Thoresby's ‘Constitutions’ are printed in Wilkins's ‘Concilia,’ iii. 66, 666–79. A large number of his Latin letters are contained in the second part of Archbishop Alexander Neville's ‘Register’ and in Cotton MS. Galba E. x. Eight of them are printed in Dixon and Raine's ‘Fasti Eboracenses,’ pp. 477–80. Thoresby is also credited with having taken part in the controversy with the mendicant friars, and is said to have been the author of ‘Processus contra Fratres Mendicantes, qui prædicaverant mortuaria non esse sacerdotibus aut ædituis tribuenda.’ But it may be questioned whether in this he has not been confused with his nephew, John de Thoresby, who was a D.C.L. of Oxford, and had lectured in the university on the civil and canon law previously to 1364 (Bliss, Cal. Pap. Reg. Petitions, i. 245, 482), and who would therefore have been at Oxford during the height of the controversy between Richard FitzRalph [q. v.] and the friars. The younger John de Thoresby was an executor of his uncle's will (Hist. Church of York, iii. 281–3). Two mitres which had been presented by Archbishop Thoresby were anciently preserved in the treasury at York (ib. iii. 376).
[Raine's Historians of the Church of York and its Archbishops, ii. 419–21 (Life by Thomas Stubbs, pp. 484–5), iii. 275, 281–3, 376; Wharton's Anglia Sacra; Tanner's Bibl. Brit.-Hib. p. 711; Thoresby's Vicaria Leodiensis, pp. 185 sqq., and Ducatus Leodiensis, p. 69; Drake's Eboracum; York Fabric Rolls (Surtees Soc.); Dixon and Raine's Fasti Ebor. pp. 449–94; Jones and Freeman's Hist. of St. Davids, p. 303; Foss's Judges of England; other authorities quoted.]
THORESBY, RALPH (1658–1725), antiquary and topographer, was the son of John Thoresby by his wife Ruth, daughter of Ralph Idle of Bulmer in the West Riding of Yorkshire. His father was a Leeds wool and cloth merchant in good circumstances, who had served in the parliamentarian army under Fairfax, and had again joined his old general on his rising in arms against the Rump. The family of Thoresby of Thuresby in Wensleydale was of respectable and ancient descent, and the antiquary, who represented the family through a younger branch, was especially proud of the connection with John Thoresby [q. v.], the archbishop of York.
Thoresby was born in Leeds on 16 Aug. 1658 in his father's house, the seventeenth in line between Kirkgate End and Vicar Lane. He was educated first in the school, formerly the chantry, near the bridge at Leeds, and subsequently at the Leeds grammar school. In 1677 he was sent to London to acquire mercantile knowledge in the household of a relative, John Dickenson, a cloth merchant of Leeds and London. His father's instructions ‘to be always employed in some lawful employment or other’ (Letter from John to Ralph Thoresby, 15 Aug. 1677, Hunter's preface to Thoresby's Diary) allowed him considerable liberty of action, and he appears to have occupied more time in attending nonconformist services, visiting remarkable places, and copying inscriptions than in studying the methods of commerce. Following his father's advice contained in the same letter, ‘to take a little journal of anything remarkable every day,’ he began at this time to write the diary which he continued throughout life, making his first entry on 2 Sept. 1677. In February 1678 he returned to Leeds, where he remained till July, when he was despatched to Rotterdam to learn Dutch and French, and to continue his mercantile training. Here he also indulged his growing predilection for antiquarian research, and much of his time was spent in noting important buildings, copying epitaphs and inscriptions. A serious form of ague from which he recovered with difficulty compelled him to return to Leeds in December 1678.
Thoresby's responsibilities were suddenly increased by the death, on 30 Oct. 1679, of his father, with whom he had always lived on terms of the closest intimacy. Left with a moderate fortune and a brother and sister to settle in life, he determined to carry on his father's business; but during the next five years, though he sometimes attended the market, the bulk of his time, according to his diary, appears to have been spent in discursive reading and antiquarian study. He paid occasional visits to London, partly on business and partly to buy books, and on one of these occasions, in October 1680, he attended the levee of the Duke of Monmouth. At this period Thoresby was a presbyterian and a zealous attendant at nonconformist gatherings. In December 1683 he was indicted at quarter sessions under the Conventicle Act, but was acquitted (Hunter, i. 190). After this he regularly attended one service each Sunday at the established church, to which he eventually conformed. In May 1684 Thoresby made an effort to enlarge his business by entering the linen trade, and for this purpose purchased his freedom in the Incorporated Society of Merchant Adventurers trading to Hamburg, but with no great success.
Meanwhile he was making a reputation as
