4: Death of John Lomax: 1827

By the beginning of 1827, Alice and her four children had moved north of Manchester to the fresh air and pleasant surroundings of semi-rural Cheetwood in the southern part of the township of Cheetham.  Was John Lomax living with them now?  We don't know.  Alice would be 40 years old on 15 January and she now thought she might be expecting her fifth child.

John Lomax had various business ventures:

• he had been buying property in Manchester, which will have been a profitable trade as the town grew ever bigger and busier.  He owned warehouses, land and houses.  We know he had bought the London Road Inn because when it was advertised to let in 1825, interested persons were to enquire at the Mathers, Lomax & Co warehouse or at 11 George Street, which was John Lomax's address.  (It was a "large and commodious" inn with two kitchens, five parlours on the first floor, dining room, 21 other rooms, stabling for 20 horses and "convenience for Carriages")

• he was still engaged in the affairs of Messrs Mathers, Lomax & Company.  His partners were now his 56 year old nephew Richard Hampson and the 33 year old John Philips Mather, presumably the son of John's old partner John Mather and his wife Susanna Philips.  John Philips Mather lived in Everton and must have run the port of Liverpool end of the firm's business.

John Lomax was close to his family and particularly to three of his nephews:  Richard Hampson (son of his sister Hannah), John Bentley (son of his sister Ellen) and his brother's son Robert Lomax.  Richard Hampson was of much the same age as John and had evidently been his friend and partner for a long while.  

John Lomax probably felt a rather fatherly protectiveness towards the other two nephews.  John Bentley had lost his father when he was a baby.  Robert Lomax lost his father when he was nearly 16 and then, when he was 24 and busy building up a business of his own, he had lost his mother and one of his unmarried sisters within six days of each other.  His sisters Ellen and Margaret were still at home with him.  

On 10 January 1827 John Lomax made his Will – or perhaps he was driven to make a new Will so as provide for the unborn child.  It seems to have been made in something of a hurry, which suggests that he was anxious for it to be executed as soon as possible: 

• the clerk at one point uses a standard abbreviation rather than the word in full
• the handwriting is poor, evidently written in haste
• there is an omission in the terms of the Will and the solicitor had to draw up a Codicil immediately after the Will was executed
• spaces were left for some names, which were then squeezed in by the clerk
• the order of the legacies suggests some afterthoughts  

He had reached the age of 63 in the striving, urgent merchant world of Georgian Manchester.  Perhaps his health had now failed and he was putting his affairs in order in case he didn't recover.

His Will covers 23 pages (of A3 paper) and most of it is taken up with the trusts he set up for Alice and the children

• Alice is described as the "Daughter of the late John Hopkinson Stone Mason of Bury or of Birch near Bury" and the children as "the three Daughters (Ellen Lomax Hopkinson Elizabeth Lomax Hopkinson and Mary Lomax Hopkinson) of the said Alice Hopkinson and John Lomax Hopkinson the son"

• his executors were his solicitor Samuel Kay and his three nephews Robert Lomax, John Bentley and Richard Hampson

• the trustees for Alice and the children were both young men – chosen, no doubt, because they would be most likely to see the children through to adulthood.  They were John's partner John Philips Mather and the Manchester solicitor Samuel Dukinfield Darbishire.  
• Darbishire was a young man of 28 whose family owned slate mines in Wales.  He was a Unitarian and he and his wife later became great friends of the writer Mrs Gaskell – whose husband was a Unitarian minister – and her family

• the nephews and the trustees obviously knew all about Alice

Mather and Darbishire were to raise £25,000 from the estate

• £5,000 each was allocated for Ellen, Elizabeth, Mary and John.  The maintenance, education and expenses of each child were to be paid from his or her share 

• by way of comparison, John Lomax's brother Robert had left his daughters £2,500 each and had allowed £80 a year per child for maintenance, education etc

• each daughter, when she reached 21, was to get the income on her share.  It was to be paid into her own hands, free from control by her husband.  This was long before the Married Women's Property Act of 1882 and John Lomax was ensuring no husband could deprive them of their money.  But the daughters only received the income, not the capital – they could dispose of that by Will, and if they didn't leave a Will it would go to their children, if any

• but so that Alice would still have funds, a daughter wouldn't receive her income in full while her mother was still alive because Alice was to be paid £100 of the income first (unless she had married)  

