Thomas Whately

Thomas Whately (1726 – June 1772), an English politician and writer, was a Member of Parliament (1761–1768), who served as Commissioner on the Board of Trade, as Secretary to the Treasury under Lord Grenville, and as Under- secretary of State under Lord North (1771–1772). As an M.P. he published a letter on the reasonableness of the Stamp Act, 1765, which earns him a place in the events that led to the American Revolution.

Among gardeners, Whately is largely remembered as the author of Observations on Modern Gardening, illustrated by descriptions (London, 1770), written while living in the Mansion House in Nonsuch Park. Close on the heels of George Mason's Essay on Design in Gardening, Whately's Observations provide the most comprehensive work on the theory and practice of English landscape gardening in the naturalistic taste before Horace Walpole's brief Essay on Modern Gardening (1782) and the writings of Humphry Repton. The picturesque landscape style in the manner of idealized landscapes by Salvator Rosa or Claude Lorraine, had been pioneered by Charles Bridgeman in the 1720s and brought to fruition by Lancelot Brown, but neither had put their thoughts into print.

Whately's work was many times reprinted.

Whately's Remarks on Some of the Characters in Shakespeare was left unfinished at his death and published posthumously by his brother, the Rev. Joseph Whately, in 1785. Whately's analysis of several of Shakespeare's principal characters applies to them the principles of psychology and motivation of Whately's own proto-Romantic sensibilities.

After Whately's death, correspondence directed to him from Thomas Hutchinson, governor of Massachusetts, Lieutenant-Governor Oliver and other British colonial agents was leaked to Benjamin Franklin and later published in Boston, causing great scandal, and eventually involving his brother William Whately in a duel. "These letters, though not official, related wholly to public affairs, and were intended to affect public measures. They were filled with representations, in regard to the state of things in the colonies, as contrary to the truth, as they were insidious in their design. The discontents and commotions were ascribed to a factious spirit among the people, stirred up by a few intriguing leaders; and it was intimated, that this spirit would be subdued, and submission to the acts of Parliament would be attained, by the presence of a military force, and by persevering in the coercive measures already begun." (Sparks, Life of Benjamin Franklin).

At the insistence of Hutchinson, then acting governor, the town of Whately, Massachusetts was named for him when it was set apart from Hatfield in 1771..

Whately was great-great-great-great grandfather to the actor Kevin Whately through Whately's nephew, Archbishop Richard Whately (according to research broadcast on Who Do You Think You Are - BBC One 2 March 2009).

External links

• Thomas Whately, "The Regulations lately Made concerning the Colonies and the Taxes Imposed upon Them, Considered" (London, 1765): Whately's observations on the Stamp Act: "this Mode of Taxation is the easiest, the most equal and the most certain that can be chosen; The Duty falls chiefly upon Property; but it is spread lightly over a great Variety of Subjects, and lies heavy upon none."
• Remarks on Some of the Characters in Shakespeare (e-books text)
• Sparks, Life of Benjamin Franklin ch. vii: the Hutchinson correspondence
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