THORNE, Richard

The Thornes were an established Devon family with landholdings in the north-western parishes of Holsworthy, Pyworthy, Pancrasweek, Sheepwash and West Putford. Their principal manor of Thorne was held from the Holand dukes of Exeter as parcel of the honour of Barnstaple, and it may have been the family’s connexion with Henry IV’s sister Elizabeth, wife of John Holand, duke of Exeter, and after his execution in 1400 of John Cornwall, Lord Fanhope, which allowed them to serve in minor local office both before and after Bolingbroke’s usurpation of the throne.1 CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 53; C142/25/129; CFR, xi. 25, 266; xii. 115.

The family tree in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries cannot be established with any degree of certainty, and it is not clear whether Richard was related to John Thorne†, who had been MP for Dunheved in the ‘Bad Parliament’ of 1377 (Jan.), or William Thorne†, who had represented Tavistock in 1382 (Oct.). Nor, indeed, is it known if he was himself a head of the family, or merely a junior cadet. In chronological terms it is possible that he was a son of the John Thorne who served as a tax collector under both Richard II and Henry IV, and a close kinsman of a contemporary, Roger Thorne, who held the same position in the reign of Henry V and attested the Devon shire elections of 1420.2 CFR, xi. 266; xii. 115; xiv. 172; C219/12/4. Few details of Richard’s career beyond his spell in the Commons as MP for Barnstaple in 1426 have come to light. On the occasion of his return he was present in the shire court at Exeter for the election of the knights of the shire, for alongside John Medelond*, one of the Members for Totnes, he stood surety for Robert Cary*, who was elected to represent the county.3 C219/13/4.

Several members of Thorne’s prolific family went on to make their mark in the Church: a namesake of Richard’s was provided for in the family benefice of West Putford, and Robert Thorne rose to become prior of Barnstaple in the last years before the Reformation.4 Reg. Lacy ed. Hingeston-Randolph, i. 343; Reg. Lacy, iv (Canterbury and York Soc. lxiii), 164-6; C147/206; C1/603/15.