# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Horne, Robert (1519?-1580)

​HORNE, ROBERT (1519?–1580), bishop of Winchester, was son of John Horne, a member of an old Cumberland family settled at Cleator in that county, where he was probably born. The doubt as to his birthplace, suggested by his having been admitted to a Yorkshire fellowship at St. John's College, Cambridge, is answered by the fact that Cleator is situated in what was the old archdeaconry of Richmond, which, before the foundation of the see of Chester by Henry VIII, was included in the diocese of York. He graduated at St. John's College as B.A. in 1536–7, M.A. in 1540, B.D. in 1546, and D.D. in 1549. He was elected a fellow of his college on 25 March 1536–7, and became senior bursar, and Hebrew lecturer in 1545–1546. He was a zealous advocate of the reformed doctrines, and, being a man of learning and a powerful preacher, he soon obtained ecclesiastical preferment. In October 1546 he became vicar of Matching in Essex, in May 1550 rector of Allhallows, Bread Street, London, about the same time chaplain to Edward VI, and in November of the following year dean of Durham, on the deprivation of Dean Robertson. The new dean was received with ill-concealed aversion by a chapter wedded to the ‘old learning’ and ritual (Rites of Durham, Surtees Society, pp. 59, 65). On 18 Feb. 1552–3 Cecil wrote to the chapter requiring them to conform to Horne's orders ‘in religion and divine service,’ and to ‘receive him and use him well’ (Lansdowne MS. 981, fol. 194). Without delay Horne began reforming his cathedral and its services on the strictest puritan lines. With his own hands he removed St. Cuthbert's tomb in the cloisters, and tore down the ‘superstitious ornaments’ in the cathedral and in St. Nicholas Church.
Horne took part in the disputation on the sacraments with John Feckenham [q. v.] and Young, held at the houses of Sir William Cecil and Sir Richard Moryson (Strype, Cranmer, i. 385). He became prebendary of Bugthorpe in York Minster on 27 April 1552, and in the following October he was appointed with other of the royal chaplains to consider a scheme of articles of religion (ib. p. 391); the forty-five articles were the result, and Horne amongst the rest signed them. On 11 Oct. 1552 ‘Horne, deane of Durham, declared a secret conspiracy of th' erl of Westmurland, the yeare of th' apprehension of the duke of Somerset. … He was commanded to kepe this matter close’ (Lit. Rem. Edw. VI, 463). At the same time he was nominated by Northumberland as the successor of Tunstall, the deprived bishop of Durham, the see being severed from that of Newcastle by act of ​parliament (7 Edward VI). The oversight of the diocese was actually committed to him on 27 Nov. 1552 (ib. p. 415), but, greatly to Northumberland's annoyance, he ‘cared not to take it over Tunstall's head’ (Cal. State Papers, January 1551–2). On 2 Jan. 1552–3 Northumberland wrote of Horne: ‘I have been much deceived by him, for he is undoubtedly not only a greedy, covetous man, but also a malicious, and an open evil speaker.’
The accession of Mary at once deprived Horne of all his preferments. He was summoned before the lords of the council in September 1553, and charged with having polluted the church of Durham by introducing his wife into the college, and with having infected the whole diocese with protestant error. He was deprived of his deanery; all his goods at Durham were confiscated for the queen's use, and on learning that it was intended to commit him to the Tower, he started for Zurich, paying a visit on the way to Peter Martyr at Strasburg (Strype, Memorials, iii. pref. viii). At Zurich Horne and his wife, Margery, with eleven others of the leading scholars of the day, were sheltered and hospitably entertained by Christopher Froschover, the protestant printer (ib. i. 232, 519, cf. Cole, William, D.D., d. 1600). Horne declined the invitation of the English exiles settled at Frankfort, under the spiritual rule of John Knox [q. v.], to join them there and form one united protestant church. He was determined to ‘adhere to the order last taken in the church of England’ (the second prayer-book of Edward VI), but ultimately joined Richard Cox [q. v.] at Frankfort, and on the expulsion of Knox (26 March 1555) and the resettlement of the church there, he was appointed reader in Hebrew. He joined with Cox, Grindal, Sandys, and others in a letter to Calvin (5 April 1555) informing him of the changes made in their ritual for the sake of peace, and apologising for acting without consulting him (Zurich Letters, iii. 753–5). Horne was soon involved in the notorious ‘troubles at Frankfort,’ but after the withdrawal of Knox's supporters, Whittingham, Foxe, and others, Cox appointed Horne chief minister (1 March 1555–6), and left for Strasburg. Fresh broils ensued in January 1556–7. Horne resigned his office. At the suggestion of the magistrates a new scheme of church government was drawn up, but Horne and his friends declined to accept either it or another plan of reconciliation drawn up by Cox and Sandys (afterwards archbishop of York), whom the magistrates had summoned to heal the rupture (Fuller, Church Hist. iv. 207–26; Collier, Church Hist. vi. 144–53, 162–4). In June Horne left Frankfort for Strasburg, and remained there until 21 Dec. 1558, when the death of Mary made it safe for him to return to England.
