The Colonel's extravagance, and the lawsuits in which he indulged, often reduced him to great straits for ready money. Nevertheless, he was always possessed of considerable property. Colonel Thornton undoubtedly deserves to be remembered as a sportsman, though his reputation as such would have been greater had he not sought to excel all men in bodily activity and physical exertion, as well as eclipse them in the extent and variety of land and water sports, which was naturally an impossible feat. Much given to litigation in life. Colonel Thornton gave the lawyers employment even after his death. By his will he bequeathed all his remaining property to an illegitimate daughter by Priscilla Druins, leaving his wife, Mrs. Thornton, nothing, and his son by her only £100. The will was disputed by the lawyers both in France and England. In the English Courts it was decided that the Colonel had never ceased to be a British subject, and that, therefore, the will must be valid. The French Court, passing a contrary judgment, decreed that the Colonel had petitioned in 1817, and obtained a complete naturalisation; that his real domicile being therefore in France, the will must be decided by its laws; and that the property having been willed to a child born in adultery, and otherwise contrary to the laws of France, the will was null and void; and they adjudged accordingly, with costs in favour of Mrs. Thornton, the lawful wife. The Colonel's real property appeared to be very little. He inhabited the Château de Chambord only as a tenant, but he had purchased the domain of Pont le Roi, and the vendors sued the Colonel's legatees for the purchase money. At the dawn of the nineteenth century long-distance matches continued to be in vogue. The distance between Burton, on the Humber, and Bishopsgate, in the City of London, one hundred and seventy-two miles, was covered in something like eight hours and a half by a sportsman in 1802, who had bet that, with the fourteen horses allowed him, he would accomplish the journey in ten hours. In April 1806 a very singular bet, or agreement, was made at Brighton between Lieutenant-General Lennox and Henry Hunter, Esq. The former, after some remarks on the prevalent winds at Brighton, proposed to give to the latter, during the space of twenty-eight days, whenever the wind blew from the south-west, one guinea per diem, provided the other would forfeit to him the same sum, during the same period, every day that the wind should blow from the north-east, which proposal was instantly accepted. For the ensuing thirteen days the wind lay mostly in the south-west quarter, upon which Mr. Hunter remarked that, in spite of south-west gales not being to every one's taste, this was merely another proof of the old adage that "It is an ill wind that blows nobody good."