• John was to receive £1,000 of his share outright, as a capital sum, at the age of 21 and the remainder due to him at the age of 23 – but again, to provide for Alice, when John reached 21, the trustees were to invest £2,000 of his money and pay the interest to his mother

• the income from the last £5,000 was to be paid to Alice unless she married (in which case, she was assumed to be provided for by her husband).  If she died or married the income was to be used for the upbringing of "the child with which I apprehend the said Alice Hopkinson may be now enceinte [pregnant]" and would be that child's share

John Lomax intended to provide handsomely for Alice and the children.  The usual rate of interest through the 19th century was 4% or 5%, although railway investments could bring in 8%.  His son would have a good start in life and his daughters' income – say £200 or £250 – was very comfortable.  Some literary comparisons:

• Miss Bates and her mother in Jane Austen's Emma lived together on £100 a year

• Mrs Dashwood and her three daughters in Sense and Sensibility found themselves sharing an income of £500 and went to live for free in a cottage in Devonshire as a result

• Sir Walter Elliot of Persuasion had a fortune of £10,000 to be divided between his three daughters

• Mr Darcy of Pride and Prejudice had £10,000 a year (no wonder Mrs Bennet was quite overcome) 

• the Revd Patrick Brontë's yearly income at Haworth (where he lived from 1820 to 1861) was £170; as governesses, his daughters might earn £25 a year

(We normally think in terms of inflation when comparing money, but since 1810, which is roughly when Jane Austen's novels were published, there had been deflation – which was to recur during the 19th century)  

John Lomax left legacies to his family

• 10 guineas each to his sisters Jane Orrell and Betty Stepford, his seventeen nieces and his nephews George Stopford and Richard Orrell 
  

• £100 to his cousin Edmund Pilkington, the son of his mother's sister Mary Knowles

• "my small silver Teapot which I now use" to his niece Ellen Lomax – it must have held a sentimental meaning for her   

All the rest of his household goods and furniture, pictures, printed books, plate, linen and china were for Alice's use during her lifetime and afterwards to be divided between her children.  There is no mention of any horses or carriages, but he clearly kept a good cellar:

• his three nephews Robert Lomax, Richard Hampson and John Bentley were left all his "Madeira Port and Hock wines" apart from 

• 10 dozen bottles of Madeira and 10 dozen bottles of Port which were to go to Alice.  She was also to have "all my other foreign and homemade wines and all my spiritous liquors for her own use"

• Alice was also to have the sum of £500

He gave his real property – warehouses, land, houses – and any remaining personal estate (ie everything except land, but including leaseholds) to his three nephews, Robert Lomax, John Bentley and Richard Hampson.

Five months later, on 5 June 1827, he died.  

He was buried on 11 June at the chapel at Ainsworth where his brother Robert, sister-in-law Mary and niece Betsey lay.

Ainsworth Unitarian Chapel by Alexander P Kapp

The notice of his death appeared in the newspapers – on 12 June in the Tyne Mercury (which came out on Tuesdays) and on 15 June in the Chester Chronicle and Liverpool Mercury (which both came out on Thursdays): 

On the 5th inst. in the 64th year of his age, John Lomax, Esq. of the firm of Messrs Mather, Lomax, and Co. of Manchester

Thirteen years later in 1840, his nephew Robert Lomax – who must have left the Unitarians for the Church of England – built Christ's Church, Harwood.  He commissioned Messrs Patteson of Manchester to  make two memorials – one for his parents Robert and Mary and the other, on behalf of himself, Richard Hampson and John Bentley, for their uncle John.  (The WWI memorial is directly beneath it, which is why you can see part of a poppy wreath in this photograph.)

A tribute of respect

from his affectionate Nephews

to JOHN LOMAX Esq

of Manchester

youngest son of Richard & Ellen

Lomax of Harwood,

who departed this life on the

fifth of June 1827

 aged 63 years

Not long after John's death, on 16 July, Alice's baby was born.  She named her Alice Lomax Hopkinson, and had her baptised on 26 August at St John's, Manchester.

Alice was left alone to raise five children under the age of ten.  John was only 3½ – he and his baby sister had no memory of John Lomax, but the older girls must have remembered their father.  Unfortunately, we don't have any stories from them.  They were long dead by the time Mary Hopkinson wrote her memoir and she had only her own memories of her aunts and the letters they had written to her parents.  

