THORNHAGH, Francis (c.1617-48), of St Mary’s Hill, Nottingham, and Rushcliffe Hall, Gotham, Notts.

Thornhagh was probably descended from the de Thornhagh family of Thorney, Nottinghamshire, about seven miles west of Lincoln, whose members had represented that city on numerous occasions between 1295 and 1393.28Lincs. Peds. 969; HP Commons 1386-1421, ‘Thomas Thornhagh’; Foljambe, ‘The Notts. fam. of Thornhagh’, 41; Wood, ‘Col. Francis Thornhaugh’, 81-2. His ancestors had acquired Fenton – six miles from East Retford and eight from Thorney – in the fifteenth century, and it subsequently became the family’s principal residence.29Wood, ‘Colonel Francis Thornhaugh’, 82. By the early seventeenth century, the Thornhaghs were one of Nottinghamshire’s principal gentry families. Thornhagh’s grandfather, Sir John Thornhaugh, represented East Retford in the Parliament of 1604, and his father, Sir Francis Thornhaugh, served as a justice of the peace, deputy lieutenant and sheriff of the county.30HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Sir John Thornhaugh’; Foljambe, ‘The Notts. fam. of Thornhagh’, 201; Wood, ‘Colonel Francis Thornhaugh’, 84. Sir Francis was active as a Forced Loan commissioner for Nottinghamshire, and during his shrievalty in 1637-8 he was diligent in the collection of Ship Money.31Notts. Co. Recs. 110; M.D. Gordon, ‘The collection of ship money in the reign of Charles I’, TRHS ser. 3, iv. 159.

The education and subsequent career of Francis Thornhagh, the future MP, are illuminated at several points by the seventeenth century memorialist Lucy Hutchinson, the wife of Thornhagh’s comrade-in-arms during the civil war, Colonel John Hutchinson*. Along with John Hutchinson, his near contemporary, Thornhagh was educated at Lincoln grammar school under its master, Nathaniel Clarke, who, according to Lucy Hutchinson, was ‘very famous for learning and piety’, but was ‘such a supercilious pedant and so conceited of his own pedantic forms’ that her husband, for one, ‘profited very little there’.32Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 22, 24. The school had one advantage in Lucy Hutchinson’s eyes:

there being very many gentlemen’s sons there, an old Low-Country soldier was entertained to train them in arms, and they all bought themselves weapons and … when they were not at their books were exercised in all their military postures and in assaults and defences...33Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 24.

This ‘sportive militia’ was to stand both Thornhagh and Hutchinson in good stead during the civil war. This military tuition from ‘an old Low-Country soldier’ was possibly the source of a ‘tradition’ in Nottinghamshire by the 1680s that Thornhagh had been ‘trained up to arms beyond the seas in the Low Country wars, under the earl of Essex [Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex]’.34Foljambe, ‘The Notts. fam. of Thornhagh’, 202. In fact, Essex had quit soldiering in the Low Countries well before Thornhagh was old enough to have served under him there. If Thornhagh did serve in the Dutch army, fighting the Spanish, it would have been in the mid-to-late 1630s, and no record of his exploits there has survived. His name does not feature among the English volunteers in the most notable campaign of the period – the siege and capture of Breda in 1637. By early 1641, he had married a daughter of John St Andrew of Rushcliffe Hall, Gotham, which he made his principal country residence. His other main residence was a house he had purchased on St Mary’s Hill, Nottingham. He was destined never to take possession of the family seat at Fenton, which was part of the dower of his mother and remained in her hands until her death in December 1660.35Foljambe, ‘The Notts. fam. of Thornhagh’, 201, 202.

