John Horne Tooke

Radical politician, born in London, UK. He studied at Cambridge, and became a lawyer, and in 1760 a vicar. In 1771 he formed the Constitutional Society, supporting the American colonists and parliamentary reform. His spirited opposition to an enclosure bill procured him the favour of the rich Mr Tooke of Purley in Surrey, which led to his new surname and The Diversions of Purley (1786), written while in prison for supporting the US cause. He was tried for high treason in 1794, acquitted, and became an MP in 1801.

John Horne Tooke (June 25, 1736 – March 18, 1812), was an English politician and philologist.

He was born in Newport Street, Long Acre, Westminster, the third son of John Horne, a poulterer in Newport Market, whose business the boy, when at Eton College, described to his friends as a "Turkey merchant". Horne had been admitted on the 9th of November 1756, as student at the Inner Temple, making the friendship of John Dunning and Lloyd Kenyon, but his father wished him to take orders in the Church of England, and he was ordained deacon on September 23, 1759 and priest on November 23, 1760.

For a few months he was usher at a boarding school at Blackheath, but on September 26 1760 he became perpetual curate of New Brentford, the incumbency of which his father had purchased for him, and he retained this poor living until 1773. The excitement created by the actions of John Wilkes led Horne into politics, and in 1765 he brought out a scathing pamphlet on Bute and Mansfield, entitled "The Petition of an Englishman". In the summer of 1767 Horne returned, and in 1768 secured the return of Wilkes to parliament for Middlesex. His dispute with George Onslow, MP for Surrey, who at first supported and then threw over Wilkes for place, culminated in a civil action, ultimately decided, after the reversal of a verdict which had been obtained through the charge of Lord Mansfield, in Horne's favour, and in the loss by his opponent of his seat in parliament. An influential association, called "The Society for Supporting the Bill of Rights," was founded, mainly through the exertions of Horne, in 1769, but the members were soon divided into two opposite camps, and in 1771 Horne and Wilkes, their respective leaders, broke out into open dispute.

On July 1, 1771 Horne obtained at Cambridge, though not without some opposition from members of both the political parties, his degree of M.A. In the same year (1771), Horne argued with Junius, and ended in disarming his masked antagonist.

He resigned his benefice in 1773 and began the study of the law and philology. The possession of this property brought about frequent disputes with an adjoining landowner, Thomas de Grey, and, after many actions in the courts, his friends endeavoured to obtain, by a bill forced through the houses of parliament, the privileges which the law had not assigned to him (February 1774). Horne, thereupon, by a bold libel on the Speaker, drew public attention to the case, and though he himself was placed for a time in the custody of the serjeant-at-arms, the clauses which were injurious to the interest of Tooke were eliminated from the bill. Tooke declared his intention of making Horne the heir to his fortune, and during his lifetime he bestowed upon him large gifts of money. No sooner had this matter been happily settled than Horne found himself involved in serious trouble. For his conduct in signing the advertisement soliciting subscriptions for the relief of the relatives of the Americans "murdered by the king's troops at Lexington and Concord," he was tried at the Guildhall on July 4, 1777, before Lord Mansfield, found guilty, and committed to the King's Bench prison in St George's Fields, from which he only emerged after a year's durance, and after a loss in fines and costs amounting to £1200.

Soon after his deliverance he applied to be called to the bar, but his application was negatived on the ground that his orders in the Church were indelible. Horne thereupon tried his fortune, but without success, on farming some land in Huntingdonshire. One of them, Fads Addressed to Landholders, etc. (1780), written by Horne in conjunction with others, criticizing the measures of Lord North's ministry, passed through numerous editions; On his return from Huntingdonshire he became once more a frequent guest at Tooke's house at Purley, and in 1782 assumed the name of Horne Tooke. In 1786 Horne Tooke conferred perpetual fame upon his benefactor's country house by adopting, as a second title of his elaborate philological treatise of "Epea Pteroenta", the more popular though misleading title of The Diversions of Purley.

Between 1782 and 1790 Tooke gave his support to Pitt, and in the election for Westminster, in 1784, threw all his energies into opposition to Fox. With Fox he was never on terms of friendship, and Samuel Rogers, in his Table Talk, asserts that their antipathy was so pronounced that at a dinner party given by a prominent Whig not the slightest notice was taken by Fox of the presence of Horne Tooke. It was after the election of Westminster in 1788 that Tooke depicted the rival statesmen (Lord Chatham and Lord Holland, William Pitt and Charles James Fox) in his celebrated pamphlet of Two Pair of Portraits.

At the general election of 1790 he came forward as a candidate for that distinguished constituency, in opposition to Fox and Lord Hood, but was defeated; Horne Tooke was arrested early on the morning of May 16, 1794, and conveyed to the Tower of London.

His public life after this event was only distinguished by one act of importance. Lord Temple endeavoured to secure his exclusion on the ground that he had taken orders in the Church, and one of James Gillray's caricatures delineates the two politicians, Temple and Camelford, playing at battledore and shuttlecock, with Horne Tooke as the shuttlecock. The ministry of Addington would not support this suggestion, but a bill was at once introduced by them and carried into law, which rendered all persons in holy orders ineligible to sit in the House of Commons, and Horne Tooke sat for that parliament only.

The last years of Tooke's life were spent in retirement in a house on the west side of Wimbledon Common.

The Life of Horne Tooke, by Alexander Stephens, is written in an unattractive style and was the work of an admirer only admitted to his acquaintance at the close of his days. Many of Horne Tooke's wittiest sayings are preserved in the Table Talk of Samuel Rogers and S.