THORNBOROUGH, John (1551/2-1641)

One contemporary described Thornborough as ‘not unfurnished of learning, of wisdom, of courage’, and claimed that he was equipped with ‘panoplia or furniture beseeming a gentleman, a dean and a bishop’.23 J. Harington, Brief View of the State of the Church of Eng. (1653), 159. This was a remarkably charitable view: many others saw him as a self-indulgent rogue, who served almost 50 years as a bishop – even while falling far short of contemporary ideals of the godly episcopate – because of a talent for making himself useful to powerful individuals.

Early career to 1603

A native of Salisbury, Thornborough was admitted in 1569 a demy (scholar) at Magdalen College, Oxford, where the astrologer Simon Forman, then a pupil at Magdalen School, catalogued his roisterings, most notably his jilting of a daughter of the archdeacon of Wiltshire.24 Fasti, vi. 18; Al. Ox.; Rowse, 90. At around this time, or so he later recalled, Thornborough was granted a reversion to the rectory of Chilmark, Wiltshire by William Herbert^†, 1st earl of Pembroke (d.1570), whose main country seat at Wilton lay close to Salisbury. However it was some years before Thornborough was able to take possession.25 J. Thornborough, The Last Will and Testament of Jesus Christ (1630), sigs. A2v-3. Pembroke’s heir, Henry Herbert^†, 2nd earl of Pembroke continued the family’s patronage, appointing Thornborough as his chaplain, presumably at around the time the latter was instituted to his living at Chilmark in 1575. In the same year a Salisbury brewer presented Thornborough to a prebend at the cathedral.26 Fasti, vi. 64; Oxford DNB liv. 589. Further preferments followed: a string of benefices in Wiltshire and Dorset; a royal chaplaincy in 1582; the mastership of the Savoy hospital in 1586; and finally, in around 1589, the position of clerk of the Closet. The latter appointment made Thornborough the queen’s private chaplain, although the office was much less important than it became under James, and constant attendance at court was not then required.27 Somerville, 238; McCullough, 110.

In 1589 Thornborough tested the limits of his royal patronage by putting himself forward for the bishopric of Salisbury, vacated when John Piers^† was translated to the archbishopric of York. Secretary of State Sir Francis Walsingham^‡, who promoted his cause, seems to have used him as an informant, and Thornborough himself claimed to have helped secure vast estates in Cumberland for the crown following the attainder of Philip Howard^†, 20th (or 13th) earl of Arundel. However, Salisbury diocese was far too big a prize for one so junior, and Piers and his counterpart at Canterbury, John Whitgift^*, pronounced Thornborough ‘insufficiently learned’ for a bishopric. They planned instead to offer him the deanery of Peterborough when the incumbent, Richard Fletcher^†, transferred to York, but in the end Thornborough himself became dean of York, while Fletcher was consecrated as bishop of Bristol.28 CSP Dom. 1581-90, pp. 598-9; THOMAS HOWARD, EARL OF ARUNDEL; B. Usher, Ld. Burghley and Episcopacy, 1577-1603, pp. 100-1. Thornborough’s finances benefited from this move: he acquired another York prebend in commendam within six months, and kept his Salisbury prebend until 1593. He sought out commercial opportunities, though with little success: in 1590-1 a potentially lucrative patent for the survey of Newcastle coals was vetoed by the lord admiral, Charles Howard^* (later 1st earl of Nottingham); while his plan to sell a crown lease of the honour of Pickering Lythe, Yorkshire to a local gentleman apparently fell through.29 Fasti, iv. 6, 59; vi. 24; CSP Dom, 1581-90, p. 692; 1591-4, p. 299; S. Healy, ‘Tyneside Lobby on the Thames’, Newcastle and Gateshead before 1700 ed. D. Newton and A.J. Pollard, 222. A brief biographical notice written some years after his death also noted his ‘skill in chemistry’ – he presented King James with an elixir which (he claimed) promoted health and long life.30 T. Fuller, Worthies of Eng. ed. P.A. Nuttall, iii. 327.

