Tooke, John Horne, originally John Horne 1736-1812
English radical politician

Born in Westminster, London, the son of a poulterer called Horne, he was educated at Eton and Cambridge. He entered the Middle Temple but, to please his father, left to become vicar of New Brentford. Travelling as a tutor, he met John Wilkes in Paris. While unsuccessfully trying to obtain a Commons seat, he founded the Constitutional Society which supported the American colonists and parliamentary reform (1771). He then fell out with Wilkes, and carried on an angry correspondence with him in the Public Advertiser (1771). In 1773 he went back to study law, and received the patronage of the rich William Tooke of Purley, who greatly admired his spirited opposition to an enclosure bill. Horne added Tooke's surname to his own in 1782, and while in prison for supporting the American rebels he wrote The Diversions of Purley (1786), a medley of etymology, grammar and politics. He was tried for high treason in 1794, but acquitted. He was eventually elected MP for Old Sarum in 1801.