Dr. Robert Thoroton 1623-1678.
Nottinghamshire Antiquarian.
Robert Thoroton was a country gentleman, descended from a long line of Thorotons, and lived at the family’s ancestral home, Morin Hall, in Car Colston, Nottinghamshire. He was born on 4 October 1623, the eldest of six children of Robert Thoroton (1601-1673) of Car Colston and his wife Anne Chambers of Stapleford. Probably educated privately during the 1630s he entered Christ’s College, Cambridge, in December 1639 as a sizar (an undergraduate who received allowances for work undertaken in the college). He graduated BA in 1642/3 and MA in 1646. He also studied medicine and was granted a university licence to practice medicine in 1646.
In 1663, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Medicine largely as the result of his close friendship with Gilbert Sheldon, the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1663 to 1677 who had become acquainted with Thoroton’s family when he lived in East Bridgford during the Civil War.
Alongside this professional activity he also had an interest in researching local and family histories, mainly to trace the history of the manors of Nottinghamshire and the families who lived in them. His research was spread across the period from 1662 to 1675 and drew on work of his father-in-law, Gilbert Boun for a description of Nottinghamshire manors for taxation purposes, as well as the results of his own visits to churches, largely in the centre and south of the county, to make inscriptions from tablets, memorials and gravestones, and to take copies of coats of arms. He was largely reliant on correspondence for information from the north of the county.
He also borrowed archives from leading members of the nobility and gentry which gave him access to the cartularies (charters and especially title deeds) of Rufford, Newstead, Blyth and Thurgarton. He also borrowed the Southwell Chapter records and consulted the muniments (title deeds or other documents provingntitle to land) and archival remains of many landed families however he was criticised for not visiting national repositories such as the public records in London and the diocesan records in York.
Thoroton’s acquaintance with William Dugdale, the Garter King of Arms, transformed his private antiquarian research into a major work of scholarly reference and the first published history of Nottinghamshire. In 1663, the College of Arms undertook a Heraldic Visitation of Nottinghamshire to ensure that no-one was using unauthorised coats of arms or pretending to be a ‘gentleman’. As chief herald of the College, Dugdale consulted Thoroton, and employed him to compile or edit about a dozen pedigrees of local families. The following year, Dugdale encouraged Thoroton to turn his Nottinghamshire research into a book. Thoroton agreed, observing that, having acted as a doctor, but ‘not being able for any long time to continue the people living in it’, he was now going to ‘practice upon the dead’ and record their family histories instead.
Thoroton’s The Antiquities of Nottinghamshire was published in London in 1677, dedicated to the eminent antiquarian William Dugdale, and illustrated with engravings by Wenceslaus Hollar of country houses, churches, family monuments, views of Nottingham and Newark, and drawings of the coats of arms of numerous local gentry families. The book was printed by Robert White for Henry Mortlock ‘at the sign of the Phoenix in St Paul’s churchyard, London, and at the White Hart, in Westminster Hall’, and sold for between 16 and 18 shillings a copy
Thoroton died on 21 November 1678, aged 55, having lived to see the publication of The Antiquities. In June 1897, a meeting in the Grand Jury Room at Shire Hall in Nottingham, unanimously agreed to name the County’s newly formed Historical, Archaeological and Antiquarian Society in honour of Nottinghamshire’s first historian, Dr Thoroton.
The suggestion originated with W.P.W. Phillimore, who was the principal founder of the Thoroton Society. The following month, the first Society excursion took in Thoroton country, centred on Car Colston and its neighbouring villages. On Tuesday 27 July 1897, fifty members met at Bingham station and proceeded to Car Colston, Screveton, Hawksworth and Thoroton. They moved on to Aslockton, Whatton-in-the-Vale (for lunch), Langar, Wiverton, and arrived back at Bingham in time for the first of what has turned out to be a Society tradition – the Thoroton tea. The following morning, they toured the historic sites of Nottingham, moved on to Wollaton in the afternoon, and finished with a lecture at the Albert Hall on ‘The Early Churches of Nottinghamshire’ and W.P.W. Phillimore’s clarion call to the Society, entitled ‘The work we have to do’. The Society continues to honour the name and work of its eponymous founder, and to maintain the high standards of scholarship for which he was known in his lifetime.
More information about The Thoroton Society of Nottinghamshire here
Much of this article is based on The Nottinghamshire Heritage Gateway article Dr Robert Thoroton by Richard A Gaunt and Adrian Henstock published in 2022.
