Finding Alice Thornton's Letters

Blog article published by Cordelia Beattie on 1 September 2023  IrelandVirginiafamilylettersmanuscripts

The 1st September is World Letter Writing Day. While Alice Thornton (1626-1707) is best known for writing four books about her life, we know that she frequently communicated by letter and we have been able to trace twenty-five of her holograph letters (and one copy), with the latest written only a year before her death; a further twelve Thornton letters were edited in 1875 and 1904 but their current whereabouts is unknown.

In Book 3: The Second Book of My Widowed Condition, Thornton frequently lists letters she had received, for example, as evidence of her account – which contradicted that given by her niece Anne Danby - of the match between her daughter Nally and Thomas Comber: ‘these letters, papers and transactions of this affair are in bundles and preserved to make out these proceedings and in vindication of our just and laudable actions’.^[1] We have not been able to trace any of these to date, although we have located four holograph letters written to her (and a further five have been published).^[2]

Durham Cathedral Library now have six letters written by Thornton (and four written to her), from the two bequests received of Dean Comber papers in 1969 and 2019. The six Thornton letters span the period 1668–99 and were sent to her son Robert, her husband William, her son-in-law Thomas Comber, and his mother Mary. The four written to her span from 1639-92, with the earliest one from her father Christopher Wandesford, two from Thomas Comber and one from his mother. The letter from her father is labelled by Thornton, ‘My honoured dear father’s 3rd letter to me into England at the Bath’.^[3] We know from Thornton’s books that Alice and her mother had travelled from Dublin to Bath and Bristol in 1639 to take the waters to help with her mother’s kidney stone.^[4] In the letter, her father twice addressed her by the nickname ‘Buss’.

The latest letter in Durham Cathedral’s collection was written by Thornton to Thomas Comber on 24 April 1699 with an addendum of 3 May 1699; Comber died later that year on 26 November. According to this letter, Comber had sent her a ‘kind letter of advice with a copy of one in answer to Sir Abstrupus Danby’s scurrilous letter to me… I have writ out that copy your kindness writ … and made some additions’.^[5] Thornton goes on to note that she is expecting a letter from Comber with a draft reply she could use to answer her daughter Kate. It is unclear how long Comber had been helping Thornton draft her letters. This letter from 1699 is one of the manuscripts that will be on display in the Refectory Library on 19 and 21 October 2023.

The largest collection of Thornton letters is at North Yorkshire County Record Office (NYCRO). They have fifteen: four sent to her nephew Thomas Danby in the period c.1654–1659 and eleven sent to her great-nephew Abstrupus Danby, of the ‘scurrilous letter’, in the period 1683–1705. In one of the final letters, dated 25 February 1705, Thornton seems on better terms with her great-nephew and she informed him that she had, ‘in answer to your desire’, written to the Governor of Virginia to aid Danby and his family keep the land in Virginia that his late grandfather, and Thornton’s brother-in-law, had bought.^[6]

When Hardy Bertram McCall compiled his Story of the Family of Wandesford of Kirklington and Castlecomer in 1904, he wrote that there were ‘some twenty’ of Thornton’s letters extant and he edited two, one to her brother, Christopher Wandesford, and one to his wife, Eleanor.^[7] McCall had access to all the family papers at Castlecomer House, Kilkenny. This included the Yorkshire evidence for the Wandesford family dating back to the thirteenth century; Thornton was born Alice Wandesford at Kirklington on 13 February 1626.

In 1964 the National Library of Ireland (NLI) purchased the pre-twentieth century Castlecomer papers. Then, in 2000, the English material was lent indefinitely to the NYCRO. However, the Thornton letters to the Danby men came from the Swinton and Middleham Estate Records (Swinton Park being a Danby family seat from 1695), not those lent from the NLI. This suggests that some Thornton letters have gone astray in the twentieth century. The NLI does have at least two letters from Thornton to her brother Christopher (from 1677), but these are part of the Ormonde Papers.^[8]

Of the other three Thornton letters we have located, two are to her cousin, Thomas Osborne, Lord Danby; one copy is in Cumbria Archives Centre, dated 1673, and one is in the British Library dated 1689.^[9] The only one not to a relative – sent to Lady Henrietta Maria Yarburgh in 1700 - is in the Borthwick Institute for Archives, York. It was found by Emma Marshall who has written about why Thornton might have sent a Lady she had never met a medical recipe, although unfortunately the recipe is no longer with the letter.^[10]

Besides the two Thornton letters edited by McCall, there are a number of others in the appendix to Jackson’s edition of her books. Of these, the originals of six letters to her husband, two to her son Robert, one to her mother-in-law Elizabeth Gates, and one to a Reverend Tillotson are currently unlocated.^[11]

If anyone comes across any Alice Thornton letters, do please let us know!