USA > Pennsylvania > Luzerne County > Wilkes-Barre > A history of Wilkes-Barre, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania : from its first beginnings to the present time, including chapters of newly-discovered early Wyoming Valley history, together with many biographical sketches and much genealogical material. Volume I > Part 92
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* See The New London Gazette, June 10, 1768.
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printed placards bearing these words : "The prayers of this congregation are earnestly desired for the restoration of Liberty, depending on the election of Mr. Wilkes." The Austrian Ambassador, the Graf von Seilern, most solemn and haughty of the representatives of a solemn Court, was dragged from his carriage by the mob and had to submit to being held with his legs in the air while a man chalked "45" on the soles of his boots. Every coach on the streets was stopped, and if its occupants did not hurrah for "Wilkes and Liberty !" the windows were broken, and in any event the number "45" was deeply scratched on the varnished sides.
The wildest work of the mob was done after the closing of the polls on the night of the 28th of March, and on the following day and night. Some person having written "Damn Wilkes and Liberty !" in several places on the walls of a house in Soho Square, which had formerly been occupied by the Tripolitan ambassador but was then vacant, the mob were so enraged that they broke every window in the house, and did con- siderable damage to other houses in the same square that were not illuminated in honor of Wilkes' victory-for he had been elected by a large plurality. London was illuminated for two nights at the com- mand of the mob, who made their rounds at intervals during each night and ordered those who had extinguished their candles to relight them ; their windows being smashed if they neglected to obey. The beautiful Duchess of Hamilton had her house battered with stones because she refused to illuminate it. The residences of the Duke of Gloucester and of Lord Weymouth were similarly attacked for a like reason, while the windows and lamps of the Mansion House (the official residence of the Lord Mayor) were all broken. The Earl of Hillsborough (Secretary of State for the Colonies), in passing by Charing Cross on his way to his office in Whitehall, had the windows of his carriage smashed by the mob, and was otherwise insulted. During the course of the election forty-seven lives were lost. Wilkes wrote letters to the nobility and gentry whose property had been either defaced or destroyed by the mob, "expressing his great concern for such outrageous and scandalous be- havior, and assuring them that his friends and himself took the utmost pains to restrain the intemperate zeal of the populace previous to and at the time of election ; but that they could not foresee or suspect any irreg- ularities in the metropolis after it was over."
A gentleman in Aylesbury, Wilkes' former home, writing to a friend in London under date of March 30, 1768, said* :
"This day about noon we received the news of Mr. Wilkes' election for the county of Middlesex by a great majority. The inexpressible joy that appeared among the in- habitants in general is not to be conceived. The bells were immediately set a-ringing, and continued upwards of twelve hours, and every inhabitant of the town appeared with a blue cockade in his hat, interwoven with the words "Wilkes and Liberty !" and under- neath, "The Worthy Freeholders of the County of Middlesex who Voted for Him !" The windows in every house of the town were illuminated, and several of the principal inhabitants provided hogsheads of beer at their own expence, at different parts of the town, for the populace. Bonfires were immediately made, and the evening concluded with the greatest joy and decorum imaginable. The next morning the populace carried a blue flag round the town, whereon was painted the portrait of Mr. Wilkes, and under- neath, "Wilkes and Liberty !"-accompanied by a great number of the principal inhabit- ants, who, as soon as the parade ended, fixed it on the Town Hall, there to remain to the latest posterity."
Diderot, at Paris, wrote to Wilkes a letter of congratulation, clos- ing with this sentence : "The august Senate of Great Britain will still * See The New London Gazette, June 10, 1768.
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count a Wilkes among its most illustrious members ; and the liberty of your country will still find in you a generous defender of its rights and privileges." But there were some people, of course, who were not at all pleased with Wilkes' success-as is indicated by the following letter* from Alexander Wedderburn (mentioned in a note on page 441, ante) to George Grenville, written at Morley, in Yorkshire, April 3, 1768.
"How different has the scene been in the South, and how little reason can any man have for leaving a country of plenty, frugality and sobriety, as this is ( where laws execute themselves, and where the name of Wilkes is never profanely joined with Liberty, nor mentioned but with detestation), to inhabit a great bedlam under the dominion of a beggarly, idle and intoxicated mob without keepers, actuated solely by the word 'Wilkes,' which they use (as better savages do a walrus) to incite them in their attempts to insult Government and trample upon law. Wilkes, I dare to say, is vain enough to imagine that he has raised all this tumult ; but in my opinion he is as innocent of it as the staff that carries the flag with his name upon it. The mob has been made sensible of its own
THE POLLING AT AN ELECTION IN ENGLAND. A photo-reproduction of an engraving after the picture painted by William Hogarth in 1753.+
* See "The Grenville Papers," IV : 263.
