132 KEW GARDENS 



Brentford a din that must have reached the royal 

 ears, if George III. did not keep clear of Kew for 

 the nonce. At one of those abortive elections, 

 every road to the poll was blocked by a crowd 

 that would allow no one to pass unless wearing 

 the popular idol's blue cockade. Wilkes and 

 George might well be nicknamed the "Two 

 Kings of Brentford." And for ten years or so 

 New Brentford, as the village was then called, 

 had a firebrand parson who would not com- 

 mend himself to Mrs. Trimmer. Her future 

 home, indeed, was at Old Brentford, now being 

 swallowed up in Baling. 



The Brentford political parson was John 

 Home, afterwards better known as Home Tooke. 

 Son of a London poulterer, whom he styled to 

 his Eton school-fellows "a Turkey merchant," 

 Home was not the best man to hold a living 

 which his friends bought for him about the time 

 of the King's accession. He is said to have done 

 his duty at least as conscientiously as most 

 parsons of his day ; and he seems to have been 

 on the way to become a popular preacher, if he 

 had not been distracted by other avocations. He 

 had studied for the Bar, had suffered as usher in 

 a school ; and he practised medicine en amateur 



