Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Mosley, Nicholas
MOSLEY, NICHOLAS (1611–1672), author, son of Oswald Mosley and his wife Anne, daughter of Ralph Lowe, was born at Ancoats Hall, Manchester, in 1611 (baptised at the collegiate church 26 Dec.) On the outbreak of the civil war he took the royalist side, and his estates were in consequence confiscated in 1643, but on 18 Aug. 1646 they were restored on his paying a heavy fine. In 1653 he published a philoophical treatise entitled 'ψυχοσοφια, or Natural and Divine Contemplations of the Passions and Faculties of the Soul of Man' (London, Humphrey Moseley, 1653, 8vo). In 1657–8 he, along with other of his townsmen, engaged in a controversial discussion with Richard Heyrick [q. v.] and other leaders of the Manchester presbyterian classis. At the Restoration he mustered the remains of an auxiliary band, with whom he headed an imposing procession to the Manchester collegiate church on the coronation day, 23 Aug. 1661. Among other local public offices held by him were those of justice of the peace, boroughreeve of Manchester (1661-2), and feoffee of Chatham's Hospital and Library. He married Jane, daughter of John Lever of Alkrington, and died at Ancoats in October 1672, leaving three sons.
[Sir O. Mosley's Family Memoirs, 1849, p. 36; Local Gleanings, 1st ser. i. 248, 254, ii. 194; Earwaker's Manchester Court Leet Records, iv. 282, v. 154 et passim; Manchester Constables Accounts, vol. iii.; Foster's Lancashire Pedigrees; Commons' Journals, 5 and 12 May 1643.]