HORNER, George (1605-77), of Cloford, Som.

Throughout most of this period, George Horner’s political career was determined by his status as the son and heir of Sir John Horner.* As a young man, he was educated at Oxford and at Lincoln’s Inn. He pursued his legal studies with sufficient seriousness that in 1633 he was called to the bar.20Al. Ox.; LI Admiss. i. 199; LI Black Bks. ii. 309. Less than a year later, however, he got into trouble with the Lincoln’s Inn authorities when he was accused of calling their chief butler a ‘double-dealing knave’.21LI Black Bks. ii. 319. That may have been the moment at which he abandoned any thought of a legal career. At some point, probably when he married, he was given the Horner estates at Cloford, about four miles to the south of his father’s seat at Mells. Any role he played during the war years may have been undistinguished; at the time of his election to Parliament, he was accused of being ‘a known neuter, if not worse being all the time of the king’s party being here, at his own house in quiet’.22The Scotish Dove no. 119 (21-9 Jan. 1646), 945, E.319.17. However, it is possible that he was the ‘Colonel Horner’ whose quarrel with William Strode II* in late 1643 was important enough to come to the Commons’ attention.23CJ iii. 351a, 352a, 355b.

Horner had one singular advantage when he came to stand in the December 1645 Somerset by-election – his father, as sheriff, presided over the poll. What their opponents saw as Sir John’s high-handedness ensured that Horner was elected along with John Harington I*. The pair were allowed to take their seats at Westminster and on 28 January 1646 Horner took the Covenant.24CJ iv. 420b. But their rivals, led by John Pyne*, challenged the result and petitioned Parliament against them. On 5 June the Commons ruled that the election had been invalid.25Harington’s Diary, 22; CJ iv. 565b-566a. However, Horner and Harington secured their re-election at the second poll held on 13 July.26Harington’s Diary, 28.

Tellingly, most of Horner’s known activity at Westminster relates to periods of absence. The liklihood is that he became increasingly uncomfortable with the direction Parliament was taking. As early as 21 August 1646 and again on 22 February 1647 he obtained permission to spend time in the country. He was back in London by early May 1647 when he was named to the committee considering the indemnity bill.27CJ iv. 650b; v. 93a, 166a. A Presbyterian (like his father), he remained at Westminster following the withdrawal of the Independents to the army on 30 July and three days later he was added to the committee on the bill concerning the powers of the ‘committee of safety’, which had been set up in June to join with the City militia for mobilising London against the army.28CJ v. 265b. But equally, he remained in the Commons after the army had entered London and he subsequently sat on the committee on the bill to reverse all decisions which had been taken by the Commons between 26 July and 6 August, a time when Horner himself had been present in the House.29CJ v. 272a. Thereafter his disquiet with the Independents would take the more subtle form of non-attendance. He was absent when the House was called on 9 October. He formalized his absence on 23 November, when he was given permission to be away from Westminster for six weeks.30CJ v. 330a, 366b. Perhaps for that reason, he was one of the Somerset MPs who a month later were given the task of encouraging the assessment collections there.31CJ v. 400b. He was absent once more when the House was called on 24 April and was granted a further period of leave the following June. He was still absent on 26 September.32CJ v. 543b, 609a; vi. 34a. Yet he had one task still to perform in the Commons. On 23 November 1648 he and John Ashe* acted as the tellers in the procedural division over the appointment of Henry Henley* as sheriff of Dorset. There was a personal dimension to this. Henley had been one of the candidates Horner had defeated in order to get elected, so Horner and Ashe were now probably attempting to block Henley’s appointment. They failed and the Commons went ahead and appointed Henley.33CJ vi. 84b.

Horner found himself excluded from Parliament by the purge of 6 December 1648.34A Vindication (1649), 28 (irregular pagination) (E.539.5); A List of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1648, 669.f.13.62). However, at this point the Rump, seemingly eager to retain the service of Horner and his father, added him to the Somerset commission of the peace.35C231/6, p. 130. Any hope that he would be active in that role probably proved to be ill-founded and in the 1650s he was appointed to no further local offices. In 1654 it was his father who represented the family interest in the elections to the first protectoral Parliament. On the death of Sir John in late 1659, George inherited most of the family estates, although the doubts about the authenticity of his father’s will may initially have created some uncertainty as to the exact extent of that inheritance.36PROB 11/298, ff. 257v-258. As his mother retained Mells as part of her jointure until her death in 1666, Cloford remained Horner’s principal residence for the time being. If he resumed his seat in the Long Parliament in late February 1660, he left no trace in the records.

Horner may have seemed well-placed to benefit from the Restoration. His position as head of one of the major Somerset families, as well as his lack of involvement in public affairs during the interregnum, made him a figure of some local consequence. In April 1660, when he was elected as one of the Somerset knights of the shire for the Convention, he did so as a supporter of a restored monarchy and he was then said to have ‘always showed himself affected to that interest’.37HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Somerset’. Two months later he was knighted by the king.38Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 229; Le Neve’s Pedigrees, 79 Yet the following year he did not stand again and the remaining years of his life seem to have been largely uneventful. When he was appointed as sheriff in 1668 he was allowed to appoint a deputy on account of ‘his great infirmities’.39CSP Dom. 1667-8, p. 244. In the words of his epitaph, he ‘fell asleep’ on 9 February 1677. He was then buried at Cloford.40Collinson, Som. ii. 206; Pevsner, North Som. and Bristol (1958), 171. His eldest surviving son, George†, continued the family’s intermittent tradition of parliamentary service as a moderate tory in the 1685 and 1689 Parliaments.41HP Commons 1660-1690.