Thomas Anson

Who was Thomas Anson?

Thomas Anson, FRS was a British Member of Parliament, traveller and amateur architect.

Anson was the son of William Anson and Isabella Carrier, sister-in-law to the Thomas Parker, 1st Earl of Macclesfield. The family estate was Shugborough Hall in Staffordshire. Admiral George Anson, 1st Baron Anson was his younger brother and along with their cousin, George Parker, 2nd Earl of Macclesfield, they were taught mathematics and navigation by Isaac Newton's friend the mathematician William Jones, who was later to propose Anson's membership for the Royal Society in 1730. Anson went up to St John's College, Oxford, and later studied law at the Inner Temple.

Upon his father's death Anson abandoned law and began the first of many travels to the continent as was then the fashion for young men of fortune and taste. In 1732 Anson and his friend the Earl of Sandwich formed a riotous dining-club called the Society of the Dilettanti which also had the more serious purpose of encouraging study of Greek architecture. In 1740 Thomas briefly joined his brother George on The Centurion as he and his crew began their circumnavigation of the globe. Anson left them in order to travel to Egypt. This qualified him for the Egyptian Society and the Divan Society, the latter being a wild drinking-club of which Lord Dashwood and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu were avid members.