---
type: Person
title: Sir Edmund Thornbury
description: The English trader who co-founded the merchant house Thornbury & Lin
  and ran its London side of the tea and coffee trade.
tags:
- tea
- coffee
- trade
- england
resource: raw/tea-history-and-trade.md
timestamp: '2026-07-16T16:02:37Z'
citadel_version: 0.3.0
---

Sir Edmund Thornbury was an English trader with a sharp eye for what the fashionable would pay for.[^s1] Together with [Mei Lin](mei-lin.md), a Canton merchant, he co-founded the merchant house [Thornbury & Lin](../organizations/thornbury-lin.md), which first brought tea to England in 1657.[^s1] Within the partnership, Thornbury kept the London end of the business — the warehouses near the river, the buyers among the gentry, and the long negotiations with customs men.[^s1]

The partnership with Mei Lin was unusual for its day: rather than dealing at arm's length through middlemen, as most traders did, Thornbury shared the risk and the knowledge of the trade directly with his partner, a true partnership stretched across half the globe.[^s2]

According to the firm's own family history, Thornbury was a merchant of restless temperament with little interest in money for its own sake, caring most for what he called "the finding" — the hunt for a thing worth bringing home; it was on one of his ships' calls at Canton that he met [Mei Lin](mei-lin.md), who refused to sell him the inferior tea reserved for foreigners and instead sold him the good stock, at a price that made him laugh and shake her hand.[^s3] The two later married.[^s4]

## See also
- [Thornbury & Lin](../organizations/thornbury-lin.md)
- [Mei Lin](mei-lin.md)
- [History of Tea](../concepts/history-of-tea.md)

## Sources
[^s1]: [raw/tea-history-and-trade.md](../../raw/tea-history-and-trade.md), line 21 — Thornbury's background, the co-founding, and his role running the London end (ingested 2026-07-16)
[^s2]: [raw/tea-history-and-trade.md](../../raw/tea-history-and-trade.md), line 23 — the unusual, direct nature of the partnership (ingested 2026-07-16)
[^s3]: [raw/thornbury-tea-blog.md](../../raw/thornbury-tea-blog.md), line 9 — Thornbury's temperament and how he met Mei Lin in Canton, per the firm's own family history (ingested 2026-07-16)
[^s4]: [raw/thornbury-tea-blog.md](../../raw/thornbury-tea-blog.md), line 11 — Thornbury and Mei Lin married (ingested 2026-07-16)
