“TO THE REV. JOHN HORNE, MINISTER OF BRENTFORD.
“O, sent by Heav’n in these dishonest days
In ev’ry breast to kindle Freedom’s blaze,
To snatch the cov’ring from the statesman’s heart,
And awful truths, without a fear, impart!
Tho’ ministerial thunders round thee roll,
They roll in vain, nor shock thy manly soul:
Thy country’s rights thy midnight labours claim,
And with a Sidney’s join thy honour’d name.
Superior thou to every threat shalt rise,
And from the hands of rapine wrest her prize.
Thy pen shall Vice in all her wiles reveal,
And trembling Graftons[53] shall its vengeance feel.
Nor shall the murd’rer, foe to man and God,
Tho’ sav’d by power, escape thy painful rod;
Nor shall corruption, unmolested stand,
Sap all our rights, and sink a venal land;
True to thy conscience, to thy country true,
Thou shalt detect and dash her conquests too.
Proctor shalt, blushing, all his failings own,
Sigh o’er his loss, and o’er his triumphs groan;
His hir’d assassins fill his breast with shame,
And trembling own the terror of thy name.
Proceed, great Sir, in Freedom’s glorious cause,
O! save thy country and thy country’s laws!
The wiles of Statesmen without fear disclose,
And be a foe to all thy country’s foes.
So shall thy friend,[54] who in confinement sighs,
Smile in his pains, and great in suffr’ing rise:
In health, an honest patriot own in thee,
And, dying, joy to leave his country FREE.”
As in the previous election, there was a charge of murder, which arose out of the irregularities then committed, and two Irish chairmen, Balfe and McQuirk, were tried for the death of Mr. George Clarke, “a young gentleman of the law, whom curiosity had brought to Brentford at the late election.” References to this incident are given in the satirical prints and magazines, together with the usual report of the trial of the malefactors. “The Present State of Surgery; or, Modern Practice” (Dec. 14, 1768), appeared in the Universal Magazine, vol. v. (April, 1769). This engraving shows Mr. Clarke, whose skull was fatally injured by a blow from a bludgeon, placed between two doctors, who are examining his head: one, a surgeon, is declaring, “If the fever does not kill him, contusions and fractures are nothing;” the other is of opinion, “A court plaister will remove the disorder.” One of a group of surgeons is inquiring of the senior, “Shall we apply the trepan, sir?” “A Glyster” is proposed as likely to “evacuate the broken pieces of bone.” The authors of the mischief, or some of the Irish bludgeon men, are standing by, and discussing the case: “The doctor says a broken skull’s nothing if they can but cure the fever.” His companion replies, “Thank God, we need not fear being knock’d on the head then!” A bystander is remarking, “I catch’d a fever from a bludgeon at Brentford myself”—many persons besides Clarke having complained of maltreatment during these riots. “Ay, they were deadly wise at the Election time,” is the opinion of another. A spectator ejaculates, “I wish those Irish dogs had kept the distemper to themselves—it’s worse than the Itch!” a double-barrelled allusion to the two trials for wilful murder which had arisen out of the successive Middlesex elections—the Irish chairmen who were the cause of Clarke’s death, and the Scotch soldiers who killed Allen. The contusion proved fatal; after languishing a few days the unfortunate young gentleman succumbed.
The trial of the two chairmen, Balfe and McQuirk, came on at the Old Bailey, January 14, 1769, and though the prisoners were provided with an array of learned counsellors, to the number of five, for their defence, they were pronounced “guilty,” and sentenced to transportation. An appeal was made to arrest judgment, but it was overruled, and the sentences ordered to be executed. Court influence, in the interval, procured a respite, and the men ultimately received a royal pardon, signed by Lord Rochford, secretary of state, which produced severe animadversions; see “Junius to the Duke of Grafton,” and the notes to this letter by John Wade (Edin. 1850). In the Political Register (IV.) is a copy of the document setting Balfe and McQuirk free. Meanwhile the College of Surgeons was consulted, to exonerate the guilty, to the dissatisfaction of the public.
“It is said that on a late chirurgical examination, there was the greatest privacy imaginable supported; not only several young surgeons (who, being advertised of the meeting, went there for the sake of instruction) were denied admittance, but there were two sentinels on the outside of the door to prevent any person from listening. Strange inquisitorial proceedings!”
