Henry Thornton (reformer)

For other people named Henry Thornton, see Henry Thornton (disambiguation).

The Right Honourable Henry Thornton
Member of Parliament for Southwark
In office 1782–1815
Personal details
Born	10 March 1760 Clapham, England
Died	16 January 1815(1815-01-16) (aged 54) Kensington Gore, London
Resting place	St Paul's Church, Clapham
Political party	Independent
Spouse	Marianne Sykes ​ (m. 1796⁠–⁠1815)​
Children	9, including Marianne Thornton
Parent(s)	John Thornton (father) Lucy Watson (mother)
Relatives	Samuel Thornton (brother) Robert Thornton (brother) William Wilberforce (cousin)
Occupation	banker Member of Parliament philanthropist abolitionist
Employer(s)	Down, Thornton and Free
Academic work
Discipline	monetary economics
Notable works	An Enquiry into the Nature and Effects of the Paper Credit of Great Britain (1802)

An Enquiry into the Nature and Effects of the Paper Credit of Great Britain (1939)

Henry Thornton (10 March 1760 – 16 January 1815) was an English economist, banker, philanthropist and parliamentarian.

Early life

He was the son of John Thornton (1720–1790) of Clapham, London, who had been one of the early patrons of the evangelical movement in Britain. At the age of five, Henry attended the school of Mr Davis at Wandsworth Common, and later with Mr Roberts at Point Pleasant, Wandsworth. From 1778 he was employed in the counting house of his cousin Godfrey Thornton, two years later joining his father's company, where he later became a partner.

Career

In 1784 Thornton joined the banking firm of Down and Free of London, later becoming a partner of the company which became known as Down, Thornton and Free. It was under his direction that this became one of the largest banking firms in London, with regional offices in other British cities.

In 1782 Henry Thornton had been urged to seek a seat in Parliament, and applied to contest one of the two seats for Hull. He soon withdrew on a point of principle, after learning that it was local custom to pay each voter two guineas in order to secure their vote. In September the same year Thornton was elected as member for Southwark, London. Despite lacking popular appeal, and refusing to bribe voters in a similar way to those of Hull, he became respected as a man of morals and integrity.

As an independent MP, Thornton sided with the Pittites, and in 1783 voted for peace with America. In general he tended to support William Pitt, Henry Addington and the Whig administration of William Grenville and Charles Fox. He seldom spoke in the House of Commons, as much of his contribution was in the various parliamentary committees on which he sat. In 1795 he became the treasurer of the committee responsible for the publication of the Cheap Repository Tracts.

He served on committees to examine the public debt (1798), the Irish exchange (1804), public expenditure (1807) and the bullion committee (1810), which scrutinized the high price of gold, foreign exchange, and the state of the British currency. The report of the committee, written by Thornton, argued for the resumption of gold payments in exchange for notes and deposits, which the Bank of England (of which his elder brother, Samuel Thornton, was a director) had suspended in 1797, but the recommendation was not well received at the time, and gold redemption on demand was not restored until 1821. In the next few years he continued to press for these measures to be implemented, publishing two reports in 1811.

This period 1797–1810 was a time of major change and great confusion in the British banking system, and the currency crisis of 1797 led to Thornton's greatest contribution as an economist, for which he is most remembered today. In 1802 he wrote An Enquiry into the Nature and Effects of the Paper Credit of Great Britain, in which he set out to correct the view that the increase in paper credit was the principal cause of the economic ills of the day. This was a work of great importance, and gave a detailed account of the British monetary system as well as a detailed examination of the ways in which the Bank of England should act to counteract fluctuations in the value of the pound.

Abolitionist and reformer

Thornton was one of the founders of the Clapham Sect of evangelical reformers and a foremost campaigner for the abolition of the slave trade. A close friend and cousin of William Wilberforce, he is credited with being the financial brain behind their many campaigns for social reform and philanthropic causes which the group supported. For some years Thornton and Wilberforce shared a house called Battersea Rise which Thornton had bought in 1792. The cousins spent much time here co-coordinating their activities and entertaining their friends. After their marriages in 1796–97 they continued to live and work in close proximity for another decade.

In 1791 Thornton played a major part in the establishment of the Sierra Leone Company, which took over the failed attempt by Granville Sharp to create a colony for the settlement of freed slaves in Africa. The company sponsored the voyage to London (1791–93) of the Temne prince John Naimbanna.

As the company's foremost director, Thornton virtually administered the colony as chairman of the company until responsibility was transferred to the Crown in 1808. It was at this time that he became a friend of Zachary Macaulay, who was governor of the colony 1794–99.

