HARLEY, THOMAS (1730–1804), lord mayor of London, third son of Edward Harley, third earl of Oxford, and Martha, eldest daughter of John Morgan of Tredegar, Monmouthshire, was born on 24 Aug. 1730. Edward Harley (1664-1735) [q. v.] was his grandfather. He was educated at Westminster School, and afterwards entered the office of a London merchant. A wealthy marriage in 1752 enabled him to set up in business as a merchant at 152 Aldersgate Street, and in 1778 he joined Sir Charles Raymond in establishing a banking firm at George Street, Mansion House, under the style of Raymond, Harley, Webber, & Co. With Mr. Drummond he obtained a contract for paying the English army in America with foreign gold, and shared the profits, which are said to have amounted to 600,000l. He was also a clothing contractor for the army. In 1761, at the age of thirty-one, he was elected alderman of Portsoken ward, and at the general election in the same year he became M.P. for the city of London. In March 1761 he was made free of the Goldsmiths' Company by redemption, and on 6 May following was admitted to the livery and court of the company, serving the office of prime warden in 1762-3. On Midsummer day 1763 he was elected sheriff of London and Middlesex. As sheriff he carried out on 3 Dec. the orders of parliament for burning No. 45 of the 'North Briton' by the hands of the common hangman at the Royal Exchange. The mob came into collision with Harley's officers, and the window of his state carriage was broken. They afterwards carried off a portion of the paper, and burnt a boot and petticoat at Temple Bar in derision of Lord Bute and the princess-dowager. Parliament voted Harley their thanks, but a similar vote from the corporation was vetoed by the lordmayor (Cormick's continuation of Hume and Smollett, History of England, ii. 60). Harley became lord mayor on Michaelmas day 1767. Early in the following year a severe frost and the long depression of trade caused great distress in London, and a serious riot occurred among the weavers. Harley established a system of bounties for bringing mackerel and other fish into Billingsgate Market, to be sold to the poor at cheap rates. At the general election in March Wilkes, just returned from France, offered himself as a candidate for the city of London. Wilkes was defeated, and Harley was re-elected (23 March) at the head of the poll. This produced two satirical pamphlets, 'A Letter [and 'Second Letter'] to the Right Hon. Thomas Harley, Esq., lord mayor . . . By an Alderman of London,' London, 1768; the former is known to have reached four editions. Five days later Wilkes was returned for Middlesex, and in the riots which followed the mob avenged themselves on Harley for his successful opposition to Wilkes at the poll in the city by breaking the windows of the Mansion House and doing other damage (Hughson, Hist. of London, i. 573-5). Harley displayed much vigilance and ability throughout the Wilkeite riots, and was thanked for his services by the House of Commons at the close of his mayoralty. The popular party ridiculed him in an illustrated lampoon entitled 'The Rape of the Petticoat,' dated 9 May. He was shortly afterwards appointed a privy councillor, an honour which had not been conferred upon a lord mayor of London since the time of Sir William Walworth. The 'North Briton,' No. 55, of 1 July, contains a letter to Harley from William Bingley, occasioned, as the writer alleges, 'by some cruel reflections' of Harley's (Nichols, Lit. Anecd. iii. 632). At the close of his mayoralty a laudatory poetic effusion was addressed to him ('To the Right Honourable Thomas Harley, late Lord-Mayor of London; an Ethic Epistle,' London, 1769, 4to).
Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 24.djvu/420
Harley
406
Harley
i. and ii.; Lecky's History of England, 1883, i. 129–30; Macpherson's Original Papers, 1775; Hardwicke's Miscellaneous State Papers, 1778, ii. 482–520; Wentworth Papers, 1883; Lockhart Papers, 1817, i. 369–74; Macky's Memoirs, 1733, pp. 115–16; Spence's Anecdotes, 1820, pp. 167–8; Memoirs of the Marquis of Torcy, 1757; Coxe's Memoirs of Marlborough, 1818; Coxe's Memoirs of Sir Robert Walpole, 1798; Memoirs of the Harley Family and particularly of Robert, earl of Oxford, drawn up by one of his brothers (Lansdowne MS. 885); Collins's Historical Collections, 1752, pp. 205, 207–12; Manning's Speakers of the House of Commons, 1851, pp. 405–8; Lodge's Portraits of Illustrious Personages, 1850, vii. 97–109; Noble's Continuation of Granger's Biog. Hist. of England, 1806, ii. 20–3; Howell's State Trials, 1812, xv. 1045–1196; Walpole's Cat. of Royal and Noble Authors, 1806, iv. 118–26; Edwards's Lives of the Founders of the British Museum, 1870, pt. i. pp. 203–46; Dibdin's Bibliomania, 1876, pp. 346–56; Preface to vol. i. of the Cat. of the Harl. MSS. in the Brit. Mus., 1808; Sims's Handbook to the Library of the British Museum, 1854, pp. 29–34, 147–9; The Genealogist, 1884, new ser. i. 114–17, 178–182, 256–61; Boswell's Life of Johnson (G. B. Hill, 1887), i. 153–4, 158, 175; Edinburgh Review, lxii. 1–36; Quarterly Review, cxlix. 1–47; Boyer's Annals, 1703–13; Historical Register, 1714–24; Boyer's Political State of Great Britain, 1724, xxvii. 534–41; Doyle's Official Baronage, 1886, ii. 743–4; Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. xi. 181, 441, 5th ser. xi. 344, 6th ser. vii. 150, 212; Official Return of Lists of Members of Parliament, pt. i. pp. 558, 571, 578, 585, 592, 599, 606, pt. ii. pp. 8, 16, 27 ; Brit. Mus. Cat.]
