THE VILLAGE : IN AND ABOUT IT 135 



tion, for Mr. Tooke left his supposed heir only a 

 small legacy, along with the welcome opportunity 

 for a lawsuit. But Home Tooke's real father 

 had left him means to live comfortably at Wim- 

 bledon till 1812, long enough to take part with a 

 new generation of Radicals, in which the names of 

 Sir Francis Burdett and Major Cartwright came 

 to the front. He succeeded in slipping into 

 Parliament, strangely enough, as representative 

 of a rotten borough, Old Sarum ; and his " elec- 

 tion" led to a Bill disqualifying the clergy as 

 members, though a generation would pass before 

 the lease of rotten boroughs was cancelled by 

 such reform as Home Tooke had loudly ad- 

 vocated at the cost of again standing a trial for 

 high treason. 



Another noisy reformer, if he be not better 

 described as a pig-headed lover of the past, who 

 was Tory and Radical by turns, had a glimpse of 

 Kew, about or soon after the time that Home 

 Tooke left Brentford. In the farther corner of 

 Surrey there was then living a sturdy little 

 peasant who, with a smattering of the three R's, 

 went to work in the fine gardens of Waverley 

 Abbey, then got another job of clipping and 

 weeding at the Bishop's Palace of Farnham. He 



