John Thornton was said to be the richest businessman in England. When he died in 1790, he left treasures on earth amounting to ÂŁ600,000, according to his obituary in the Gentlemanâs Magazine, the equivalent of ÂŁ45 million today, and his only equal in Europe was Henry Hope, the âmerchant princeâ of Amsterdam.
The figure is all the more remarkable considering that Thornton gave away ÂŁ3,000 a year for fifty years of his life. He bought debtors out of prison and provided food and blankets for the poor in winter. He supported struggling ministers and missionaries and gave away tens of thousands of Bibles. For Thornton material generosity went hand in hand with spiritual outreach, the two great obligations of his life. He was not a powerful man, nor was he a preacher, but instead he spent thousands buying the rights to parishes so that he could appoint true âgospel ministersâ, and make his own contribution to âthe rising tide of true religionâ, considering this a better harvest than mere money deserved. He lived a life of quite eccentric simplicity for a rich man, economizing so that he would have more to give to his mission. He never missed the chance to make a profit, but was equally determined that his wealth should benefit other people, materially and spiritually, and above all that it should save souls, throughout Britain and the world.
He was the Clapham sect in embryo.
Conversion
John was born in an old stone house beside Clapham Common, on 1 April 1720, his father having moved there from Hull where the Thorntons were a major trading family. Clapham was a wealthy village amid marshy grazing land four miles from Westminster Bridge on the road to Epsom, its roads often impassable in winter and a haunt of bandits. It was popular with successful London merchants, accessible to the City but distant enough to be a country retreat. Samuel Pepys had lived there, as had the Bishop of Exeter.
The Thornton family had made their fortune in Russian trade, importing timber, pig iron, flax, yarn, fur, spice, and wax from the Baltic, selling in return cloth, metals, herring, glassware, and cutlery. Johnâs grandfather had a trading house in Hull, which in 1732 passed to their cousins the Wilberforces, another leading family of Russia merchants â it was the birthplace of William Wilberforce and is now the Wilberforce House museum. Johnâs father Robert was a director of the Bank of England as well as a merchant, though John himself was never interested in banking. Otherwise though, he went about his fatherâs business, often overseas, going to Riga for two years at the age of twenty-one. In time he became a member, then consul, then assistant of the Russia Company. According to his son Henryâs memoir, he did not by then want to become a governor of the Company because he had become serious about religion and objected to the unsavoury toasts and songs he would have had to hear at their public dinners. John inherited partnerships in factories near Hull, and in 1755 he joined Benjamin Pead in opening an oil mill in London containing Britainâs first major soap works, an industry slowly being learned from the Dutch. He owned shares in the Bank of England, the East India Company, and the South Sea Company, and made ÂŁ13,000 from insuring New York companies.
There was no very remarkable amount of religion or charity in Johnâs upbringing, but around the age of thirty he fell for Lucy Watson, a popular woman in her thirties from Hull. It was one of the many marriages that interwove the great merchant families of the city, Lucy being the heiress of Alderman Samuel Watson, a sometime partner of the Thorntons and Wilberforces. At first Lucy refused John on the grounds of religious differences, but he persisted and finally married her, âafter many years of ineffectual endeavourâ as Henry put it, on 28 November 1753.1
One religious difference that had obstructed their marriage was that the Watsons were Dissenters and the Thorntons belonged to the Church of England â although in later life John had vastly more sympathy for Dissenters than most in his own church and often went to their services. The other problem was that John simply did not yet take God seriously enough for Lucy. She was a spiritual woman, very active in providing for the poor in the area. Every new year she wrote a pious review of the year, âthat my heart may be suitably affected with the blessings I have received, humbled under a sense of my ingratitude for them, and stirred up to more active servicesâ. Henry tells us she did not think John âa sufficiently religious characterâ yet, and a few years into their marriage she was writing to him about his laxness in âthe duty of secret prayerâ.2
John became an evangelical Christian in the first year of their marriage, according to his friend Henry Venn, the evangelical curate of Clapham church.3 Before then, John had been arrogantly resolute to win Lucy around to his own conventional Anglicanism according to their sonâs report: his opinions were âcrudeâ, his way of arguing for them âharshâ, and in the end it was he who shifted. From then on, John more and more exhibited the spirituality of his wife. During that first year of marriage Lucy was dangerously ill for some months, and if this drove John into a period of spiritual searching, he would have been following a common pattern.
