[2][3] His father, the rector of Lower Comber (Diocese of Derry), led an extravagant lifestyle and is said to have left debts of £40,000 on his death in 1831, aged 66, equivalent to some £4.1 million as of 2019.

[1] Hume was one of the signatories of a progressive booklet titled 'Declaration in Favour of United Secular Education in Ireland' in 1866.

[6] The declaration noted, on behalf of the united Church of England and Ireland, 'We entirely admit the justice and policy of the rule which protects scholars from interference with their religious principles and thus enables members of different denominations, to receive together in harmony and peace, the benefits of a good education'.

[1] He published, in the Cork Constitution, the contents of a threatening letter he had received ('the Crookstown notice'), in which it threatened, among others, Hume Babington, with murder if he did not become a repealer of the Act of Union 1801 and with making a bonfire of hay in his farmyard if he did not show the letter to its other addresses.

The Roman Catholic parish priest, Fr Daly, and parishioners refuted the allegation that the letter had been authored by a Roman Catholic and claimed that, conversely, the letter was an invention of a local Protestant who wrote 'repeal or die' on the Crookstown Bridge.