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.
[3] 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.
[9] Writing in 1578, Queen Elizabeth's chief advisor on scientific matters, John Dee, claimed that Robert Thorne and Hugh Eliot made this discovery in 1494.
[12] Thorne's involvement in the Bristol exploration voyages of the years 1501-5, along with his brother, William, and his business partner, Hugh Eliot, is better documented.
[16] Thorne, along with Hugh Eliot were very likely two of ‘the merchauntes of bristoll that have bene in the newe founde landes’, who were given a £20 reward by the King in late September 1502.
[19] In the accounts for 1516/17, he was trading exclusively to Sanlúcar in Andalusia, sometimes alongside his son, Nicholas, exporting English woollen cloth and importing wine and dyestuffs.
[21] In 1518, as an alderman (former mayor) and steward of Bristol, Thorne was appointed to go to London to represent the corporation in a dispute being heard in Star Chamber.