|
At
the beginning of the present century few names were better known in the
sporting world than that of Colonel Thornton, one of the wealthiest of the
broad-acred squires of Yorkshire-that land of genuine sportsmen, with its
open moors and heathery bills. The Thorntons, as heralds and genealogists
tell us, either derived their name from, or gave it to, one of the sixteen
lordships in the three Ridings which owned them as superiors. The most
ancient of these, Thornton in Craven, perpetuates the family name,
which is mentioned in deeds of the age immediately before the arrival of
William the Conqueror. As legislators and as soldiers, as civilians,
merchants, and diplomatists, the Thorntons have rendered good
service to the State at various times and various ways and places.
But at present the connection with broad lands
in Yorkshire would seem slight, as not a single
Thornton figures the modern 'Doomsday
Book' as the owner more than about two hundred acres in the why of that
county in which once they were wealthy squires.
The grandfather of the
sporting colonel, Sir William Thornton, was in
his day so active a zealous a supporter of the rights and privileges
of his countrymen that be was chosen, as the
leading Yorkshire squire, to present at the foof
the throne the articles of the union between
England and Scotland in the reign of Queen Anne,
on which occasion he received the honor of
knighthood. Sir William's son-of the same
name-at the outbreak of the second Scott rebellion, raised in Yorkshire,
at his own cost, a corps of one hundred men,
whom be fed, clothed, and commanded for several
months. At the head of this little band
Colonel Thornton marched into Scotland, joined
the army of the Duke of Cumberland, and bore
himself so bravely on the fields of Falkirk and
Culloden that the Stuart clans set a price of
one thousand pounds on his head. On returning to England, he entered
Parliament as member for York. In this character he signalised himself by
revising the old code of the militia laws. He died young, and left his
son, the future colonel, a minor.
The guardians sent the
boy to the Charterhouse, where he may have been, and probably was, the
school fellow of John Wesley.
His health, however, broke short his school career, and he was
entered, when fourteen years of age, as a student of the University of
Glasgow. Here he seems to have been a diligent scholar in term-time,
though in his vacations he devoted himself wholly to field sports, his
chief companions being Lords Rivers and Seaforth, Sir Thomas Wallace, and
Mr. (afterwards the Right Hon.) William Windham. He took an especial
delight in hawking, a diversion which he revived with some success upon
the broad moors of his native county; and before he had attained his
majority he had gained a name known all over England to the north of the
Trent as a very keen rider, and one of the best
and most scientific breeders of horses and dogs His stables and
his kennels at Old Thornville
were said to be the best in the county; and well
they may have been such, for he grudged
no expense for their maintenance. When
the young squire came to London for `the season,' he found that his fame
had traveled thither before him in spite of the
badness of the roads, which indeed made a journey from the
north of Yorkshire to the metropolis a serious undertaking not
easily accomplished in bad wintry weather in much less
than, 'the inside oil a week.'
On reaching town he
was introduced as a member of the 'Savoir Vivre
Club,' then recently established, where he met most of the
'young bloods' of the day, and some also of the
rank and file of the army of literature, and so saw a little of `life.'
Charles James Fox and the Lord Lyttelton, whose 'Ghost
Story' I have told in another work,* were among
the members of this club; and among its occasional guests and visitors was
the kind-hearted Olives Goldsmith. The annual subscription to the club was
four guineas, and a guinea was the charge for dinner, including wine.
Cards and dice were in vogue at this club, according to the fashion of the
age: but the colonel would have nothing to do with either the one or the
other, being content, as he used to say, with
'sport,' which rendered play needless. Indeed, it is said that when he put
up over the chimney-piece of his library at Thornville
a Latin inscription, declaring that his house was open to none but veri
amici, he wrote below it:
'By the established rule of this house, all bets are considered to
be off if either of the parties, by letter or otherwise, pay into the
hands of the landlord one guinea by five the next day.'
We next find the
colonel established malgré
liu as a master of hounds. At first the pack
was supported by a subscription among the neighboring gentry; but
quarrels and dissensions arose, and in the end the hunt association was
dissolved, and the colonel found himself obliged to maintain the pack at
his own charges. This, however, was no very great burden, for he
was a keen sportsman, and had plenty of ready
cash in his pockets or at his bankers. Indeed, so fond was
he of sport that for seventeen years in
succession he spent several month'. in the Highlands of Scotland, which at
that time were almost as difficult of access as
the Black Forest is now to the English tourist Here he kept a journal,
and, employing a young artist to make sketches
of the neighboring country, he brought his work
before the public under the title of a 'Sporting
Tour through the Highlands of Scotland.' Nor was
this all for, before quitting the north, he built on the
lands of the Duke of Cordon a shooting-box which
he humorously styled Thornton Castle.
Towards the end of the last century he had
for his neighbor at Thornville the Duke of
York, who had bought the estate of Allerton, and
which a few years later the colonel purchased when it came into the
market, styling it Thornton Royal. He also added to his Yorkshire estates
by the purchase of Boythorp, of the wolds, on
which he built a new mansion which he called Falconer's Hall, on accountt
of his love for the merry sport of hawking which he indulged on the open
moors in the neighborhood.
The list of the more
celebrated of the colonel's horses and dogs occupies three pages in the
'Book of Sporting Anecdotes;' and among the latter are foxhounds, beagles,
pointers, setters, greyhounds, spaniels, terriers, &c. Three of the hawks
reared in his ' mews,'-named 'Sans Quartier,'Death,' and 'The Deuce,' from
their respective qualities-were allowed to distance any tame birds of the
kind which have been flown in modern times in pursuit of game.
The colonel was also a
vigorous athlete; on one occasion he walked four miles in thirty-two
minutes, and he could leap his own height, five feet nine inches. On one
occasion, on the Newmarket race-course, he ran down a hare, picked her up,
and carried her off in the presence of a large assemblage. He was also
well-known in other circles, and especially as a patron of the
'ring,' which at that day was rendered all the
more fashionable on account of the encouragement which it received from
the frequent presence of the Prince of Wales-the
' first gentleman in Europe'-at price-fights.
But no man’s life is
quite unchequered. Here and there a dark cloud will overcast the sky of
every man. For instance, in spite of the
efficiency of the West York Militia, of which he
held the colonelcy, he was brought, through
private malice, before a court-martial, being
accused of unsoldierly conduct. This he felt
keenly, and at one time he was tempted resign his commission; but
he was consoled by the
love and affection of his Yorkshire neighbours,
who, on his acquittal, took the horses from his
carriage and drew him to his hotel in triumph,
and presented him with a beautiful medallion in
silver and a handsome sword.
'The old Colonel,' as
he was always called was a good scholar, a man
of wit, and a great connoisseur in paintings,
both ancient and modern; and his book on 'Sport
in Scotland had the honor of being reviewed in the
Quarterly by no less a person than Sir Walt Scott.
As to the after life of
Colonel Thornton, it would appear that he
survived the malice of his enemies, and passed
his declining years in peaceful retirement,
retaining his love for his horses and dogs to
the last. He did not, he, ever, confine his affection to his horses, dogs,
hawks. He married a lady from Essex, a Miss
Corston, who was wise enough to cultivate a taste in the same directions
as those of her husband. 'The old Colonel' died in 1823,
when a large part of his estates was purchased by the late Lord Stourton,
who changed the name of Allerton to Stourton Castle.
See 'Tales of Great Families,'
1st series, vol. i
Chapters From the Family Chests, 1887
Chapters From the Family Chest |
|
Add/Correct a Link