+ The maimed, the lame, the blind and the sick are shown in this picture hastening to the hustings to give their independent votes. The two contending candidates, seated at the back of the polling-booth, anticipate the event. One of them, coolly resting upon his cane in a state of stupid satisfaction, appears to be as happy as his nature will admit, in the certainty of success. Very different are the feelings of his opponent, who, rubbing his head with every mark of apprehensive agitation, contemplates the state of the poll, and shudders at the heavy expense of a contest in which he is likely to be the loser. On goes the day ; and the grave business of registering the names and counting up the votes, hour by hour, is watched by both candidates with the most anxious expectancy-each "state of the poll" showing either candidate the chances he sustains of being returned.
The first person who tenders his oath to the swearing-clerk is an old soldier, and probably a brave one, for he has lost a leg, an arm and a hand in the service of his country. A brawling advocate, with that loud and overbearing loquacity for which Billingsgate and the Bar are so deservedly eminent, puts in a protest against the vote being received, on the ground that the law ordains that "the person who makes an affidavit shall lay his right hand upon the book"; but this man, having had his right hand severed from his arm, cannot comply with the letter of the law, and therefore is not competent to make an affidavit. An opposing advocate (standing behind the clerk) replies to this protest that, although the veteran has lost much of his blood and three of his limbs in the service of his King, yet the sword which deprived him of his hand did not deprive him of his birthright. It might as well be argued, he asserts, that the handless veteran is excluded from the rites of matrimony because he cannot pledge his hand. The law must and will consider the substitute for the hand to be as good as the hand itself.
The next in the line of worthy and independent freeholders is evidently a deaf idiot, who, fastened in his chair, is brought by his attendants to give his vote for a fit person to represent him in Parliament. Behind him are two men carrying a sick man wrapped in a blanket ; after them follows a blind man, and then a lame man.
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importance, and the pleasure which the rich and powerful feel in governing those whom Fate has made their inferiors, is not half so strong as that which the indigent and worth- less feel in subverting property, defying law, and lording it over those whom they were used to respect.
"A 'Jack Straw' or a John Wilkes are but the instruments of those whom they seem
to lead. * * Has not the mob of London as good a right to be insolent as the un- checked mob of Boston? Was not the attack on Bedford House an encouragement to pull down any other house in London? And is it wonderful that the populace should at last assist the endeavours of those who for five years past have been making interest for Mr. Wilkes?"*
A few days after the announcement of Mr. Wilkes' election a Lon- don newspaper printed the following :
"It is confidently said that the legal life of Mr. Wilkes in Parliament will prove the certain death of the Scottish interest at Court; that expiring Jacobitism will, for the same reason, be totally extinguished, and that Mr. Wilkes' well-known aversion to the Romish superstition will greatly promote the present strict enquiry into the state of it in these kingdoms. * * We learn from Edinburgh that, on the night of the 4th inst. [April], several hundred persons assembled there and carried on their shoulders a figure which they called 'Wilkes'; and after parading the streets and shouting 'Wilkes and Liberty !' they carried him to the Grass-market, where they chaired the mock hero on the stone where the gallows is usually fixed at executions. After making a fire they com- mitted the effigy to the flames, scattered the ashes in the air, and then dispersed."
"The only opponent of Wilkes who was consistent throughout," says Fitzgerald,t "and who all through was for dealing with the arch- agitator in the most summary fashion, was the King. In fact, the whole seemed to be really fought out between two men, His Majesty and Mr. Wilkes. The former identified him with the lowest scum of the popu- lation, and seemed to believe that he was ready to burn, sack and ravish. He held him accountable for the excesses of the mob. In alarm for the safety of the palace, he had sat up during the whole night when the town was illuminated.
