abandoned hope of office. In 1795 he opposed the Treason and Sedition bills without success. In 1801 he spoke on behalf of Horne Tooke—now his friend—when a bill was introduced to render a priest in orders ineligible for a seat in the House of Commons. His last recorded appearance in the House of Lords was in 1802. He now spent his time between his villa at Dulwich and various seaside resorts. He died at Brighton on the 12th of September 1806, and was buried in the Temple church. Thurlow was never married, but left three natural daughters, for whom he made a handsome provision. The title descended to his nephew, son of the bishop of Durham.
Lord Thurlow was a master of a coarse caustic wit, which habitually in his private and too frequently in his public life displayed itself in profanity. He was a good classical scholar and made occasional translations in verse from Homer and Euripides. His judicial and his ecclesiastical patronage were wisely exercised; he was the patron of Dr Johnson and of Crabbe, and was the first to detect the great legal merits of Eldon. Thurlow's personal appearance was striking. His dark complexion, harsh but regular features, severe and dignified demeanour, piercing black eyes and bushy eyebrows, doubtless contributed to his professional and political eminence and provoked the sarcasm of Fox that he looked wiser than any man ever was. Yet he was far from being an impostor. By intense though irregular application he had acquired a wide if not a profound knowledge of law. Clear-headed, self-confident and fluent, able at once to reason temperately and to assert strongly, capable of grasping, rapidly assimilating, and forcibly reproducing minute and complicated details, he possessed all the qualities which command success. His speeches in the trial of the duchess of Kingston for bigamy (20 St. Tr. 355-651) are vigorous and effective, while his famous opening in the Douglas peerage case and his argument for the Crown in Campbell v. Hall (20 St. Tr. 312-316) show that he might have rendered high service to the judicial literature of his country had he relied more upon his own industry and less upon the learning of Hargrave and Kenyon.
See Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, vii. 153-333; Foss's Judges of England, viii. 374-585; Public Characters (1798); Notes and Queries, 2nd series, vol. iii. p. 283; 3rd series, vol. lii. p. 122; Reports of his decisions by Brown, Dickens and Vesey (jun.); Brougham's Statesmen of the Time of George III.
THURMAN, ALLEN GRANBERY (1813-1895), American
jurist and statesman, was born at Lynchburg, Virginia, on the
13th of November 1813. In 1819 he removed with his parents
to Chillicothe, Ohio, where he attended the local academy for
two years, studied law in the office of his uncle, William Allen,[1]
and in 1835 was admitted to the bar, becoming his uncle's law
partner. He began to take an active part in politics in 1844,
and in 1845-1847 was a Democratic representative in Congress,
where he advocated the Wilmot Proviso. From 1851 to February 1856 he was an associate justice of the state supreme court, and from December 1854 was chief justice. He was Democratic candidate for governor of Ohio in 1867, and was defeated by Rutherford B. Hayes by a majority of less than 3000 votes; but the Democrats gained a majority in both branches of the state legislature, and Thurman was elected to the United States Senate, where he served from 1869 until 1881—during
the 46th Congress (1870-1881) as president pro tempore. Here
he became the recognized Democratic leader and in 1870-1881 was chairman of the judiciary committee. He contested the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Bill, opposed the resumption of specie payments, advocated the payment of the public debt in silver and supported the Bland-Allison Act. He introduced the Thurman Bill, for which he was chiefly responsible, which became law in May 1878, and readjusted the government's relations with the bond-aided Pacific railways. Thurman was a member of the Electoral Commission of 1877, and was one of
the American delegates to the international monetary conference at Paris in 1881. In 1876, 1880 and 1884 he was a candidate for the presidential nomination, and in 1888 was nominated for vice-president on the ticket with Grover Cleveland, but was defeated in the election. He died at Columbus, Ohio, on the 12th of December 1895.
THURSDAY ISLAND, one of the smallest of the Prince of Wales group, N. of Cape York, in the Torres Strait, attached to Somerset county, Queensland, Australia. Pop. (1901), 1534. It has an excellent harbour, Port Kennedy, and is a port of call for mail steamers and the centre of the bêche-de-mer and pearl fisheries of the Torres Strait. It is a fortified coaling station for the British navy. The neighbouring Friday Island is the quarantine and leper station for Queensland.
