Henry Thornton

The Eclectic Society was a small group of evangelical clergy and laymen that met fortnightly in London, always with a Bible open on the table, to discuss how they might further the cause of the gospel.

Among its leaders, John Newton, who had been a slave trader and was now one of the finest preachers in England, the man who wrote Amazing Grace after his conversion and spent the rest of his life trying to make up for what he had done before it, William Wilberforce, who was in the middle of his long campaign to abolish the slave trade, Henry Thornton and his brother John, men who took their convictions seriously enough to act on them.

The news that a colony was being established at Botany Bay fired their imagination and their concern.

750 convicts sailing to the end of the world.

These were immensely wealthy, highly influential men who lived near Clapham Common, which was a village just south of London at the time.

They frequently met in the sunny, tree-lined oval garden of a massive estate called Battersea Rise, which belonged to a man named Henry Thornton.

Let's analyze this brain trust because the combination of skills they brought to the table is wild.

It's like assembling the Avengers of 19th century philanthropy.

That is incredible.

So you have a fiercely stubborn, self-taught, legal and linguistic genius as your chairman.

Next, you have Henry Thornton, who was the treasurer.

And Thornton was a wildly successful banker, right? He had the financial infrastructure to handle the massive logistics of global printing.