Mr Roger Thornton

• General Notes
  • Roger Thornton, a merchant of Newcastle, who had made his fortune entirely by his integrity and ability, for he came into Newcastle in such poverty that the townspeople still preserve the memory of it in a rhyme:
    
    "At the West gate came Thornton in
    With a hap, and a halfpenny in a ram's skin."
    
    But after his death, the lady's illegitimate brother disputed her right to the property, and he and Lord George Lumley fought a duel about it in the castle ditch of Windsor, when Giles Thornton was killed by his antagonist. The son of the merchant's daughter and the baron, wedded, as we have seen, a royal princess.