On Monday, the master, wardens, and examiners of the Surgeons’ Company, ten in number, of whom five had appointments under administration, the president being one, and consequently holding the casting-vote (three of the committee actually held at that time appointments of “sergeant-surgeon” to the king, and another was surgeon to the Dowager Princess of Wales, his mother), met at their hall in the Old Bailey, in pursuance of a letter from the Earl of Rochford, one of His Majesty’s principal secretaries of state, desiring their opinion in relation to a doubt that had arisen whether the blow which Mr. Clarke received at the election at Brentford was the cause of his death; and the above gentlemen, after examining the surgeons, apothecary, and several others (in camera, as alleged), returned an answer the same evening to his lordship, giving it as their unanimous opinion, that the blow was not the cause of Mr. Clarke’s death. A satirical print, given in the Oxford Magazine as “A Consultation of Surgeons” (Feb. 27, 1769), exhibits the supposititious explanation of the inquiry and verdict. The surgeons are grouped round a table, on which are pens and ink. The president is pointing to the decision of the conclave, set down to order for Lord Rochford—“It does not appear that he died——” At the same time a large and well-filled bag of money, held up temptingly in the president’s right hand, appears the most conclusive evidence before the corporation. The chairman observes, “This [the money] convinces me that Clarke did not die of the wound he received at Brentford.” A Scotch surgeon is asserting, “By my Soul, his head was too thick to be broken, or he would ne’er ha’ gang’d to Brentford.” The next speaker, regarding the weighty motive in the president’s charge, avers, “Another such bag would convince me Clarke never received any blow.” A surgeon, with his gold-headed cane to his nose, is convinced, “Gold is good evidence, and carries great weight.” In reference to the surgeon Foot, who, called in at the time, deposed at the trial that Clarke died of the blow on head, but was of opinion that his life might have been saved by judicious treatment, one of the consulting body, rising from his seat, is declaring, “Devil burn me, but that same surgeon was a blockhead; how should a Foot be able to judge of the Head?” The verdict of the College of Surgeons excited popular disgust, and various reflections were cast upon the method by which it was arrived at. The following appeared in the Public Ledger (April 13, 1769):—
“It is confidently repeated, that while a certain party of gentlemen were assembled together, in order to consult about vindicating themselves against Mr. Foot’s appeal, the ghost of Mr. Clarke appeared, and behaved in a most gross and insulting manner to the whole committee, which so terrified them all, that they have been very ill ever since, and it is thought some will not recover.”
Considerable interest attaches to the struggle in question, which made Wilkes a hero for a while. It was a time of trial as regarded the inviolability of the constitution. The ministers, safe in their bought majority in the Commons, ready to vote mechanically, seemed utterly callous as to the consequences of those infractions they were making on national liberties, presumably secured on an unassailable basis. The more impartial-minded of the people began to dread the attempted revival of despotic and irresponsible government and of those evils which had been guarded against by great exertions, firmness, and no slight sacrifices in the past. The spirit of resistance was abroad, and ministers for their own purposes disguised by every means the true condition of affairs from the head of the State. As the violation of popular liberties recalled the struggles which marked the later Stuart era, so were the means taken to resist these encroachments compared to the conduct of the people and their tribunes under the same trying circumstances. Petitions and remonstrances began to make ministers tremble lest the sympathies of the throne might be turned to their proper channel, the people.
