Gentleman's Magazine (December 1801)
 |
|
The earliest known pictorial record of Thornton Church 1801 (taken from Gentleman's Magazine)
|
| Mr Urban |
Dec. 7.
|
| The church of Thornton, Bucks, (plate II.) is placed in a beautiful lawn near the mansion called Thornton Hall and is of antiquity. There is no certain account of its date. We find in the year 1288, 22 Hen. III. Hugh was the rector. Its present lord, Thomas Sheppard, esq. who married the daughter of Doctor Cotton, by his wife Hester Maria Tyrrel, when he first came here, found it much delapidated. He immediately applied for a faculty, and repaired and beautified it, adding a new North aile where an old one once stood; and it is now a neat uniform building, and a pattern for all churches and chapels for the purpose of pure devotion. It has several monuments dreadfully mauled by Time, with a neat one to the memory of Sir Thomas Tyrrel. Here Wm. Bredon was vicar; who was not only a most profound divine, but absolutely the most polite person for nativity in his time, strictly adhering to Ptolemy, which he well understood. He had a hand in comprising Heydon's Defence of Judicial Astrology, being at that time his chaplain. He was so given over to tobacco and drink, that, when he had no tobacco, he would cut the bell ropes and smoke them, from, I suppose, too much drink. See History of Lilly's Life and Times, p.44. | |