page_title: John Horne Tooke
section_title: Political career
hierarchical_section_title: John Horne Tooke / Political career
caption_attribution_description: John Glynn, John Wilkes and John Horne Tooke, after Richard Houston (died 1775), given to the National Portrait Gallery, London in 1922. See source website for additional information. From left to right: John Glynn, John Wilkes, John Horne Tooke. This set of images was gathered by User:Dcoetzee from the National Portrait Gallery, London website using a special tool. All images in this batch have been confirmed as author died before 1939 according to the official death date listed by the NPG.
context_page_description: John Horne Tooke, known as John Horne until 1782 when he added the surname of his friend William Tooke to his own, was an English clergyman, politician, and philologist.
context_section_description: 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 autumn of 1765 he escorted another rich young man to Italy. In Paris he met Wilkes, and from Montpellier, in January 1766, addressed a letter to him which began the quarrel between them. In the summer of 1767 Horne returned, and in 1768 secured the return of Wilkes to parliament for Middlesex. With inexhaustible energy he promoted the legal proceedings over the riot in St George's Fields when a youth named Allen was killed, and exposed the irregularity in the judge's order for the execution of two Spitalfields weavers. 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 and Wilkes, with the support of John Wheble, 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 1 July 1771 Horne obtained at Cambridge his degree of M.A., though not without some opposition from members of both the political parties. Earlier in that year he claimed for the public the right of printing an account of parliamentary debates, and after a long struggle, the right was definitely established. In the same year (1771), Horne argued with Junius, and ended in disarming his masked antagonist.
caption: A portrait of John Horne Tooke (right) in discussion with John Glynn and John Wilkes
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