Horne reached London at the beginning of 1559, and was restored to the deanery of Durham (Strype, Annals,i. i. 228–9; Camden, Elizabeth, s.a. 1559). He was at once selected to preach on public occasions in London, sometimes before the queen (cf. Churton, Life of Nowell, p. 43; (Strype, u.s. p. 394). At the disputation at Westminster Abbey between the Roman catholic and protestant divines on 31 March, Horne led the way on his side with a weighty and learned paper ((Strype, u.s. i. ii. 465, No. xv.; Foxe, Acts, iii. 979 ff.; Cardwell, Conferences, pp. 24–9). On the opening of the visitation at St. Paul's on 11 Aug. he was the preacher, and sat as visitor both there and in other churches of London (Machyn, Diary, pp. 206–7; (Strype, u.s. I. i. 249). He was also appointed one of the visitors of the university of Cambridge and of Eton College ((Strype, Parker, i. 205). In November 1560, on White's deprivation, he was nominated to the see of Winchester, and was consecrated by Parker at Lambeth on 16 Feb. 1561. In the winter of 1563 Feckenham, the late abbot of Westminster, was committed to his custody. For a time Horne daily discussed matters of faith with the prisoner before selected audiences with much temper and courtesy. But after Feckenham contradicted a report of his approaching conformity which Horne had circulated, the bishop treated him with greater rigour, refused all further discussion with him, and finally secured his recommittal to the Tower in October 1564. Feckenham published (1565) what purported to be Horne's arguments and his answers in their conferences together. Horne, in an elaborate reply, violently impugned Feckenham's accuracy and honesty [see Feckenham, John] ((Strype, Annals, i. i. 215, ii. 179; (Strype, Parker, i. 279; Wood, Athenæ, i. 508). When Edmund Bonner [q. v.], the deprived bishop of London, was committed to the Marshalsea in Southwark, within his diocese, Horne, ‘with officious and reprehensible zeal,’ caused the oath of supremacy to be tendered to him in the full assurance that he would not take it. When indicted for recusancy before the queen's bench Bonner, or his counsel, justified his refusal by the plea that Horne had no authority to administer the oath as not being legally a bishop, never having been consecrated by a form sanctioned by parliament, the Act of Uniformity which gave authority to the prayer-book having made no express mention of the ordinal. To remedy this defect a fresh act was passed in 1566, ​having a retrospective force, but care was taken that neither Bonner nor any other person should be similarly molested (Heylyn, Reformation, ii. 424–6; Strype, Annals, i. ii. 2–4; Strype, Parker, i. 120). In 1573 John Leslie [q. v.], bishop of Ross, the wily ambassador of Mary Queen of Scots at the English court, was placed in Horne's custody, and on 14 Nov. Horne begged Burghley to relieve him of his prisoner, whom he described as a ‘devilish spirit’ and ‘this devill’ (Lansd. MSS. xvii. art. 57; Ellis, Orig. Letters, 3rd ser. iii. 367). In 1565 he presented his old fellow-exile, Laurence Humphrey [q. v.], to a living, which called forth a remonstrance from Jewel on account of Humphrey's nonconformity (Strype, Annals, i. ii. 133; Strype, Parker, i. 369). Horne was incorporated D.D. of Oxford 9 July 1568. As visitor he forced Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, to admit his companion at Zurich, William Cole, D.D. [q. v.], to the headship, to which Cole had recently been nominated by the queen against the fellows' wishes. A strict visitation followed, and the college was purged of all taint of Romanism (Strype, Grindal, p. 196; Strype, Parker, i. 528; Wood, Annals, ii. 165). He exercised visitatorial authority with equal vigour at St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1571, and at New College, Oxford. At New College he removed in 1576 John Underhill [q. v.], afterwards bishop of Oxford, from his fellowship for questioning his powers; but Underhill, by Leslie's advice, having threatened Horne with a lawsuit, the bishop reinstated him (Wood, Athenæ, ii. 831). Horne's puritanical fanaticism led him in his visitations of his cathedral, as well as of the colleges subject to him, to order the destruction of every picture, painted window, image, vestment, ornament, or architectural structure, which he regarded as superstitious. Organs were silenced, and missals and old service books were put to the vilest uses. Copes and vestments were prohibited, and persons were forbidden to turn to the east at the ‘Gloria Patri’ more papistico. At New College the whole of the rich tabernacle work covering the east end of the chapel was shattered to pieces, the wall made flat, whitened, and inscribed with scripture texts. The cloisters and chapter-house of his cathedral were pulled down to save the cost of repair, and ‘to turn their leaden roofs into gold’ (Warton, Life of Sir Thomas Pope, Appendix xix.; Wood, Fasti, i. 180, n. 7; Kitchen, Winchester, p. 180).
