Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 56.djvu/350

Thurloe , i. 705, 759, vii. 915). An unsupported tradition asserts that Charles II often solicited him to engage again in the administration of foreign affairs, but without success (State Papers, vol. i. p. xix). He died at his chambers at Lincoln's Inn on 21 Feb. 1667–8, and is buried in the chapel there. An account of his last illness, written by his friend Lord Wharton, is printed in ‘Notes and Queries,’ 8th ser. xi. 83.

Thurloe was twice married: first, to a lady of the family of Peyton, by whom he had two sons who died in infancy; secondly, to Anne, third daughter of Sir John Lytcott of East Moulsey in Surrey, by whom he had four sons and two daughters (State Papers, vol. i. p. xix).

A portrait of Thurloe by Stone, belonging to Mr. Charles Polhill, was No. 812 in the National Portrait Exhibition of 1866. Another portrait, ascribed to Dobson, is in the National Portrait Gallery, London. An engraved portrait by Vertue is prefixed to the state papers.

Thurloe's vast correspondence is the chief authority for the history of the Protectorate. His papers, no doubt purposely hidden at the Restoration, were discovered in the reign of William III, ‘in a false ceiling in the garrets belonging to secretary Thurloe's chambers, No. xiii near the chapel in Lincoln's Inn, by a clergyman who had borrowed those chambers, during the long vacation, of the owner of them.’ The papers were sold to Lord Somers, passed from him to Sir Joseph Jekyll, master of the rolls, on whose decease they were bought by Fletcher Gyles, a bookseller (Preface to the Thurloe Papers, p. vi). Richard Rawlinson purchased them from Gyles in 1752, and left them to the Bodleian Library at his death in 1755 (, Annals of the Bodleian Library, 1890, p. 236). Before this time, in 1742, Thomas Birch had printed his seven folio volumes of Thurloe state papers, adding to the original collection a certain number of papers from manuscripts in the possession of Lord Shelburne, Lord Hardwicke, and others. The manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, which include a considerable number of unpublished letters, are catalogued as Rawlinson MSS. A. vols. 1 to 73. Others which Birch obtained from Lord Hardwicke are now in the British Museum (Addit. MSS. 4157, 4158). Letters from Thurloe to English agents in Switzerland form part of Robert Vaughan's ‘Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell,’ 2 vols. 1836.

[A memoir of Thurloe serves as introduction to the State Papers. Other authorities are mentioned in the article.]  THURLOW, EDWARD, first (1731–1806), lord chancellor, eldest son of the Rev. Thomas Thurlow (d. 1762), incumbent successively of Little Ashfield, Suffolk, and of Thurston, Long Stratton, and Knapton, Norfolk, by Elizabeth, daughter of Robert Smith, a descendant of Sir Richard Hovell, esquire of the body to Henry V, was born at Bracon Ash, Norfolk, on 9 Dec. 1731. His grandfather, Thomas Thurlow, whose cousin, John Thurlow, obtained a license for armorial bearings, 19 Nov. 1664, was a scion of the Thurlows of Burnham, Norfolk, who are traceable as far back as the reign of Henry VIII. It is therefore probable that the carrier of Cromwell's time, whom the chancellor, in disclaiming descent from secretary Thurloe, jocularly claimed as his ancestor, was a mythical personage. Thurlow had two younger brothers: Thomas [see ], bishop of Durham; John, who died alderman of Norwich on 11 March 1782, and whose son, Edward South Thurlow (1764–1847), prebendary of Norwich, was father of Charles Augustus Thurlow (d. 1873), chancellor of the diocese of Chester.

Being hard to manage at home, Thurlow was early committed to the care of the Rev. Joseph Brett, master of Seckars school, Scarning, Norfolk, a disciplinarian of the then approved type. There he became an adept at cock-throwing, which he celebrated in some Latin elegiacs printed by Lord Campbell (Chancellors, ed. 1868, viii. 157), and conceived an unalterable aversion for the master. ‘I am not bound,’ he said savagely in later life, when Brett claimed acquaintance, ‘I am not bound to recognise every scoundrel that recognises me.’ After four years at Scarning he was removed with the character of an incorrigibly bad boy to King's school, Canterbury, where he acquired sufficient knowledge of the classics to enable him to take, upon his matriculation at Cambridge, 5 Oct. 1748, a Perse scholarship at Gonville and Caius College. There he distinguished himself by idleness and insubordination. His misconduct occasioned his removal from college without a degree soon after Lady-day 1751. His destination being already determined, he was placed in the office of a solicitor named Chapman, of Ely Place, Holborn, where he found a congenial companion in William Cowper [q. v.], the poet. Cowper introduced him to his uncle, Ashley Cowper, at whose house in Southampton Row the two spent much of their time in flirting with the ladies. On 9 Jan. 1752 Thurlow was admitted a member of the Inner Temple, where he was called to the bar on