cognition of the importance of all this unremunerative work, Thorpe was granted a civil list pension of 160l. in 1835, and on 17 June 1841 this was increased to 200l. per annum (Colles, Lit. and Pension List, p. 15).
As early as 1834 Thorpe had commenced a translation of Lappenberg's works on old English history, but had felt the inadequacy of his own knowledge to control his author's statements. By 1842 his knowledge had been greatly enlarged and consolidated, and he commenced another version, with numerous alterations, corrections, and notes of his own. This was published in two volumes in 1845 as ‘A History of England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings,’ from the German of Dr. J. M. Lappenberg (London, 8vo). It was followed, after an interval of twelve years, by a version of the same writer's ‘History of England under the Norman Kings … from the Battle of Hastings to the Accession of the House of Plantagenet’ (Oxford, 8vo). The literary introduction to both these works is still of value, although they have been superseded in most respects by the works of Kemble, Green, Freeman, and Bishop Stubbs. Of more permanent importance was Thorpe's two-volume edition of Florence of Worcester, issued in 1848–9 as ‘Florentii Wigornensis monachi Chronicon ex Chronicis ab adventu Hengesti … usque ad annum mcxvii, cui accesserunt continuationes duæ,’ collated and edited with English notes (London, 8vo). In 1851, after a long negotiation with Edward Lumley, Thorpe sold that publisher, for 150l., his valuable ‘Northern Mythology, comprising the principal popular Traditions and Superstitions of Scandinavia, North Germany, and the Netherlands … from original and other sources’ (London, 3 vols. 12mo), a work upon the notes and illustrations of which he had lavished the greatest care and pains. Continuing in the same vein of research, he produced in 1853 his ‘Yule Tide Stories: a collection of Scandinavian Tales and Traditions,’ which appeared in Bohn's ‘Antiquarian Library.’ For the same library he translated in 1854 ‘Pauli's Life of Alfred the Great,’ to which is appended Alfred's Anglo-Saxon version of ‘Orosius,’ with a literal translation and notes. In 1855 appeared Thorpe's ‘Anglo-Saxon Poems of Beowulf,’ with translation, notes, glossary, and indexes. He had designed this work as early as 1830, and in the meantime had appeared Kemble's literal prose translation in 1837, and Wackerbarth's metrical version in 1849. Thorpe's text was collated with the Cottonian MS. before Kemble's; and as the scorched edges of that manuscript, already ‘as friable as touchwood,’ suffered further detriment very shortly after his collation, a particular value attaches to Thorpe's readings, which vary in many respects from those of his predecessor. In 1861 Thorpe deserved the lasting gratitude of historical students by his ‘excellent edition’ for the Rolls Series of ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, according to the several Authorities.’ In the first volume are printed synoptically the Corpus Christi, Cambridge, the Bodleian, and the various Cottonian texts, with facsimiles and notes, while in volume two appears the translation (London, 8vo; cf. Athenæum, 1861, i. 653). Four years later, through the liberality of Joseph Mayer [q. v.] of Liverpool (after having applied in vain for financial aid to the home office, to Sir John Romilly, and to the master of the rolls), Thorpe was enabled to publish his invaluable supplement to Kemble's ‘Codex Diplomaticus ævi Saxonici,’ entitled ‘Diplomatarium Anglicum Ævi Saxonici: a Collection of English Charters (605–1066), containing Miscellaneous Charters, Wills, Guilds, Manumissions, and Aquittances, with a translation of the Anglo-Saxon’ (London, 8vo). Among the subscribers to this scholarly record of early English manners were Blaauw, Earle, Guest, Freeman, Lappenberg, Milman, and Roach Smith, to whose great archæological learning Thorpe made special acknowledgement in his preface. His last work, done for Trübner in 1866, was ‘Edda Sæmundar Hinns Frôða: the Edda of Sæmund the Learned, from the old Norse or Icelandic,’ with a mythological index and an index of persons and places, issued in two parts (London, 8vo).
Thorpe, who was an F.S.A., a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Munich, and of the Society of Netherlandish Literature at Leyden, spent the last twenty years of his life at Chiswick, where he died, aged 88, on 19 July 1870. Of his own generation he probably did more than any man to refute Kemble's charge against English scholars of apathy in relation to Anglo-Saxon literature and philology.
[Thorpe's Works in British Museum Library; Athenæum, 1870, ii. 117; Metcalfe's Englishman and Scandinavian, 1880, p. 18; Allibone's Dict. of English Literature; The Deeds of Beowulf, ed. Earle, 1892, xxix.; Roach Smith's Retrospections, 1883, i. 71–2 (containing two of Thorpe's letters); Britton's Autobiography, 1850, p. 8.]
THORPE, FRANCIS (1595–1665), judge, born in 1595, was the eldest son of Roger Thorpe of Birdsall in Yorkshire and