Horne laboured hard to get the ‘papistical habits’ abolished, but he ultimately accepted them. In 1564 he signed the episcopal manifesto allowing the ‘habits’ and explaining their use, and, with Jewel, preached at Paul's Cross to reconcile the people to them, saying ‘he wished those cut off from the church who troubled it about white or black garments, square or round caps’ (Neal, Puritans, i. 156). Writing to his friend Gualter he expressed his dislike to the vestments, and his hope that the law might be altered; but ‘he obeyed for obedience sake’ (Strype, Annals, i. i. 264; Strype, Parker, i. 344).
In the administration of his diocese he was equally harsh to papists and sectaries. In January 1579 he desired that the papists should be more rigorously dealt with (Lansd. MSS. xii. art. 31), and in 1580 he advised the council to prevent the landing of jesuits and priests in Hampshire, and to transport obstinate recusants (Strype, Annals, ii. ii. 344). His enemies played upon his name as indicative of his character, ‘hard in nature and crooked in conditions,’ and of his ‘dwarfish and deformed person’ (Fuller, Worthies, i. 330). In January 1567 he recommended to Cecil for the deanery of Canterbury ‘one Mr. Whitgift,’ as ‘a man honest and very well learned’ (Cal. State Papers). His wife Margery died in 1576. He was in very infirm health in February 1579–80 (Zurich Letters, 2nd ser. p. 307), and died at Winchester House, Southwark, on 1 June 1580. He desired to be buried in his cathedral ‘before the pulpit, in seemly sort, without any pomp or blazing ceremony.’ He left four daughters surviving him: Anne Dayrel, Mary Hales, Margery Hales, and Rebecca Hayman. A fifth daughter, Elizabeth Dering, appears to have predeceased him. Dr. William Barlow, probably the bishop successively of Rochester and of Lincoln, was his brother-in-law. Immediately after his death his goods were seized for debts to the crown.
Apart from letters, injunctions, &c., Horne published: 1. A translation of two sermons of Calvin's, with a prefatory apology, 1553; reprinted by Antony Munday, and dedicated to Robert, earl of Leicester, 1584. 2. ‘Whether Christian Faith may be kept secret, and The hurt of being present at the Mass;’ entitled by Bale ‘De Missæ Abominationibus,’ 1553. 3. ‘Answer to Feckenham's “Scruples and Staies of Conscience touching the Oath of Supremacie,”’ 1566. 4. ‘Life and Death,’ four sermons published under his name in 1613. Horne was one of those who drew up the ‘Book of Advertisements’ in 1564 (Strype, Parker, i. 315), and helped to frame the canons of 1571 (ib. ii. 60). In Parker's revision of the authorised version, known as the ‘Bishops' Bible’ (1568), the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Lamentations were assigned to Horne (ib. ii. 222). ​In 1573 he joined Parker, Sandys, Jewel, his old friend Cox, and other prelates in concerting measures to counteract Cartwright's attacks on the established ecclesiastical government (ib. p. 282).
The collection of ‘Zurich Letters’ contains a large number of letters from and to Horne. Some of the most valuable historically, as well as the most pleasing in tone, are those addressed to Bullinger and to Gualter, Bullinger's successor in the pastorate of Zurich. One of those written to Bullinger describes the order of common prayer and administration of the sacraments of the church of England according to Edward VI's second prayer-book (Zurich Letters, 2nd ser. pp. 354–8).
A portrait at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, is said to represent Horne. It was engraved by White by mistake as that of Bishop Gardiner. It is also engraved in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine,’ vol. lxi. pt. ii. p. 611.
[Fuller's Church Hist. iv. 207–26; Heylyn's Hist. of Reformation, ii. 144–53, 162–4; Strype's Annals; Parker's Memorials, ll. cc.; Warton's Life of Sir Thomas Pope, pp. 155, 353; Troubles at Frankfort passim; Zurich Letters (see Index); Machyn's Diary; Literary Remains of King Edward VI, ed. Nichols (Roxburghe Club), ii. 463, 464, 547, 591; Neal's Hist. of Puritans, i. 82, 126; Cassan's Lives of Bishops of Winchester, ii. 25; Cooper's Athenæ Cantabr.]
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