TOOKE, JOHN HORNE (1736-1812), English politician and philologist, third son of John Horne, a poulterer in Newport Market, London, was born on June 25, 1736. He was educated at Westminster school, Eton, and St. John's college, Cambridge. He had been entered at the Inner Temple, but his father wished him to take orders and he was ordained to a curacy at New Brentford in 1760. He travelled in France in 1765-67, where he met John Wilkes (q.v.). In 1767 he returned and became Wilkes' most energetic and ingenious supporter. In 1771, however, he quarrelled violently with his leader, to the damage of their cause. Horne's supporters took the name of the Constitutional Society.
in 1773 he was placed beyond the reach of want by the grati tude of William Tooke, of Croydon, whose rights in an enclosure case he had protected by turning attention to his case.
But Horne was now involved in serious trouble. For 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 £1,200. 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. He also published two influential reforming pamphlets: Facts Addressed to Landholders, etc. (1780), and A Letter on Parliamentary Reform (1782).
On his return from Huntingdonshire he became once more a frequent guest at Mr. Tooke's house at Purley, and in 1782 assumed the name of Horne Tooke. In 1786 Horne Tooke gave his philological treatise of "Erea irrep6Evra (2 pts. 1786-1805), the sub-title of The Diversions of Purley, as a tribute to his friend.
Between 1782 and 1790 Tooke supported Pitt, and in the elec tion for Westminster, in 1784, threw all his energies into oppo sition to Fox. After the Westminster election of 1788 Tooke de picted the rival statesmen (Lord Chatham and Lord Holland, Wil liam Pitt and C. J. Fox) in his pamphlet of Two Pair of Portraits. At the general election of 1790 he was a candidate for West minster, in opposition to Fox and Lord Hood, but was defeated; and, at a second trial in 1796, he was again at the bottom of the poll. Meantime the excesses of the French revolution had pro voked reaction in England, and the Tory ministry adopted a policy of repression. Horne Tooke was arrested early on the morning of May 16, 1794, and conveyed to the Tower. His trial for high treason lasted for six days (Nov. 17-22) and ended in his acquittal, the jury only taking eight minutes to settle their verdict. Through the influence of the second Lord Camelford, he was returned to parliament in 1801 for the pocket borough of Old Sarum. Efforts to secure his exclusion on the ground of his cleri cal orders failed, but an act was passed rendering all persons in holy orders ineligible, and he 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, where he gave the Sunday parties, attended by Thurlow, Bentham, Coleridge, Paine and others, which became a legend. He died on March 18, 1812.
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. The notice in the Quarterly Review, June 1812, of W. Hamilton Reid's compilation, is by J. W. Ward, Lord Dudley. The main facts of his life are set out by Mr. J. E. Thorold Rogers, in his Historical Gleanings, 2nd series. Many of Horne Tooke's wittiest sayings are preserved in the Table Talk of Samuel Rogers and S. T. Coleridge.