184 KEW GARDENS 



ing parliamentary debates, which led to a famous 

 collision between the officers of the House and 

 the City magistrates, and indirectly to the tacit 

 acceptance of a liberty of reporting, hitherto 

 practised by stealth. He next broke a lance 

 against that unknown knight, Junius. It was a 

 more daring adventure when he touched the 

 Government's shield by hotly espousing the cause 

 of the American Colonists, and writing of the 

 Lexington victims as " murdered " by the King's 

 troops, for which he had to stand his trial and be 

 convicted of a libel. 



By this time the parson had resigned his living, 

 and thrown off the gown that hampered his 

 robustious exertions as an agitator, but he 

 remained a resident at Brentford till circum- 

 stances took him into Surrey. A Mr. Tooke of 

 Purley had invoked his assistance for a dispute 

 about common rights in that neighbourhood ; 

 and Home proved such a doughty advocate in 

 this case that close intimacy sprang up between 

 the two men. The younger assumed Tooke's 

 name, and from his house dated the philological 

 and grammatical treatise, Diversions of Purley, 

 by which he is best known. In the end there 

 seems to have been some cooling of their affec- 



