Colonel TTbomas ftbornton 89 



to a dozen sportmen. We had roast beef, plum pudding, 

 Yorkshire goose-pie, and sat up singing most gaily till 

 two this morning. At twelve we had two boiled fowls, 

 etc., and finished a bottle of old rum in punch. No 

 intoxication, for I went to bed well, and never rose 

 better." 



It has been unkindly hinted that the Colonel himself 

 circulated the report of his own death in order to see 

 what the newspapers: would say of him. Lord Brougham 

 was said by his spiteful detractors to have done the 

 same thing. In Thornton's case the libel emanates 

 from persons who brand him as a humbug and a 

 fraud an estimate of his character against which I 

 most emphatically protest. 



Colonel Thornton lived for nearly two years after the 

 newspapers had killed him, and died at last at his 

 rooms in Paris on March 23rd, 1823. His end was 

 sudden, for, but a couple of hours before the fatal 

 seizure, he had ordered out his hounds, and the horse 

 which he was to have mounted was at the door when 

 he breathed his last. He was sixty-six years of age, 

 and had lived every hour of his life. 



By his will he left the whole of his property in trust 

 for Thornvillia Diana Rockingham, his natural daughter 

 by his last mistress Priscilla Duins. An attempt was 

 made to upset the will in the English courts on the 

 ground that Colonel Thornton, as a domiciled French- 

 man, was subject to the law of France, which did 

 not allow a man to will away the whole of his property 

 from his lawful widow and children, or bequeath " an 