Alice stayed in Cheetwood for another couple of years but by September 1829 she had moved the family a couple of miles across to the other side of Manchester, to Rusholme Road in the township of Chorlton-upon-Medlock.  It had been marked for building a couple of decades earlier – maps show the outlines of housing plots – but not very many had been built as yet, and it was still a semi-rural area.

     Alice Hopkinson    –    John Lomax

                                                 1787-1852                 c1764-1827

                                                                     |

                                 |-------------------|-------------------|-----------------|----------------|

                           Ellen               Elizabeth              Mary                 John               Alice

                      b Sept 1817       b July 1819       b Mar 1821      b Feb 1824      b July 1827

                     d Aug 1900        d Jan 1887       d June 1866      d Mar 1902     d Dec 1881

Next:  5: The Rusholme Road Chapel & the Rev James Griffin

2: John Lomax of Manchester (1763/4-1827): the father of John Hopkinson

 John Lomax was the father that John Hopkinson never knew – he died before John's third birthday.  

John Lomax was born some 10 miles north-west of Manchester in the township of Harwood, which was one of the 17 townships that made up the parish of Bolton-le-Moors.  

(The following information is taken from the invaluable booklet Harwood: The Early Years by J Frederick Horridge.  I have included from the booklet a part of the projected map of Harwood c1600 and a picture of Lomax Fold.  I do recommend buying the booklet, which can be bought from Amazon – see the list of publications on the Turton Local History Society website.  And I'm very grateful for the headstart given to me by Tonge's Old Lancashire Wills)

In 1600 – about the time of the first written record of a Lomax at Lomax Fold – some 250 people lived in the township of Harwood.  

• there wasn't a village – just 16 or so farms and folds and a water cornmill.  (A fold is a farmstead surrounded by a cluster of cottages)

• about a quarter of the township was common land – cart tracks and bridle ways led between the mill, the common land and the farms

• the people had always spun yarn and woven cloth for their own use and by 1600 it was an additional source of income for many.  Chapmen acted as agents, supplying the yarn to the farms and cottages and selling the cloth 

• the farmers were all tenants to absentee landlords.  Their houses were built of dry stone with timber-framed internal walls, roofed with thatch or split-stone slate.  

In 1610, John Lomax of Owd Jacks Farm married a girl from the neighbouring township of Breightmet – his marriage brought him a farm called Old Nans

• not long afterwards, when the farmers of Harwood were able to buy their farms, he bought the freehold to the 18 Cheshire Acres (nearer 40 Statute Acres) of his farmstead.  It cost him about £66.  This was to be known for more than 200 years as Lomax Fold.

• Lomax Fold lay in the south-eastern corner of Harwood township, bordered by the Blackshaw Brook, Nab Moor, and Breightmet

Part of 'Projected map of Harwood c1600'
from Harwood: The Early Years by J Frederick Horridge

• the Harwood farmers now built themselves better houses.  The outer walls were of random or coursed stonework, and the walls inside were timber-framed with a wattle & daub infill – some had internal walls of riven oak planks.  

Lomax Fold must have looked something like Leegate Farm, Bradshaw, which remains an unspoiled example of 17th century South Lancashire rural architecture: 

Lee Gate Farm, by Plucas58 CC BY-SA 3.0 

On 31 December 1751, Richard Lomax of Lomax Fold married Ellen Knowles in the old church of St Peter's, Bolton

Old Bolton Parish Church

• Ellen was the daughter of Robert & Jane Knowles and came from Eagley Bank, a couple of miles north of Bolton

• the Knowles family had mining interests going back to Elizabethan times and Ellen's father had started pits in Eagley Bank.  Her brother Andrew and his descendants continued the business – by the end of the 19th century it dominated the mining industry in the Manchester area

• Richard developed Lomax Fold into a grand Georgian residence for his new bride.  A datestone on his extension reads 'L-RE-1757' (Lomax – Richard & Ellen – 1757).  

