Recent from talks
Thomas Guy
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Thomas Guy
Thomas Guy (1644 – 27 December 1724) was an English merchant and politician who is best known for founding Guy's Hospital in London.
Thomas Guy was born in Horselydown in Southwark, in south London, the eldest child of a lighterman and coalmonger. Thomas Guy (senior) was a citizen and Carpenter of the City of London and was an Anabaptist dissenter. His mother, Anne, was the daughter of William Voughton, from a respectable family of the borough of Tamworth in Staffordshire. Thomas Guy (senior) died in 1652, whereupon his widow returned to Tamworth with her children, Thomas (junior), John and Anne, and it was probably in the free grammar school there that the younger Thomas received his education.
Thomas returned to London in 1660 and served for eight years as the apprentice of John Clarke the younger of Cheapside, a bookseller and bookbinder. His term of service therefore spanned the age of the Restoration (1660), the Plague year (1665) and the Great Fire (1666). In 1668, he was admitted into the Stationers' Company and made a freeman of the City of London. In the same year he opened a bookstore at the corner of Lombard Street and the Cornhill.
At first, Guy illegally imported bibles printed in the Netherlands, as they were of higher quality than those printed in England. His imprint appears in the fourth edition of James Howell's Epistolae Ho-Elianae, Familiar Letters, Domestic and Forren (1673), and the third edition of John Ogilby's translation of Virgil (1675) was published by him jointly with the London publisher Peter Parker, with whom he shared lists. Parker and Guy were the sellers for John Bond's edition of Horace (1678), and were among the sellers of school-books printed at the Theatre in Oxford, editions of classical texts by Pliny, Homer, Theocritus, Herodian, Cornelius Nepos, Sallust, Quintilian and Maximus Tyrius, and also Thomas Lydiat's Canones Chronologici. Books sold by them printed in London included Elisha Coles's Latin and English Dictionaries, the Colloquia Familiaria of Erasmus, H. Robinson's Scholae Wintoniensis Phrases, Thomas Godwyn's Antiquities, Martial's Epigrams, works of Quintus Curtius, Lucius Florus, Valerius Maximus, Caesar, etc., and also Sir Robert Stapylton's translation of Juvenal's Satires and Thomas May's translation of Lucan's Pharsalia (though these also appear under other imprints).
In most of these publications Guy's name is linked with that of Peter Parker, and in the 1677 edition of Coles's Dictionary John Guy, Thomas's brother, is shown in partnership with him. After the first English Bible to be printed at Oxford was issued in 1673-1675, in 1679 Thomas was contracted by the University of Oxford to produce bibles under their licence. With Parker and Moses Pitt, he was licensed to sell the Oxford 1683 edition of the Book of Homilies, and an Oxford Bible was published under his name in 1679, 1680, 1682, 1683, 1685-1686 and 1687-1688, in various formats. The Oxford prayer-book published by him in 1689 included the forms of prayer and collects for 5 November (for deliverance from the Gunpowder Plot, and also for the Happy Arrival of King William III), for 30 January (martyrdom of King Charles I) and for 29 May (Thanksgiving for the end of the Great Rebellion and Restoration of King Charles II). His later publications include a Theodore Beza bible of 1705. A fuller account of his publications is given by Wilks and Bettany.
A frugal bachelor, after nine years of business, in 1677, he paid for new facilities at the Tamworth free grammar school, where he had been educated before his apprenticeship. The next year, he built an almshouse in Tamworth. He was elected as MP for Tamworth in 1695 and commissioned a new Tamworth Town Hall in 1701. However, when the voters of Tamworth rejected him in 1707, he angrily refused to help them any further.
By the late 1670s, Guy had begun purchasing seamen's pay-tickets at a large discount, as well as making large loans to landowners. In 1711, these tickets, part of the short-term "floating" national debt, were converted into shares of the South Sea Company in a debt-for-equity swap. The South Sea Company was primarily set up as a government-debt holding company; although it later held a monopoly on British trade to Spanish America, this used less than 2% of the Company's capital. In 1720, before the South Sea Bubble burst, Guy sold 54,040 stock for £234,428, making a profit of about £175,000. He re-invested this money in £179,566 4% government annuities, £8,000 of 5% government annuities, and £1,500 East India Company shares.
In 1704, Guy became a governor of St Thomas' Hospital, in London. He gave £1000 to the hospital in 1707 and further large sums later. In 1721, having quintupled his fortune the previous year, he decided to found a new hospital "for incurables." Work on what became Guy's Hospital began in 1721.
