Three Deaths

Deaths

August 17. Died, George James, one of the common councilmen for the ward of Aldersgate-without, and printer to the city of London. His widow carried on the business for some time, when the office of city printer was conferred on Henry Kent, printer, deputy of the ward of Broad-street.

November 10. Died, Thomas Dean, of Malden, in Kent, aged 102 years. When king Charles I. was beheaded, he was then twenty years of age, and was a fellow of University college, Oxford; but being a Catholic, was deprived at the revolution. He wrote some pieces of his religion, which were privately printed in the master's lodgings, and December 18, 1691, he stood in the pillory for concealing a libel: from that time he subsisted mostly on charity.

November 25. Died, Jacob Tonson, the second. He was the eldest son of Richard Tonson, and nephew to the first Jacob Tonson; and it appears from his will, which was made August 16, and proved December 6, 1735, that he was a bookseller, bookbinder, and stationer, all which businesses were carried on in his own house; and that he was also a printer, in partnership with John Watts. The elder Jacob probably also carried on all these several occupations. His will, which filled twenty-seven pages, written by himself, shows him not only to have abounded in wealth, but to have been a just and worthy man - according to the printed accounts of that period he was at the time of his death worth £100,000. After having devised his estates in Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, and Worcestershire, and bequeathed no less a sum than £34,000 to his three daughters and his younger son, Samuel, and disposed of his patent between his eldest sons Jacob and Richard, he mentions his uncle old Jacob Tonson, to whom he leaves fifty guineas for mourning; but, knowing his love of quiet and retirement, he says he would not burden him with the office of executor of his will. He, however, recommends his family to his uncle's care, and exhorts all his children to remember their duty to their superiors and their inferiors, tenderly adding - “And so God bless you all!” It appears by the grant and assignment of his uncle, that he was entitled to the collection of the kit-cat portraits, and that he had not long before his death erected a new room at Barn-elms, in which the pictures were then hung. Seventeen days after his death old Jacob Tonson made his will, in which he confirmed a settlement that he had made on him, (probably at the time of his marriage) and appointed his great nephew, Jacob Tonson, the eldest son of the former Jacob, his executor and residuary legatee.