Draft:Robert Thorne (explorer)

Robert Thorne the elder (d.1519) was a fifteenth-century Bristol merchant who was involved in the port's early Atlantic exploration voyages to North America, described in the sixteenth century as one of the English 'discoverers of the Newfound Landes'.

Life
Thorne is first mentioned in the Bristol customs accounts of 1479-80, carrying sugar from Lisbon and small quantities of wine and woad dye from Bordeaux. He is not recorded as a merchant in the surviving accounts of the 1470s. This suggests he was born around the mid 1450s.

Thorne served as Sheriff of Bristol in 1503-4 and Mayor in 1514-15.

Thorne's last will and testament was written 20 Jan 1518 and proved on 6 July 1519. He was to be buried in the crypt of St Nicholas Church, Bristol. He was clearly a rich merchant leaving £200 in cash and 200 oz. silver plate to his wife, among other goods and £60 in cash and 60 oz. in silver plate to each of his three surviving children, Robert, Nicholas and Alice. He also made substantial bequests to the Church and other charitable causes around Bristol.

Atlantic exploration
Thorne's son, Robert Thorne the younger, claimed in a 1527 letter to Henry VIII that it was his father, along with another Bristol merchant called Hugh Eliot, who were 'the discoverers of the Newfound Landes'. Writing c. 1570, Queen Elizabeth's chief advisor on scientific matters, John Dee, suggested that Robert Thorne and Hugh Eliot made this discovery in 1494 - albeit it is not clear whether Dee had any evidence for this. It has often been assumed that Thorne and Eliot were involved in John Cabot's expeditions from the city from 1496-98, since it is known that Bristol merchants accompanied the 1497 expedition that resulted in the European discovery, or rediscovery, of North America.

Thorne's involvement in the Bristol exploration voyages of the years 1501-5 is better documented.