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". Before Eton, he had been at school in Soho Square, in a Kentish village, and from 1744 to 1746 at Westminster School. On January 12, 1754 he was admitted as sizar at St John's College, Cambridge, and took his degree of B.A. in 1758, as last but one of the senior optimes, Richard Beadon, his lifelong friend, afterwards Bishop of Bath and Wells, being a wrangler in the same year. 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. During a part of this time (1763-1764) he was absent on a tour in France, acting as a bear-leader to a wealthy man. 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, 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. 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.
He resigned his benefice in 1773 and began the study of the law and philology. An accident, however, occurred at this moment which largely affected his future. His friend William Tooke had purchased a considerable estate, including Purley Lodge, south of the town of Croydon in Surrey. 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. Two tracts about this time exercised great influence in the country. 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; the other, A Letter on Parliamentary Reform (1782), addressed by him to Dunning, set out a scheme of reform, which he afterwards withdrew in favour of that advocated by William Pitt the Younger. 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 Etrea impbevra, the more popular though misleading title of The Diversions of Purley. The treatise at once attracted attention in England and the Continent. The first part was published in 1786, the second in 1805. The best edition is that which was published in 1829, under the editorship of Richard Taylor, with the additions written in the author's interleaved copy.
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; and, at a second trial in 1796, he was again at the bottom of the poll. Meantime the excesses of the French republicans had provoked 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 of London. His trial for high treason lasted for six days (17th to 22nd of November) and ended in his acquittal, the jury taking only eight minutes to settle their verdict.
His public life after this event was only distinguished by one act of importance. Through the influence of the second Lord Camelford, the fighting peer, he was returned to parliament in 1801 for the pocket borough of Old Sarum. 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 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 Samuel 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 James 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, London, and was buried with his mother at Baling, 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. The notice in the Quarterly Review, June 1812, of W Hamilton Reid's compilation, is by JW Ward, Lord Dudley. The main facts of his life are set out by Mr JE 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.
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