Some time between June 1763 and June 1764, Ellen gave birth to John 

Lomax Fold, 1806

• so John was the same age as Joséphine de Beauharnais, who married Napoleon Bonaparte, and Fletcher Christian, who led the mutiny on HMS Bounty

• he was one of the younger children of a large family – he was only five when his eldest sister Hannah married 

• he grew up in a family which belonged to a deeply-rooted network of rural kinship groups – these were people who, like their neighbours in the villages and towns around Manchester, had been diversifying into cotton and fustian manufacture for a long while

• during his childhood, the inventions of the Industrial Revolution – for example, the Spinning Jenny (1764), Arkwright's water-powered water frame (1769) and Crompton's Mule (1770s),  – revolutionised cotton production

• when John was 15 or 16, his father Richard Lomax died.  He was buried at St Peter's, Bolton-le-Moors, on 15 May 1779

• his surviving children were Hannah, Robert, Richard, Ellen, John, Jane and Betty.  Betty and Ellen were aged 6 and 11; Jane was probably in her late teens

• Richard evidently found he was land-rich and cash-poor when he made his Will.  He instructed his executors to put a value on his estate, including Lomax Fold and Old Nans, and offer it to his son Robert at that price.  If Robert refused the offer, the executors were to sell the estate.  They were to provide for Ellen out of the proceeds of sale, giving her an income for her life and the means to raise the young children.  After her death, the estate was to be divided between the children with Robert taking a double share, and Hannah taking £50 less than the others because she had already received that amount on her marriage

• Robert was still very young – probably just 21 years old – when his father Richard died.  He must have raised the money, perhaps with family help, because he took over the farms

This was the Manchester that John Lomax knew in 1800:

• the town had grown rapidly in his lifetime.  In 1784, when John was 20, a Monsieur de Givry (a Frenchman engaged in industrial espionage) had described it as a "large and superb town ... which has been built almost entirely in the past 20 to 25 years"

• in 1800 – when Napoleon had taken power in France and the war against the French had already

  

  Napoleon crossing the Alps
  by J-L David

  been going on for 8 years – Manchester's population had increased from over 40,000 to over 70,000.  People had come in from the surrounding countryside, from Scotland and from Ireland, and the town now had a high birth rate

• the canal system brought in the food for the ever increasing population.  Imports included apples from the cider districts – an important part of the diet even of the poor, valued for pies and puddings – salt butter from Ireland; and fish from the Yorkshire and Lancashire coasts (the River Irwell had no fish, being poisoned by liquor from the dye-houses)

• but the Lancashire roads were still notoriously bad, except for the famous paved causeways of stones raised above field level, just wide enough for horses but too narrow for wheeled traffic

• foreign merchants were coming to live in the town, which was becoming more and more like one of the commercial capitals of Europe

• there were many schools.  The College of Arts and Sciences was founded in 1783

• the town had a theatre, and there were the Assembly Rooms in Mosley Street, with a ballroom with glittering chandeliers and mirrors, an elegant tea-room, a billiard room and a card room

• there were Public Baths supplied by a local spring and, for half a guinea a year, subscribers could enjoy the Cold Bath, Hot or Vapour Bath or the 'Matlock or Buxton' Bath

• there was a long-established hospital (it was doctors at the Manchester Infirmary in the early 1770s who pioneered cod-liver oil treatment for rickets, a disease which had been well-known in many parts of England in the C17)

• there were three weekly newspapers and the town had its own Penny Post

• the town had an intellectual life – the Manchester Literary & Philosophical Society had been founded in 1781 

Men, however great their learning often become indolent and unambitious to improve in knowledge for want of associating with others of similar talents and improvements. But science, like fire, is put in motion by collision. Where a number of such men have frequent opportunities of meeting and conversing together, thought begets thought, and every hint is turned to advantage. A spirit of enquiry glows in every breast   [Manchester Lit & Phil, 1785]

• in the early 1790s, when the French Revolution had sharply divided public opinion in the town over political reform, a breakaway group from the Lit & Phil formed the Manchester Reading Society or "Jacobin Library" as it was known (one of the founders was Thomas Cooper, a Radical who later became a prosperous lawyer and slave-owner in the USA)

• but the town's local government had barely started and it was still governed like a village.  The fire service and police force were both inadequate 

• the rapid change and newness of the town could appal outsiders – one visitor from Rotherham wrote in 1808 "the town is abominably filthy, the Steam Engine is pestiferous, the Dyehouses noisome and offensive, and the water of the river as black as ink or the Stygian lake" 

