Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 25.djvu/68

H plete act of apostasy which is now preserved in the Public Record Office, and has only lately become known (State Papers, Dom. Eliz. vol. cl. No. 80). Why he did not occupy the place on the hurdle by Campion's side the catholics of his day never knew. Within a short time Hart repented of his weakness, and again stood firm in the catholic faith. According to Cardinal Allen, Hart's mother visited him in the Tower, and she, ‘a gentlewoman of a noble spirit, spoke to him in such lofty tones of martyrdom, that if she found him hot with the desire of it, she left him on fire.’

Walsingham gave Hart leave to go to Oxford for three months upon condition that he should confer with John Rainoldes or Reynolds, a protestant divine, on matters in controversy between the English and Roman churches. Hart acquitted himself with honour, and Camden styles him ‘vir præ cæteris doctissimus.’ The conference appears to have taken place in 1582. Dodd says it was held on very unequal terms, as Hart was unprovided with books and was labouring under great infirmity caused by the rigour of his confinement (Church History, ii. 145). Hart returned to Walsingham as resolute in the catholic faith as before, and was sent back to the Tower. On the anniversary of the day when he should have died, his name reappears in Rishton's diary, 1 Dec. 1582: ‘John Hart, priest, under sentence of death, was punished by twenty days in irons, for not yielding to one Reynolds, a minister.’ Six months later he was put into the pit for the same offence for forty-four days. On 18 March 1582, while in prison, he was admitted into the Society of Jesus. On 21 Jan. 1584–5 he and twenty others, among whom was Jasper Heywood [q. v.], were conveyed to France and banished the realm for ever by virtue of a commission from the queen. They were landed on the coast of Normandy and were sent to Abbeville after signing a certificate to the effect that they had been well treated on the voyage (, Chronicles, iii. 1379, 1380). Hart proceeded to Verdun and thence to Rome. His superiors ordered him to Poland, and he died at Jarislau on 17 or 19 July 1586. The necrology of the province, however, states that he died in 1595.

‘The Summe of the Conference betwene John Rainoldes and John Hart, touching the Head and Faith of the Church. Penned by John Rainoldes, according to the notes set down in writing by them both; perused by J. Hart, &c.,’ was published at London in 1584, 4to, reprinted in 1588, 1598, and 1609, and translated into Latin (Oxford, 1610, fol.) by Henry Parry, afterwards bishop of Gloucester. Dodd asserts that the particulars of the conference are very unfairly given by Rainoldes. 

HART, JOSEPH (1712?–1768), independent divine and hymn-writer, was born in London about 1712, and was religiously brought up. After much spiritual perturbation, extending over four-and-twenty years, he achieved his conversion, after hearing a sermon on Rev. iii. 10 preached in the Moravian Chapel in Fetter Lane, on Whit-Sunday, 1757. From the end of 1760 until his death on 24 May 1768 he preached regularly at Jewin Street Chapel, London, where he gathered a large congregation. He was buried in Bunhill Fields. Twenty thousand people are said to have listened to the funeral sermon. He left a widow and several children.

Hart published: 1. ‘The Unreasonableness of Religion; being Remarks and Animadversions on Mr. John Wesley's Sermon on Rom. viii. 32,’ London, 1741, 12mo (an apparently serious argument to prove that religion not only receives no support from reason, but is diametrically opposed to it); and 2. ‘Hymns, &c., composed on various Subjects. With a Preface, containing a brief Account of the Author's Experience,’ London, 1759, 12mo. The hymns are of an ultra-Calvinistic tone. The preface has been reprinted as ‘The Experience of Joseph Hart,’ London, 1862, 16mo. 

HART, JOSEPH BINNS (1794–1844), organist and compiler of dance music, born in London in 1794, was chorister at St. Paul's Cathedral, under Sale, from 1801 to 1810, and during those years had lessons on the organ from S. Wesley and Matthew Cook, and on the pianoforte from J. B. Cramer. At the early age of eleven Hart often played as deputy for Attwood, the organist of St. Paul's. In 1810 he was elected organist of Walthamstow Church, Essex, and joined the Earl of Uxbridge's household as organist for three years. Hart was elected, after severe competition, organist of Tottenham Church (Middle-