In 1802 Thornton was one of the founders of the Christian Observer, the Clapham Sect's journal edited by Zachary Macaulay, to which he contributed many articles. He was also involved in supporting the spread of Christian missionary work, including the founding of the Society for Missions to Africa and the East (later the Church Missionary Society) in 1799, and the British and Foreign Bible Society (now the Bible Society) in 1804, of which he became the first treasurer. A friend of Hannah More, he assisted in the writing and publication of her Cheap Repository tracts. In 1806, Thornton served as Manager of the newly formed London Institution.

He was a pioneer of deaf education, setting up, with Rev John Townsend and Henry Cox Mason, rector of Bermondsey, Britain's first free school for deaf pupils, the London Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb. Its name and location changed over the centuries; The Royal School for Deaf Children Margate closed in 2015.

Personal life

In 1796 Thornton married Marianne Sykes (1765–1815), daughter of Joseph Sykes, a merchant from Hull. They had nine children. Both parents died in 1815 and the children were adopted by a family friend, Sir Robert Inglis. The eldest child, Marianne Thornton, was a bluestocking who lived in Clapham for most of her long life. She was the subject of a biography by her cousin, E.M. Forster (1879–1970), the novelist, who was one of Henry Thornton's great-grandchildren. The eldest son, Henry Sykes Thornton (1800–1881), succeeded his father in the banking business, but the firm was merged into Williams Deacon's Bank following the financial crisis of 1825–6. One of the younger daughters, Sophia Thornton, married John Leslie-Melville, 9th Earl of Leven). Another daughter, Isabella, in 1841 married the clergyman Benjamin Harrison who became a Canon of Canterbury and Archdeacon of Maidstone.

Henry Thornton was buried at St Paul's Church, Clapham where a commemorative plaque records the fact, with an additional reference to the family vault nearby. A selection of photographs is displayed on the website of the former school named after him.

Legacy

A successful merchant banker, as a monetary theorist Thornton has been described as the father of the modern central bank. An opponent of the real bills doctrine, he was a defender of the bullionist position and a significant figure in monetary theory, his process of monetary expansion anticipating Knut Wicksell's theory of the Cumulative process. His work on 19th century monetary theory has won praise from present-day economists for his forward-thinking ideas, including Friedrich Hayek, who wrote an introduction to his 'An Enquiry into the Nature and Effects of the Paper Credit of Great Britain', and John Maynard Keynes alike.

Works

• An Enquiry into the Nature and Effects of the Paper Credit of Great Britain. London: J. Hatchard and Messr s. F. and C. Rivington. 1802. Retrieved 31 August 2023 – via Internet Archive.
• Thornton, Henri (1803). Recherches sur la nature et les effets du crédit du papier dans la Grande Bretagne. Genéve: la Bibliothéque Britannique – via Google Books.
• Thornton, Heinrich (1803). Der Papier-Credit von Großbritannien. Translated by Ludwig Heinrich von Jacob. Halle: in der Ruffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung – via Internet Archive.
• Substance of two speeches of Henry Thornton, Esq.: in the debate in the House of Commons, on the report of the Bullion Committee, on the 7th and 14th of May, 1811. London: Printed for J. Hatchard. 1811 – via Internet Archive.
• Hayek, F.A. v., ed. (1939). An Enquiry into the Nature and Effects of the Paper Credit of Great Britain (1802), together with his evidence given before the Committee of Secrecy of the two Houses of Parliament in the Bank of England, March and April 1797, some manuscript notes, and his speeches on the Bullion Report, May 1811. London: George Allen & Unwin. Retrieved 31 August 2023 – via Internet Archive.
• Thornton, Henry (1807). An Inquiry Into the Nature and Effects of the Paper Credit of Great Britain. Philadelphia: James Humphreys.
• Family Commentary upon the Sermon on the Mount. London: Hatchard & Son. 1835 – via Google Books.
• Family prayers and prayers on the Ten Commandments: to which is added a family commentary upon the sermon on the mount. New York: Stanford and Swords. 1848 – via Internet Archive.
• Family Commentary on portions of the Pentateuch, in lectures, with prayers adapted to the subject. London: Hatchard & Son. 1837 – via Google Books.
• Family Prayers (5th ed.). London: Hatchard & Son. 1837 – via Internet Archive.
• Female Characters. London: Hatchard & Son. 1846 – via Google Books.

In media

• Amazing Grace, a film about William Wilberforce, Henry Thornton and the struggle against the slave trade, was released in 2007.