Hub AI
Thomas Guy AI simulator
(@Thomas Guy_simulator)
Thomas Guy
Thomas Guy (1644 – 27 December 1724) was an English merchant and politician who is best known for founding Guy's Hospital in London.
Thomas Guy was born in Horselydown in Southwark, in south London, the eldest child of a lighterman and coalmonger. Thomas Guy (senior) was a citizen and Carpenter of the City of London and was an Anabaptist dissenter. His mother, Anne, was the daughter of William Voughton, from a respectable family of the borough of Tamworth in Staffordshire. Thomas Guy (senior) died in 1652, whereupon his widow returned to Tamworth with her children, Thomas (junior), John and Anne, and it was probably in the free grammar school there that the younger Thomas received his education.
Thomas returned to London in 1660 and served for eight years as the apprentice of John Clarke the younger of Cheapside, a bookseller and bookbinder. His term of service therefore spanned the age of the Restoration (1660), the Plague year (1665) and the Great Fire (1666). In 1668, he was admitted into the Stationers' Company and made a freeman of the City of London. In the same year he opened a bookstore at the corner of Lombard Street and the Cornhill.
At first, Guy illegally imported bibles printed in the Netherlands, as they were of higher quality than those printed in England. His imprint appears in the fourth edition of James Howell's Epistolae Ho-Elianae, Familiar Letters, Domestic and Forren (1673), and the third edition of John Ogilby's translation of Virgil (1675) was published by him jointly with the London publisher Peter Parker, with whom he shared lists. Parker and Guy were the sellers for John Bond's edition of Horace (1678), and were among the sellers of school-books printed at the Theatre in Oxford, editions of classical texts by Pliny, Homer, Theocritus, Herodian, Cornelius Nepos, Sallust, Quintilian and Maximus Tyrius, and also Thomas Lydiat's Canones Chronologici. Books sold by them printed in London included Elisha Coles's Latin and English Dictionaries, the Colloquia Familiaria of Erasmus, H. Robinson's Scholae Wintoniensis Phrases, Thomas Godwyn's Antiquities, Martial's Epigrams, works of Quintus Curtius, Lucius Florus, Valerius Maximus, Caesar, etc., and also Sir Robert Stapylton's translation of Juvenal's Satires and Thomas May's translation of Lucan's Pharsalia (though these also appear under other imprints).
In most of these publications Guy's name is linked with that of Peter Parker, and in the 1677 edition of Coles's Dictionary John Guy, Thomas's brother, is shown in partnership with him. After the first English Bible to be printed at Oxford was issued in 1673-1675, in 1679 Thomas was contracted by the University of Oxford to produce bibles under their licence. With Parker and Moses Pitt, he was licensed to sell the Oxford 1683 edition of the Book of Homilies, and an Oxford Bible was published under his name in 1679, 1680, 1682, 1683, 1685-1686 and 1687-1688, in various formats. The Oxford prayer-book published by him in 1689 included the forms of prayer and collects for 5 November (for deliverance from the Gunpowder Plot, and also for the Happy Arrival of King William III), for 30 January (martyrdom of King Charles I) and for 29 May (Thanksgiving for the end of the Great Rebellion and Restoration of King Charles II). His later publications include a Theodore Beza bible of 1705. A fuller account of his publications is given by Wilks and Bettany.
A frugal bachelor, after nine years of business, in 1677, he paid for new facilities at the Tamworth free grammar school, where he had been educated before his apprenticeship. The next year, he built an almshouse in Tamworth. He was elected as MP for Tamworth in 1695 and commissioned a new Tamworth Town Hall in 1701. However, when the voters of Tamworth rejected him in 1707, he angrily refused to help them any further.
By the late 1670s, Guy had begun purchasing seamen's pay-tickets at a large discount, as well as making large loans to landowners. In 1711, these tickets, part of the short-term "floating" national debt, were converted into shares of the South Sea Company in a debt-for-equity swap. The South Sea Company was primarily set up as a government-debt holding company; although it later held a monopoly on British trade to Spanish America, this used less than 2% of the Company's capital. In 1720, before the South Sea Bubble burst, Guy sold 54,040 stock for £234,428, making a profit of about £175,000. He re-invested this money in £179,566 4% government annuities, £8,000 of 5% government annuities, and £1,500 East India Company shares.
In 1704, Guy became a governor of St Thomas' Hospital, in London. He gave £1000 to the hospital in 1707 and further large sums later. In 1721, having quintupled his fortune the previous year, he decided to found a new hospital "for incurables." Work on what became Guy's Hospital began in 1721.
Recent media