"No. XLV"

Lord Bute, to support his policy, had founded two newspapers, "The Auditor," and, under the editorship of Smollett, "The Briton," and these inspired John Wilkes, member of Parliament for Aylesbury, to set up, as a weapon for the Opposition, "The North Briton," the onslaughts in which were so ferocious that "The Auditor" on February 8, 1763, and "The Briton", four days later, died of sheer fright. Wilkes and Charles Churchill,[249] the most valuable contributor to "The North Briton," did indeed fight with the buttons off the foils, and, while other papers still retained the custom of referring to persons by their initials, they disdained this foolish method, and gave their enemies the poor comfort of seeing their names in the full glory of print.

When Bute resigned, No. xliv of "The North Briton" had appeared, and the next issue was in preparation. Wilkes, on hearing this important intelligence, delayed the publication to see if George Grenville,[250] the new Prime Minister, would offer a new policy, or follow in the footsteps of his late leader. Pitt and Lord Temple showed Wilkes an early copy of the King's Speech, and, learning from this that no change would take place, the latter proceeded with the composition of the since historic No. xlv. The King's Speech was read on April 19, 1763, and on April 23 appeared the famous sheet, wherein the terms of the peace, the Cyder tax, and other acts of the Ministry were attacked, and the Address was stigmatised as "the most abandoned instance of ministerial effrontery ever attempted to be imposed upon mankind." In the paper it was stated very clearly that the King's Speech was always regarded, not as the personal address of the sovereign, but as the utterance of ministers. "Every friend of his country," said "The North Briton," "must lament that a prince of so many great and amiable qualities, whom England truly reveres, can be brought to give the sanction of his sacred name to the most odious measures and to the most unjustifiable declarations from a throne ever renowned for truth, honour and unsullied virtue."

This attack on ministers was not more violent than others that had appeared in earlier issues of the same paper, but the adherents of Bute, whom Wilkes had taken an active part in ousting from the Ministry, now saw an opportunity to avenge their fallen leader. The severe criticism of his speech made the King furious, and on the principle of "L'ÉtÂt, c'est moi," he disregarded the distinction that Wilkes had so carefully drawn between the utterances of the monarch and the utterances of ministers in the monarch's name, and encouraged, if, indeed, he did not instigate, a prosecution. The Secretary of State, Lord Halifax, issued a general warrant, that is, a warrant which specified neither the name nor names nor described the person nor persons of the offender or offenders, but only gave instructions "to make a strict and diligent search for the authors, printers and publishers of a seditious and treasonable paper entitled 'The North Briton,' No. xlv, Saturday, April 23, 1763, printed for G. Kearsley, in Ludgate Street, London, and them, or any of them, having found, to apprehend and seize, together with their papers, etc."

The printer and publisher were at once arrested, and, when brought before Halifax and Egremont, gave the names of the authors as John Wilkes and Charles Churchill. The warrant was shown to Wilkes at his house in Great George Street on the night of April 29, but he declined then to comply with it, stating his objection to a general warrant as such, pointing out that his name was not mentioned, that he was a Member of Parliament, and concluded by threatening the first who should offer violence to him in his own house at that hour of the night; but when the officers returned in the morning he offered no further opposition. Just after he was arrested and before he had been removed from his house, Churchill walked into the room, where were Wilkes and his captors. Wilkes knew the messengers wanted also to arrest Churchill, and observing they did not know the poet by sight, before the latter could speak, with great presence of mind, said, "Good morning, Mr. Thomson. How is Mrs. Thomson to-day? Does she dine in the country?" Churchhill took the hint, said Mrs. Thomson was waiting for him, left the room, and fled from the metropolis.

Wilkes's papers were seized, and he was taken before the Secretaries of State, and by them, after he had asserted his privileges as a Member of Parliament and had refused to answer any questions, was committed a prisoner to the Tower. Such were the preliminaries of the great battle that made Wilkes a great and popular figure in the struggle for the liberty of the subject and the liberty of the press in England.

Wilkes's friends moved at once for a writ of habeas corpus, and after some delay, on May 6, the prisoner was produced before Chief-Justice Pratt[251] in the Court of King's Bench, when counsel applied for his discharge on the ground that the commitment was not valid. The Judge gave his decision in favour of Wilkes, declaring that general warrants were illegal, and that, anyhow, the charge against the accused was not sufficient to destroy his privileges as a Member of Parliament.

