Page:Devon and Cornwall Queries Vol 9 1917.djvu/89

 —It is with the deepest regret and sincere sorrow that we have to record the demise of the Rev. W. H. Thornton, one of our most frequent as well as one of the most able of our contributors. By his death, which took place on the 31st March, 1916, in his 87th year, the County of Devon has lost one of the best known clergy in the diocese of Exeter, the Church one of its most loyal workers, and the Country a fine example of that fast disappearing type of English clergyman, known as the "squire-parson." His loss will be greatly felt, not only by his parishioners, by whom he was held in the highest respect and esteem, but also by a wide circle of friends throughout the country.

Born in 1830, Mr. Thornton was the youngest son of Mr. John Thornton, of Clapham, London, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue.

Writing of him, his son-in-law, the Rev. Edward Robert Gotto, M.A., Vicar of Braunton, says: "He came of a good stock, being a descendant of the Rev. Robert Thornton, the Royalist Rector of Birkin, Yorks, whose deprivation of his living and many privations during the usurpation of the Commonwealth are set forth in Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy. He died in 1665, and there is a monument to him in Birkin Church. Among his descendants are many men distinguished in the public service of their country, and not the least of these is the Samuel Thornton, of Clapham, and of Albury Park, Surrey, M.P. for that county, and, as a prominent member of what was called in those days (circa 1770-1830) the Clapham Sect, an intimate friend of Wilberforce and Macaulay, and an associate with them in the emancipation of the slaves in our British colonies. This Samuel Thornton was a leader, too, in the Evangelical party in the Church of England, and it was at his house at Clapham that the Church Missionary Society — the most flourishing now of all our missionary societies — was founded."

The Rev. W. H. Thornton was educated at Rugby and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took his degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1853, and was ordained Deacon, at Exeter, in the same year. His first Curacy was that of Lynton and Countisbury, North Devon, in 1853, where, "passing rich on forty pounds a year," he remained till