nothing for games, and yet did not distinguish himself in lessons. He lost the sight of his right eye in a fight with a schoolfellow who had a knife in his hand, and ran away from his tutor in Kent, defending himself to his father on the ground of the tutor's ignorance of grammar. ‘He never was a boy,’ said an old lady who had known him as a child. In 1754 he entered St. John's College, Cambridge, and was ‘senior optime’ in the tripos of 1758, graduating B.A. in that year. He had a strong natural inclination for a legal career, and in 1756 he entered the Inner Temple. He kept some terms, and was intimate with Dunning (afterwards Lord Ashburton) and Kenyon. His father, however, insisted upon his taking orders, and bought for him the right of presentation to the chapel of ease at New Brentford, worth 200l. or 300l. a year. After graduating Horne was for a time usher in a school at Blackheath, and while there was ordained deacon. He was ordained priest on 23 Nov. 1760, and began his clerical duties at Brentford. He is said to have delivered good practical sermons, and to have been often asked to preach for charities in London. He also studied medicine, and established a dispensary for the good of his parishioners. He was, however, accused of being too fond of cards and society. His creed, if he had one, was of the vaguest, and he was no doubt glad of a reason for leaving his duties to a curate. In 1763 he became travelling tutor to the son of John Elwes [q. v.], the famous miser, and made a year's tour in France. Through the influence of his brother-in-law, Demainbray, Elwes, and other friends, he had a promise of a chaplaincy to the king and some hopes of preferment. On his return to England, however, he threw himself into the political excitement of the time. He published an anonymous pamphlet, called ‘The Petition of an Englishman’ (1765), defending Wilkes in violent language and challenging prosecution. He promised the publisher to give up his name if a prosecution took place. The authorities, however, refrained, because, as his biographer surmises, they did not wish to attract attention to Horne's insinuations about Bute's relations to the king's mother ingeniously conveyed by a plan of their houses at Kew. In any case Horne escaped, and in 1765 made another tour with the son of a Mr. Taylor. On landing in France he dropped his clerical dress. At Calais he made the acquaintance of Thomas Sheridan (1719–1788) and his wife, and at Paris was first introduced to Wilkes. Wilkes welcomed him as the author of the pamphlet just mentioned and the brother-in-law of Wildman. They became intimate and agreed to correspond. Horne visited Voltaire at Ferney, met Sterne at Lyons, travelled in Italy, and afterwards went to Montpellier. Thence, on 3 Jan. 1766, he wrote an unlucky letter to Wilkes, apologising for having had the ‘infectious hand of a bishop waved over him,’ but declaring that the usual results had not followed, for the devil of hypocrisy had not entered his heart. He was afterwards in Paris, and did not return to England till May 1767, when he left with Wilkes five very unclerical suits of clothes, intending to return and use them in a few months. He resumed his functions at Brentford until the return of Wilkes and the famous Middlesex election of 1768. Horne then took up Wilkes's cause with enthusiasm. He pledged himself to the full value of his means in order to secure the two best inns at Brentford for Wilkes's supporters. He made speeches, in one of which he was reported to have said that in such a cause he would ‘dye his black coat red.’ He addressed a series of fierce letters to one of the ministerial candidates, Sir W. B. Proctor, which again escaped prosecution, and he took an active part in the subsequent agitation. He made himself conspicuous by his efforts to obtain the conviction for murder of a soldier who during the St. George's Fields riots (10 May 1768) had by mistake shot an innocent spectator. He promoted the prosecution of one M'Quirk, who, during the next election at Brentford (8 Dec. 1768), when Serjeant Glynn became Wilkes's colleague, had killed a man by a blow on the head with a bludgeon. In 1769 he successfully opposed (4 Sept.) the Duke of Bedford in the election of the mayor and bailiffs of the town of Bedford, where Horne happened to have an interest. ‘Junius’ taunted the duke upon his defeat (Letter of 19 Sept. 1769). Horne also attacked George Onslow (1731–1792) [q. v.], who, after defending Wilkes, had become a lord of the treasury (11 July 1769). Horne accused him in the ‘Public Advertiser’ of selling an office at his disposal. He repeated the charge in answer to an indignant reply from Onslow, who then brought an action, which was tried at Kingston before Blackstone. The prosecutor was nonsuited upon a technical point. Another trial, however, took place before Lord Mansfield at the next assizes. Horne was then indicted for words applied to Onslow at a meeting of Surrey freeholders. A verdict was given against him, with 400l. damages. Horne appealed against this judgment on the ground that the words used were not actionable, and the verdict was
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