father, was some time in prison, and had to pay a very large sum of money (2,000l.) He lost some of his lands in Essex in consequence. These proceedings were declared void in the first parliament of Henry VII's reign (cf. Campbell, Materials for the History of Henry VII, Rolls Ser. i. 127–9).
[Manning's Speakers of the House of Commons, p. 101; Rolls of Parliament, v. 199, vi. 294; Ramsay's Lancaster and York; Paston Letters, ed. Gairdner; Foss's Judges of England, p. 658; Return of Members of Parliament, i. 265, 342, 346, 347; Weever's Funeral Monuments, p. 391; Ordinances of the Privy Council, ed. Nicolas, v. 186, vi. 143 &c.; Stubbs's Constitutional History, iii. 168, 169, 266, 471.]
THORPE, THOMAS (1570?–1635?), publisher of Shakespeare's ‘Sonnets,’ born about 1570, was son of Thomas Thorpe, an innkeeper of Barnet, Middlesex (Arber, Reg. of Stationers' Company, ii. 124). At midsummer 1584 he was apprenticed for nine years to a printer and stationer of London, Richard Watkins (ib. p. 713), and in 1594 he took up the freedom of the Stationers' Company. A younger brother, Richard, was apprenticed to another stationer, Martin Ensor, for seven years from 24 Aug. 1596, but did not take up his freedom (ib. ii. 123). Thomas found obscure employment as a stationer's assistant, but in 1600 he became the owner of the unpublished manuscript of Christopher Marlowe's translation of the ‘First Book of Lucan.’ Through the good offices of a friend in the trade, Edward Blount [q. v.], he contrived to publish it. His name did not figure on the title-page, but as owner of the ‘copy’ he signed the dedication, which he jestingly addressed to his friend Blount. He wrote with good-humoured sarcasm of the parsimony of the ordinary literary patron. In 1603 Thorpe again engaged in a publishing speculation, and his name figured on a title-page for the first time. The book was an insignificant pamphlet on current events. Another work of a like kind bore his name later in the year, and between that date and 1624 twenty-eight books were issued at irregular intervals with the announcement that he took part in the process of publication. The title-pages of nearly all Thorpe's books declared that the volumes were printed for him by one stationer, and were sold for him by another stationer, whose address was supplied. It was only in three of the publications on the title-pages of which Thorpe's name figured—viz. R. West's ‘Wits A. B. C.,’ Chapman's ‘Byron,’ and Ben Jonson's ‘Masques of Blackness and Beauty,’ all dated in 1608—that he announced, in accordance with the custom of well-established publishers, that he was himself in the occupation of a shop, i.e. ‘The Tiger's Head, in St. Paul's Churchyard,’ at which the books could be purchased. During the other years of his publishing career he pursued his calling homelessly—without business plant or premises of his own, and depending on better equipped colleagues in the trade to sell as well as to print the volumes in which he had an interest. Many of his colleagues began publishing operations in this manner, but none except Thorpe are known to have followed it throughout their careers.
Thorpe's energies seem, in fact, to have been mainly confined, as in his initial venture of Marlowe's ‘Lucan,’ to the predatory work of procuring, no matter how, unpublished and neglected ‘copy.’ In the absence, in the early part of the seventeenth century, of any legal recognition of an author's right to control the publication of his work, the actual holder of a manuscript was its lawful and responsible owner, no matter by what means it had fallen into his hands. Thorpe was fortunate enough to obtain between 1605 and 1611 at least nine manuscript volumes of literary interest, viz. three plays by Chapman, four works of Ben Jonson (including ‘Sejanus,’ 1605), Coryat's ‘Odcombian Banquet,’ and Shakespeare's ‘Sonnets’ (1609). The last—the most interesting of all—which had many years earlier circulated in manuscript among Shakespeare's ‘private friends,’ was entered by Thorpe on the ‘Stationers' Registers’ on 20 May 1609. There, as on the published title-page, he styled his treasure-trove ‘Shakespeares Sonnets’—a tradesmanlike collocation of words which is one of the many proofs that the author was in no way associated with Thorpe's project. The volume was printed for Thorpe by George Eld, and some copies of the impression bore the name of William Aspley as Thorpe's bookselling agent, while others bore the name of John Wright. In conformity with the accepted practice, Thorpe, as owner of the ‘copy,’ supplied the dedication. He signed it with his initials ‘T. T.,’ styling himself, with characteristic bombast, ‘the well-wishing adventurer in setting forth’ [i.e. the hopeful promoter of the speculation]. As in the case of Marlowe's ‘Lucan,’ he selected for patron of the volume a friend in the trade, whom he denominated ‘Mr. W. H.’ He fantastically described ‘Mr. W. H.’ as ‘the only begetter’—i.e. procurer of the sonnets—a description which implies that Thorpe owed his acquisition of the manuscript to the good offices of ‘Mr. W. H.’ An obscure
