Joseph Nicolson (antiquarian)

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Joseph Nicolson (1706–1777) was an English antiquarian from Carlisle. He was the youngest son of John Nicolson, the diocesan registrar and chapter clerk, and nephew of bishop William Nicolson. His father married Mary Miller, and they had three daughters and three sons. In 1728 Nicolson became proctor to the Consistory Court at Carlisle, and a year later was made joint diocesan registrar for life. After his older brothers died, he inherited the family estates by 1735. Nicolson moved in the Carlisle ecclesiastical elite and supported the Howards of Naworth Castle politically from the early 1730s. His letters from the Jacobite rising of 1745 show his active political involvement. By 1768 he acted as agent for William Cavendish-Bentinck, the 3rd Duke of Portland, in Carlisle. He had collected his uncle's antiquarian items, which formed the basis of his two-volume History and Antiquities of the Counties of Westmorland and Cumberland, made with Richard Burn; he died shortly before it was published. Nicolson had no children with his wife Elizabeth (d. 1755); his estate went to his nephew John.