Thornton was the oldest surviving son of
Rear Admiral Samuel Thornton (c.1797-1859) & his wife Emily Elizabeth née Rice. His grandfather was the
abolitionist MP Samuel Thornton and his uncle was
Henry Thornton, founder of the
Clapham Sect. Thornton attended
Harrow School and
Jesus College, Cambridge. His interest in athletics led to him becoming secretary of Cambridge University Athletics Club in 1863. Three years later in 1866, Thornton won the
half-mile race in the inaugural
1866 AAC Championships. He was also a keen cricketer, inspired by his cousin
Charles Inglis Thornton. From 1871 to 1899, he was Honorary Secretary of
Middlesex County Cricket Club. In 1877, Thornton married his second cousin, Florence Emily Thornton, daughter of the banker
Henry Sykes Thornton. In 1880, he took up residence at the family home in
Clapham. Thornton rejected his family's adherence to
Liberal politics and became a supporter of the Conservative party. In 1880, he began his writing career with the pamphlet ''Recovered Thread of England's Foreign Policy
, which espoused Conservative policies. Thornton followed this with the three-volume Foreign Secretaries of the Nineteenth Century
(1891), Harrow School and its Surroundings'
(1883), The Brunswick Ascension
(1887) and The Stuart Dynasty'' (1890). At the
general election of 1892, Thornton was elected as MP for
Clapham. He successfully defended the seat three times before retiring from parliament in 1910. Following his retirement from politics, he was elected to the position of Registrar of the
Royal Literary Fund, and wrote an
autobiography,
Some Things I Have Remembered in 1911. == References ==