There is every reason to suppose that Robert Thornes was the younger brother of Thomas. Both men began their public career in the last years of their putative father’s lifetime, Robert being returned to Parliament in 1435 when still a young man.
In the autumn of 1437 both men were drawn into a dispute within the important Shrewsbury family of Horde. According to an indictment taken before the Shropshire j.p.s at Ludlow on 17 Sept. 1437, Robert, described as ‘of Shrewsbury, gentleman’, had joined John Horde* and others in stealing goods worth as much 160 marks from Horde’s stepmother, Katherine. Thomas and Thomas’s wife Isabel were named as accessories to this act of plunder, which seems to have been prompted by Katherine’s efforts to disinherit her stepson. The indictment was taken expeditiously, for the alleged offence had taken place at Shrewsbury only five days before, and it is probable that the j.p.s, headed by an important local lawyer, William Burley I*, were acting to prevent the escalation of tensions in the county town. Such sensitivity was understandable, for Horde’s father, William*, had been murdered two years before. Their prompt action appears to have been effective. The matter, at least as far as its legal consequences were concerned, was quickly concluded: Horde and our MP appeared personally in the court of King’s bench on the following 12 Nov. and were acquitted at the Shrewsbury assizes in February 1438.
Beyond this indictment, little of interest is known of Thornes’s career. His only borough office was that of coroner, and for the most part he discharged the tasks that generally fell to townsmen below the elite. In 1442 and 1446 he acted as one of the 25 electors of the borough officers (on the first occasion his putative brother was named as coroner), and in June 1448 he was one of the jurors of the borough’s curia magna.