In the short term, Thornborough’s best hope for a bishopric lay not in England, but in Ireland, and early in 1593 he was consecrated as bishop of Limerick,31 Fasti Ecclesiae Hibernicae, i. 382. situated in the province of Munster. Wisely he secured a dispensation to hold his preferments at York in commendam. Since the Desmond rebellion of 1579-83, Munster had seen an influx of New English settlers, but the Church of Ireland had only a tenuous hold over most of the population. The first problem facing Thornborough, who moved his family to Limerick in 1593/4, was that his predecessor, William Casey, had reconciled himself with Rome and denounced the Elizabethan Church as ‘schismatic’, which prompted many episcopal tenants to withhold their rents. At the same time, the rents due from the Gaelic tenants of former Desmond rebels also proved impossible to collect, while in the town of Limerick the Old English corporation refused to attend the sermons Thornborough ‘painfully preached every Sabbath day’.32 CSP Ire. 1592-6, pp. 73, 288-9, 432-3. The situation deteriorated over the next few years, as Ulster rebelled, and the crown’s authority weakened throughout Ireland. It was during this time that Thornborough met the informer William Udall, who came to Dublin in 1595 with the intention of interrupting communications between the rebellious earl of Tyrone [I] and Spain. On this occasion, Udall went no further than the inside of a debtors’ prison, but he introduced Thornborough to the world of espionage, and the pair kept in contact.33 Ibid. 425, 435-6; HMC Hatfield, xv. 295-9, 325, 330-1; xvi. 7-12; xx. 181.

As the crown lost control in Ireland, it became clear that Thornborough’s gamble in moving to Limerick had misfired. In 1597 he renewed his suit for the bishopric of Salisbury, vacant following the death of John Coldwell^†, but his chances of success were negligible, thanks to a personal scandal: he had divorced his first wife, presumably for adultery, and taken another bride, who may already have been pregnant.34 HMC Hatfield, vii. 406; CSP Dom. 1597-1601, p. 178; Harington, 156-7; Oxford DNB (John Thornborough). In 1599 he returned to York, handing his house at Limerick over to the archbishop of Cashel.35 CSP Dom. Addenda 1580-1625, p. 392; HMC Hatfield, x. 338, 379. He joined an anti-Catholic clique on the council in the North, which arranged a raid on a Catholic safe house on the Yorkshire moors in July 1599. The new lord president, Thomas Cecil^*, 2nd Lord Burghley (later 1st earl of Exeter), then organized weekly sermons to the Catholic prisoners at York Castle. Thornborough, who participated in the preaching rota, cannot have expected to make any more converts than he had at Limerick, but the exercise demonstrated that the authorities knew how to deploy the arts of persuasion as well as persecution.36 Add. 34250; HMC Hatfield, x. 277-8. We owe the point about the York sermons to Michael Questier. In 1600 a group of Catholics took some measure of revenge by mocking the devotions of a local puritan, Sir Thomas Hoby^‡. Thornborough sent out warrants to arrest the miscreants, but these were intercepted and suppressed by Vice President Ralph Eure^*, 3rd Lord Eure, father and brother to two of the protagonists.37 STAC5/H50/4, 5/H67/29; M.C. Questier, ‘Practical Anti-Papistry during the Reign of Eliz.’, JBS, xxxvi. 371-96.

Preferment, Parliament and the Union, 1603-7

In April 1603 Thornborough preached at York before the new king, James I, who commended his ‘doctrine and method of teaching’. However, he surrendered the clerkship of the closet to Richard Neile^* (later archbishop of York) shortly thereafter, and his Irish bishopric; perhaps by way of compensation, he was translated to the bishopric of Bristol in July 1603. Valued at £350 a year, this was one of the poorest sees in England, but he was allowed to retain his deanery – probably worth rather more – and still spent much of his time at York. Although the diocesan records are patchy, it is clear that Thornborough was an absentee bishop: on a rare visit to his cathedral, he offended the Bristol corporation by requiring them to take down a gallery erected for their own use.38 McCullough, 110 (and suppl. cal. 98-9); K. Fincham, Prelate as Pastor, 79. An English see also brought Thornborough a seat in Parliament, and he was present in the House throughout the 1604 session. He was not, however, a particularly active Member: his committee nominations comprised a naturalization bill for four Scottish courtiers and bills to promote the repair of two of Yorkshire’s smaller harbours, Bridlington and Whitby .39 LJ, ii. 272a-b, 281a, 286a.

Thornborough made his most significant impact on the session by publishing a short tract on the Union, which he had submitted to the king in draft. He began by reprinting the Commons’ objections of 27 Apr. against the Union, then proceeded to refute each in turn. To those who argued there were no precedents, he cited the union of the Saxon heptarchy:

Shall we think it a matter of such difficulty, to unite only two kingdoms, which do not much differ in manners, laws and customs …? Which laws doubtless all will say, must be abrogated, that in further proceeding to union, wise men, with grave consideration may conclude it, for good of both nations, without offence, as in former times much more hath been done with less ado.

