‘Paying a Visit’ in Alice Thornton's Books

Blog article published by Eleanor Thom on 23 August 2024  animalscastleschildbirthfamilyillnesslettersnaturetravelwars of the three kingdoms

Festival time is in full swing here in Edinburgh and this time of year is also when many of us, including the Alice Thornton’s Books team, host relatives and friends or take time off to travel. In Thornton's Books, there are numerous occasions when she recalls visits to or from family members and friends and, as we begin to return home from our travels, this seems a good time to consider how much, or how little, staying with your cousins or taking a trip to the spa has changed since Thornton was writing her memoirs.

Thornton recalled and wrote about many journeys she made in her lifetime with her mother and father, and later with her husband, and she also tells us about trips that other people made, some travelling as far afield as France and Virginia, and some visiting her at home in Yorkshire.

Thanks to the work of the Alice Thornton’s Books team, Thornton’s four books of her life are being made available to read online for free. The books, handed down by generations of Thornton’s descendants over the centuries, offer an opportunity to journey into the past and, whatever your area of interest, they are well worth a visit.

Visiting Relatives in the Seventeenth Century

The majority of visits in Thornton’s Books were, perhaps unsurprisingly, familial, but many trips to stay with relatives weren’t only socially motivated. Often, practical matters prompted the arduous and sometimes dangerous journeys that could be necessary to reach family and friends, and long sojourns were often the result.

This was the case in August 1644, when young Alice travelled to Middleham Castle on horseback to reach her older sister, Katherine Danby. Katherine was pregnant for the fifteenth time and she was in labour with a son, Edward, although Thornton misremembered some of the details in Book 1. The journey, Thornton did recall, was perilous. She nearly drowned in the River Swale, the same river that would later take the life of her brother, George Wandesford, as he tried to cross it on his way to Richmond on Easter Monday in 1651.

it happened the river proved deeper than we expected it. And I kept up my horse as well as I could from standly and so bore up a long time but, when we were gone so far that I could not turn back, the river proved past riding and the bottom could not be come to by the poor mare (which was an excellent mare of my poor brother George Wandesford’s). So, I saw myself in such apparent danger and begged of God to assist me and the poor beast I rid on, and to be merciful to me and deliver me out of that death for Jesus Christ his sake, and the poor mare drew up her fore feet and I perceived she did swim.^[1]

Alice and the horse survived this incident and, the following year, when Alice's sister Katherine had her sixteenth child, this time in Thorpe, Alice was present again. Sadly on this occasion, Katherine died of postpartum complications, but not until the following month. Alice stayed with Katherine as her suffering grew worse, but was sent home by their mother before Katherine died.

Many of the women in Thornton's circle visited and supported each other in times of need. A visitation that Thornton sounds truly grateful to have had was one by her aunt, Anne Norton, who arrived to be by her side in 1668. Thornton, then 42, found herself facing a scandal as rumours circulated about her relationship with Thomas Comber, the young vicar engaged to her daughter.

My dear aunt was so concerned to hear I had been so belied that she immediately came to Newton and found me in a manner half dead with grief, upon this alarm that Mrs Danby and her maid raised up against me. I was extremely overjoyed to see her and blessed God for that providence which brought her thither.^[2]

Aunt Norton is not the only woman to visit Alice Thornton at this time. The family's former servant, Daphne Lightfoot, also comes to help her: "At my dear aunt's going away, she sent my good friend, Daphne, to be with me and comfort me".^[3]

Assisting a relative or a friend during difficult times was important enough to prompt treacherous journeys by horse, carriage and ship, but sometimes it was the visitor who was the one in need. According to Thornton’s accounts, doors were opened wide to her and her family many times. During the first English Civil War, Thornton and her mother took sanctuary with Thornton’s sister, Katherine.

For it being in the heat of the wars, [my mother] could not live at Hipswell, her jointure, which was molested sometimes with the parliament’s and then the king’s forces among them… So that for a whole year, we lived with great comfort and safety with my sweet sister Danby at Snape. ^[4]

Travelling for Treatment

Thornton wrote of many occasions when she and her relatives travelled for health reasons. Her husband, William Thornton, was ‘upon serious consideration of his distemper, then inclining to melancholic ... advised for the spa’ ^[5]. William travelled to Scarborough on the recommendation of the family’s doctor, Dr Robert Wittie.

Alice Thornton was herself treated in Scarborough for haemorrhoids in 1659:

This was pitched upon: that I should go to Scarborough spas for the cure of that sad distemper. And, accordingly, I went with my husband and stayed about a month there until I recovered some strength...In which time, by the infinite and wonderful mercies of the Lord and his blessing upon drinking of the waters, I recovered my strength by degrees after the curing of me of that infirmity of bleeding.^[6]

When Alice was thirteen and her family were living in Ireland, she briefly returned to England with her mother, who was treated for a kidney or bladder stone. They visited Bath and St Vincent’s Well in Bristol and her mother was cured. They then visited relatives and returned to Ireland on a ship which, according to Thornton, was nearly lost at sea. She writes of their relief on being reunited with Christopher Wandesford, her father:

And, on the next day, came my father from Dublin in the company of many noble friends in coaches to carry us home to Dublin where my dear mother was received with all joy and gladness.^[7]

Social visits

The countryside may be where we go to escape on our holidays but, in Thornton’s writing, the landscape and the weather were often presented as obstacles to social visiting. When travel was necessary, the outdoors was something to be endured and crossed in fear of your life.

In October 1677, Alice Thornton wrote to her brother, Sir Christopher Wandesford, to let him know that Yorkshire’s Hambleton Hills were preventing her from making a social visit to Osgoodby Hall in Thirkleby.^[8] The same hills were referenced in Book 1, having caused her difficulties during her first pregnancy in 1652.

It was during this first pregnancy that Alice Thornton made what must have been quite a social tour, visiting her husband’s relations at Crathorne, Buttercrambe, York, Hull and Beverley, and she was keen to make a good impression: 'I bless God who gave me favour in their eyes of my husband’s friends.'^[9]

On her way home, though, she once again came to danger.

at that place of the great rocks and cliffs, which is called Whitestone Cliff which I knew not, but was a mile to the bottom, where I could not tread one step even down but on my toes (being held up by my maid, Susan Gosling) which so strained my body, being near my time, that I went down in pain and did sweat exceedingly.^[10]

When social visits were planned in advance, they often took place because there were important matters to attend to, such as a marriage arrangements or other legal matters. Thornton’s writings, and letters sent to her, suggest that a good meal could be laid out for guests when they did come calling. In a letter from May 1699, Thornton’s son-in-law Thomas Comber sent a list of what he expected to find on his arrival at her home, East Newton Hall:

bread must be baked, and meat bespoke against that time, I have ale, and I hope small beer is brewed, if not I must borrow a hogshead of you to pay again.^[11]

Some guests could be as demanding as they are today, but with travel being difficult and dangerous, perhaps all welcomed a good meal at the end of it. In March 1699, just a few months before Comber would send Thornton the letter about the meal he wanted on arrival, she had written to him at the Deanery of Durham Cathedral. She thanked him for letting his wife (Thornton’s daughter, Nally) come for a visit to East Newton, but she advised Comber against making the same journey. Her concern was the wintry weather, so she said, but you might wonder if she just didn’t have the beers in.

Journeying into Thornton's World

There is a lot to discover about Alice Thornton in the four books she wrote about her life. You can already read the first 100 pages of all her books, and the four books will soon be available in full.