Tooke, John Horne, baptismal name John Horne, born, the son of a well-to-do poulterer, in London; graduated at Cambridge, and to please his father took holy orders in 1760, but after some years, during which he had tutored abroad, zealously assisted Wilkes in his election to Parliament, and successfully encountered “Junius”; he abandoned the Church and studied for the bar, to which, on account of his holy orders, he was refused a call; became an active political free-lance, and acquired great popularity as a strenuous advocate of parliamentary reform; entered Parliament in 1801, but in the following year was excluded by an Act making it illegal for any one in priest's orders to be returned; inherited the fortune and assumed the name of his friend William Tooke of Purley; is best known as the author of the “Diversions of Purley,” “a witty medley of etymology, grammar, metaphysics, and politics” (1736‒1812).
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
Tonnage and Poundage * Toole, John Lawrence