SIR

See also:

• GEOFFREY
• GEOFFREY (1158-1186)
• GEOFFREY (c. I152-1212)

GEOFFREY

See also:

• THOMAS
• THOMAS (c. 1654-1720)
• THOMAS (d. 110o)
• THOMAS, ARTHUR GORING (1850-1892)
• THOMAS, CHARLES LOUIS AMBROISE (1811-1896)
• THOMAS, GEORGE (c. 1756-1802)
• THOMAS, GEORGE HENRY (1816-187o)
• THOMAS, ISAIAH (1749-1831)
• THOMAS, PIERRE (1634-1698)
• THOMAS, SIDNEY GILCHRIST (1850-1885)
• THOMAS, ST
• THOMAS, THEODORE (1835-1905)
• THOMAS, WILLIAM (d. 1554)

THOMAS PHIPPS

See also:

• SIR GEOFFREY THOMAS PHIPPS HORNBY (1825-1895)

HORNBY (1825-1895)  , British admiral of the fleet, son of Admiral Sir Phipps Hornby, the first cousin and brother-in-law of the 13th earl of Derby, by a daughter of Lieut.-General Burgoyne, commonly distinguished as " Saratoga " Burgoyne, was born on the loth of February 1825 . At the age of twelve he was sent to sea in the flagship of Sit Robert Stopford, with whom he saw the capture of Acre in November 184o . He afterwards served in the flagship of Rear-Admiral Josceline Percy at the Cape of Good Hope, was flag-lieutenant to his father in the Pacific, and came home as a commander . When the Derby ministry fell in December 1852 young Hornby was promoted to be captain . Early in 18J3 he married, and as the Derby connexion put him out of favour with the Aberdeen ministry, and especially with Sir James Graham, the first lord of the Admiralty, he settled down in Sussex as manager of his father's property . He had no appointment in the navy till 1858, when he was sent out to China to take command of the " Tribune " frigate and convey a body of marines to Vancouver Island, where the dispute with the United States about the island of San Juan was threatening to become very bitter . As senior naval officer there Hornby's moderation, temper and tact did much to smooth over matters, and a temporary arrangement for joint occupation of the island was concluded . He afterwards commanded the " Neptune " in the Mediterranean under Sir William Fanshawe Martin, was flag-captain to Rear-Admiral Dacres in the Channel, was commodore of the squadron on the west coast of Africa, and, being promoted to rear-admiral in January 1869, commanded the training squadron for a couple of years . He then commanded the Channel Fleet, and was for two years a junior lord of the Admiralty . It was early in 1877 that he went out as commanderin-chief in the Mediterraean, where his skill in manoeuvring the fleet, his power as a disciplinarian, and the tact and determination with which he conducted the foreign relations at the time of the Russian advance on Constantinople, won for him the K.C.B . He returned home in r88o with the character of being perhaps the most able commander on the active list of the navy . His later appointments were to the Royal Naval College as president, and afterwards to Portsmouth as commanderin-chief .

On hauling down his flag he was appointed G.C.B., and in May 1888 was promoted to be admiral of the fleet . From 1886 he was

principal naval aide-de-camp to Queen Victoria, and in that capacity, and as an admiral of the fleet, was appointedon the staff of the German emperor during his visits to England in 1889 and 189o . He died, after a short illness, on the 3rd of March 1895 . By his wife, who predeceased him, he left several children, daughters and sons, one of whom, a major in the artillery, won the Victoria Cross in South Africa in 1900 . His life was written by his daughter, Mrs Fred . Egerton, (1896) . HORNCASTLE, a market-town in the S . Lindsey or Horncastle parliamentary division of Lincolnshire, England, at the foot of a line of low hills called the Wolds, at the confluence of the Bain and Waring streams; the terminus of a branch line of the Great Northern railway, 130 M . N. from London . Pop. of urban district (1901) 4038 . The church of St Mary is principally Decorated and Perpendicular, with some Early English remains and an embattled western tower . Queen Elizabeth's grammar school was founded in 1562 .

Other buildings are an

exchange, a court-house and a dispensary founded in 1789 . The prosperity of the town is chiefly dependent on agriculture and its well-known horse fairs . Brewing and malting are carried on, and there is some trade in coal and iron . Remains have been found here which may indicate the existence of a Roman village . The manor of Horncastle (Hornecastre) belonged to Queen Edith in Saxon times and was royal demesne in 1o86 and the head of a large soke . In the reign of Stephen it apparently belonged to Alice de Cundi, a partisan of the empress Maud, and passing to the crown on her death it was granted by Henry III. to Gerbald de Escald, from whom it descended to Ralph de Rhodes, who sold it to Walter Mauclerc, bishop of Carlisle in 1230 . The see of Carlisle retained it till the reign of Edward VI. when it was granted to Edward, Lord Clinton, but was recovered in the following reign . In 1230 Henry III. directed the men of Horncastle to render a reasonable aid to the bishop, who obtained the right to try felons, hold a court leet and have free warren . An inquisition of 1275 shows that the bishop had then, besides the return of writs, the assize of bread and ale and waifs and strays in the soke . Horncastle was a centre of the Lincolnshire rebellion of 1536 . Royalist troops occupied the town in 1643, and were pursued through its streets after the battle fought at Winceby . It was never a municipal or parliamentary borough, but during the middle ages it was frequently the residence of the bishops of Carlisle .

Its prosperity has always depended largely on its fairs, the great horse

fair described by George Borrow in Romany Rye being granted to the bishop in 1230 for the octave of St Lawrence, together with the fair on the feast of St Barnabas . The three other fairs are apparently of later date . See George Weir, Historical and Descriptive Sketches of the Town and Soke of Horncastle in the County of Lincoln and of Several Places adjacent (London, 1820) .