George Horne DD (1730 - 1792)

Born 1 Nov 1730 in Otham, Kent, England

Ancestors

Husband of Felicia Elizabetha (Burton) Horne — married 22 Jun 1768 in Holborn, Middlesex, England

Descendants

Died 17 Jan 1792 at age 61 in Bath, Somerset, England

Biography

George Horne DD is Notable.

George Horne DD (1730-1792) was an English clergyman, academic, writer, and university administrator.

Born at Otham near Maidstone in Kent, he was the eldest surviving son of the Reverend Samuel Horne (1693-1768), rector of the parish, and his wife Ann Hendley (1697-1787), youngest daughter of the MP Bowyer Hendley. He attended Maidstone Grammar School and from there went in 1746 to University College, Oxford. His two younger brothers were also Oxford graduates and clergymen, Samuel Horne (1733-1772) becoming an Oxford academic while William Horne (1740-1821) succeeded their father as rector of Otham.

In 1749 he became a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, later being elected its President, and serving as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford from 1776 until 1780. In 1771 the Prime Minister had appointed him to the Royal Household as chaplain in ordinary to King George III, a position he held until 1781. In that year, he was appointed Dean of Canterbury, combining the post with the presidency of Magdalen. In 1790, by then in ill health from which he never recovered, with some reluctance he accepted the bishopric of Norwich, resigning from Canterbury and, the next year, from Magdalen. Aged 62, he died at Bath, Somerset, in 1792 and was buried in his father-in-law's vault at Eltham.

Through his preaching, journalism, correspondence: and authorship of numerous works, he actively defended the High Church tendency in Anglicanism against Calvinism, the Church of England against other denominations, and Trinitarian Christianity against other beliefs. He was friendly with Samuel Johnson who with James Boswell came to tea at Magdalen, where they discussed producing a new edition of the Lives by Izaak Walton, and Boswell later wrote warmly of Horne's character and abilities.

In 1768, he had married Felicia Burton (1741–1821), only child of lawyer and legal author Philip Burton and his wife Felicia Whitfield, and they had three daughters, two of whom married and left children.

Sources

Nigel Aston. "Horne, George (1730–1792)" in "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography", 23 September 2004 https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/13789 (accessible to members of subscribing libraries)

J. H. Overton, "Horne, George (1730–1792)" in "Dictionary of National Biography", 1891 https://doi.org/10.1093/odnb/9780192683120.013.13789

See also

Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Horne_(bishop)