• it was not a clean or safe town!  A description of the town in 1799:

during many wet and dark winter months, the streets have remained uncleansed and without lights; for some time no watchmen or patrols were appointed ... and none could pass through the streets in safety.  Escaping personal violence, they were still in imminent personal danger, from the numerous unguarded cellars, pits and various obstructions that every where interrupted their passage ... the streets are still crowded with annoyances ... not a street has been widened or laid open

By 1800, John was 27 years old and was a cotton manufacturer in Manchester

Cooper Street and Kennedy Street near Manchester Town Hall
cc-by-sa/2.0 © Andrew Hill geograph.org.uk/p/3803930

• the Manchester & Salford Directory 1800 shows that he was living at 9 Cooper Street, a part of Manchester favoured by the prosperous.  His office was not far away at 15 Brown Street

• cotton manufacture at this time still involved putting out work to handloom weavers – the manufacturers finished and sold the woven cloth

• soon the economic recession would enable manufacturers to offer handloom weavers only breadline wages.  By 1812, with increasing numbers of power looms in operation, the Luddites were active, breaking the machines that put them out of work.  Manchester was growing rapidly and these were restless and difficult times, with a growing gulf between the rich and the poor.  There's a good account of the industrial unrest and the increasing desperation of the weavers on the Heywood History website

John Lomax's brother Robert now lived at Lomax Fold – he was a farmer and manufacturer

• he is listed in the 1800 Directory as a dimity manufacturer (dimity was a stout cotton fabric, with a raised pattern on one side) with a Manchester place of business at 11 Crow Alley.  Harwood: The Early Years records that he became a successful velveteen manufacturer

• Robert married Mary Kay of the parish of Middleton in 1782

John Lomax's sisters married yeomen and manufacturers:

• Hannah married John Hampson, yeoman, in 1769 at St Peter's, Bolton-le-Moors; their son Richard became one of John Lomax's partners

• Jane married Richard Orrell in 1784 at Bolton-le-Moors.  He is described in the register as a weaver.  They lived at Orrell Fold in the moorland township of Turton, north of Bolton, where his family had lived since the 15th century.  

• Ellen (known as Nelly) married John Bentley, a Stockport muslin manufacturer in 1794 at Bolton-le-Moors; they were both 26 years old.  Their home was at Birch House in the township of Farnworth, near Bolton, which he bought from the previous owner at about this time.  Bentley died aged 29, only three years after the marriage, leaving Nelly with one son, John.  This engraving shows the mansion house in 1835.  (The house was sold by John Bentley junior, who moved to London)

  

  Birch House, 1835

• Betty married George Stopford, a muslin manufacturer of Stockport, in 1797 in the Manchester parish church (now the cathedral).  Muslin must have been in great demand because of the fashions of the time; by 1808 Stopford had moved to Manchester and was described as a cotton manufacturer 

Until 1807, when George Stopford retired from the firm, John Lomax was in business in Stockport & Manchester with George Stopford, John Mather and Samuel Mather

• they traded as George Stopford & Company

• I think this was almost certainly his brother-in-law George Stopford, but the name of the company suggests it was founded by Stopford's father

• John Lomax was also in a separate partnership with the two Mathers in the firm Samuel Mather & Company.  Newspaper reports from 1802 and 1804 show that the firm dealt in malt and in coffee from the slave plantations of the West Indies.  

It was when John Lomax was in business in Stockport that he was presented with a silver medal as a trustee of the Sunday School built in Stockport in 1805

• this medal is referred to by Mary Hopkinson in her memoir of her parents – in fact, all she knew for certain of her grandfather was his name and that he was given the medal

• in 1805, £6,000 had been raised for a new building on London Square for the Stockport Sunday School

• it was large enough to hold 5,000 scholars – and it was needed to provide the only education available to the children who worked 14 hour shifts in the mills from Monday to Saturday

• it was to be inter-denominational but the local Anglican clergy, who felt threatened by Methodism and Calvinism, withdrew their support 

  

  Stockport Sunday School in 1855

• it seems John Lomax was a Nonconformist, like so many in his close family – they came from an area with a long history of Nonconformity.  It had been a Puritan stronghold in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms of the 1640s

Chester Chronicle, 19 July 1805

On Sunday the 16th ult. 3000 children, educated at the Sunday Schools in Stockport, in this county, were conducted by their teachers to a spot of ground in an eligible and airy situation, purchased for erecting a building by voluntary contributions, and capable of holding upwards of 4000 scholars, where they were formed into a semi-circle, with the band of the Stockport Volunteers placed in the centre; in the front a platform was raised for the Committee, and an immense multitude surrounded the whole.  The first stone of the building having been laid the preceding night, one of the Committee stepped forward, and, in an audible voice, gave out the following hymn, in which thousands of voices joined:

These walls we to thine honour raise,

Long may they echo to thy praise.