* He was infinitely disgusted at the un- accountable inaction of the Ministers in not arresting the outlaw on his arrival. He wrote to one of his Secretaries : 'If he is not soon secured, I wish you would inquire whether there is no legal method of quicken- ing the zeal of the Sheriffs themselves.' "
Wilkes, unmolested, carried out his duly announced plans by pre- senting himself at Westminster Hall on the 13th of April. On his ap- pearance in the Court he made a speech to the Judges, offering to sub- mit himself in everything to the laws, and adding a short defense on the two charges of publishing The North Briton and the "Essay on Woman." He complained also of the records of the Court having been altered by Lord Mansfield. The case was then duly argued by counsel, whereupon Lord Mansfield held that Wilkes was not properly "before the Court"- that he must be formally brought there on a writ, or warrant. West- minster Hall-as well as both the court-yards of Westminster Palace- was crowded by the populace on this occasion, but there was no dis- order. Upon retiring from the Court Wilkes repaired to Waghorn's coffee-house near by, and upon appearing at one of the windows thereof was greeted with vigorous applause and cheering by the crowd in the street. Later in the day he was served by a Sheriff's officer with a writ of "capias utlugatum"-under which he was permitted to remain at large, on his parole of honor to surrender when sent for. Wilkes im-
* In less than a year after this time Alexander Wedderburn exerted himself as much in the defense of Wilkes as ever he did in his condemnation. His vote on the popular side of the Middlesex election ques- tion in February, 1769, lost him his seat in Parliament. Through the friendship of Lord Clive for George Grenville, and on the recommendation of the latter, Wedderburn was elected to Parliament from Bishop's Castle in November, 1769. While he was out of Parliament he went about making harangues and sup- porting violent resolutions against the Government, and was more of a Wilkesite than even Wilkes himself.
+ "The Life and Times of John Wilkes," I : 336.
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mediately announced in public that he would formally surrender his out- lawry on Wednesday, April 20th. George Grenville writing in reference to this said : "A great concourse of people is expected on Wednesday -the very expectation will alone make it. But, besides, I was told yesterday that Mr. Fitzherbert had advised Wilkes to prevent all crowd on that day, and that Wilkes in answer swore that he would be carried down to the Court on the shoulders of the city of London."
From a London newspaper of April 21, 1768, we get the following :
"Yesterday morning Mr. Wilkes came from his lodgings in a hackney-chair to the Parliament Coffee-house, in Old Palace-yard, being preceded by three gentlemen, who most pressingly recommended silence and good order to the populace, as did Mr. Wilkes also from the chair. He staid at the coffee-house till the Court was sat, and then went the back way into the Court, where his surrender was not accepted. The matter was argued by counsel, and it is said that according to law Mr. Wilkes should have surrendered him- self to the Sheriff. The pleadings of the counsel lasted till near two o'clock, when Mr. Wilkes left the Court. * * Among other prudent measures used yesterday for the preservation of peace, the locks were taken off the muskets belonging to the Middlesex militia, lest the mob should seize them."
In a London newspaper of April 28, 1768, we find the following :
"Yesterday morning about nine o'clock Mr. Wilkes was brought to Westminster Hall by virtue of the writ of capias utlugatum. He did not come into the Court of King's Bench till four minutes before three o'clock in the afternoon. A writ of error was allowed, after which it was argued whether the said gentleman could be admitted to bail ; when, after several learned arguments and debates-which lasted till half past six o'clock-it was the opinion of the Court that he could not. In consequence thereof he was committed to the King's Bench Prison ; to which place, as Mr. Wilkes was going from the Hall in an hackney-coach, attended by Messrs. Stichall and Holloway, tipstaffs to the Rt. Hon. Lord Mansfield, the mob stopped the coach at the foot of Westminster Bridge, on the Middlesex side, took out the horses and drew the coach along the Strand, Fleet Street, etc., to Spitalfields. When they came to Spital Square they obliged the two tipstaffs to get out, and let them go very quietly away. They then drew Mr. Wilkes to the Three Tuns Tavern, in Spitalfields, where, from a one-story window, he earnestly entreated them to retire ; but they refused, saying they would watch him till the morn- ing. However, soon after they dispersed, and Mr. Wilkes went to the King's Bench between ten and eleven last night."
The next morning Lord Temple wrote to Mr. Wilkes as follows :
"I little thought I should ever pay a visit to the King's Bench Prison ; but the same opinions which carried me to see you in the Tower now incite me to take an opportunity (before I leave town for the Summer) of returning my thanks to you in person for your sober and discreet conduct of yesterday, manifested in a dutiful submission to the law, though carried on against you with the most unnecessary rigour by refusing bail. I applaud your wise and humane discouragement of all tumult and disorder, in which I doubt not but you will persevere. Though I have not seen you for many years, yet I shall bring with me the same heart warm for your support of the just rights and dignity of the Crown, and for the defence of the constitutional privileges of Englishmen, violated in so many instances in your person."
