Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 27.djvu/371

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HORNE, Sir WILLIAM (1774–1860), lawyer, born in 1774, was second son of the Rev. Thomas Horne, who kept a private school at Chiswick, where Lord Lyndhurst was educated. He was admitted student at Lincoln's Inn on 3 June 1793, and called to the bar on 23 June 1798. Twenty years later (1818) he became a king's counsel, and on 6 Nov. 1818 was made a bencher of his inn (Lincoln's Inn Registers). After he had been for many years distinguished as a leader in the court of chancery he was created in 1830 attorney-general to Queen Adelaide. When Brougham became lord chancellor a law officer was necessary to assist him in the court of chancery, and Horne was appointed. He became solicitor-general on 26 Nov. 1830, and was knighted in the same month; but his abilities made him no match for Sugden in the courts, and in the House of Commons he was deficient in adroitness. He sat for Helston in Cornwall from 1812 to 1818, and now that he was an officer of the crown a seat was found for him at Bletchingley, Surrey, from 18 Feb. to the dissolution on 23 April 1831, and for Newtown in the Isle of Wight for the parliament of 1831–2. After the Reform Bill he represented the new constituency of Marylebone (1833–4). When Denman succeeded as lord chief justice, Brougham made a vain attempt to induce Sir John Bayley [q. v.] to retire from the court of exchequer to make way for Horne there. Horne was raised to the post of attorney-general (November 1832), and Campbell [see Campbell, John, first Baron, 1779–1861] took the vacant place of solicitor-general, with the understanding that he should ‘conduct all government prosecutions in the king's bench and be consulted separately when necessary.’ Campbell was not long in pressing his claims to promotion, and Bayley was at last forced into resignation in Horne's favour (February 1834). Horne had ‘conscientious scruples against pronouncing sentence of death, and therefore could not go the circuit or sit in a criminal court.’ After a conversation with the lord chancellor, he imagined that the court was to be remodelled, and that he would not be called upon to undertake these duties; but this plan, if ever entertained by Brougham, proved impracticable, and it was at last intimated to Horne that he must either resign or be superseded. He replied ‘with great spirit’ that he would vacate his office, and thereupon withdrew to private practice. After several years he accepted from Lord Cottenham, on 23 July 1839, the post of master in chancery, and held it until 1853. Horne died at 49 Upper Harley Street, London, on 13 July 1860. Campbell acknowledged Horne's ‘many valuable qualities,’ and Brougham referred to the ‘abominable treatment of Horne’ and his ‘admirable and truly unexampled behaviour.’ His wife, a Miss Hesse, whom he married in 1800, died there on 12 Nov. 1849. They had a large family. His third son, Francis Woodley Horne, a major in the 7th hussars, was killed in the Indian mutiny on the River Raptee in 1858, and is commemorated on a tablet in Little Berkhampstead Church (Cussans, Hertfordshire, vol. ii. pt. ii. p. 168).

[Times, 14 July 1860 p. 1, 16 July p. 9; Mrs. Hardcastle's Lord Campbell, ii. 18–41; Martin's Lord Lyndhurst, p. 18; Le Marchant's Lord Spencer, pp. 61–2; Brougham's Life and Times, iii. 341–54, 426–9; Greville's Journals, iii. 67; Gent. Mag. 1839 pt. ii. 194, 1849 pt. ii. 665.]

W. P. C.

HORNEBOLT, or HORNEBAUD, HORENBOUT, HOORENBAULT, HOREBOUT, GERARD (1480?–1540), painter, was born about 1480 at Ghent, of a family which had produced numerous artists since 1414. The earliest notice of him is a payment to him in the communal accounts for the year 1510–11 for a plan of part of the town of Ghent. His chief patron at Ghent was the Abbé Lievin Huguenois of the cathedral church, for whom he executed two pictures—one of the ‘Flagellation,’ and the other of ‘The Deposition from the Cross,’ formerly in the church of St. Bavon—a diptych with the portrait of the abbé adoring the Virgin and Child, lately in the collection of M. C. Onghena at Ghent, by whom it was engraved (see Messager des Sciences Historiques, 1833, p. 16), and the designs for the fine chasuble and cope still preserved in the treasury of St. Bavon, also engraved by Onghena (Kervyn de Volkaersbeke, Eglises de Gand, i. 164). In December 1517 Hornebolt was already married, as appears by a deed preserved at Ghent to which he and his wife, Margaret Svanders, daughter of Derick Svanders and widow of Jan van Heerweghe, were parties. Hornebolt was celebrated as one of the best illuminators of the day, and was largely employed by Margaret of Austria, the regent of the Netherlands, for whom he executed several walls, including a portrait of Christian II of Denmark. He attended her at Bruges, Mechlin, and Antwerp, and it was probably on one of these journeys that Albrecht Dürer met him at Antwerp in 1521, as recorded in Dürer's diary of his journey to the Netherlands. His reputation as an illuminator has led to the identification of Gerard Hornebolt with the ‘Gherardo da Guanto,’ one of the traditional collaborators in the famous breviary of Car-