Thomas Denison

Sir Thomas Denison (1699 - September 8, 1765) was a British judge.

Born in Leeds, Denison's father William was a clothier described as "an opulent merchant at Leeds".^[1] Denison, the younger of two sons, was educated at the Leeds Grammar School, and entered the Inner Temple in 1718 to receive his legal education; he was thereafter called to the bar.^[2]

He was successful as a lawyer, and December 1741,^[2] he was appointed to succeed Sir Francis Page on the Court of the King's Bench, taking office on February 16, 1742.^[1] He served in that capacity for over twenty-three years, under chief justices, Sir William Lee, Sir Dudley Ryder, and Lord Mansfield, resigning on February 14, 1765 due to poor health and failing eyesight.^[1]

He died in September of that year, and was buried in Harewood in Yorkshire.^[2][1] Per his instruction, Denison was buried next to admired former Chief Justice Gascoigne; a memorial was erected in his honor with an inscription by his closest friend, Lord Mansfield.^[2]

Denison had no children. His wife, Anne, daughter of Robert Smithson, Esq., died twenty years later, and his estate passed to his wife's grand-niece, who married Edmund the fifth son of Sir John Beckett, Bart. who then assumed the name of Denison.^[1] Denison's grand-nephew, John Evelyn Denison, would become speaker of the House of Commons in the 1800s.

References

1. Edward Foss, The Judges of England, With Sketches of Their Lives (1864), Volume 8, p. 266-268.
2. Richard Vickerman Taylor, The Biographia Leodiensis: Or, Biographical Sketches of the Worthies of Leeds and Neighbourhood (1865), p.169-170.

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