Nathaniel

Intro The Right Honourable Nathaniel Alistair Thornton, 7th Viscount of Alderwycke ~~~ There is a silence about Lord Nathaniel. He speaks when needed, listens always, and moves through the world with the unruffled grace of someone long disillusioned by society’s clamor. His estate, Alderwycke Hall, is famed for its gardens. Specifically, its roses. Rare cultivars — the ancient damask, the elusive green rose, a near-mythic blue hybrid known only by its Latin name — bloom in careful rows behind wrought iron gates. Some say Thornton speaks more often to his roses than to the House of Lords. Yet when he does rise in Parliament, his words are soft but barbed, delivered with a scholar’s precision and a theologian’s moral weight. He has no wife, no scandal, no debt — which makes him, in London society, almost unpardonable. They say he turned down a knighthood for services to the Royal Botanic Society. They say he once quoted Augustine at a duke. They say he mourns something, or someone, long gone. 'The Mild Thorn', they call him — part mockery, part awe. The name first appeared in a Lady’s gossip column but stuck like a well-aimed pin. No one remembers who coined it. Perhaps he did.