Born in 1693,[1] a son of Timothy Thackeray, parish clerk of Hampsthwaite, in the West Riding of Yorkshire (now in North Yorkshire), who was one of a family of yeomen, Thackeray was born at Hampsthwaite and from 1706 was educated as a King's Scholar at Eton College.
[1] The prince's early death in 1751 dashed some of his hopes of future royal preferment, but he remained on excellent terms with the new heir to the throne, Prince George, and in 1753 Benjamin Hoadly, Bishop of Winchester, gave him the sinecure of archdeacon of Surrey, which was worth another £130 a year, equivalent to £25,004 in 2023.
In the 1750s, Prince George's friend (and future prime minister) John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute, sent his sons to Harrow.
[3] When he died in 1760, a month after retiring as head master, fourteen of Thackeray's sixteen children were still alive, and he was able to leave each of them £300, equivalent to £57,294 in 2023.
[1] Thackeray's other fourteen children included Anne, John, Alethia, Henrietta, Martha, Theodosia, and Decima.