abstemious, an untiring student of the Bible and religious literature, a skilful casuist, constantly consulted in cases of conscience, and well read in Arabic, Hebrew, and rabbinical literature. He wrote little in controversy, though he took a decided part against the catholics during the reign of James II. His books are chiefly devotional, and dwell especially upon preparation for the sacrament. They went through many editions down to 1730, and some reprints have appeared since 1846. Kidder says that he never saw such a number of communicants, or such signs of devotion, as at Horneck's church. He was one of many men of eminent piety in the anglican church during the Restoration period, though he cannot be reckoned among the philosophical writers of the time.
Horneck was survived by three children: Philip, called by Lord Oxford ‘a special rascal,’ and abused in the ‘Dunciad’ (bk. iii. l. 152); William, who became a general, and is buried near his father; and a daughter, married first to Robert Barneveld, and secondly to Captain Warre. William was father of Kane William Horneck, whose eldest daughter married Henry William Bunbury [q. v.], and whose younger daughter was Goldsmith's ‘Jessamy Bride.’ For further information as to his family, see ‘Notes and Queries,’ 1st ser. iii. 117, and 3rd ser. v. 458, 521, vi. 38, 92.
His works are: 1. ‘The Great Law of Consideration … wherein the nature, usefulness, and absolute necessity of Consideration, in order to a … religious life, are laid open,’ 1676; 11th edit. 1729. 2. ‘Letter to a Lady, revolted from the Romish Church’ (given by Kidder, not in the British Museum). 3. ‘The happy Ascetick; or the Best Exercise …; to which is added, A Letter to a Person of Quality concerning the Holy Lives of the Primitive Christians,’ 1681; 6th edit. 1724, for which Hogarth engraved a frontispiece (The ‘Letter’ was reprinted in 1849, and in the ‘Churchman's Library,’ 1853). 4. ‘Delight and Judgment; or the Great Assize …,’ 1683 (where the first title appears to have been the ‘Sirenes;’ see ‘Short Account’); 3rd edit. 1705. 5. ‘The Fire of the Altar; or certain Directions how to raise the Soul into holy Flames before, at, and after the receiving of the … Lord's Supper.’ Appended is ‘A Dialogue betwixt a Christian and his own Conscience,’ 1683; 13th edit. 1718. 6. ‘The Exercise of Prayer’ (supplementary to the last), 1685. 7. ‘First Fruits of Reason,’ 1685. 8. ‘The Crucified Jesus; or a full account of the … Sacrament of the Lord's Supper,’ 1686; 7th edit. 1727. 9. ‘Questions and Answers concerning the two Religions,’ 1688. 10. ‘Advice to Parents,’ &c., 1690. 11. ‘An Answer to the Soldier's Question’ (mentioned by Kidder). 12. ‘Several Sermons upon the Fifth of St. Matthew, being part of Christ's Sermon on the Mount’ (with an engraved portrait), 2nd edit. 1706, with life by Kidder.
Horneck published some separate sermons. He translated from the French ‘An Antidote against a Careless Indifferency …’ in 1683; and supervised a translation of Royaumont's ‘History of the Old and New Testaments,’ 1690, &c. He added accounts of witchcraft in Sweden to the later editions of the ‘Sadducismus Triumphatus’ of Joseph Glanvill [q. v.], and wrote a preface to Glanvill's ‘Remains,’ 1681. He attended Borosky and Stern, convicted of the murder of Thomas Thynne in 1682, and with Burnet published an account of their confessions and behaviour (printed in Howell, State Trials, ix. 83–123, and Harleian Misc. (1811), viii. 191–218). On 5 May 1689, E. Sclater, vicar of Putney, who had gone over to Rome under James II, recanted publicly at the Savoy, and Horneck published an account of the affair.
[Summary Account of the Life of … Horneck, in a Letter to a Friend, 1697 (a vague eulogy); Life by Richard (Kidder), bishop of Bath and Wells (an interesting account), 1698 (and prefixed to fifteen sermons, as above); Loftie's Memorials of the Savoy, 1878, pp. 180, 190–2; R. B. Hone's Lives of Eminent Christians, 1834, ii. 305–65; Le Neve's Fasti, i. 201, 425, iii. 362; Wood's Athenæ, iv. 529–31, and Fasti, ii. 271.]
HORNER, FRANCIS (1778–1817), politician, eldest son of John Horner, a merchant of Edinburgh, and his wife Joanna, daughter of John Baillie, a writer of the signet, was born at Edinburgh on 12 Aug. 1778. Leonard Horner [q. v.] was his brother. In 1786 he was sent to the high school at Edinburgh, where he became dux of the rector's class. In November 1792 he matriculated at the university of Edinburgh, where he attracted the notice of Dugald Stewart, and became the intimate friend of Lord Henry Petty. He left the university at the end of the summer session of 1795, and having determined to go to the bar was placed under the care of the Rev. John Hewlett at Shacklewell, Middlesex, in order to rid himself of his broad Scottish accent. Returning to Edinburgh in the autumn of 1797, he was shortly afterwards admitted with his friend Brougham to the Speculative Society, of which he became a leading member. In June 1800 he was called to the Scotch bar, but though he became ‘daily more attached to law as a study,’ he also became ‘daily more averse to the practice of the Scots court’