THURSO, a municipal and police burgh, and seaport of
Caithness, Scotland. Pop. (1901), 3723. It is situated at the
mouth of the Thurso, on Thurso Bay, 21 m. N.W. of Wick, and
319 m. N. of Edinburgh by the North British and Highland
railways, the most northerly town in Scotland. Coaches run
daily to Mey and Wick and every day a mail-car goes to Tongue,
in Sutherlandshire, about 40 m. west.
In Macdonald Square, laid out with ornamental walks, there is a statue of Sir John Sinclair. A promenade along the sands was opened in 1882. The town-hall contains a public library and museum, which possesses the geological and botanical specimens of Robert Dick (1811-1866), the “Thurso baker,” as well as a large collection of northern birds. In the neighbourhood are quarries for Caithness flags, which are cut and dressed in the town. They constitute the leading export, but the trade of the port is hindered by the inconvenience of the harbour. There is, however, communication daily from Scrabster pier, 2 m. north-west, with Scapa and Stromness in Pomona (Orkneys), calling at Hoxa; once a week with Wick, Aberdeen and Leith; and occasionally in summer with Liverpool. To the east is Thurso Castle, the residence of the Ulbster branch of the Sinclairs, and near it is Harold's Tower, built over the grave of Earl Harold, once owner of half of Caithness, and half of the Orkneys and Shetlands, who fell in battle with Earl Harold the Wicked in 1190. About three-quarters of a mile west stand the ruins of the bishop's palace, which was destroyed by fire in 1222. Thurso was the centre of the Norse power on the mainland when at its height under Thorfinn (1014), and afterwards till the battle of Largs (1263). Count Modach, nephew of King Duncan, quartered his army for a time at Thurso and despoiled it till he was surprised and slain by Thorfinn in 1040. In the time of Malcolm II. Earl Erlend resided in the town. In 1633 it was created a burgh of barony, and was the seat of the sheriff courts of the county till they were removed to Wick in 1828.
THURSTAN, or Turstin (d. 1140), archbishop of York, was the son of a certain Anger, or Auger, prebendary of St Paul's, London, and a brother of Audoen (d. 1139), bishop of Evreux. He himself was a prebendary of St Paul's, and was also a clerk in the service of William II. and then of Henry I., who secured his election as archbishop of York in August 1114. He now entered upon the great controversy which occupied him during a large part of his subsequent life and made him for several years an exile from England. Archbishop Ralph of Canterbury refused to consecrate him unless he made a profession of obedience to the southern see; this Thurstan refused and asked the king for permission to go to Rome to consult Pope Paschal II. Henry I. declined to allow him to make the journey, while Paschal declared against Archbishop Ralph. At the Council of Salisbury in 1116 the English king ordered Thurstan to submit, but instead he resigned his archbishopric, although this did not take effect. The new pope, Gelasius II., and also his successor, Calixtus II., espoused the cause of the stubborn archbishop, and in October 1119, in spite of promises made to Henry I., he was consecrated by Calixtus at Reims. Enraged at this the king refused to allow him to enter England, and he remained for some time in the company of the pope. At length, however, his friends succeeded in reconciling him with Henry, and, after serving the king in Normandy, he was recalled to England, which he entered early in 1121. Refusing to recognize the new archbishop of Canterbury, William of Corbeil, as his superior, Thurstan took no part in his consecration, and on two occasions both archbishops carried their complaints in person to Rome. In 1138 he made a truce at Roxburgh between England and Scotland, and took active part in gathering together the army which defeated the Scots at the Battle of the Standard
- ↑ William Allen (1806-1879), a native of North Carolina, removed in 1822 to Chillicothe, Ohio, was admitted to the bar in 1827, was a representative in Congress in 1833-1835, served in the United States Senate in 1837-1849, and was governor of Ohio in 1874-1875.