In the early months of 1642, Thornhagh emerged at the forefront of Nottinghamshire’s nascent parliamentarian interest. On 28 February, he and Henry Ireton* presented a petition to the Commons, urging the king to return to Westminster, annexed to which was a protest ‘shewing the many obstructions caused by Serjeant [Gilbert] Boune* to hinder the said petition’.36CJ ii. 458b; To the Kings Most Excellent Majesty a Petition Presented to the Kings Majesty at York (1642, 669 f.6.6); A. C. Wood, Notts. in the Civil War, 12. At the outbreak of civil war, Thornhagh, like his father, sided with Parliament – his allegiance perhaps determined in part by his religious views, which the godly Lucy Hutchinson implied were of puritan complexion (she referred to Thornhagh’s faithfulness to ‘God and God’s people’).37Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 72. In the autumn of 1642, Sir Francis Thornhaugh raised a regiment of horse for Parliament and appointed Thornhagh his lieutenant-colonel.38Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 73. Thornhagh was later to claim that he had contributed £1,030 towards raising and equipping this force.39CJ v. 327a. In December, he was named by the Commons to the Nottinghamshire county committee – of which he became a leading member.40CJ ii. 940b; SP28/241, unfol. With his father’s death in April 1643, Thornhagh took charge of the regiment, and by the end of the war he was commanding the entire Nottinghamshire horse.41Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 138. After Ireton, who served as Thornhagh’s major for the first half of 1643, he was the county’s most prominent and successful military figure of the civil-war era.42Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 278. He fought in numerous engagements during the mid-1640s and was seriously wounded on two occasions – at Gainsborough in July 1643 under Oliver Cromwell* and again during Prince Rupert’s relief of Newark in March 1644.43A Briefe Relation of the Siege at Newark (1644), 7 (E.39.8); Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 86-7, 122-3; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 278-9; Wood, ‘Col. Francis Thornhaugh’, 89-97. Thornhagh’s bravery won him the admiration of Lucy Hutchinson, who praised him as one of the most ‘faithful, unbiased and zealous champions’ of the parliamentarian cause in Nottinghamshire.44Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 72-3, 107, 182. At the same time, however, she was critical of him for his easy-going relationship with his men – some of whom she claimed became ‘great plunderers’ – and accused him of unwittingly helping to foment the opposition to her husband’s command at Nottingham that so divided the county’s parliamentarians during 1644.45Supra, ‘John Hutchinson’; Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 107, 112, 132, 182; CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 111-12, 115.

In the summer of 1645, Thornhagh and the Nottinghamshire horse were assigned to Colonel-general Sydnham Poynts’s flying cavalry brigade, which was charged with the task of pursuing the king and bringing him to battle; and in August, Poynts despatched Thornhagh to Westminster to report on the state of Parliament’s northern forces.46CJ iv. 261a; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 279; CJ iv. 261a. Thornhagh’s reputation preceded him, and after making his report, the Commons resolved to bestow two horses upon him in recognition of his ‘many faithful and good services’, and he was returned the thanks of the House.47CJ iv. 258a. Poynts’s pursuit of the king effectively ended with the rout of the royalist cavalry at the battle of Rowton Heath, near Chester, on 24 September. Thornhagh and the Nottinghamshire horse were apparently instrumental in securing this victory and were voted £1,000 by Parliament for their valour.48CJ iv. 297a; Whitelocke, Mems. i. 521; Wood, ‘Col. Francis Thornhaugh’, 95. During the winter of 1645-6, Thornhagh took part in the siege of Newark and was one of the parliamentary signatories to the articles for the town’s surrender in May 1646.49LJ viii. 303a.

Thornhagh took time off from besieging Newark to secure election as a ‘recruiter’ for East Retford in March 1646.50Supra, ‘East Retford’. As head of the family which owned Fenton and other property in the East Retford area, he enjoyed a strong proprietorial interest in the town. He may also have profited electorally from his standing as one of the county’s most renowned soldiers. A fortnight or so after his own election, he was a signatory with William Pierrepont*, Peniston Whalley* and other gentlemen to the indenture returning Colonel Hutchinson for Nottinghamshire.51C219/43/2/78. Thornhagh did not attend the House until after the fall of Newark, taking the Solemn League and Covenant in the Commons on 27 May 1646.52CJ iv. 556a; Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 164. During his brief career at Westminster, which spanned just over two years, he was named to only seven committees and – judging by his attendance at the Nottinghamshire county committee – spent a good deal of time away from the House.53CJ iv. 666b, 684a; v. 60a, 75b, 100a, 238a, 322a, 327b; SP28/241, unfol. Several of his appointments during 1647 suggest that he was broadly aligned with the Independent interest in the Commons. On 1 March, for example, he was a minority teller with the Independent MP Denis Bond, against allowing the royalist earl of Chesterfield £5 a week out of his estate for his subsistence. The majority tellers were the leading Presbyterians Sir Walter Erle and Sir John Clotworthy.54CJ v. 102a. Thornhagh’s next Commons appointment was on 8 July, when he was added to the committee for receiving complaints against MPs – a body used by the Independents to hound their political opponents.55Supra, ‘John Bulkely’; CJ v. 238a. He was among those Members who fled to the army following the Presbyterian-inspired ‘riots’ at Westminster on 26 July; and on 4 August he signed the ‘engagement’ of these fugitive Members in which Fairfax and his men were eulogised for their ‘Christian, noble and public affection to the good, peace and prosperity of this kingdom and ... faithfulness to the true interest of the English nation’.56LJ ix. 385b.