Wilkes was no sooner at liberty than he showed he was not a man who could be maltreated with impunity. He republished the numbers of "The North Briton" in a volume with notes, reasserting that the King's Speech could only be regarded as a ministerial pronouncement. He addressed to Lord Halifax and Lord Egremont an open letter, of which many thousand copies were distributed throughout the country, complaining that his home had been robbed, and that he was informed that "the stolen goods are in possession of one or both of your Lordships." His papers were not returned, and he brought an action against Robert Wood, the Under-Secretary of State, against whom he received a verdict giving £1,000 damages, and another action against Lord Halifax for unlawful seizure, from whom also, after many years' delay, he recovered heavy damages. In the meantime Lord Egremont had written to Lord Temple that the King desired the latter, as Lord-Lieutenant of the county, to inform Wilkes that he was dismissed from the Colonelcy of the Buckinghamshire Militia, which task Temple duly discharged, saying, "I cannot, at the same time, help expressing the concern I feel in the loss of an officer, by his deportment in command, endeared to the whole corps." As a punishment for this expression of sympathy, the King removed Lord Temple from the Lord-Lieutenancy, and with his own hand struck his name out of the Council books.

The ministers in this struggle had found a powerful ally in Hogarth, who, though he had been friendly with Wilkes and Churchill, had been high in Bute's favour, even before the accession of George III, and now saw an opportunity to repay his patron. The quarrel between the painter and the agitator had begun with Hogarth's political cartoon, "The Times," in which Wilkes was ignominiously portrayed; and Wilkes, who let no man attack him with impunity, had replied in "The North Briton" with a violent onslaught upon the caricaturist. When Wilkes appeared in the Court of King's Bench, Hogarth, it is said, from behind a screen made a sketch for a caricature of the accused, in which the latter's squint was most malignantly exaggerated. Wilkes took this in good part, and, indeed, in later days said jocularly that he found himself every day growing more and more like the unflattering portrait; but Churchill, who was devoted to his friend, replied in "An Epistle to William Hogarth," in which—after the model furnished by Pope in his immortal reprimand to Addison—while praising Hogarth's genius, he poured vitriolic scorn upon his vanity and other weaknesses, concluding with a tremendous indictment of the painter's supposed dotage.

Hogarth replied to the "Epistle" by a savage caricature of Churchill, entitled, "The Bruiser, C. Churchill (once the Reverend!) in the character of a Russian Hercules, regaling himself after having killed the monster Caricatura, that so sorely-galled his virtuous friend, the Heaven-born Wilkes." The poet is portrayed as a bear, with torn clerical bands and ruffles, seated upon Massinger's "A New Way to Pay Old Debts," and "A List of the Subscribers to 'The North Briton,' etc., one arm holding a quart pot, and the other round a massive club, on which the knots are inscribed "Lye 1," "Lye 3," "Lye 5," "Lye 8," "Fallacy," etc.

Ministers, having been defeated on a point of law, were now determined to ruin Wilkes,[253] and proceeded, so far as lay in their power, to damn his reputation for all time, although, as will be seen, the method adopted did not have the desired effect.

That Wilkes was a man of high moral character, as some few of his eulogists have endeavoured to sustain, is a theory incapable of acceptance, though perhaps his lack of principle in early days has been more severely castigated than it deserved, considering that morality is, after all, comparative, and that a dragon of virtue in the days that were earlier would now be looked upon as a monster of iniquity. The son of a rich merchant, Wilkes was educated in England and at Leyden, and on his return to England at the age of two-and-twenty, had been persuaded by his father to espouse a wealthy woman ten years his senior. Not unnaturally the marriage was unhappy, and, indeed, Wilkes never even professed to regard it except as a convenience, but notwithstanding this circumstance his behaviour to his wife leaves the deepest stain on his character. He squandered her money in debauchery, and, after they had separated, endeavoured to deprive her of an annuity of £200 a year, all she had kept of her estates. He was initiated by Sir Francis Dashwood into the brotherhood of Medmenham Abbey, where he fraternised with Lord Sandwich,[254] Thomas Potter,[255] and other men of fashion, and with them proceeded to outrage all canons of decency.[256] In connexion with the brotherhood Potter and Wilkes in collaboration composed an obscene parody of Pope's "Essay on Man" called "An Essay on Woman," which, in imitation of the original poem, was furnished with notes under the name of Bishop Warburton; and to the burlesque was attached a blasphemous paraphrase of Veni Creator.

