Colonel Thomas Thornton 



WHEN the late Dr. James Bowstead, sometime Bishop 

 of Lichfield, was first raised to the Episcopal Bench as 

 Bishop of Sodor and Man, he described his reception in 

 his diocese in the words of St. Luke after the shipwreck 

 of himself and St. Paul at Melita, " The barbarous people 

 showed us no little kindness." That was but sixty 

 years ago, yet so little was the Isle of Man then 

 known to most persons in England that Dr. Bowstead's 

 English friends condoled with him on his banishment 

 to that " savage island," which they supposed to be 

 inhabited only by smugglers, fugitives from justice, 

 and half-civilised kernes. And the Bishop humoured 

 them in the idea though I doubt whether the Manx 

 clergy and gentry would have appreciated the joke. 



It was with much the same feelings that Colonel 

 Thomas Thornton's friends and brother-sportsmen . in 

 England regarded his departure on a sporting tour 

 through the Highlands of Scotland in the year 1786. 

 It was but ten years since Samuel Johnson had pub- 

 lished his "Journey through the Western Islands of 

 Scotland," a record of adventurous travel which excited 



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