Echoing the king’s views, he dismissed the existing dynastic union as ‘not substantial, but equivocal’, and brushed aside the judges’ recent ruling against the change of name: ‘ancient records do no more lose their force by the change of England into Britain, than by change of Queen Elizabeth into King James’.40 CJ, 188a-b; J. Thornborough, A Discourse Plainly Proving the … Necessity of the Desired Happy Union (1604), sig. A3-4, pp. 10-12, 17, 20. Such a snub could hardly be allowed to pass without comment, and on 26 May – the day the bill for the Union commission had its first reading in the Lords – John Tey^‡, a servant of Thomas Sackville^*, 1st earl of Dorset, complained of the ‘derogation and scandal’ this tract offered to the Commons. MPs voiced their objections at a conference on 30 May, and on 4 June Thornborough apologized to the Lords for ‘presuming to deliver a private sentence in a matter so dealt in by the high court of Parliament’. The Commons pressed to have this apology entered in their own Journal, but as the Lords declined to allow the lower House to take formal cognizance of their debates, the matter was laid to rest.41 LJ, ii. 306b, 314a, 325b, 332a-b; CJ, i. 226b-7a, 981a; C.C.G. Tite, Impeachment and Parlty. Judicature, 57-9.

Thornborough was spurred into print again by the royal proclamation of 20 Oct. 1604, which formally changed the name of the kingdom to Great Britain. This was not, he insisted, a ‘matter of indifferency’; even if old hostilities were to fade, ‘I fear that the very names would ever put ill men in mind of old grudge, and incite new variance’.42 J. Thornborough, The Joyful and Blessed Reuniting the two Mighty and Famous Kingdoms (n.d.), 15, 44, 48; Stuart Royal Proclamations I ed. J.F. Larkin and P.L. Hughes, 94-7. However, unlike his earlier polemic, this tract carefully avoided discussing the specifics of parliamentary proceedings, and attracted no adverse comment. Thornborough attended the opening days of the next parliamentary session, in November 1605, but then gave his proxy to Tobie Matthew^*, archbishop of York, and appeared in the Lords only twice thereafter: 21 Jan. 1606, the first day after the Christmas vacation; and 27 May, the day of the prorogation. The session of 1606-7 was dominated by debates over the Union, in which Thornborough, unsurprisingly, played no recorded part. At first, he attended the House regularly, although he was named to just two bill committees, for defective titles and preservation of timber. However, he may have been advised to leave town as the Union debates became more fraught, as he did not sit after 4 Mar., missing the last four months of the session.43 LJ, ii. 355a, 471b, 473a.

Revenue raising and parliaments, 1607-14

Despite the multiplicity of his preferments, Thornborough still looked for other ways to make money, and in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot he exploited the Exchequer’s revived enthusiasm for levying recusancy fines. His departure from Westminster in the spring of 1607 was prompted by a commission to collect arrears from the recusants of Yorkshire, county Durham and Northumberland: over the next six months his officials seized £2,200 in goods from recusants, sequestrated estates worth £1,725 a year, and intimidated at least three dozen Catholics into declaring their conformity. In his report to the chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Julius Caesar^‡, he insisted (correctly) that ‘his Majesty receiveth not one thousand pounds yearly for every five, or rather ten thousand due to him upon recusants’ lands’, and suggested that his rigorous efforts to rate the true value of recusant estates be applied generally, before any leases were made by the crown. He also warned that the self-interest of courtiers who received grants of recusant estates undermined efforts to levy these revenues, urging ‘that commissioners may have countenance from men of higher place’. One particular focus of his complaint was a patent awarded to two courtiers to collect arrears of recusant forfeitures, whose local agent, the notorious Yorkshire informer Richard Heaton, was attempting to mulct the wealthy Catholics the bishop aimed to prosecute, and skimmed the profits for himself. Thornborough’s achievements also reflected badly upon the lord president, Edmund Sheffield^*, 3rd Lord Sheffield (later 1st earl of Mulgrave), who responded by deploring the fact ‘that one of our bishops should leave the charge of his bishopric to follow such base courses, only for his own gain’.44 Lansd. 153, ff. 266-7 (further copies in ibid. ff. 273-6), 277-8; C66/1746; HMC Hatfield xix. 274.

