A Radical MP at Brandenburgh House: John Horne Tooke
John Horne Tooke, portrait by Thomas Hardy. John Horne Tooke was one of the most controversial and radical MPs of the Georgian era. We know, from her Memoirs, that Elizabeth Craven was friendly with John Wilkes, so it is not altogether surprising to discover that Horne Tooke also turned up from time to time at Brandenburgh House when she lived there with her second husband, the Margrave of Anspach. Horne Tooke was an indefatigable campaigner for electoral reform, whose support for the independence of the American colonies got him jailed for seditious libel in 1778. Nothing daunted, he went on advocating radical ideas during the period of the French Revolution, something so alarming to those in power that he was tried for treason in 1794. If convicted, he would certainly have been hanged. Luckily, he was acquitted. Shortly afterwards, he went to one of Craven's theatrical productions at her private theatre in Hammersmith. Samuel Rogers tell...