Havre, and the Rhenish Railways; Sheriff of London, 1845–6; a Member of Parliament for Salisbury, 1847–57; in politics an advanced Liberal. He died at his residence, 2, Hyde Park Gardens, on April 24th, 1859, in his seventy-second year, leaving property to the value of over half a million sterling, including a quarter share in the firm of Chaplin & Horne. William Augustus Chaplin, the eldest among his eight sons and six daughters, succeeded him in the conduct of that business, and died, also in his seventy-second year, at Melton Mowbray, October 9th, 1896. [Illustration: WILLIAM AUGUSTUS CHAPLIN.] Benjamin Worthy Horne, whose chief place of business was the “Golden Cross,” Charing Cross, succeeded his father, William Horne, in 1828. William Horne, who was born in 1783, was originally a painter, but followed that trade only a few years after his apprenticeship had expired. He had at an early age married Mary Worthy, daughter of Benjamin Worthy, a wealthy wheelwright in Old Street, and in 1804 his eldest son, Benjamin Worthy Horne, was born. This marriage bringing him the command of some capital, he entered into partnership with one Roberts, a coach-proprietor established at the “White Horse,” Fetter Lane. But the partnership was dissolved at the expiration of twelve months, when Horne, making a bold stroke, purchased the “Golden Cross” of John Cross, who, having acquired a large fortune after many years in business there, was now retiring from it and entering upon a series of rash speculations which eventually ruined him and brought Thomas Cross, his son, down to poverty from the assured position of heir to that fortune, and thence to the dramatic reverse of soliciting employment as a coachman in the very yard his father once had owned. Established thus at the “Golden Cross,” William Horne further developed the very fine coaching business he had acquired, and added to it the yards at the “Cross Keys,” Wood Street, and the “George and Blue Boar,” Holborn, together with an office at 41, Regent Circus. He soon had seven hundred horses in work, and was in the full tide of life and energy when he died in 1828, at the early age of forty-five. “His last journey,” says the obituary notice of him, “was but a short distance--St. Margaret’s churchyard, Westminster; and, as a man of talent, his remains were placed within a few feet of some of the greatest men of their age.”