This was the last letter written by Lord Temple to Wilkes, and shortly afterwards the friendship which had existed between the two men for so long was broken-Wilkes having grievously offended his Lordship by some remarks which he had printed.
The new Parliament being appointed to meet on the 10th of May there was an expectation that Wilkes would endeavor, by some means, to take his seat in the House of Commons, and a great crowd of people assembled near the prison. A riot ensued, the military were called out by the magistrates in pursuance of the advice of Lord Weymouth-com- municated in an official letter-and one man was killed and several were wounded by the soldiers. Subsequently a letter of the Secretary for War, conveying an expression of the King's approval of the conduct of the officers and men on this occasion, was the subject of much caustic comment by "Junius." In the meantime the appeal of Wilkes against his outlawry had been argued-Serjeant Glynn appearing in his behalf-
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and on the 8th of June Wilkes was brought from the prison to the Court to hear the judgment, which was a reversal of the outlawry on a technical point. But the Court took advantage of the opportunity to pass sentence on Wilkes for reprinting and publishing The North Briton, "No. 45," and for printing the "Essay on Woman." In the one case he was sentenced to pay a fine of £500 and (having already been in prison for six weeks) to undergo a further confinement of ten months ; while in the other case he was to pay a fine of £500 and be imprisoned for a twelve- month. At the end of these terms he was to find sureties for his future conduct during seven years. A writ of error to the next House of Lords was immediately applied for by Wilkes, and he announced his determination to bring his whole case before Parliament by way of petition.
The quarrel of Wilkes with the Ministry gave him great popularity in the American Colonies with the opponents of the Government, and every political and public move made by Wilkes and his followers was chronicled in due time in the American newspapers-particularly in those of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Some of the issues of those papers published in May and June, 1768, had their news columns almost entirely filled with items relating to Wilkes; as for example, The New London Gazette of June 10, 1768-a sheet of four pages, each 72x12 inches in size, with three columns to a page-devoted five and a-half columns to the doings of Wilkes and the Wilkesites. When news reached Boston that Wilkes had been returned to Parliament as Member for Middlesex, "the friends of liberty, Wilkes, peace and good order- in other words, the Sons of Liberty" *- assembled at the Whig Tavern in Boston "to the number of forty-five and upwards" and formulated an address to Wilkes. They congratulated his country, the British Colonies and himself on his happy return to the land worthy such an inhabitant. They expressed their confidence that he would convince Great Britain and America "that he was one of those incorruptibly honest men reserved by Heaven to bless and perhaps save a tottering empire." Feeble and infirm as was the British Constitution, they would not despair of it. To Mr. Wilkes they owed much for his strenuous endeavors to preserve it. They asked leave, therefore, to express their confidence in his approved abilities and steady patriotism. His perseverance in the good old cause might still prevent the great system from dashing to pieces. In con- cluding they begged him to accept the copy of "The Farmer's Letters"t which they sent with the address; the sentiments of the "Farmer" being theirs.
The foregoing address, together with "The Farmer's Letters," were forwarded to Wilkes' brother-in-law, Alderman Hayley, by whom they were duly delivered to Wilkes at the King's Bench Prison. Under date of July 19, 1768, Wilkes sent a reply to the address-professing himself extremely honored by it and the valuable present which accompanied it. Nothing could give him more satisfaction than to find the true spirit of liberty so generally diffused through the most remote parts of the British monarchy. He thanked them very heartily for the generous and rational entertainment of "The Farmer's Letters," in which the cause of freedom was perfectly understood and ably defended. As a member of the Legis-
* Mentioned on page 482, and more fully referred to in Chapter X.
t "Letters of a Pennsylvania Farmer," by John Dickinson. For a fuller reference to these "Letters," and for a portrait of the author and a sketch of his life, see a subsequent chapter.
