• Name: Thornton, General William
• Gender: Male
• Birth Date: 1779
• Death Date: 6  April  1840
• Occupation: army officer

The identification is rather tenuous. What is clear is that a military Thornton does frequent artist circles in the 1830s. It is possible that this is also the col Thornton from 1800, whom Godwin meets at a dinner at King's in 1800. However, the later meetings have a unity - they are all at the houses of artists, Pickersgill, Aldis, Sass. There is nothing in the DNB that suggests that Sir William Thornton (1779?-1840), had any artistic interests, so the attribution is based largely on the assumption that there are relatively few generals names Thorton. That said, there are General Thornton's mentioned in the press between 1830 and 1836 including a magistrate in Surrey, a member of the East India Company's Court of Proprietors, a member of the Middlesex Court, a general inspecting troops in Armagh (subsequently due to be transferred to Jersey),a sceptic about a proposed trip around the world who believed it would undermine the East India Company, the Armagh/Jersey General petitioning the king to have morning prayers restored for all military establishments to prevent men defecting to dissenting houses or catholicism, someone who will appear (poorly disguised) alongside a range of other statesmen, in the novel 'The Premier', a proprietor of the Bank of England, a petitioner to Parliament attempting to remove the requirement that the King be required to support the doctrine of transubstantiation, a petitioner for Catholic rights, and so on. In 1831 Col Charles Wade Thornton was knighted. And in 1834 Major-Gemneral William Thornton was made Colonel. Clearly, some of these Major Thornton's are the same, but it seems unlikely that they all relate to the same individual.

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