John Thorne c1545-1618

JOHN THORNE, was by trade a brewer of 'bearbruer' who lived in the Parish of St. Nicholas ('that great capitall Messuage or Tenement wherein I now dwell'). He also owned property in a number of places in and around Gloucester, including a corn mill near Barton Street known as Wyndowe's Mill. An alderman of the City he was Sheriff in 1600 and Mayor in 1609. In the year 1595 his son Richard was apprenticed to him and his wife Joan 'in the arte de maultinge et brewing', but we know little about his brewing activities, though one of his workmen, Walter Trigge, was scalded to death by falling into a 'furnace of water' in the brewery.

Alderman Thorne, whose wife predeceased him, was buried in St. Nicholas church on the 19 March 1617/8. and left, amongst other things, the sum of five pounds to be spent on bread for the poor in Gloucester, to be purchased within a week of his death. He also made a number of bequests including one of 6/8d. per annum for twenty poor widows, and the sum of 13/4d. per annum for a sermon on Ash Wednesday. The former sum was to be paid out of Wyndowe's Mill, but in 1666 there was an investigation into the legacy made under an Act of 1601 'to redress the misemployment of lands, goods and stocks of money heretofore given to Charitable uses', which suggests that the money was not being properly administered.

Perhaps the best-known bequest was, as the portrait tells us, a 'basson & yewer' which were of silver and cost thirty pounds, which he intended should 'remayne from Mayor to Mayor for ever'. These items managed to survive the considerable sale of civic place at the time of the Civil War, but it is to be regretted that they were both sold by the Corporation in 1818, and two dozen spoons were purchased in their place.