Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Horn, Andrew

1396555Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 27 — Horn, Andrew1891Charles Welch

HORN, ANDREW (d. 1328), chamberlain of London and legal writer, born in London, carried on the trade of a fishmonger in Bridge Street. In 1315 he, with fifteen other fishmongers, was summoned before the sheriffs of London on a charge of using dorsers or baskets ‘not of rightful measure.’ Horn and one other person were acquitted (Riley, Memorials of London, 1868, p. 116). He was elected chamberlain of the city in January 1319–20, and continued in that office till his death. Horn was present at a meeting of the mayor and aldermen in 1327 (ib. p. 169). He died in 1328, and his will, dated 9 Oct. of that year, is enrolled in the Court of Husting (Sharpe, Calendar of Husting Wills, i. 344–5). His accounts as chamberlain, up to 18 Oct. 1328, were rendered by his executors, and passed in August of the following year (ib. i. 344). He leaves to the chamber of the Guildhall of London several valuable books: ‘De gestis Anglorum,’ ‘De veteribus legibus Angliæ,’ and other manuscripts, some of which have been identified as still in the possession of the corporation. He was unmarried, and left his property to be divided among his brother, William Horn, rector of the church of Rotherhithe, William and Simon Doggett, his nephews, and Cristina his niece. Besides his residence in Bridge Street, he possessed a house in Eastcheap.

Horn is chiefly known by a valuable compilation of city laws and customs preserved among the records at Guildhall, and entitled ‘Liber Horn,’ which is composed of two or more distinct treatises. It contains an early copy of the laws of Oleron (Black Book of the Admiralty, ed. Sir Travers Twiss, Introd. pp. lix–lx); on folio ccvi, where a fresh compilation of charters, statutes, &c., commences, there is an illuminated frontispiece containing a rubricated note briefly describing the contents of the volume (‘Quem fieri fecit anno Domini mcccxi’). Horn was also the author (or perhaps editor) of the well-known legal treatise ‘La Somme appelle Mirroir des Justices, vel Speculum Justiciariorum, factum per A. H.,’ of which a sixteenth-century manuscript copy is in the British Museum (Addit. MS. 25033). Printed editions of the book appeared in 1624, London, 12mo; 1642, London, 16mo; in 1776, in Hoüard's ‘Traité sur les coutumes Anglo-Normandes,’ tome 4, 4to; and an English translation by W[illiam] H[ughes] in 1646, London, 8vo, 1649, 12mo, 1659, 8vo, and 1768, 8vo. A new edition, edited from MS. in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, by W. J. Whittaker, with translation and introduction by F. W. Maitland, was issued by the Selden Society in 1895.

[Authorities above cited.]

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