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lature he would always give a particular attention to whatever respected the interests of America, which he believed to be intimately connected with and of essential moment to the parent country and the common welfare of the great political system. After the first claims of duty to England and of gratitude to the county of Middlesex, none should engage him more than the affairs of the Colonies. He would ever avow himself a friend to universal liberty, and he held Magna Charta to be in as full force in America as in England. The only ambition he felt was to distinguish himself as a friend of the rights of mankind, both religious and civil. The favorable opinion, which the committee of the Sons of Liberty in the town of Boston had been pleased to express of him, was a great encouragement and a noble reward of his efforts in the service of the kingdom.
The Sons of Liberty answered this letter shortly after its receipt- the members of the organization having assembled to hear the letter read and to spend an evening in drinking toasts to the health of Wilkes and his friends, and to the cause they represented. In their reply the "Sons" congratulated themselves on their well-placed confidence, and presumed much on the exertions of such a martyr to universal liberty as John Wilkes. They felt, with fraternal concern, that Europe in a ferment and America on the point of bursting into flames more press- ingly required the patriot senator, the wise and honest counselor, than the desolating conqueror. Numerous friends in the Colonies having dis- covered a great desire to see Wilkes' letter, they preferred a request for permission to publish it; and then they concluded with these words : "With ardent wishes for your speedy enlargement, elated expectations of sharing in your impartial concern for your country-the spreading empire of your sovereign, wherever extended-we remain, Unshaken Hero, your steady friends and much obliged humble servants."
At Norwich, Connecticut, the headquarters of the Sons of Liberty in Connecticut, Wilkes' election to Parliament was celebrated on June 7, 1768. The principal men of the town and vicinity assembled at Peck's Tavern on the Green, near the Liberty Tree (see page 591). A bounteous repast was served, all the furniture of the tables -- plates, bowls, tureens, tumblers, napkins, etc .- being marked "No. 45." The Liberty Tree was decked with new emblems, among which, and conspicuously surmounting the whole, was a banner inscribed with "No. 45" and "Wilkes and Liberty !" During and after the repast forty-five toasts were drunk, some of which were : "The King"; "The Queen"; "Wilkes and Liberty"; "No. 45"; "The British Parliament"; "The Royal Pa- triots of America"; "The Governor and Colony of Connecticut"; "All the Sons of Liberty on the Continent"; "No Internal Taxes in this Colony but such as are laid on us by our own Assemblies"; "No Bishops for America, to eat up the Tythe Pigs"; "May we never want a Wilkes, and may Wilkes never want Liberty"; "Success to our American Man- ufactories"; "Success to Trade and Navigation."*
Wilkes' imprisonment was, in a measure, a long triumph. Hampers of game and wine were sent to him continually from all quarters, and money poured in upon him from sympathizing patriots. Meanwhile he sent numerous addresses to his constituents and communications to the newspapers. In one of the latter he incorporated a copy of Lord Wey-
* See The New London Gazette, June 10, 1768, and The Connecticut Courant (Hartford), July 4, 1768.
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inouth's letter to the City magistrates (alluded to on page 547, ante)- which by some unknown means he had obtained-introducing it with this remark : "It shows how long the horrid massacre in St. George's Fields had been planned and determined upon before it was carried into execution, and how long a hellish project can be brooded over by some infernal spirits without one moment's remorse." When Parliament met, November 14, 1768, Wilkes' petition was presented, setting out all his grievances in detail. His case was taken up at an early day by the two Houses in conference, when his libellous comments on Lord Weymouth's letter were considered. Later his petition was taken into consideration, and over it there was a hot debate in the House of Commons. Burke inveighed against the Ministers, declaring it was safer to libel the Con- stitution than the Ministers ; while Col. Isaac Barré went so far as to style Wilkes "a wicked, daring, infamous incendiary" and "an infernal parricide." Finally, on the 3d of February, the House resolved, by a vote of 219 to 137, "that John Wilkes, Esq., who hath expressed him- self the author and publisher of an insolent, scandalous and seditious libel [against Lord Weymouth], and who has been convicted in the Court of King's Bench of having printed and published a seditious libel and three obscene and seditious impious libels, and been sentenced to twenty-two months' imprisonment, be expelled this House, and that a warrant be issued for a new election." In the meantime, about the first of January, Wilkes had been chosen Alderman of the Ward of Farring- don-Without, London, by a very considerable majority ; on which oc- casion "a great number of the gentlemen of the Lumber Troop, of which he [Wilkes] was a member, repaired to their suttling-house, where they drank health, prosperity and liberty to Mr. Wilkes, under a discharge of forty-five pieces of cannon, which were fired off before the door of the house."*
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