Without setting up any defence of these compositions, it may in extenuation be said that the circulation was limited to twelve or thirteen copies, which were distributed among members of the club, that it was printed at Wilkes's house, and that the latter took the greatest care to prevent the workmen from carrying away any sheets. Disgraceful as the amusement was, at least it could be pleaded it had no evil effect upon the circle of vicious men who inspired it; but it gave the Government a handle against their uncompromising foe of which they were not slow to take advantage.

In spite of all precautions, one of the printers had stolen some sheets of the "Essay on Woman" and this fact, which came to the knowledge of John Kidgell, then chaplain to the Earl of March, was by him imparted to a minister, who incited the clergyman to publish a pamphlet giving an account of Potter and Wilkes's jeu d'esprit. This in itself was an unworthy proceeding, but a greater folly threw this into the shade, for, when it was decided to bring to the notice of Parliament the stolen copy of the "Essay," the person chosen to raise the matter in the House of Lords was Lord Sandwich, than whom, Mr. Justin McCarthy has rightly said, "no meaner, more malignant, or more repulsive figure darkens the record of the last century."[257] This was a bad blunder, for Sandwich, as a member of the Franciscan brotherhood at Medmenham, had received a copy of the production, had read it with amusement, and had expressed his approval; and, even apart from this, was notorious for profligacy even among his immoral associates—rumour has it he was expelled for blasphemy from the Beefsteak Society, and Horace Walpole has stated that "very lately, at a club with Mr. Wilkes, held at the top of the play-house in Drury Lane, Lord Sandwich talked so profanely that he drove two harlequins out of the company."[258]

At the moment, to make bad worse, it was known that Sandwich had some personal animus against Wilkes, arising out of a quarrel at an orgy at which Sandwich when very drunk had invoked the devil, and Wilkes had thereupon let loose a monkey and nearly scared his fellow reprobate out of his wits. What the public thought of the part Sandwich took in this affair was not long afterwards made manifest at a performance at Covent Garden Theatre of "The Beggar's Opera," when, in the third act, Macheath exclaims, "That Jemmy Twitcher should peach me I own surprised me. 'Tis a proof that the world is all alike, and that even our gang can no more trust each other than other people," there were cries from all parts of the house of "Jemmy Twitcher! Jemmy Twitcher!" and for the rest of his life by that sobriquet was Sandwich known, even, as Horace Walpole says, to the disuse of his own name.

Parliament met on November 15, 1763; and Lord Sandwich, before the Address was taken into consideration, placed on the table the "Essay on Woman," and denounced it as a "most blasphemous, obscene, and abominable libel," in a speech which drew from Lord le Despencer the remark that never before had he heard the devil preach. Bishop Warburton's language on this occasion was, perhaps, such as no divine has ever before or since employed in public—"the blackest fiends in Hell would not keep company with Wilkes," he declared, and then apologised to Satan for comparing them. This intemperance of attack coupled with the underhand methods employed by the Ministry, brought forth a remonstrance from Pitt; while later Churchill avenged Wilkes by some lines of terrible ferocity on the Bishop:

The House of Lords voted the "Essay" a breach of privilege, a "scandalous, obscene and impious libel," and presented an address to the King demanding the prosecution of the author for blasphemy; while at the same time the House of Commons declared No. xlv of "The North Briton" to be a "false, scandalous, and seditious libel," and ordered the paper to be burnt by the common hangman. In the debate in the lower house, Samuel Martin, an ex-Secretary of the Treasury, who had been denounced in "The North Briton" as a "low fellow and a dirty tool of power," took the opportunity to denounce Wilkes as a cowardly, scandalous, and malignant scoundrel, and immediately afterwards challenged him to a duel, in which the latter was severely wounded. Wilkes, although the challenged person, had generously allowed his assailant the choice of weapons, and Martin selected pistols. Subsequently, however, it became known that, since the insult appeared in "The North Briton" eight months earlier, he had regularly practised shooting at a target, whereupon Churchill took the not unnatural view that Martin was, to all intents and purposes, a would-be assassin.