See also

• Bank Restriction Act 1797
• Monetary policy
• Sierra Leone Company
• Clapham Sect
• Walter Bagehot

References

• "Henry Thornton, Esq". The Christian Observer. 14 (1): 72. January 1815. Retrieved 26 July 2025.
• "Memoir of Henry Thornton, Esq., Late one of the Representatives of the Borough of Southwark [with a portrait engraved by blood, from an original picture by J. Hoppner, R.A. in the possession of Mrs. Thornton]". The European Magazine and London Review: 99-100. February 1815. Retrieved 26 July 2025.
• Blaug, Mark, ed. (1986). "Thornton, Henry". Who's Who in Economics: A Biographical Dictionary of Major Economists 1700-1986 (2nd ed.). Wheatsheaf Books Limited lo. p. 831-832. ISBN 978-0-7450-0230-9 – via Internet Archive.
• Calquhoun, John Campbell (1866). William Wilberforce, his Friends and his Times. London: Longmans, Green, Reader, & Dyer – via Google Books.
• Fetter, Frank Whitson (1965). The Development of British Monetary Orthodoxy 1797-1875. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. pp. 22, 37, 39, 40, 42–45, 60, 76–77, 89, 131, 149–150, 152, 215, 234, 257 – via Internet Archive.
• Forster, Edward Morgan (1951). "Henry Thornton". Two cheers for democracy (First American ed.). New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. pp. 192–196. ASIN B0CQQ5TD2N. LCCN 51013652. OCLC 364466. GoodReads:129837888. – via Internet Archive.
• Forster, Edward Morgan (1956). Marianne Thornton: A Domestic Biography 1797-1887. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. pp. 4–6, 12, 13, 14–15, 16–20, 23–26, 47, 50–51, 59, 60–61, 65–68, 89, 106, 194, 317 – via Internet Archive.
• Hayek, F. A. v. (1939). "Introduction". In Hayek, F. A. v. (ed.). An Enquiry into the Nature and Effects of the Paper Credit of Great Britain. London: George Allen & Unwin. pp. 11-63. Retrieved 23 July 2025 – via Internet Archive.
• Hick, John (1967). "Thornton's Paper Credit". Critical Essays in Monetary Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. 174-188.
• Hollander, J. H. (May 1911). "The Development of the Theory of Money from Adam Smith to David Ricardo". The Quarterly Journal of Economics. 25 (3): 429–470. doi:10.2307/1883613. JSTOR 1883613.
• Horner, Francis (1802). Review of Thornton's Paper Credit, Edinburgh Review, Vol. I ([No. 1] Oct. 1802), Art. XXV (pp. 172–201). Extended analytical abstract, sections I-IV.
• Hutchison, Terence Wilmot (1968). "Henry Thornton". In Sills, David L. (ed.). International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Vol. 16. New York: The Macmillan Company. p. 14-17 – via Internet Archive.
• Laidler, David (2008). "Thornton, Henry (1760–1815)". In Durlauf, Steven N.; Blume, Lawrence E. (eds.). The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Vol. 8 (2nd ed.). Basingstoke, UK and New York: Macmillan Publishers Ltd. pp. 263–266. doi:10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_1636. ISBN 978-1-349-95188-8.
• Loria, Achille (1891). Studi sulla valore della moneta. Torino: Fratelli Bocca – via Google Books.
• Meacham, Standish (1964). Henry Thornton of Clapham, 1760-1815. Harvard University Press – via Internet Archive.
• Pollock, John (1977). Wilberforce. London: Constable – via Internet Archive. ISBN 0-85476-907-2
• Rist, Charles (1940). History of Monetary and Credit Theory from John Law to the Present Day. Translated by Degras, Jane. New York: Macmillan Company – via Internet Archive.
• Schumpeter, Joseph A. (1954). Elizabeth Boody Schumpeter (ed.). History of Economic Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 689, 696, 698, 700, 702, 704, 707-709, 713, 715, 718-724, 730, 733, 735-736, 1107 – via Internet Archive.
• Stephen, James (1907). "The Clapham Sect". Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography. Vol. 2. New York, Bombay, and Calcutta: Longmans, Green, and Co. pp. 187–248 – via Internet Archive.
• Stott, Anne (2004). Hannah More – The First Victorian. Oxford: University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-924532-1 – via Internet Archive. ISBN 978-0-19-927488-8
• Tolley, Christopher (8 February 2015). "Henry Thornton". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/27357. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
• Telford, John (1907). A Sect that Moved the World: Three Generations of Clapham Saints and Philanthropists. London: Charles H. Kelly – via Internet Archive.
• Thornton, Henry (1939). Enquiry into the nature and effects of the paper credit of Great Britain. The library of economics. Section 1, Classics of economic thought 2. London: Allen & Unwin.
• Viner, Jacob (1937). Studies in the theory of international trade. New York: Harper Brothers – via Internet Archive.

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Henry Thornton
• Works by or about Henry Thornton at the Internet Archive
• Portraits of Henry Thornton at the National Portrait Gallery, London