THE AFFAIRS OF WILKES.
By this time Sergeant Glynn had been elected for the county of Middlesex. Glynn was the friend and companion of Wilkes, and it happened that some of the chairmen of his opponent killed a man of the name of Clarke in an affray. At this period, such events were by no means uncommon, but as Sir William Beauchamp was a ministerial candidate, the populace spread surmises abroad, and circulated accusations detrimental to his character. He was charged with being an employer of assassins, and two of his chairmen were tried at the Old Bailey for murder. They were acquitted, but this only tended to increase the popular excitement against the ministers. Wilkes still more inflamed it by his intemperate conduct. Lord Weymouth sent a letter to the bench of magistrates for the county of Surrey, expressing the warmest approbation of their conduct, and recommending them to quell all tumults on their first rising by the aid of the civil and military power. This letter, or a copy of it, having fallen into the hands of Wilkes, it was published by him, with an inflammatory preface, in which he called the affair in St. George’s Fields “a horrid massacre, and the consequence of a hellish project deliberately planned.” Irritated by his imprisonment, Wilkes, indeed, seems now to have set his fortune on the cast of a die, and the only way of playing the game successfully, seems to have been, considered by him, that of inflaming the passions of the people, already enraged beyond endurance, to the utmost. But the ministers resolved that he should not act with impunity, and this last act determined them upon taking effectual measures to overthrow his cause, finally and for ever. But the determination taken by them only aided the “patriot” in his ambitious projects, and tended to increase their own unpopularity.
GEORGE III. 1765-1769