Thomas Pierson ca.1573-1633

Thomas PIERSON or PEIRSON ca.1573-1633

Biographical Note

Born at Weaverham, Cheshire. BA Emmanuel College, Cambridge 1594, MA 1597. Lecturer at Northwich, Cheshire and at Weaverham around the run of the seventeenth century before returning to Cambridge for a while. Rector of Brampton Bryan, Herefordshire 1612 where he was energetic in bringing puritan godliness to his congregation.

Books

In his will, Pierson, made a number of specific bequests involving books, including £8-worth of books to his son in law and executor Christopher Harvey, and Foxes's Martyrs, together with works by Perkins, Bolton and Preston to his widow Helen. He left a medieval manuscript to Cambridge University Library and one to Hereford Cathedral Library, and some books to schools in Northwich and Kington, Herefordshire. The bulk of his library of ca.450 volumes was to become a kind of circulating parish library held in trust by Sir Robert Harley and others, and loaned out to thirteen named local clergymen. Although this arrangement was operated for a while, in 1652 Harvey divided the books into four between the trustee families; one of these quarters passed to Samuel More and his son Richard, who gave the books to More, Shropshire to create a parish library there. Over forty books, mostly of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century theology, remain in that library which came from Pierson or Harvey.

Sources

• Will of Thomas Pierson, The National Archives PROB 11/164/645.
• Cambers, A., Godly reading, Cambridge, 2011, 125.
• Eales, Jacqueline. 'Pierson, Thomas (c. 1573–1633), Church of England clergyman'. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
• Eales, J., Thomas Pierson and the transmission of the moderate puritan tradition, Midland History 20 (1995), 73-102.
• Oates, J. C. T., A history of Cambridge University Library, Cambridge, 1986, p.242.
• Perkin, M., A directory of the parochial libraries of the Church of England, London, 2004, 287-8.