Ralph Thoresby

Ralph Thoresby

Ralph Thoresby (born August 16, 1658 in Kirkgate, Leeds , † October 16, 1725 ) was an English antiquarian and topographer . He became known for his museum, which contains an important collection of coins and medals, and for the composition of a work entitled Ducatus Leodiensis on the topography of the city of Leeds and its surroundings. From 1677 he kept an accurate diary for life, also held the function of a councilor for Leeds and was a Fellow of the Royal Society .

Life

Descent and youth

Ralph Thoresby was the son of John Thoresby (1626–1679), a wool merchant who lived in good living conditions in Leeds, and his wife Ruth († 1669), daughter of Ralph Idle from Bulmer near York . His father had served for some time as an officer in the parliamentary army under Thomas Fairfax during the civil war fought between supporters of King Charles I and those of the English parliament (1642–49) . The Thoresby family belonged to the old and respected English families and Ralph Thoresby, who did extensive research on his pedigree, was proud of his descent from John of Thoresby († 1373), Archbishop of York.

Ralph Thoresby's father cultivated antiquarian interests, bought the coin and medal collections of the Fairfax and Stonehouse families for a large sum of money and exhibited them in their own museum. Ralph Thoresby himself, who also developed antiquarian tendencies, first attended a private high school and then the Leeds Grammar School , where he learned among other things Latin and Greek. After the death of his older brother at the age of 12, he was his father's eldest son. The latter sent him to London in 1677 , where he was to receive commercial training in the household of a relative, the cloth merchant John Dickenson. But Thoresby enjoyed considerable freedom, apparently devoting himself less to studying the methods of trade than to visiting important places in the city and copying inscriptions. As his father had recommended in a letter dated August 15, 1677, from September 2, 1677 he kept a diary that was kept regularly throughout his life. Joseph Hunter got a two-volume print edition in 1830. This diary provides a reliable and detailed chronology of Thoresby's life.

In February 1678 Thoresby returned to Leeds and stayed there until July 1678. Then he traveled to Rotterdam to learn Dutch and French and to perfect his training as a wool merchant. Here, too, he indulged in his antiquarian research, visited important Dutch cities, noted important buildings and copied epitaphs and inscriptions. He recovered only with difficulty from a severe chills and had to return to Leeds in December 1678. He enriched his knowledge of local antiquities on trips to rural areas of Yorkshire .

Entry into the wool trade; antiquarian studies; religious development

The death of his father on October 30, 1679 presented Thoresby with new challenges. He had always felt a close bond with his father and inherited a modest fortune from him. But now, since his mother had also died ten years earlier, he had to take on responsibility for the family and the continuation of the wool trade carried out by his father. His younger brother and sister still lived in the household, and he now took care of their needs.

Although Thoresby now developed mercantile activities and went into the wool trade, he seems to have devoted more time to his antiquarian studies after his diary entries. Occasionally he went to London on business and to buy books, and on one of these visits to the capital he was present at the Duke of Monmouth's Lever in October 1680 . In the 1680s he also traveled to Scotland for his archaeological research , visited scholars and various collections, such as those of the Ashmolean Museum in 1684 , made observations in local rural areas and continued to copy inscriptions.

At that time Thoresby was initially still a Presbyterian according to his upbringing and often took part in non-Anglican meetings. In December 1683 he was charged under the Conventicle Act for this, but acquitted. Afterwards he attended services every Sunday in the English state church , to which he finally officially declared himself around 1699 after long deliberations and an extensive correspondence with his friend John Sharp , Archbishop of York. Religion also had a high priority for him in his further life. For example, in many letters he touched on religious questions and tried to distribute spiritual literature among arms.

In May 1684 Thoresby put his trading activities on a broader basis by now also including linen products and for this purpose bought membership in the Society of Merchant Adventurers , which had trade relations with Hamburg . He also joined the Eastland Company . With this company expansion, however, he was granted only moderate success and he never practiced the commercial profession with great dedication.

Marriage and offspring

On February 25, 1685 Thoresby married Anna († 1740), the third daughter and co-heir of Richard Sykes, a squire from Leeds. The marriage was quite happy, but differences of opinion existed between the couple about religious beliefs. Of Thoresby's ten children from this marriage, only two sons and a daughter survived. The older son, Ralph, was pastor of Stoke Newington , the younger, Richard, pastor of Catherine's Church on Coleman Street, London . These two ecclesiastical functions were bestowed upon them by their father's friend Edmund Gibson , Bishop of London.

Literary ventures; Correspondence; Fellow of the Royal Society

Over time, Thoresby has built a reputation as an antiquarian and outstanding private collector in Great Britain. He tirelessly added to the inventory of the museum inherited from his father. In 1682 he lent some Saxon coins to Obadiah Walker , who had them engraved for his edition of John Spelman's Life of King Alfred . Then Edmund Gibson and Sir Andrew Fountaine were also indebted to him for similar loans which were to be depicted in William Camden's Britannia and in the Numismata .

