Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 27.djvu/231

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Home
225
Home

vened to take measures for the repression of disorder on the borders, he and others were summoned to appear on 11 Aug. 1600 at Falkland on pain of rebellion (ib. vi. 136). Home obeyed the summons. In the following year he and other nobles who had previously been catholics were subjected to more stringent superintendence by the authorities of the kirk, and an ordinance was made for confirming them in the truth (Calderwood, vi. 115–23), but the commissioner appointed to wait on Home reported that he was out of the country (ib. p. 162). Home was one of the retinue who in 1603 accompanied King James to England on his accession to the English throne, the king on his way staying for a night at Home's castle of Dunglass. On 7 July the king constituted him lieutenant and justiciary over the three marches (Reg. P. C. Scotl. vi. 833). He was also sworn a privy councillor of England, and on 4 March 1605 was created Earl of Home and Lord Dunglass. Suspected anew of Roman catholicism, he was ordered in 1606 to confine himself in Edinburgh (Calderwood, vi. 608). He died 5 April 1619.

He married first Christian, sister of William Douglas, earl of Morton, and relict of Laurence, master of Oliphant. She died without issue by Home. His second wife was Mary Sutton, eldest daughter of Edward, lord Dudley, by whom he had a son James, second earl of Home, and two daughters: Margaret, married to James, fifth earl of Moray; and Lady Anne, married to John Maitland, duke of Lauderdale.

[Reg. P. C. Scotl. vols. iii–viii.; Cal. State Papers, Scott. and Dom. Ser.; Hist. James the Sext; Histories of Calderwood and Spotiswood; Balfour's Annals; Douglas's Scottish Peerage (Wood), i. 735–6.]

T. F. H.

HOME, DANIEL DUNGLAS (1833–1886), spiritualist medium, born near Edinburgh on 20 March 1833, was son of William Home, by Elizabeth McNeill, who came of a family supposed to be gifted with second sight. His father was a natural son of Alexander, tenth earl of Home. His surname was pronounced Hume. He was taken when about nine years old to Greeneville, Connecticut, by an aunt, Mrs. McNeill Cook, who had adopted him. He was a delicate, nervous, sensitive child, and a seer of visions. Soon after his mother's death, of which she is said to have had a presentiment, and he ‘telepathic’ warning, mysterious ‘raps’ were heard in his aunt's house. She called in the local clergy of all denominations to exorcise the supposed evil spirits, and, their prayers failing to put an end to the noises, turned Home, whom she suspected to be responsible for them, out of the house. The raps accompanied him. He found friends, however, who welcomed both him and the raps, and for the pleasure of hearing ‘messages’ spelt out of them by calling over the alphabet, and seeing their furniture move as if alive, gave him board and lodging. He soon became famous, and his séances were attended by Bryant the poet, Professor Wells of Harvard, Professor Hare of Philadelphia, and Judge Edmonds of the United States Supreme Court, all of whom publicly attested his good faith and the phenomena. Only once while in America, at the house of Ward Cheney, near Hartford, Connecticut, in 1852, is Home said to have been ‘levitated,’ i.e. raised in the air by some unknown force. Guitar-playing without hands, and autograph-writing and hand-shaking by a hand without a body, are said to have been observed at another séance at Hartford on 15 March 1855. In the following April Home landed in England, and Lord Brougham and Sir David Brewster held an informal séance at his hotel, Cox's, in Jermyn Street, London. Brougham kept silence as to what occurred, but Brewster admitted in the columns of the ‘Morning Advertiser’ that he had heard unaccountable rappings, and that ‘the table actually rose, as appeared to me, from the ground.’ Home held other séances at the houses of Dr. Garth Wilkinson and Mr. Rymer, a solicitor at Ealing, which were attended by (among others) Sir Edward Bulwer (afterwards Lord) Lytton and Robert Browning and his wife. Mrs. Browning is said to have believed; her husband disbelieved, and wrote ‘Sludge the Medium’ (first published in 1864). Some of the phenomena at these séances, in particular the shuddering, tilting, and turning of the chairs and tables, the articles on the latter keeping their place nevertheless, the playing of tunes on an accordion held by Home bottom upwards with one hand only, the levitation of the tables, the receipt of messages by raps, and so forth, were minutely described by Dr. Wilkinson in a letter to the ‘Morning Advertiser’ signed ‘Verax’ (reprinted in Home's Incidents in my Life, pp. 70 et seq.). Home wintered in Florence, where he held many séances at an old villa, reputed to be haunted, then the residence of Mrs. Georgina Baker, a well-known member of the English colony. Only very fragmentary records of these séances have been preserved. On 5 Dec. 1855 his life was attempted as he was returning to his rooms late at night. He escaped, however, with a slight wound. For a year he abandoned holding séances, visited Naples and Rome, was received into the church of Rome, and had an audience of the pope. During 1857–8 he held séances

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