When Parliament met in the spring of 1610, Thornborough was assiduous in his attendance, and played a slightly larger role in the Lords’ proceedings than hitherto. He was one of the large delegation which attended the conference of 14 Feb. at which the king’s financial problems were first aired, but left no trace on the subsequent debates which led to the agreement known as the Great Contract. A few weeks later he was ordered to attend a conference about a legal dictionary by Dr John Cowell, which discussed constitutional issues in terms that the Commons considered to be absolutist. Two of the committees to which he was named concerned a bill to endow a preacher, school and almshouse in Dorchester, Dorset, which lay within Bristol diocese; while his administrative role at York explains his involvement in the bill for execution of justice in the north.45 LJ, ii. 551a, 557b, 563b, 596b, 619a, 634b. By the time Parliament reassembled in October, enthusiasm for the Great Contract had faded. Thornborough was ordered to attend the conference of 25 Oct. at which the Commons were pressed to reach a decision. In the aftermath of the Contract’s rejection, he attended another conference which considered alternative ways to meet the crown’s financial needs.46 Ibid. 671a, 768a; HMC Hastings, iv. 222-6.

In 1612 Thornborough’s life was marred by personal tragedy, when his eldest son committed suicide. Three years later, his wife was implicated in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury. Mrs Thornborough had been on cordial terms with Overbury’s patron, Robert Carr^*, earl of Somerset, and in 1613 she supplied the wedding cake for the latter’s marriage to Frances Howard. She was also a skilled pharmacist, and when Overbury was poisoned, she was asked about the drugs she had supplied, and pressed for any evidence of plots against the royal family.47 Chamberlain Letters, i. 335, 498; CSP Dom. 1611-18, pp. 336, 338, 345; A. Bellany, Pols. of Ct. Scandal in Early Modern Eng. 193. However, she was never put on trial. Thornborough himself took a keen interest in alchemy: in 1621 he published a Latin work on the subject, which cited a broad range of the occult philosophers; while the tomb he designed for himself in Worcester cathedral was embellished with astrological symbols rather than biblical texts.48 Rowse, 95-6, 107.

Thornborough missed the first month of the 1614 Parliament, due to illness. On 3 May, the day he arrived at Westminster, he was included on the committee for a bill for preservation of timber, but although he attended until the dissolution, this was the last trace he left on the records of the session. He contributed the relatively generous sum of £40 and 30oz.of gilt plate to the benevolence collected after the dissolution, but his diocese produced the disappointing sum £242, about half the value of a clerical subsidy.49 LJ, ii. 690a, 697b; E351/1950; SP14/133/13.

Bishop of Worcester, 1617-25

In 1617 Thornborough was translated to the diocese of Worcester, with the support of the lord chamberlain, William Herbert^*, 3rd earl of Pembroke: he later acknowledged how ‘your honour brought me to the place where I now live’, and saluted him as the third generation of the Herberts who had offered him patronage. The episcopal estates, worth £900 a year, dwarfed those of Bristol, and included Hartlebury Castle, an imposing residence which doubled as the winter base for the council in the Marches. Thus while he surrendered his York preferments as well as Bristol, he probably still gained financially from the move.50 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 47; Thornborough, Last Will, sig.A3; Worcs. RO, 009.1/BA2636/188, acct. for 1623-4. In contrast to his record at Bristol, he was an active, resident diocesan at Worcester, conducting his episcopal visitations in person, and serving as a member of the council in the Marches and a magistrate.51 Fincham, 39, 99-100, 322.

Thornborough’s health was fully recovered by the time of the 1621 Parliament; he attended over three-quarters of its sittings. He shared the proxies of two other bishops, Miles Smith^* of Gloucester and Thomas Dove^* of Peterborough, and in May Robert Snowden^*, bishop of Carlisle, left his proxy in Thornborough’s hands.52 LJ, iii. 3b-4a. On 15 Mar. Thornborough was one of the committee appointed to search the papers of the disgraced monopolist Sir Giles Mompesson^‡ for evidence of his patent for concealed lands; ten days later, the whole committee reported their findings to the House, revealing extensive malpractice by the patentee and his agents. His other committee appointments included those for bills to restrict the export of ordnance and upgrade militia arms; to restrict the export of bullion; to deregulate the wool trade; and to restrict the tobacco trade to American growers.53 Ibid. iii. 13a, 26b, 47a, 70b, 136b, 194a.

