“This year (1765),” says Boswell, “was distinguished by his (Johnson) being introduced into the family of Mr. Thrale, one of the most eminent brewers in England, and member of Parliament for the borough of Southwark....  Johnson used to give this account of the rise of Mr. Thrale’s father:  ’He worked at six shillings a week for twenty years in the great brewery, which afterwards was his own.  The proprietor of it had an only daughter, who was married to a nobleman.  It was not fit that a peer should continue the business.  On the old man’s death, therefore, the brewery was to be sold.  To find a purchaser for so large a property was a difficult matter; and after some time, it was suggested that it would be advisable to treat with Thrale, a sensible, active, honest man, who had been employed in the house, and to transfer the whole to him for thirty thousand pounds, security being taken upon the property.  This was accordingly settled.  In eleven years Thrale paid the purchase money.  He acquired a large fortune, and lived to be a member of Parliament for Southwark.  But what was most remarkable was the liberality with which he used his riches.  He gave his son and daughters the best education.  The esteem which his good conduct procured him from the nobleman who had married his master’s daughter made him be treated with much attention; and his son, both at school and at the University of Oxford, associated with young men of the first rank.  His allowance from his father, after he left college, was splendid; not less than a thousand a year.  This, in a man who had risen as old Thrale did, was a very extraordinary instance of generosity.  He used to say, ’If this young dog does not find so much after I am gone as he expects, let him remember that he has had a great deal in my own time.’”

What is here stated regarding Thrale’s origin, on the alleged authority of Johnson, is incorrect.  The elder Thrale was the nephew of Halsey, the proprietor of the brewery whose daughter was married to a nobleman (Lord Cobham), and he naturally nourished hopes of being his uncle’s successor.  In the Abbey Church of St. Albans, there is a monument to some members of the Thrale family who died between 1676 and 1704, adorned with a shield of arms and a crest on a ducal coronet.  Mrs. Thrale’s marginal note on Boswell’s account of her husband’s family is curious and characteristic: 

“Edmund Halsey was son to a miller at St. Albans, with whom he quarrelled, like Ralph in the ‘Maid of the Mill,’ and ran away to London with a very few shillings in his pocket.[1] He was eminently handsome, and old Child of the Anchor Brewhouse, Southwark, took him in as what we call a broomstick clerk, to sweep the yard, &c.  Edmund Halsey behaved so well he was soon preferred to be a house-clerk, and then, having free access to his master’s table, married his only daughter, and succeeded to the business upon Child’s demise.  Being now rich and prosperous, he turned his eyes homewards, where he learned that sister Sukey had married a hardworking man at Offley in Hertfordshire, and had many children.  He sent for one of them to London (my Mr. Thrale’s father); said he would make a man of him, and did so:  but made him work very hard, and treated him very roughly, Halsey being more proud than tender, and his only child, a daughter, married to Lord Cobham.