possible age in politics, and even in the currency. He wrote a paper advocating this practice in the ‘Christian Observer,’ to which in the course of his life he contributed some eighty articles. His eldest daughter left unpublished records which show strikingly his attention to his domestic duties, and his care for his parents as well as his children. Thornton represented the best type of the classes from which was drawn the strength of the early evangelical movement. Intellectually he was distinguished for sincerity and calmness of judgment. In commercial matters he was conspicuous for a high standard of integrity. Sir James Stephen mentions that he once spent 20,000l. to meet liabilities for which he was not legally, but considered himself to be morally, responsible, because he had given credit to the firm immediately concerned and so enabled them to obtain credit elsewhere.
Thornton's health was always delicate. It broke down in 1814, and he died on 16 Jan. 1815 in Wilberforce's house at Kensington Gore. He was buried at Clapham. His portrait was painted by John Hoppner, R.A. (Cat. Third Loan Exhib., No. 182). He had married (1 March 1796) Marianne, only daughter of Joseph Sykes of West Ella, near Hull. He left nine children: Henry Sykes, partner in Messrs. Williams, Deacon, & Co.; Watson, rector of Llanwarne; Charles, the first incumbent of Margaret Street Chapel; Marianne and Lucy, who died unmarried; Isabella, wife of Archdeacon Harrison, canon of Canterbury; Sophia, wife of her cousin, the Earl of Leven and Melville; Henrietta, wife of Richard Synnot, esq.; and Laura, wife of the Rev. Charles Forster, rector of Stisted. Mrs. Thornton died nine months after her husband, when the children were placed under the guardianship of Sir Robert Harry Inglis [q. v.]
Besides the book above mentioned, Thornton composed family prayers for his own use, which were published in 1834 (edited by Sir R. Inglis), and reached a thirty-first edition in 1835. Sir James Stephen speaks highly of its merits. Inglis also edited ‘Family Commentaries’ on the sermon on the mount (1835), on the Pentateuch (1837), ‘Lectures on the Ten Commandments’ (1843), and ‘Female Characters’ (1846). Thornton also published in 1802 a pamphlet upon the ‘Probable Effects of the Peace upon the Commercial Interests of Great Britain.’
[Information from family papers kindly communicated by Miss Laura Forster, H. Thornton's granddaughter. For John Thornton, see also Memorials of W. Bull (1864); Cecil's Life of Newton, chap. x.; Cowper's Life and Works by Southey (1835, &c.), i. 244, v. 200. For Henry Thornton see Grover's Old Clapham (1887), pp. 70–4; Colquhoun's Wilberforce and his Friends (2nd ed.), pp. 254 seq.; Life of W. Wilberforce (1838), iv. 227–33, and elsewhere; Sir James Stephen's Essays on Ecclesiastical Biography (‘Clapham Sect’); Christian Observer for 1815, pp. 127, 137, 265.]
THORNTON, ROBERT (fl. 1440), transcriber of the ‘Thornton Romances,’ has been identified by Canon Perry with the Robert Thornton who was a doctor of laws and commissary and official of the bishop of Lincoln in 1437–9 (Statutes of Lincoln Cathedral, ed. 1897, vol. ii. passim). He was collated archdeacon of Bedford in Lincoln Cathedral on 14 Feb. 1438–9, and died on 15 May 1450, being buried in Lincoln Cathedral (Le Neve, ii. 73–4). The transcriber has also been identified with the Robert Thornton, prior of the Benedictine abbey at Bardney, Lincolnshire, who gave to the inmates of that abbey a book entitled ‘Regulæ vitæ anachoretarum utriusque sexus;’ the manuscript extant in Cottonian MSS. Vitellius E, vii. 6, was marked as destroyed by fire in the catalogue of Cottonian manuscripts, but has been partially restored (cf. Thomas Smith, Cat. Cotton. MSS. 1696, p. 97). Neither identification is satisfactory. Numerous branches of the Thornton family were settled in Yorkshire in the fifteenth century (cf. Testamenta Eboracensia, Surtees Soc. passim; Foster, Yorkshire Pedigrees). The transcriber is more probably to be identified with Robert Thornton of East Newton, near Pickering, in the North Riding of Yorkshire (Foster, Visitation of Yorkshire, p. 296). He is said to have been a native of Oswaldkirk, and references to that place and to Pickering occur in his writings. He held several manors, was married, and had children. His grandson, Robert Thornton, born in 1454, married a daughter of William Layton of Sproxton; from him descend the Thorntons of East Newton, in the possession of which family the Lincoln manuscript of the ‘Thornton Romances’ remained until late in the sixteenth century (Autobiogr. of Mrs. Alice Thornton, Surtees Soc. pref. p. ix).
Thornton spent much of his life in transcribing, and perhaps translating into English, romances and other works popular in his day. By Tanner and others he is described as the author of some of these books, but there is no evidence that he composed anything himself. His transcripts, written in a northern English dialect, are extant in two manuscripts; one, already referred to, is now in Lincoln Cathedral library (A. i. 17), the other is British Museum Additional MS. 31042. The former, written about 1440, con-