In July 1624 Thornborough was reported to have died; as he was over 70 years old, this was a reasonable, if unfounded, assumption. In fact, he arrived at Westminster for the first week of the 1624 Parliament, but then, perhaps lacking the stamina for highly charged debates about war and peace, he left. Having perhaps noted the rising influence of the Arminians at court, he chose to grant his proxy to two bishops from the Durham House clique, Richard Neile and John Buckeridge^*.54 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 569; LJ, iii. 212a, 218b; Add. 40083, f. 3. He attended the Lords on 17 and 31 May 1625, on which occasions the Parliament was postponed for several weeks. By the time the session opened he had fallen sick; as far as can be ascertained, he never attended Parliament again, granting his proxy to William Laud^*, bishop of St Davids (later archbishop of Canterbury), on four occasions.55 Procs. 1625, pp. 45, 135, 590; Procs. 1626, iv. 10; Lords Procs. 1628, p. 25; LJ, iv. 3a.

Later career, 1625-41

Despite his age, Thornborough remained active in local affairs until his death: in 1625 he was involved in disarming the local Catholic peers, Thomas Windsor^*, 6th Lord Windsor, and George Talbot^*, 9th earl of Shrewsbury, and two years later trumpeted his success in persuading a Jesuit to conform.56 CSP Dom. 1625-6, p. 179; 1627-8, pp. 277, 289. In the 1630s he cited the vicar of Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire into the court of High Commission on charges of nonconformity.57 Ibid. 1635-6, pp. 239, 390, 415, 502, 512. However, after the Laudian Christopher Potter arrived as dean of Worcester in 1636, he quietly sided with the corporation during their five year campaign in defence of the cathedral’s Sunday afternoon lectureship, which Potter had attempted to suppress.58 Ibid. 1636-7, pp. 359-60, 390-1, 496-7; 1639-40, pp. 79-80, 106-7, 129-30; Worcester Chamber Order Bk. ed. S. Bond (Worcs. Hist. Soc., n.s. viii), 343-4; Procs. LP, ii. 459-60.

Thornborough sent proxies for both the Short and Long parliaments; his name does not appear in the surviving attendance registers.59 LJ, iv. 58a, 92a, 279a. The final years of his life were dominated by a dispute with his daughter-in-law, Dame Helen Thornborough, a wealthy heiress whose fortune had been dissipated by the bishop’s youngest son, Sir Thomas. When the couple separated in 1639, Sir Thomas refused to pay either the alimony awarded to his wife by the High Commission, or a lump sum she had been awarded by Chancery; Dame Helen and two of her children then moved in with her father-in-law at Hartlebury. When she petitioned the Privy Council for relief, Thornborough appeared in person to defend himself, although he was swiftly discharged because of his age. In March 1641, Dame Helen appealed to the House of Lords, when her differences with the bishop were apparently settled by arbitration.60 PC2/52, f. 219v; CSP Dom. 1640, pp. 130-1, 146; LJ, iv. 175a, 208a, 220b-1a. That same year Thornborough’s earlier tracts on the Union were reworked in a fresh publication. This appeared under his former title, ‘Jo. Bristol’, and his signature was not appended to the preface, both unusual practices for an author; it seems likely that this was an unauthorized reprint, which may have appeared just after his death, when the king’s departure for Scotland made the Union topical once more.61 J. Bristol [Thornborough], A Discourse … Advocating the Union of England and Scotland (1641), title page, sigs. A11v, a4. We owe the typographical points to Elizabeth Evenden.

At a roll-call of the Lords on 14 May 1641, Thornborough was listed as ‘very old, excused’. His will was dated 8 July, the day before he died, although much of it had presumably been drafted in advance. He protested that he had little to bequeath, ‘my children and hospitality having spent me’, but most of his surviving descendants received a legacy of plate or cash. However, his feckless son Sir Thomas received only £5. Finally, he confirmed that he died a member of the Church of England, to pre-empt Catholic claims of a deathbed conversion. He was buried, as requested, in the tomb he had already erected in Worcester cathedral, which was damaged during the Civil War.62 LJ, iv. 249b; PROB 11/187, ff. 26v-7v; Fasti, vii. 117; Rowse, 107-8; Oxford DNB liv. 591.