor in Divinity, the Master of ‘Katherin Hall’ who had served two terms as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. At 22, this Thomas Hobson had become the main male heir, as the sons of the aged Carrier had pre-deceased their father. The George Inn was demolished in 1760 but the college building of 1930 that covers its Trumpington Street footprint maintains the association, being called Hobson House.

The donation of a 1617 edition of the King James Bible to the church in 1626 underlines the centrality of St Bene’t’s in Hobson’s life. By this stage, he was over 80 and, as he conceded, struggled to read documents.  Probably set in a lectern, the heavy book was a treasured contribution. Its large script assisted the Minister with his reading of the Holy Book to the congregation, and its preface contained a liturgical calendar and orders for Morning and Evening Prayer. There are two inscriptions in the Bible. The handwriting, in the manner of the early 17th century, is similar to Hobson’s but was probably penned by a clerk. The first entry, neatly set out on a blank page at the front, declares: “The Gift of Thomas Hobson Carrier of Cambridge to St Bennet’s Parish.”

The other insertion, less well planned, appears on the opening page of the Old Testament:

St Bene’t’s was a major component of the world of Hobson and his many kinsmen. Key contacts worshiped at the church, including other prosperous town families, and charity from the Hobsons features regularly. In 1581 Hobson conducted business with Thomas Skott, the local baker, to buy land ‘against Pembrocke Hall’. As part of the transaction, Hobson agreed to pay six shillings and eight pence for a Minister to preach a Sermon on the Sunday before Michaelmas with twelve pence to the Clerk. Also due yearly was a distribution of ten shillings to the poor of the parish. Hobson was punctilious to ensure that the obligations remained in force after his death. On 23 December 1599 the Carrier was part of a small group of worshippers, including two other family members, who petitioned the Vice-Chancellor to grant a license to beg for Geoffrey Colpottes, ‘a very poore man’ living in the parish who had presumably fallen on hard times. Two years later he was working as a carrier, probably employed by Hobson.

The benefactor boards at St Bene’t’s, recently restored, record that in 1669 Dame Dorothy Clarke gave an annuity of three pounds. This was the Carrier’s oldest daughter who was baptized in St Bene’t’s on 18 June 1587. In 1620, three years after the death of her first husband William Haye (who served as Deputy Keeper of the Robes to Queen Anne, wife of James I), she married Sir Symon Clarke, baronet of the English shires and Royalist. The Hobson Portrait (shown above) dated 1620, painted on a stupendous single piece of elm, likely acclaimed the elevation of his progeny into the ranks of the hereditary landed class. In 2018, after careful conservation, it was moved to the Guildhall’s Szeged Room. Still close to his home and his church, Mr. Hobson looks out over Market Square to the original site of Hobson’s Conduit. This was the fountain that he financed in 1614 to provide fresh drinking water for townsfolk. It was the principal common source (larger properties had private wells) for nearly 200 years.

Dame Dorothy Clarke’s will, dated 16 October 1669, stated:

“I doe give unto the minister that is now of Saint Bennetts in the University of Cambridge and his successors Twenty shillings every yeare And my will is That he preach one sermon every yeare on the same day I am buried at Salford in memory of mee And I likewise give forty shillinges yearely to the poore of the said parish To bee distributed on the same daye.”

The church held the Sermon on the Eve of St. Thomas (21 December). There is ample reason to believe that Dorothy was a kind and sensitive soul. Moreover, the fact that she left an annuity to the church, though she had been living for nearly 50 years in the Cotswolds village of Salford Priors, reveals her enduring attachment to St Bene’t’s. As well as being the resting place of her beloved parents, it cannot be overstated how prominently the church would have featured in Dorothy’s early life.

Effigy of Dame Dorothy Clarke (née Hobson) in St Matthew’s Church, Salford Priors

Similarly, Elizabeth Knight in her will of 1647 remembered the family church, where she was baptized in 1604. A spinster, she lived at Denny Abbey with her sister-in-law Anne (the youngest of Hobson’s five daughters), along with Anne’s husband William, their children, and members of the Knight family. Lying about nine miles south of Ely Cathedral, it was founded in the 12th century as a Benedictine monastery and, for the two centuries before Dissolution of the Monasteries, was home to a community of the Franciscan Order of Poor Clares. In 1618 a Crown lease with 50 years remaining of the commodious property was acquired by Hobson and later bequeathed to Anne.

Elizabeth’s will exuded compassion, embracing causes with a timeless consciousness. As well as caring for widows of soldiers killed (this being a time of Civil War) in Ireland, she looked to support the education of the children of Native Americans. In Cambridge, Elizabeth founded six alms houses:

“And my will is that there shall bee alwaies placed in the said Almeshouse two poor widdowes and fower poore godly anntient maides whereof one of the said maides to bee of Bennet parrish if there bee any that are Capable and will accept of it.”

Originally facing Midsummer Common, the houses were rebuilt in 1818 by Alderman William Mortlock. They were moved to King Street on the other side of the plot in 1880. 

The Carrier and his Church would have been proud. Her endowment was one of 14 major charities, two being founded by Hobson himself, which existed in Cambridge between about 1600 and 1950.

Nigel Grimshaw read history at Queens’ College and is writing a biography of Thomas Hobson.