After which another of the Committee read the following inscription, upon a brass plate, to be placed upon the foundation stone, engraved and presented by one of the scholars:- "This foundation stone of the Stockport Sunday Schools, for the education and religious instruction of the children of the labouring poor, was laid June 15, 1805"; and in an animated address, declared, that the building was intended to concentrate the piety and benevolence of all parties in favour of the poor untutored youth, and to be under the exclusive influence and direction of no party; that it was devoted to the rising generation of Stockport, and was to be denominated The Stockport Sunday School. - An appropriate hymn, with prayer, closed this interesting scene.

In late June 1807, George Stopford retired and the remaining partners formed a new firm called Mathers, Lomax & Company, cotton merchants in Manchester

• Cotton merchants took regular consignments of cotton from the Mediterranean, from the slave plantations of the West Indies (the anti-slavery campaign in Britain in that year achieved the abolition of the trade in slaves, but not slavery itself), and the plantations of the slave states of the USA
• it seems that, generally, cotton dealers dealt in a smaller way, probably buying enough at the quayside for their customers for a fortnight or so  

• a newspaper report shows that in 1820 Mathers, Lomax & Co was awaiting 45 bales of cotton which had come into Liverpool onboard the Savannah from the USA 

• some cotton merchants owned plantations, but John Lomax did not, as nothing of the sort is mentioned in his Will  

• directories show that in the years 1816-20 the warehouse & premises of Mathers, Lomax & Co were at 5 Cromford Court, Manchester. 

• by 1819 the partnership consisted of John Lomax, John Mather and Lomax's nephew Richard Hampson, who was only seven years his junior

John Lomax took his part in the public life of Manchester.  Newspaper reports show him 

• among the gentlemen inviting the officers of the First Regiment of Manchester Local Militia to a dinner in 1810

• on the committee formed to prepare a petition relating to the Corn Laws in 1814

• giving a 10 guinea Benefaction to the Manchester Infirmary and Dispensary in 1814

In 1814, his elder Robert died at the age of 56 and was buried at the Independent Chapel at Ainsworth, a mile west of Lomax Fold.  It was Presbyterian when founded in 1662 but the congregation moved – as did many in the North West – to Unitarianism, which was finally given toleration when the blasphemy laws were altered in 1813.  It was then that Joseph Bealey, the minister who had baptised Robert and Mary's six children, openly announced that he was a Unitarian.

• Robert's eldest daughter Ann had married John Kay in 1805, but her four younger sisters and her brother were still at home with their mother – they were aged between 12 and 29

• John Lomax was one of his brother's executors and it must have fallen especially on him and his nephew and fellow executor Richard Hampson to decide what to do about Robert's cotton manufacturing business.  Robert had said in his Will that they were to keep the business going for his young son Robert if they thought it advisable for the benefit of the estate.  Robert jnr was not quite 16 years old

• some 5 years later, Robert jnr inherited Lomax Fold and his father's other properties and went on to become a successful manufacturer himself – so it looks as though, during the 5 years of young Robert's minority, John Lomax was involved in running his late brother's business as well as his own

What was John Lomax like?  

• he was a man of great family feeling, close to his sisters and brother, nieces and nephews.  People felt he could be relied on – admittedly I've only seen his brother Robert's Will and a record of the contents of the Will of his uncle John Kinder, but both appointed him as executor  

• he was able and enterprising in business and made a good deal of money

• he was remembered with great affection and gratitude by the three nephews he helped in business  

• he must have been a man of very definite presence, confidence and personality to judge by the flair of his flamboyant signature.  Here it is, from the foot of one of the pages of his Will in 1827.  Even when acting as witness to a marriage, his signature looks just the same, comfortably at ease when everyone else is evidently struggling with the space allowed and a scratchy pen.   

Here's the signature from his brother Robert's Will, by way of comparison.  Much less stylish.  

 Next:  3: Alice Hopkinson (1787-1852): the mother of John Hopkinson