# Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Tooke, John Horne

See also John Horne Tooke on Wikipedia; Tooke, John Horne in the 11th Edition; and the disclaimer.
Between 1782 and 1790 Tooke gave his support to Pitt, and in the election for Westminster, a constituency in which Fox was vitally interested, he threw all his energies into the ministerial cause. 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 Home Tooke. It was after the election of Westminster in 1788 that Tooke depicted the two rival statesmen 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; and, though he again sought the suffrages of its voters in 1796, and his speeches at the hustings were never exceeded in ability, he was again at the bottom of the poll. Meantime the excesses of the French republicans had unhinged the minds of all sections of society in England, and the actions of the Tory ministry faithfully represented the feelings of the country. Home Tooke was arrested early on the morning of 16th May 1794, and conveyed to the Tower. His trial for high treason lasted for six days (October 17-23) and ended in his acquittal, the jury only requiring the short space of eight minutes to settle their verdict. The evidence which the crown could adduce in support of the charge proved to be of the slightest description, and the demeanour of the accused throughout the proceedings furnished abundant proofs of the resolution of his mind and the force of his abilities. His public life after this event was only distinguished by one act of importance. Through the influence of Lord Camelford, the fighting peer, he was returned to parliament in 1801 for the pocket borough of Old Sarum. No sooner was he returned to the House of Commons than Lord Temple endeavoured to secure his exclusion on the ground that he had taken orders in the church, and one of Gillray's caricatures delineates the two politicans, Temple and Camelford, playing at battledore and shuttlecock, with Home 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. The parliamentary life of the member for Old Sarum was preserved through one parliament, but at its expiration he was excluded for ever.
The last years of Tooke's life were spent in retirement in a house on the west side of Wimbledon Common, and there he was visited by the leading members of the party of progress. The traditions of his Sunday parties have lasted unimpaired to this day, and the most pleasant pages penned by his biographer describe the politicians and the men of letters who gathered round his hospitable board. His conversational powers rivalled those of Dr Johnson; and, if more of his sayings have not been chronicled for the benefit of posterity, the defect is due to the absence of a Boswell. Through the liberality of his friends, his last days were freed from the pressure of poverty, and he was enabled to place his illegitimate son in a position which soon brought him wealth, and to leave a competency to his two illegitimate daughters. Illness seized him early in 1810, and for the next two years his sufferings were acute. He died in his house at Wimbledon on 18th March 1812, and his body ​was buried with that of his mother at Ealing, the tomb which he had prepared in the garden attached to his house at Wimbledon being found unsuitable for the interment. An altar-tomb still stands to his memory in Ealing churchyard. A catalogue of his library was printed in 1813.
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. Its main facts are reproduced with more brightness in an essay by Mr J. E. Thorold Rogers in the second series of his Historical Gleanings. Many of Home Tooke's wittiest sayings are preserved in the Table Talk of Samuel Rogers and S. T. Coleridge.(W. P. C.)