Thomas Wise
Mayor of Oxford 1746/7
Thomas Wise (1707–1772) was the son of Henry Wise (who was himself three times Mayor of Oxford). In January 1722/3, Thomas was apprenticed as a mercer to his father.
Wise had a mercer’s shop in Cornmarket. In September 1738 he was chosen Mayor’s Child by the new Mayor, William Ives; the next year he was appointed a cloth-searcher; and in September 1741 was elected Senior Bailiff. His father died on 9 October 1741.
In July 1746 Wise was chosen as one of the eight Assistants, and in September that year he was elected Mayor (for 1846/7), selecting John Phillips as his Child, and William Cherry as his Chamberlain.
On 3 October 1755 Wise was elected an Alderman.
By 1758 Wise had moved: Jackson’s Oxford Journal reports that a Mrs Fowler had moved into his house in Cornmarket that year, and in 1760 that Henry Smith, mercer (former apprentice of John Austin, another Mayor) had opened at a shop in Cornmarket formerly kept by Alderman Wise.
On 20 September 1762 Wise was elected Mayor again, but refused to accept the office, paying the City Treasurer £50 as a fine for not serving.
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 Wise) 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.
Wise’s widowed sister, Mrs Elizabeth Lowe of Headington Hill, died in 1766.
In 1771, Wise was again chosen Mayor, but again refused, paying another fine of £50.
By 1772, Wise was living in a house in New Inn Hall Street. In that year a survey of every house in the city was taken in consequence of the Mileways Act of 1771, and according to Salter, the house of Alderman Wise, which had a frontage of 43 yards, 0 ft. and 10 in., occpied the site of the present 42, 44, 46, 48, and 50 New Inn Hall Street; and he also had a “garden, &c” on the site of 21 New Inn Hall Street, with a frontage of 12 yards, 2 ft. and 6 in.
Thomas Wise died on 13 August 1772 at the age of 65 and was buried at the Church of St Peter-in-the-East on 29 August. His widow Deborah died on 24 April 1777 at the age of 63 in her house in New Inn Hall Street.
Left: Inscription on the wall of St Peter-in-the-East in memory of Thomas and Deborah Wise. It reads as follows:
In Sepulchro haud procul abhinc
remoto, deponuntur Reliquiae
THOMÆ WISE
Hujus Civitatis Aldermanni
Henrici et Mariae Filii
Obiit Aug: 13. 1772
In eodem etiam Tumulo
Quicquid erat mortale deposuit
DEBORAH
uxor ejus Dilectissima
Apr: 24. 1777
[In a tomb not far from here are laid the remains of Thomas Wise, Alderman of this city and son of Henry and Maria, who died on 13 August 1772. In the same tomb DEBORAH, his most beloved wife, has laid down her mortal remains. Apr: 24. 1777.]
See also:
- Portrait of Alderman Thomas Wise dated 1738 in the Council Chamber of the Town Hall. The name “Thomas Wise” is incribed on the paper in the portrait
- Henry Wise, Mayor in 1711/12, 1718/19, and 1730/1 (his father)
- Richard Wise, Mayor in 1716
- Malcolm Graham, Oxford City Apprentices 1697–1800, entry numbered 1152
- PCC Will PROB 11/982 (Will of Thomas Wise, Gentleman of Oxford, proved 13 October 1772)