Note 29 — The Speech of Mr. Thomas Theodore Deacon.[29]

See a letter to his father on the same occasion, f. 381 infra. According to Bishop Forbes, Mr. Deacon was the son of Dr. Thomas Deacon, who, he adds, (f. 40 infra), was a non-jurant bishop in Manchester. But another contemporary authority describes him as the son of an eminent and wealthy doctor of medicine in Manchester, and states that Thomas was educated at the university to qualify him for the same professions.—'History of the Rebellion,' extracted from the Scots' Magazine, 1755, pp. 294-301. The fact is that Dr. Deacon engaged in both professions. Three of his sons joined the Prince. Thomas was appointed a lieutenant in the Manchester Regiment, and so was his brother Robert, while Charles, the youngest, aged about seventeen, was made an ensign. All were taken at the surrender of Carlisle, and sent prisoners to London. Robert became so ill on the way that he was left at Kendal, and died there. Charles was reprieved, though he was taken to the place of execution under a military guard to see his brother and others suffer. The head of Thomas Deacon, with others, was sent to Manchester to be stuck up on the Exchange there. His father was the first to come and gaze upon it, and saluting it, thanked God that he had had a son who could die for his lawful prince. Dr. Deacon only survived his son about six years, and the inscription on his tombstone is worthy of note:—'Here lie interred the remains (which through mortality are at present corrupt, but which shall one day surely be raised again to immortality and put on incorruption) of Thomas Deacon, the greatest of sinners and most unworthy of primitive bishops, who died 16th February 1753, in the 56th year of his age.—Axon's Annals of Manchester, pp. 89-90.