Though Wilkes was confined to his house by his wound, ministers, in spite of his petition that no further steps should be taken before his recovery, pressed forward their measures against him. During the Christmas recess Wilkes became convalescent and went to France, from whence, when Parliament reassembled, he sent a medical certificate stating he was unable to travel without endangering his health; but his enemies declared, and perhaps some of his friends secretly believed, that this was a subterfuge, and that in reality the reason for his continued absence was because he dared not face the trials for libel and blasphemy. On January 19, 1764, Wilkes was expelled from the House of Commons for having written a scandalous and seditious libel; and on February 21 the Court of King's Bench found him guilty of having reprinted "No. XLV" and of printing the "Essay on Woman," and, as he did not appear to receive sentence, outlawed him for contumacy.

Ministers now congratulated themselves upon having got rid of their dangerous opponent, but, as a matter of fact, they had only driven him away, which was a very different thing, for in his absence he, standing as the persecuted champion of liberty, was a very potent factor in affairs. Lord Temple paid the greater part of Wilkes's law expenses, and, subsequently, the Rockingham Whigs made the outlaw an allowance of £1,000 a year. Wilkes's popularity was, indeed, immense. When on December 3, "No. XLV" was to be burnt at the Royal Exchange, a great mob collected, and showed so threatening a spirit that Harley, one of the sheriffs, went to consult the Lord Mayor as to what steps should be taken to avert danger, and the hangman followed in his wake. The partly-burnt copy of "The North Briton" was rescued by the crowd, carried off in triumph, and displayed in the evening at Temple Bar, where a bonfire was made into the midst of which, amidst great cheering, a huge jack-boot was thrown. Chief Justice Pratt was rewarded for his impartial judgment with the freedom of the cities of London and Dublin; and all adherents of Wilkes became popular personages. Astute tradesmen disposed easily of inferior goods by marking them "45," and the turmoil created by this affair penetrated even the recesses of the Court, with the result that some years later the young Prince of Wales, when he had been punished, avenged himself by crying in his father's presence "Wilkes and No. XLV for ever!"

Kearsley, the publisher of "The North Briton" was discharged by the Court on his own recognizances; but in 1765 Williams, who had re-issued "No. XLV" was fined £100, ordered to stand in the pillory in Old Palace Yard for an hour on March 1, and to give security in the sum of £1,000 for his good behaviour for seven years. This was an opportunity that gave Wilkes's supporters a chance to display their feelings. Williams was taken in a triumphant procession in a hackney-coach numbered forty-five and brought back in the same way; while he stood in the pillory a collection was made, and £200 subscribed for him; and close by were erected four ladders, with cords running from each other, on which were displayed a jack-boot, an axe, and a Scotch bonnet, to testify to the prevalent belief that the moving spirit of the prosecution was Lord Bute.

"The Pillory Triumphant, or, No. 45 for Ever.

For a while, engaged in an amorous adventure, Wilkes remained at Paris, but in 1767 he issued a pamphlet explaining his position, and just before the general election of March, 1768, he reappeared in London[263] and offered himself as a candidate for the parliamentary representation of the City, thus presenting the very strange spectacle, as Lecky puts it, "of a penniless adventurer of notoriously infamous character, and lying at this very time under a sentence of outlawry, and under a condemnation for blasphemy and libel, standing against a popular alderman in the metropolis of England."[264] In spite of his late appearance upon the scene, Wilkes polled 1,200 votes; and, thus encouraged, and supported by Lord Temple, who furnished the necessary freehold qualification, the Duke of Portland, and Horne Tooke, he stood for the county of Middlesex, and was elected by 1,290 votes against 827 of the Tory George Cooke and 807 of the Whig, Sir William Procter.

