Tooke
2 of the 7 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Tooke. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
took, John Horne (1736-1812), an English politician and wit. His father was a prosperous London dealer in poultry. When young Tooke was entered in an aristocratic school he thought proper to disguise this fact by speaking of his father as a "Turkey merchant." Against his inclination he was educated for the ministry. He held a small vicarage. His taste lay, however, in the direction of travel and in political writing for the newspapers. He was a violent opponent of the Tories. He represented a pocket borough in Parliament. He had many tilts with royal authority. He established the right of a newspaper to publish the proceedings of Parliament. He was noted for bright sayings which brought him not only fines but imprisonment. Among other incidents may be mentioned the circulation of a subscription paper to collect funds for the needy relatives of "the men murdered by the king's troops at Concord and Lexington." For this he was tried for treason, and was impoverished by a fine of $6,000. Many of his witty sayings have been preserved in the Table Talk of S. T. Coleridge.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
JOHN HORNE, an English political writer; born in Westminster, England, June 25, 1736; was educated at Westminster and Eton; afterward going to St. John's College, Cambridge. In 1760 he entered the Church, and obtained the living of New Brentford. The year 1771 witnessed his contest with Junius, in which, in the general opinion, he came off victor. In 1773 he resigned his bene fice to study for the bar (to which from being in orders he was not admitted); and by his legal advice to Mr. Tooke of Purley he became that gentleman's heir In 1777 he was and assumed his name. prosecuted for a seditious libel condemning the American war, and his trial resulted in a year's imprisonment and a fine of $1,000. He was a short time member of Parliament for Old Sarum. He wrote several political pamphlets and an ingenious linguistic work entitled "Epea Pteroenta, or the Diversions of Purley." He died in Wimbledon, England, March 18, 1812.