JOHN

See also:

• JOHN HORSLEY (c. 1685 – 1732)
• HORSLEY, JOHN CALLCOTT (1817-1903)
• HORSLEY, SAMUEL (1733-1806)
• HORSLEY, WILLIAM (1774–1858)

HORSLEY (c. 1685 – 1732)  , British archaeologist . John Hodgson (1779–1845), the historian of Northumberland, in a short memoir published in 1831, held that he was born in 1685, at Pinkie House, in the parish of Inveresk, Midlothian, and that his father was a Northumberland Nonconformist, who had migrated to Scotland, but returned to England soon after the Revolution of 1688 . J . H . Hinde, in the Archaeologia Aeliana (Feb . 1865), held that he was a native of Newcastle-on-Tyne, the son of Charles Horsley, a member of the Tailors' Company of that town . He was educated at Newcastle, and at Edinburgh University, where he graduated M.A. on the 29th of April 1701 . There is evidence that he " was settled in Morpeth as a Presbyterian minister as early as 1709." Hodgson, however, thought that up to 1721, at which time he was residing at Widdrington, " he had not received ordination, but preached as a licentiate." Even if he was ordained then, his stay at the latter place was probably prolonged beyond that date; for he communicated to the Philosophical Transactions (xxxii . 328) notes on the rainfall there in the years 1722 and 1723 . Hinde shows that during these years " he certainly followed r. secular employment as agent to the York Buildings Company, who had contracted to purchase and were then in possession of the Widdrington estates." At Morpeth Horsley opened a private school . Respect for his character and abilities attracted pupils irrespective of religious connexion, among them Newton Ogle, afterwards dean of Westminster . He gave lectures on mechanics and hydrostatics in Morpeth, Alnwick and Newcastle, and was elected F.R.S. on the 23rd of April 1730 .

It is as an archaeologist that Horsley is now known . His

great work, Britannia Romana, or the Roman Antiquities of Britain (London, 1732), one of the scarcest and most valuable of its class, contains the result of patient labour . There is in the British Museum a copy with notes by John Ward (c . 1679–1758), biographer of the Gresham professors . Horsley died of apoplexy on the 12th of January 1732, on the eve of the publication of the Britannia Romana . He also published two sermons and a handbook to his lectures on mechanics, &c., and projected a history of Northumberland and Durham, collections for which were found among his papers . J . P . Wood (d . 1838) (Parish of Cramond, 1794, and Anecdotes of Bowyer, 1782, p . 371) says that his wife was a daughter of William Hamilton, D.D., minister of Cramond, afterwards professor of divinity in Edinburgh University, but probably the John Horsley in question was another, the father of Samuel Horsley (q.v.) .