As Wilkes had received no reply to his petition for a pardon addressed to the King, he, according to the undertaking he had given, surrendered himself on the first day of term, April 20, before Lord Mansfield in the Court of King's Bench. The proceedings dragged on until June 8, when, his outlawry having been annulled, he was sentenced for republication of "No. XLV" to a fine of £500 and ten months' imprisonment, and for the printing of the "Essay on Woman" to another fine of £500 and a further twelve months' imprisonment. The populace, delighted to have their hero again among them, escorted him to prison, illuminated their houses, and broke the windows of those who took no part in the rejoicings, with the result that there ensued a riot in which six people met their death.

The election of Wilkes to the House of Commons perplexed ministers, who at first sought refuge in inaction, but eventually, after much provocation from the new member[265] moved to expel him from Parliament and carried their resolution by 219 to 137 votes. This, however, led only to further trouble, for when a new writ for Middlesex was issued, Wilkes was re-elected on February 16. Again, on the following day, he was expelled, and a resolution passed that he was incapable of sitting in the existing Parliament. This was clearly illegal, and the people avenged this attempted infringement of their rights by returning Wilkes for the third time on March 16. On the 17th he was once more expelled; and, when returned once more, a few days later, the House of Commons by 197 to 143 votes declared the defeated candidate, Colonel Luttrell,[266] duly elected.

The popularity of Wilkes was gall and wormwood to the King, whose authority and wishes were openly set at defiance, and who was openly threatened by the mob. It was known he had taken an active part in the prosecution of the popular demagogue, and this was deeply resented. "If you do not keep the laws, the laws will not keep you," so ran the lettering of a placard thrown at this time into the royal carriage. "Kings have lost their heads for their disobedience to the laws." George III's courage was undeniable, and no threat could make him connive at any action likely to lessen the royal prerogative. "My spirits, I thank heaven, want no rousing," he wrote to Lord Chatham in May, 1767. "My love to my country, as well as what I owe to my own character and to my family, prompt me not to yield to faction. Though none of my ministers stand by me, I cannot truckle."[267] Lord North, too, was well acquainted with the royal firmness and intrepidity: "The King," he said, "would live on bread and water to preserve the constitution of his country. He would sacrifice his life to maintain it inviolate."

The courage George III displayed in politics was not lacking in moments of personal danger. Though, unlike George I and George II, he could not prove his valour on the field of battle, the several attacks upon his life gave him sufficient opportunity to show his fearlessness. It was, indeed, at these times he appeared at his best, not only in dignity, but in kind-heartedness and in tender consideration for his consort. The first murderous attack upon him was made August 2, 1786, as he alighted from his coach at the garden entrance of St. James's Palace. A woman, Margaret Nicholson, held out to him a paper, which, assuming it to be a petition, he took from her; but as he did so she struck at him with a knife, and the attempt to kill him only failed from the knife being so thin about the middle of the blade that, instead of entering the body, it bent with the pressure of his waistcoat.[268] The would-be assassin was at once seized, and seeing she was roughly handled, "The poor creature is mad," cried the King; "do not hurt her. She has not hurt me." He held the levÉe, and then drove hastily to Windsor to let the Queen know he was unhurt. "I am sure you must be sensible how thankful I am to Providence for the late wonderful escape of his Majesty from the stroke of an assassin," Mrs. Delany wrote to Miss Hamilton. "The King would not suffer any one to inform the Queen of that event till he could show himself in person to her. He returned to Windsor as soon as the Council was over. When his Majesty entered the Queen's dressing-room he found her with the two eldest Princesses; and entering in an animated manner, he said, "Here I am, safe and well!" The Queen suspected from this saying that some accident had happened, on which he informed her of the whole affair. The Queen stood struck and motionless for some time, till the Princesses burst into tears, on which she immediately found relief."[269]

