John Nicholes II
Mayor of Oxford 1752/3
John Nicholes (Nicholls/Nickols/ Nickoles/ Nichols/Nickolls) junior (1703–1785) was born on 4 December 1703. He was eldest son of John Nicholes the elder, who himself was Mayor in 1719 and 1731, and his wife Ruth, and was baptised at St Michael-at-the-Northgate Church in Oxford on 9 December 1703. His next two brothers were also baptised there (William on 20 May 1706 and Aaron on 29 July 1708), and the family then moved to the parish of St Mary the Virgin, where his two youngest brothers were baptised (William Castell Nicholes on 5 April 1711 and Aaron Nicholes on 22 November 1713).
Nicholes' mother, Ruth, died when he was ten. On 5 November 1718, when he was 14, he was apprenticed for seven years to his father, a gunsmith.
In March 1734 Nicholes was selected by the Mayor, John Knibb, as his Child, and he took the usual oaths and paid 3s. 4d. for not being Constable. He came on to the council in September 1734 and was given a Chamberlain’s position.
In March 1737/8 Nicholes took on Thompson Davis as an apprentice, and in April 1744 Thomas Paulin.
In about 1736 Nicholes married his wife Hannah, and they had the following children, baptised in two different parishes:
- Mary (baptised at St Mary the Virgin on 10 July 1738)
- Elizabeth (baptised at St Mary the Virgin on 22 May 1739)
- Hannah I (baptised at St Mary the Virgin on 13 September 1740, buried there on 28 April 1741)
- Hannah II (baptised at St Mary the Virgin on 12 May 1745)
- John (baptised at All Saints on 11 February 1747/8)
- Ann (baptised at All Saints on 7 September 1749)
- Sarah (baptised at St Mary the Virgin on 7 June 1751).
In April 1741 Nicholes was elected Bailiff for the rest of the year, and in November 1750 was chosen as one of the eight Assistants.
When his father died on 5 November 1750, it can be presumed that John Nicholes junior took over his gunshop.
In September 1752 Nicholes was elected Mayor, naming Ralph Kirby as his Child
On 11 April 1757 Nicholes was made an Alderman.
On Guy Fawkes' Day 1760, Jackson’s Oxford Journal reports that Nicholes' shop was attacked by fireworks.
In April 1762 Nicholes apprenticed his son John to the grocer John Dewe. In that same year he was elected Mayor again, but chose to turn down the position and pay the mandatory £50 fine.
Parson Woodforde visited Nicholes’s gunshop when an undergraduate in Oxford, and on 29 June 1763 wrote: “For a Pocket Pistol, alias a Dram Bottle, to carry in one’s Pocket, it being necessary on a Journey or so—at Nicholl’s, 0. 1. 0.”
In 1766 the City got into such debt that the council tried to sell its two parliamentary seats. As a result, the Mayor and ten councillors (including Alderman Nicholes) were committed to Newgate Prison in London for four days; they were discharged with a reprimand from the Speaker of the House of Commons on 10 February 1768.
On 19 May 1767 Nicholes’s wife Hannah died at the age of 56, and was buried at St Mary the Virgin Church six days later.
On 12 December 1781 Nicholes’s fourth surviving daughter, Ann, died in London after a short illness.
In 1783 Nicholes’s household goods were all sold "at his house near St Mary’s Church"; and in February 1785 two houses in the High Street belonging to Brasenose College and in the possession of Alderman Nicholes were advertised to let, and were taken on by an upholsterer, John Ward.
Nicholes, by that time Senior Alderman, died at the age of 82 on 19 July 1785. He was buried four days later in St Mary the Virgin Church in the same grave as his brother William, his baby daughter Hannah who had died in 1741, his father John, and his wife Hannah.
The above stone in the aisle of the church marks the Nicholes grave. It reads:
In Memory of WILLIAM NICHOLES
[Fellow] of C.C.C.
Son of JOHN & RUTH NICHOLES
Who died April 13 1745
Aged 33 Years
Also of HANNAH the Daughter of
JOHN & HANNAH NICHOLES
Who Died in Her Infancy
Also of JOHN NICHOLES
Senr. Alderman of this City
who died ye 5th of Nov 1750
aged 79
Also of HANNAH the Wife of JOHN NICHOLES
Who died May ye 19th 1767,
Aged 51
ALSO
JOHN NICHOLES Senr. Alderman of
this City who died July ye 18th 1785
Aged 82
See also:
- John Nicholes I, Mayor 1719/20 and 17331/2 (Nicholes' father)
- Malcolm Graham, Oxford City Apprentices 1697–1800, entries numbered 1025, 1715, 1841, and 2268
- PCC Will PROB 11/1134 (Will of John Nicholes, Alderman of Oxford, proved 3 September 1785)