Lucy clearly had a hand in Johnâs religious development. The credit for his conversion is usually shared between Martin Madan, the 28-year-old chaplain of the Lock Hospital at Hyde Park Corner, the first venereal disease clinic, and Henry Venn of Clapham, but if a sermon or buttonholing from such preachers provided a turning point in his spiritual life, the sustained example and exhortations of his sweetheart, then wife â however reluctant he was to learn from her â were clearly important too.
The Evangelical Revival
The evangelical revival was about fifteen years old in Britain by this point â twenty in North America. It was already a diverse, many-headed movement, but what all its preachers had in common is that they believed the mass of church-goers were Christians in name only. They insisted, on the one hand, that they must turn from their sin, be born again with âa new natureâ, embrace âvital Christianityâ and lead radically holy lives. And on the other hand â paradoxically, but equally passionately â they insisted that no human can possibly be holy enough to satisfy God: it is only Christâs self-sacrifice on the cross that can satisfy God, and we are saved simply by âtrusting in his bloodâ. Any hope of heaven through merely being good is damnable nonsense, they said: we are saved by faith alone.
This message was thoroughly controversial in itself for British society, but it was made more outrageous by being preached not just from pulpits but in fields and market squares, bowling-greens, and brickyards, to crowds of thousands. It looked dangerously subversive. The great crowd-pullers were John Wesley and George Whitefield, who had both been ordained in the Church of England, but had no parishes and generally found themselves unwelcome in other menâs churches, so simply toured the country preaching wherever they could gather hearers. The meetings were often set upon by mobs â and the preachers and their followers were then blamed for the disorder. Wesley organized his converts into a network of local societies for preaching, worship, and pastoring, which looked suspiciously like a new sect of Dissenters, although he insisted that they stay in the established church. Whitefield offended respectable tastes with his histrionic preaching â even Thornton lamented his many âwildnessesâ â while Wesleyâs preaching had been known to provoke wailing, convulsions, and all kinds of charismatic phenomena. It was all horrifically reminiscent of the religious fanatics who a hundred years before had killed the King and dismantled the state.
Meanwhile, there were others who agreed with the evangelical message but did not see the need to spread it in such a contentious way. A small but growing number of evangelical ministers had parishes and other posts in the Church of England. There was no completely clear division between these regular ministers and the itinerant preachers, especially at first â Venn, though a parish incumbent, often left Clapham for outdoor preaching tours, though he is said (questionably) by his more conservative son to have repented later â but in retrospect we tend to call the regular ministers and their followers âevangelical Anglicansâ and the others âMethodistsâ. The word âMethodistâ had no such precise meaning at the time, and the other term was not in existence, but âMethodistâ being a term of abuse eventually became attached to the more disreputable group.
Evangelicalism had a passion that no other British religion of the time shared. The two great outward channels of that passion, as exemplified by Thornton, were evangelism and social action, saving souls and bodies. The logic of the first is obvious: nominal Christians stood on the brink of eternal hellfire, and no effort could be spared to turn them back. Not all could be preachers, but all had a part to play.
The logic of evangelical social action is less obvious. In many ways evangelicalism was extremely other-worldly: the body is for a moment, the soul forever, so believers were expected to rejoice when loved ones went to heaven, and to despise earthly reputation and pleasure. And yet many were zealously committed to social action from the start, founding schools, orphanages, and medical dispensaries. In part, this was precisely because they believed in holding their earthly wealth lightly and so were willing to share it. In another part, it was because evangelicals were creatures of the Enlightenment and so believed that God gave us a world to be improved, not just conserved. But evangelical social action was above all â paradoxically â an outworking of the belief that we are saved by faith in Christâs sacrifice and not by our own deeds. This belief meant that costly mercy is Godâs most important attribute, and so gratefully forwarding it is essential to being his child. It meant that believers had passed from infinite darkness to perfect light, and so should be able to point to an observable change in the world as a result. And it meant that, though it is easy to become a child of God, it is impossible to be a good enough person â there is always some good that remains to be done.
