stationer, William Hall, was at this period filling, like Thorpe, the irresponsible rôle of procurer of manuscripts. In 1606 Hall had procured for publication a neglected manuscript poem, ‘A Foure-fold Meditation,’ by the jesuit, Robert Southwell [q. v.], and had supplied, as owner of the ‘copy,’ a dedicatory epistle under his initials ‘W. H.’ There is little doubt that Thorpe was acquainted with Hall. Southwell's poem was printed for Hall by George Eld, the printer of Shakespeare's ‘Sonnets,’ and of many others of Thorpe's publications. Hall himself became a master-printer in a small way in 1609, and he described himself as ‘W. H.’ on the title-page of at least one of his books (‘Trial of John Selman,’ 1612). No other person who was likely to be in Thorpe's circle of acquaintance was known to designate himself by the same initials. Hall is therefore in all probability the ‘Mr. W. H.’ of Shakespeare's ‘Sonnets.’
In 1610 Thorpe acquired some unpublished manuscripts of an insignificant author, John Healey [q. v.], who had migrated to Virginia and had apparently died there. Another publisher had issued in 1609 a translation by Healey of Bishop Hall's ‘Discoverie of a New World,’ and Healey had dedicated that work to William Herbert, third earl of Pembroke [q. v.] When Thorpe published the manuscripts by Healey in his hands, he prefixed to them dedicatory epistles signed by his own initials, and, inaugurating a new practice in his choice of patrons, addressed them to men of eminence who had acted as patrons of Healey's earlier ventures. Thorpe chose Lord Pembroke as patron of Healey's translation of St. Augustine's ‘City of God’ in 1610, and penned a very obsequious address to the earl. To another of Healey's patrons, John Florio [q. v.], Thorpe dedicated Healey's translation of ‘Epictetus’ (1610), and when Thorpe brought out a second edition of that work in 1616, he addressed himself again to Lord Pembroke. These three dedicatory epistles are the longest literary compositions by Thorpe that are extant; they are fantastic and bombastic in style to the bounds of incoherence, and the two addresses to Lord Pembroke are extravagantly subservient in tone. In 1624 Thorpe's name appeared in print in connection with a book for the last time. In that year there was issued a new edition of Chapman's ‘Byron,’ which Thorpe had first published in 1608. Thorpe, whose surreptitious production of Shakespeare's ‘Sonnets’ has long perplexed Shakespeare's biographers and has given him his sole title to fame, seems to have been granted an almsroom in the hospital of Ewelme on 3 Dec. 1635 (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1635, p. 527).
[Arber's Stationers' Registers; Thorpe's publications in Bodleian and British Museum libraries; Athenæum, 1 Nov. 1873, by Mr. Charles Edmonds; Southwell's Foure-fold Meditation, edited by Mr. Charles Edmonds, 1895, preface; Life of Shakespeare, 1898, by the present writer; art. Shakespeare, William; introduction to the Oxford University Press Facsimile of Shakespeare's Sonnets, by the present writer, Oxford, 1905; information kindly supplied by Samuel Butler, esq.]
THORPE or THORP, Sir WILLIAM de (fl. 1350), chief justice, appears as an advocate in 1333, as one of the king's serjeants in 1341, as the king's attorney in 1342, and in the April of that year was appointed a justice, probably of the king's bench, where he certainly sat in 1345 (Foss), though Dugdale thinks that his first appointment may have been to the common pleas. On 26 Nov. 1346 he was appointed chief justice of the king's bench, in 1347 sat on the commission for the trial of the Earls of Menteith and Fife, and opened the parliament of that and the following year. Charges of corruption in the execution of his office were made against him in 1350, he was imprisoned, and on 3 Nov. Edward III issued a writ constituting the Earls of Arundel, Warwick, and Huntingdon, and two others, commissioners to try him. He confessed that he had received bribes from five persons indicted before him at Lincoln, and was sentenced to imprisonment and forfeiture. On the 19th the king issued a second writ to the same commissioners, setting forth the advantages of Thorpe's office and the enormity of his offence, stating that when he took the oath of his office the king had told him by word of mouth that if he transgressed he should be hanged and suffer forfeiture, and demanding sentence accordingly, which was passed by the commissioners. Edward remitted the capital punishment, and issued writs for the seizure of his lands and goods. In the parliament of February 1351 the king laid the record and process in Thorpe's case before the magnates, who declared that the judgment was right and reasonable. In the course of that year Thorpe was pardoned, and a portion of his lands—the manor of Chancton in Sussex—was restored to him. He was not reinstated as chief justice, but on 24 May 1352 was appointed second baron of the exchequer, and in 1354 was chief of a commission of assize in Sussex, and was one of the triers of petitions in parliament. In 1358 he was appointed a commissioner to treat with the