It is possible that Thornhagh returned to London with the army early in August 1647, but if so, his next Commons appointment was not until 1 October, when he was added to a committee for investigating the ‘frauds and abuses that have been put upon the Parliament’ in the payment of arrears to reduced and reformed officers, many of whom had enlisted under or supported the Presbyterians in the spring and summer.57CJ v. 322a. Four days later (5 October), in response to a petition from Thornhagh in which he requested recompense for the sum he had expended in raising his regiment, the House ordered that he receive £1,030 out of the estate of a Nottinghamshire papist.58CJ v. 327a. Thornhagh’s support for one of the Independents’ main policy commitments – that is, limited religious toleration – is suggested by his appointment to a committee set up on 6 October for preparing a peace proposition ‘concerning the settlement of the Presbyterian government; and concerning the exemption of such tender consciences as cannot conform to that government’.59CJ v. 327b, 337b. On 20 October, he was granted another leave of absence and may not have returned to Westminster again.60CJ v. 339a.

Like their colonel, the officers and men of Thornhagh’s regiment were well disposed towards the New Model Army and wrote several letters to Sir Thomas Fairfax* during the second half of 1647, expressing solidarity with the grievances and aims of his ‘gallant and faithful field army’. They also requested that they be paid ‘the wages of our blood’, complaining that they were owed £40,000 in arrears.61Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 623-4; vii. 930; Clarke Pprs. i. 439. Thornhagh’s major by September 1647 was another prominent friend of the New Model – the Derbyshire officer and future republican agitator Thomas Sanders*.62Supra, ‘Thomas Sanders’. At some point during the winter of 1647-8, Thornhagh and his regiment were incorporated into the New Model and would play a major role in helping to secure victory for Parliament during the second civil war.63M. Wanklyn, New Model Army, i. 29, 164. In the spring of 1648, they were part of the force with which Oliver Cromwell reduced royalist resistance in Pembrokeshire and secured the Welsh Marches for Parliament.64LJ x. 267b, 268a; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, i. 608, 611; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 281. By early August, Thornhagh was at Nottingham, from where he joined Cromwell in the latter’s march north to head off the invading Scots.65Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 180. At the battle of Preston on 17 August, Thornhagh and his regiment fought on the right wing and were employed the next day to harry the retreating Scots and, if possible, to bring them to battle.66Abbott, Writings and Speeches, i. 635; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 281. With characteristic valour, Thornhagh led his men from the front and being ‘singly engaged’ with some of the enemy lancers was mortally wounded.67Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 181. He was carried dying to the rear, where, according to Lucy Hutchinson, his last words were: ‘I now rejoice to die, since God hath let me see the overthrow of this perfidious enemy. I could not lose my life in a better cause...’.68Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 182. He was buried initially on the field of battle, but his body was afterwards carried back to Nottinghamshire and interred in the church of Sturton le Steeple on 18 October 1648.69Lincs. Peds. 971. Cromwell, in a letter to the Speaker after the battle of Preston, described Thornhagh as ‘a man as faithful and gallant in your service as any, and one who often heretofore lost blood in your quarrel and now his last’.70Abbott, Writings and Speeches, i. 636.

In his will, Thornhagh left the bulk of his estate to his only son John, whom he charged with raising £3,000 in portions for his daughters.71PROB11/221, f. 341v. Thornhagh’s arrears of pay at his death amounted to £2,341, and he was still owed the £1,030 he had been voted in 1647 – sums that remained largely unpaid as late as the summer of 1651.72CJ vi. 280, 544a; CCAM 2107-8. John Thornhaugh† sat for East Retford on numerous occasions between 1689 and 1702, mostly espousing the whig interest, and as a knight of the shire for Nottinghamshire in 1704, 1705 and 1708.73HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘John Thornhaugh’.