Thirteen years later, on October 29, 1795, on his way to open Parliament, he was surrounded by a violent mob, who threw stones into the carriage, and demanded peace and the dismissal of Pitt. Lord Onslow, who was with the King, has left an account of the distressing incident. "Before I sleep let me bless God for the miraculous escape which my King, my country, and myself, have had this day. Soon after two o'clock, his Majesty, attended by the Earl of Westmoreland and myself, set out for St. James's in his state coach, to open the session of Parliament. The multitude of people in the park was prodigious. A sullen silence, I observed to myself, prevailed through the whole, very few individuals excepted. No hats, or at least very few, pulled off; little or no huzzaing, and frequently a cry of 'give us bread': 'no war': and once or twice, 'no King'! with hissing and groaning. My grandson Cranley, who was on the King's guard, had told me, just before we set out from St. James's that the park was full of people who seemed discontented and tumultuous, and that he apprehended insult would be offered to the King. Nothing material, however, happened, till we got down to the narrowest part of the street called St. Margaret's, between the two palace yards, when, the moment we had passed the Office of Ordnance, and were just opposite the parlour window of the house adjoining it, a small ball, either of lead or marble, passed through the window glass on the King's right hand and perforating it, leaving a small hole, the bigness of the top of my little finger (which I instantly put through to mark the size), and passed through the coach out of the other door, the glass of which was down. We all instantly exclaimed, 'This is a shot!' The King showed, and I am persuaded, felt no alarm; much less did he fear, to which indeed he is insensible. We proceeded to the House of Lords, when, on getting out of the coach, I first, and the King immediately after, said to the Lord Chancellor, who was at the bottom of the stairs to receive the King, 'My Lord, we have been shot at.' The King ascended the stairs, robed, and then perfectly free from the smallest agitation, read his speech with peculiar correctness, and even less hesitation than usual. At his unrobing afterwards, when the event got more known (I having told it to the Duke of York's ear as I passed under the throne, and to the others who stood near us), it was, as might be supposed, the only topic of conversation, in which the King joined with much less agitation than anybody else. And afterwards, in getting into the coach, the first words he said were, 'Well, my Lords, one person is proposing this, and another is supposing that, forgetting that there is One above us all who disposes of everything, and on whom alone we depend.' The magnanimity, piety, and good sense of this, struck me most forcibly, and I shall never forget the words.

"On our return home to St. James's, the mob was increased in Parliament Street and Whitehall, and when we came into the park, it was still greater. It was said that not less than 100,000 people were there, all of the worst and lowest sort. The scene opened, and the insulting abuse offered to his Majesty was what I can never think of but with horror, or ever forget what I felt, when they proceeded to throw stones into the coach, several of which hit the King, which he bore with signal patience, but not without sensible marks of indignation and resentment at the indignities offered to his person and office. The glasses were all broken to pieces, and in this situation we were during our passage through the park. The King took one of the stones out of the cuff of his coat, where it had lodged, and gave it to me, saying, 'I make you a present of this, as a mark of the civilities we have met with on our journey to-day.'"[270]

In connexion with this episode an accusation of ingratitude was brought against the King. "Now the tradition is," wrote Lady Jerningham, "that at a certain critical moment, when the guards had actually been pushed back or disorganized for a while by a rush of the rabble, a gentleman sprang forward in front of the carriage door, drew on the assailants, threatening to kill forthwith any one who approached nearer, and thus kept the mob at bay sufficiently long to allow the guards to rally round the coach, and prevent further assault. The King inquired about 'the name of his rescuer,' and was informed that it was Mr. Bedingfeld."[271] According to Lady Jerningham, "no further notice was taken," but this was not so, although there was some delay, owing to Mr. Bedingfeld's sense of humour offending a minister. The King instructed Dundas to give his preserver an appointment of some profit, and Dundas asked Bedingfeld what could be done for him, to which question came the witty but unfortunate reply: "The best thing, sir, you can do for me is to make me a Scotchman." Dundas angrily dismissed the humorist, but George, after making frequent inquiries as to what had been done, and each time receiving the reply that no suitable position was vacant, at last said very tartly: "Then, sir, you must make a situation for him," and a new office with a salary of £650 a year was created for Mr. Bedingfeld.