It was certainly not true that evangelicals saw helping people materially as a mere back door to saving their souls. As John Thorntonâs son Henry said of his fatherâs giving, âa part was subservient to the cause of the Gospelâ, but âa large part of this sum was to those who had no other claim on his funds than that of compassionâ.4
Philanthropy: Sailors and Magdalens
John Thorntonâs earliest known charity work began in 1756, as a founder member of the Marine Society. This somewhat equivocal philanthropy was the brainchild of his fellow Russia Company merchant Jonas Hanway, devout Christian, travel writer and the first man in London to carry an umbrella. The idea, set out in the societyâs advertisement, was for âstout ladsâ to be âhandsomely clothed and provided with beddingâ, and put âon board his Majestyâs ships, with a view to learn the duty of a seamanâ. In other words, it was a scheme to provide more sailors for the Seven Yearsâ War. The society provided over 10,000 recruits, and its provision of new clothes is said to have reduced typhus. A million people died in the course of the war, which made Britain the greatest colonial power in the world. âWhat a year of slaughter has this been,â reflected Lucy Thornton in 1757. âWhy is my happy lot in England, rather than America, India or Germany? Why does our selves, our houses, our substance escape the victorâs fury, but because our good God delights in and over us?â Another benefit of having God on their side was that John was destined to make large profits from lending to the government to finance the war, and from handling government payments to Russia. He was now âvery richâ, reported the politician James West, âin great credit and esteem, and of as much weight in the City as any one man I knowâ.5
In 1758, Thornton and Hanway became founder members of the Magdalen Society, led by another Russia merchant, Robert Dingley, to give prostitutes a new start. They bought a house in London where over a hundred could live at once, paid for treatment at the Lock Hospital, provided clothes, taught the illiterate girls to read, helped them find new work, and gave them some money toward a new life. By 1765, 683 girls had come to the house, and 308 had found jobs or been reconciled to their families.
Thornton supported the evangelical mission to England by letting Whitefield preach from his house. More directly, he paid to have Bibles printed and used Russia Company ships to send them abroad. Later he extended this enterprise, sending free Bibles and other religious books to the Caribbean and Australia, as well as around Britain, at a cost of ÂŁ2,000 a year according to the Gentlemanâs Magazine. In November 1779, he helped found what became the Naval and Military Bible Society, to give pocket Bibles to soldiers and sailors in the American War of Independence, on the suggestion of one of his alms distributors. By the time of Trafalgar, twenty-six years later, the society had handed out 43,000 Bibles. It continues today as the Naval, Military, and Air Force Bible Society.
Lucyâs records of the early years of their marriage mention arduous journeys and long illnesses. At the age of thirty-four, she noted in herself the âloss of teeth, alteration of shape, some grey hairs, a faded complexion, a feebler memory, drowsiness and many other infirmitiesâ. Meditating on the prospect of death, she considered how she would live in the memory of relatives; âbut in a few years even this imaginary living is also over, and perhaps it will never be known but upon old parchment or in a register that Lucy Thornton ever lived. Vain world farewell, then, my home is not here.â To leave something to the future, she resolved at new year 1758: âto make the cultivating my childrenâs minds a great part of my employment, and [I] would reckon no time better spentâ.6
John and Lucyâs youngest child, Henry, who would gather the Clapham sect, was born in 1760. They now had four surviving children: Samuel was seven, Jane five and Robert one. Lucy persuaded John, against his inclination, to have the house extended and redecorated, and enlarge the grounds until they were nearly two miles round, with deer in a paddock. âMrs ThorntonâŠâ Wilberforce recalled, âhad somewhat of a turn for the splendid in all particulars.â
American Friends: Mohegan Missionary and Slave Poet
Coming at the dawn of the colonial era, the evangelicals were from the start enthusiastic about mission overseas, as well as to âthe heathen of Englandâ. Wesley had started his career as a missionary to Native North Americans. Thornton became involved in the same mission in 1766, after the Mohegan convert Samson Occom visited him on a fundraising tour of Britain. Occom was collecting for Moore Charity School in Lebanon, New Hampshire, where Native American children were taught Christianity, farming, and ancient Greek and Hebrew. He stayed at Thorntonâs, finding him âthe right sort of Christian and a very charitable manâ.7 Each was impressed by the other, and Thornton gave Occom ÂŁ100, promising to use his influence in the cause. Occom met George III who gave him ÂŁ200, and he made a wide enough impact to be lampooned on the London stage. He collected ÂŁ12,026 from 2,000 givers, which was kept in trust with Thornton as the treasurer, and the Earl of Dartmouth â one of a handful of evangelical peers â as president.
Soon trouble came though. The school was run by Eleazar Wheelock, a Congregationalist minister, and the year after Occom returned from his fundraising tour Wheelock turned the mission school into a college for white boys. He had taught thirty-five Native American boys and ten girls, plus a number of white boys, expecting all of them on graduating to spread Christianity and white culture among the indigenous people. âI have taken much pains to purge the Indian out of him,â he said of Occom, âbut after all a little of it will sometimes appear.â8 Wheelock never repeated the success he had had with the fervent Occom, his first pupil, so he decided to divert his energies into teaching white boys who could then go among the Native North Americans as evangelists. His college charter was ...