Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 27.djvu/385

 Elizabeth, who understood from him that the czarina was with child, gave him a suitable letter to deliver to her. The error ‘fell out to be verie dangerous’ to Horsey. But he soon regained the favour of Prince Boris and the czar, the latter of whom ‘semed glad of my return pochivated and made me merrie.’ In February 1587 he obtained ‘under the Emperiall seale a free privaledge granted unto the company … to trade and traficque thorrow all his dominions, free from payinge any manner of customs and tolls whatsoever upon their merchandise … in as ample and large a manner as I could devis and sett down myself. Never the like opteyned by any ambassodor hertofore, though thowsands expended to procure the like.’ But a party at court, headed by the chancellor Shalkalove, was opposed to the English company's monopoly, and quickly secured enough influence to imperil Horsey's position. He hastily returned to London in 1587. In November of that year Giles Fletcher [q. v.] was sent out to obtain a confirmation of Horsey's valuable charter.

At the end of 1587 and in 1588 and 1589 the Russia company brought charges amounting to fraud against Horsey before the council and Lord Burghley (see the articles in the App. to edition of the Travels, Hakluyt Soc.) Complaint was made of his arrogance and extravagance; he had traded, it was said, on his own account, and he had falsified his accounts with his employers. To the last charge he practically made no defence, and partially made up the deficiency. In 1587 Pecok had written from Moscow to Walsingham of Horsey: ‘His state is not good; he oweth that I knowe, to the merchaunts fower thowsande rubbells, and to other twoe thowsande rubbells; and of the goods and commodities brought over wyth him he hath lyttell lefte;’ and again, ‘I might troble your honorable eares with notes of his disorderlie behavior here, but I shold enter into a sea that hath no bottome.’ At the end of 1587 the company asserted that Horsey had absconded from England; he was certainly in Russia in 1588, but was in England again in 1589. In 1589 the company wrote to Burghley that a rumour had reached them that Horsey was to be employed again on diplomatic business with Russia, and they strongly deprecated such a course. In April 1590 he travelled once more to Russia by way of Cologne and Copenhagen. But on his arrival the czar refused him an audience, and he returned discomfited in October 1591.

For the next thirty years Horsey lived in Buckinghamshire. He was knighted in 1603, and on 19 June 1604 he was made one of the receivers of the king's lands for life. He was high sheriff of Buckinghamshire in 1610. Horsey was long a member of parliament for Cornish boroughs. In that summoned for 19 Feb. 1592–3 he sat for Saltash; on 4 Oct. 1597 he was returned for Camelford; on 10 Oct. 1601 for Bossiney; again for Bossiney on 12 March 1603–4. In the parliament summoned for 5 April 1614 Horsey sat for Bossiney again, and on 13 Dec. 1620 he was returned for East Looe. He must have opposed the court, as on 8 June 1622 he was committed, with William Fiennes, Lord Saye [q. v.], for opposing the grant of a benevolence. He seems to have been living in 1627. Horsey married by license, dated 5 Jan. 1591–2, Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Griffith Hampden of Hampden, Buckinghamshire. She died in 1607. He then married Isabella, daughter of Edward Brocket, late of Wheathampstead, Hertfordshire; the settlement for this marriage was dated 28 Oct. 1609. He is said to have married, in 1619, a third wife, Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Sir John North, eldest son of Roger, second lord North [q. v.] It is clear that Horsey had at least one son living in 1621, and as this son was then old enough to have quarrelled with his father his mother must have been Sir Jerome's first wife.

Horsey wrote an account of the ‘Coronation of Feodore,’ which was printed in ‘Hakluyt's Voyages,’ i. 525–35. A summary, called ‘Extracts out of Sir Jerome Horsey's Observations in Seventeene Yeares Travels and Experience in Russia and other Countries adjoyning,’ &c., appeared in Purchas's ‘Pilgrimage,’ v. 972–92. Horsey's account of his Russian travels, which supplies interesting accounts of contemporary Russian politics and society, was edited in 1856 for the Hakluyt Society by E. A. Bond, from Harleian MS. 1813, together with Horsey's contribution to Hakluyt. Purchas states that Horsey wrote other accounts of his foreign experiences, but the manuscripts have not been traced. 

HORSFIELD, THOMAS (1773–1859), naturalist, was born at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, United States, on 12 May 1773. His parents were Moravians, and he remained