As a young adult, Thoresby also cultivated and expanded the circle of acquaintances his father had built up of personalities who were also interested in antiquarian books. Thornton, the Leeds scribe, and William Nicolson , Bishop of Carlisle, were among his earliest literary friends; he also soon deepened the acquaintance of other kindred spirits such as Thomas Gale , Dean of York, George Hickes , Thomas Hearne , John Ray , John Strype and the Bishops Edmund Gibson and White Kennett .

Thoresby made the decision to write a topographical work on Leeds and its surroundings around 1690; it was not to appear until 1715 under the title Ducatus Leodiensis, or, The Topography of Leedes . Meanwhile, Thoresby was able to take over the revision of the representation of West Riding of Yorkshire in Camden's Britannia in 1693 on the basis of his knowledge at the request of Bishop Gibson . In 1695 he developed a first draft for his Ducatus Leodiensis , and John Evelyn and Bishop Gibson encouraged him in May 1699 to intensify the work on this work. Because of other activities Thoresby made slow progress. In June 1697 he was elected councilor of Leeds, also in the same year a Fellow of the Royal Society , to which he had appeared qualified on the basis of his essays on botanical objects and Roman remains found by him in Yorkshire. As a result, he published around 30 reports for the Royal Society on Roman and Saxon monuments in northern England, coin inscriptions and other things in the Philosophical Transactions . In 1698 he got into big trouble due to unfortunate speculation with an oil mill he co-founded in Sheepscar , a district of Leeds, in 1689 . He lost his capital and was caught in a lawsuit; He was even briefly imprisoned because of debt.

Later years after retiring from the cloth trade; Composition of the Ducatus Leodiensis

In 1704 Thoresby finally gave up its business as a cloth merchant. Now he devoted himself more intensively to the writing of his Ducatus Leodiensis and the expansion of his museum, whose holdings mainly comprised over 2000 coins and medals. It also contained collections of plants, shells, minerals and fossils, as well as horns and skins of exotic animals, urns for the dead, parts of human bodies - in particular an arm of the Marquess of Montrose - mathematical instruments, military equipment as well as statues and amulets , some of which were from afar Countries originated. The museum was very popular; English parliamentarians and foreign guests were also among the visitors. Thoresby wrote to numerous personalities to discuss his studies of museum objects.

In addition to setting up his remarkable museum, Thoresby was the first Yorkshire antiquarian to write an important literary work with his Ducatus Leodiensis . In creating it, he also had access to material collected by his distinguished friends James Torre , Nathaniel Johnston , William Richardson, and John Hopkinson. In January 1709 he submitted part of his work to George Hickes for assessment and received his praise for it. Although Thoresby worked diligently on his work and was very interested in the subject, it turned out to be more arduous than expected to elaborate and he continued to make slow progress. The Ducatus Leodiensis finally appeared in May or June 1715 and also contained an excellent map of the area depicted. The font was dedicated to Peregrine Osborne , Marquess of Carmarthen, and the Mayor and Councilor of Leeds. About 2000 copies were printed. On the whole, the work received a benevolent reception, but of Yorkshire's portrayal, the long account of Thoresby's museum seems to have attracted more attention than the topographical section. A second edition, with notes and additions by the English cleric and topographer Thomas Dunham Whitaker (1759–1821), appeared in 1816. Despite Thoresby's inaccuracy and gullibility, his Ducatus Leodiensis was a useful and important compilation.

Encouraged by the congratulations of his friends, Thoresby intended to add a historical depiction of Leeds and the surrounding area to his work, but this plan was only partially implemented. From 1716 to 1720 he wrote a report on the history of the Church of Leeds, which only appeared in 1724 under the title Vicaria Leodensis, or, The History of the Church of Leedes . Thoresby also completed a manuscript on the early history of the Leeds area, from the Britons to Roman rule to the 6th century. It was printed in the Biographia Britannica as an appendix to Thoresby's eldest son's biography of the antiquarian . Furthermore, Thoresby helped Bishop Gibson in 1721 with the new edition of Camden's Britannia and provided important corrections and additions to Arthur Collins' baronage .

Death and subsequent sale of Thoresby's collections

Thoresby remained active until shortly before the end of his life. He slowly recovered from a first stroke he suffered in October 1724, after which he could no longer speak or walk. A letter he received from his hand from this period reveals his melancholy state at the time, which he endured patiently and devotedly. He died six days after a second stroke on October 16, 1725 at the age of 67. Three days later he was buried near the remains of his ancestors in the choir of St. Peter's Church in Leeds. When the church was rebuilt in 1838–41, a memorial plaque was erected for him.

His museum and library went to his older son Ralph. After Ralph's death in 1764, many of the items they collected were sold at an auction in London attended by numerous distinguished antiquarians and collectors, including Horace Walpole , for the rather low total price of £ 450. A Thoresby Society was established in Leeds .

literature

• PE Kell: Thoresby, Ralph . In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB), Vol. 54 (2004), pp. 581-584.
• William Carr: Thoresby, Ralph . In: Dictionary of National Biography (DNB), Vol. 56 (1898), pp. 282-284.