Life

The son of John Nickolls, a Quaker miller of Ware, Hertfordshire, he was born there in 1710 or 1711. He was apprenticed to Joseph Wyeth

Joseph Wyeth

-Life:The son of Henry and Sarah Wyeth, was born on 19 September 1663 in the parish of St Saviour, Southwark. He became a successful merchant of London.Wyeth died of fever on 9 January 1731, and was buried at the Park, Worcester Street, Southwark, on the 15th...

, merchant in London, and, after serving his time, became a partner with his father.

Nickolls was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries on 17 January 1740. He died of fever on 11 January 1745, and was buried at Bunhill Fields

Bunhill Fields

Bunhill Fields is a cemetery in the London Borough of Islington, north of the City of London, and managed by the City of London Corporation. It is about 4 hectares in extent, although historically was much larger....

 on the 16th.

Collector

At his house in Trinity parish, Queenhithe

Queenhithe

Queenhithe is a small ward of the City of London, situated on the River Thames and to the south of St Paul's Cathedral. The Millennium Bridge crosses into the City at Queenhithe....

, he formed an excellent library. He also collected from the bookstalls about Moorfields

Moorfields

In London, the Moorfields were one of the last pieces of open land in the City of London, near the Moorgate. The fields were divided into three areas, the Moorfields proper, just north of Bethlem Hospital, and inside the City boundaries, and Middle and Upper Moorfields to the north.After the Great...

 two thousand prints of heads; these later furnished Joseph Ames

Joseph Ames (author)

Joseph Ames was an English bibliographer and antiquary. He wrote an account of printing in England from 1471 to 1600, entitled Typographical Antiquities...

 with material for his Catalogue of English Heads, London, 1748. From Wyeth's widow Nickolls received a number of letters at one time in John Milton

John Milton

John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...

's possession; they had since belonged to Milton's secretary, Thomas Ellwood

Thomas Ellwood

Thomas Ellwood was an English religious writer.He was born in Oxfordshire, the son of a rural squire. Educated at Lord Williams's School, he later joined the Quakers and became a friend of William Penn and John Milton. However, he was persecuted for his faith and spent some time in prison. His...

, and had been used by Wyeth in the preparation for publication of Ellwood's Journal, which was issued in 1713. William Oldys

William Oldys

William Oldys was an English antiquarian and bibliographer.The illegitimate son of Dr William Oldys, chancellor of Lincoln, London was probably his place of birth. His father had held the office of advocate of the admiralty, but lost it in 1693 because he would not prosecute as traitors and...

 visited Nickolls at Queenhithe on 22 December 1737, to see this collection of original letters. These documents were issued by Nickolls in 1743 His father presented on 18 Jan. 1746 the original manuscripts of the collection to the Society of Antiquaries. Oldys says in his ‘Diary’ that Nickolls allowed Thomas Birch

Thomas Birch

Thomas Birch was an English historian.-Life:He was the son of Joseph Birch, a coffee-mill maker, and was born at Clerkenwell....

 to use some of them in his life of Oliver Cromwell

Oliver Cromwell

Oliver Cromwell was an English military and political leader who overthrew the English monarchy and temporarily turned England into a republican Commonwealth, and served as Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland....

 in the General Dictionary, Historical and Critical

General Dictionary, Historical and Critical

The General Dictionary, Historical and Critical was a biographical dictionary published from 1734 to 1741 in London in 10 volumes. It derived from the Dictionnaire historique et critique of Pierre Bayle, already translated into English in 1710 by Pierre des Maizeaux as An Historical and Critical...

, 1731–41. Nickolls's prints and rare pamphlets were purchased by John Fothergill

John Fothergill (physician)

John Fothergill FRS was an English physician, plant collector, philanthropist and Quaker.- Life and work :...

.