Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Heywood, Thomas (1797-1866)
HEYWOOD, THOMAS (1797–1866), antiquary, son of Nathaniel Heywood, banker, and younger brother of Sir Benjamin Heywood [q. v.], was born at Manchester on 3 Sept. 1797, and educated at the Manchester grammar school. He was for some years a partner with his father, but retired in 1828, and purchased Hope End, Herefordshire, where he afterwards resided. Before leaving Manchester he collected a remarkable library of local books, which was dispersed in 1835. The sale catalogue is still of considerable value. He served the office of boroughreeve of Salford in 1826, and that of high sheriff of Herefordshire in 1840. In 1826 he printed an interesting pamphlet on ‘The Earls of Derby and the Verse Writers of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,’ Manchester, 4to; reprinted in 1853 by the Chetham Society. In 1829 he annotated and printed ‘The most Pleasant Song of Lady Bessy, the eldest Daughter of King Edward the Fourth.’ He was an early member of the council of the Chetham Society, and edited the following of its publications: 1. ‘The Norris Papers,’ 1846. 2. ‘The Moore Rental,’ 1847. 3. ‘The Diary of the Rev. Henry Newcome,’ 1849. 4. ‘Cardinal Allen's Defence of Sir William Stanley's Surrender of Deventer,’ 1851. 5. ‘On the South Lancashire Dialect,’ 1862. 6. ‘Letter from Sir John Seton, dated 1643,’ 1862. For the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire he wrote a notice of the family of Percival of Allerton, Lancashire (Trans. vol. i.), and a description of an old Chester document (ib. vol. v.). He married in 1823 Mary Elizabeth, daughter of John Barton of Swinton, Lancashire, and died at Hope End on 20 Nov. 1866. His general library was sold at Manchester in 1868.
[J. F. Smith's Manchester School Reg. (Chetham Soc.), iii. 74; Foster's Lancashire Pedigrees; Baker's Memorials of a Dissenting Chapel, p. 116; Chetham Soc. Annual Report, 1867.]