Twice more and on the same day, May 31, 1800, was the King's life in danger. In the morning he was present at a review of the Grenadier Guards in Hyde Park, and during one of the volleys of, presumedly, blank cartridge, a bullet struck Mr. Ongley, a clerk in the Admiralty, who was standing only a few paces from his Majesty. It was never discovered, however, whether this accident was deliberate or unintentional. George visited Drury Lane Theatre the same evening, and the moment he appeared in his box, a man in the pit near the orchestra discharged a pistol at him. "It's only a squib, a squib; they are firing squibs," he reassured the Queen as she entered the box; and, when the man was removed, "We will not stir," he added, "but stay the entertainment out." "No man ever showed so much courage as our good King's disregard of his person, and confidence in the overshadowing Providence on the pistol being fired," Lady Jerningham wrote. "He went back one step and whispered to Lord Salisbury: it is now known that it was to endeavour to stop the Queen, for that it was likely another shot would be fired, he himself remaining at his post. The Queen, however, arrived a moment after, and he then said they had fired a squib."[272] When Sheridan said to the King that after the shot he should have left the box lest the man fired again, "I should have despised myself for ever, had I but stirred a single inch. A man on such an occasion should need no prompting but immediately see what is his duty," the latter rejoined; and indeed he had his nerves so well under control that "he took his accustomed doze of three or four minutes between the conclusion of the play and the commencement of the farce, precisely as he would have done on any other night."[273] "I am going to bed with a confidence that I shall sleep soundly," he said later in the evening, "and my prayer is that the poor unhappy person, who aimed at my life, may rest as quietly as I shall." It was À propos of this attempt that Sheridan at once composed an additional verse for the Royal Anthem, which was sung at the conclusion of the performance.

In spite of these attacks, which had no political significance, for the perpetrators, Margaret Nicholson and James Hatfield, were mad, the King would have no guards except on state occasions, and when remonstrated with by a member of his Court, "I very well know that any man who chooses to sacrifice his own life may, whenever he pleases take away mine, riding out, as I do continually, with a single equerry or footman," he said calmly. "I only hope that whoever may attempt it will not do it in a barbarous or brutal manner."[274]

A king who could face death without a tremor was not to be frightened by any demagogue.

"Though entirely confiding in your attachment to my person, as well as in your hatred of every lawless proceeding," he wrote to Lord North on April 25, "yet I think it highly proper to apprise you that the exclusion of Mr. Wilkes appears to be very essential, and must be effected."[275]

The King's anger greatly handicapped ministers. "The ministers are embarrassed to the last degree how to act with regard to Wilkes," the Bishop of Carlisle wrote to Grenville. "It seems they are afraid to press the King for his pardon as that is a subject his Majesty will not easily hear the least mention of; and they are apprehensive, if he has it not, that the mob of London will rise in his favour."[276] When the City of London presented an address, complaining of the arbitrary conduct of the House of Commons, the King burst out laughing and turned his back on the Lord Mayor. A second deputation was treated in much the same way, when the Lord Mayor, William Beckford, replied to the King's abrupt reply with an impromptu speech, that was subsequently inscribed on a monument erected in his honour in the Guildhall. "Permit me, Sire, further to observe that whosoever has already dared, or shall hereafter endeavour, by false insinuations, and suggestions, to alienate your Majesty's affections from your loyal subjects in general, and from the City of London in particular, is an enemy to your Majesty's person and family, a violator of the public peace, and a betrayer of our happy constitution as it was established at the glorious and necessary revolution."

While Wilkes was in prison his admirers paid his debts, it is said, to the amount of £17,000, and on his release on April 17, 1770, he was greeted with as much enthusiasm as a king on his coronation. "It seemed," as Heron remarked, "as if the population of London and Middlesex were the plebs of ancient Rome, and Wilkes a tribune." The Common Council of the City elected him, in quick succession, Alderman and Sheriff, and, after the Court of Aldermen had twice selected another candidate, he became Lord Mayor in 1774, the year that witnessed his return for the fifth time as Member of Parliament for Middlesex, "Thus," said Walpole, summing up the career of this indomitable man, "after so much persecution by the Court, after so many attempts upon his life, after a long imprisonment in gaol, after all his own crimes and indiscretions, did this extraordinary man, of more extraordinary fortune, attain the highest office in so grave and important a city as the capital of England, always reviving the more opposed and oppressed, and unable to shock Fortune, and make her laugh at him who laughed at everybody and everything."

In the end, however, Wilkes made his peace with the King, was received at Court, and became somewhat of a courtier, declaring that himself had never been a Wilkite. The strange spectacle of the monarch and the demagogue engaged in amicable conversation delighted Byron, who could not miss so excellent an opportunity for humour.