Thomas Sclater

Thomas Sclater (later Bacon) FRS (c 1664 – 23 August 1736) was an English lawyer and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1713 and 1736.

Sclater was the son of Edward Sclater of Kingston-upon-Hull, Yorkshire and his wife Frances Thompson, daughter of Leonard Thompson, Lord Mayor of York. His father died when he was young and after 1673 he was brought up by his stepfather Edward Thompson. He was educated at St Paul's School and was admitted at Trinity College, Cambridge on 13 June 1682, aged 17. In 1684 he succeeded to the estates of his great-uncle Sir Thomas Sclater, 1st Baronet of Catley, where he amassed a valuable library. He entered Grey's Inn in 1694 and was called to the bar in 1703.

In 1713, Sclater was elected Member of Parliament for Bodmin. He was made a freeman of Cambridge in 1714. In January 1715 he was elected MP for Cambridge and sat until May. On his marriage on 22 May 1716 to heiress Elizabeth Bacon, sister of Peter Standley of Paxton Place, Huntingdonshire, he assumed the name Bacon. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1721. In 1722 he was elected again as MP for Cambridge and sat until his death. He became a bencher of his Inn in 1724.

Sclater died of a palsy, worth £200,000 at the age of about 71.

Sclater married Elizabeth Bacon who had been probably a ward "under his charge", on 22 May 1716. She was the heir of John Bacon, a London merchant who had purchased land at Little Paxton, Huntingdonshire. She died in 1726, which was after Sclater had made a will in 1724 leaving his estate for life to Sarah, the wife of his coachman whom he described as a ‘kinswoman’ with remainder to her two sons.

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