Another election for Middlesex occurred in 1769, vice Wilkes; the results were that Wilkes was returned at the head of the poll, while his opponent (with a quarter of his votes) was declared duly elected. On the subject of Colonel Luttrell’s admission to the House much was said which must have been unpalatable to the Court. The Oxford Magazine printed a list of those members who were so patriotically inclined as to resist this brazen violation of the constitution, as “the Minority who voted 1148 in preference to 296;” while those members who servilely voted for the right of the ministers to impose a defeated candidate on the Commons were described as “the Majority who preferred 296 to 1143.” A list is given of these placemen, pensioners, and courtiers, with particulars against their respective names which account for their lack of principle, all being in receipt of State patronage, or emolument of one kind or another, sufficient to prove that self-interest was their guiding principle, and that their consciences were closed by the greed of preferment. The despotic action enforced by the administration, in defiance of the principles of the constitution,—a common practice in the reign of George III.,—provoked a very pertinent disquisition upon the potentiality of the bulwark of popular rights. The great Lord Bacon, somewhere talking of the power of parliaments, says, there is nothing which a parliament cannot do; and he had reason. A parliament can revive or abrogate old laws, and make new ones; settle the succession to the Crown; impose taxes; establish forms of religion; naturalize foreigners; dissolve marriages; legitimate bastards; attaint a man of treason, etc. Lord Bolingbroke, indeed, is of a different opinion, and affirms there is something which a parliament cannot do: it cannot annul the constitution; and that if it should attempt to annul the constitution, the whole body of the people would have a right to resist it. It is natural, too, to think that Lord Bacon limited the power of parliament, great as he believed it, to those things which do not imply a physical impossibility. Modern ministers, however, have shown that a parliament is able, at least in appearance, to effect even such impossibilities. Sir Robert Walpole was wont to boast that he had “trained his fellows,” as he called his venal majority in the House of Commons, “in such a manner, and brought them to such exact discipline, that were he to desire them to vote Jesus Christ a Gildon” (i.e. the head of an infidel sect, Gildon being a deistical writer in Walpole’s day) “he was sure of their compliance.” The ministry then in office (the Grafton administration), as will appear by the list referred to above, had assumed a power no less arbitrary and equally unreasonable, by persuading their servile majority to vote in defiance of the constitution on the question of Colonel Luttrell’s qualifications to sit in the Commons—that the 296 suffrages (recorded for Luttrell) were preferable to the 1143 polled for Wilkes.
The ministerial conduct on the case of Wilkes and upon the events arising therefrom, joined with their ill-advised manœuvres on behalf of their own chosen candidates, produced a marked effect on the constituencies elsewhere, and, as Horace Walpole writes to his friend, Sir H. Mann (March 23, 1769), towns began to break off from their allegiance to the administration in power, and sent instructions to their members to oppose the measures of the Court party. “As the session approached, Lord Chatham engaged with a new warmth in promoting petitions.” In opposition alike to the “Remonstrances,” and to those who questioned the policy of turning a deaf ear to the petitions of the nation—loyal to the throne, but earnestly set upon the reform of abuses and the extinction of “grievances,”—the ministers encouraged their adherents to secure addresses approving their acts, and praying the throne to disregard petitions for rights. The public prints satirized these servile expressions, manufactured to order, while the wits and caricaturists mercilessly exposed the modus operandi of fabricating these illegitimate addresses. According to Horace Walpole, Calcraft and Sir John Mawbey “by zeal and activity obtained a petition from the county of Essex, though neither the High Sheriff, the members, nor any one gentleman of the county would attend the meeting.” It was the old story of the Essex petitions over again, as already set down in the group of “Election Ballads” under Charles II., when the same county made itself conspicuous in a similar fashion: “It was thought wise,” wrote Walpole, “to procure loyal addresses, and one was obtained from Essex, which being the great county for calves, obtained nothing but ridicule.” A pictorial version sets forth the situation (March 6, 1769) as “The Essex Procession from Chelmsford to St. James’s Market, for the good of the Common-Veal.” The engraving represents a street ending in the archway of St. James’s, towards which are progressing two carts, drawn by donkeys tandem-wise, and filled with bleating calves. The cart is driven by Rigby, the Duke of Bedford’s factotum, a supporter of the Court, much interested in the petitions presented to the king at this period: this political agent is travestied as an ass; he is crying, “Calves’ Heads à la daube! Who’ll buy my veal?” One of the victimized calves in the cart is bleating, “This is a Rig-by-Jove;” another exclaims, “How we expose ourselves!” The other charioteer is intended for C. Dingley, author of the “Saw-mill” experiment at Limehouse, and who was an influential projector of the new “City-road;” he was a creature of the Duke of Grafton, a prominent ally of the Court faction against Wilkes and the patriots, and was generally obnoxious to the more constitutionally minded of the citizens. Dingley is transformed into an ox, and he is made to declare to his special consignment of calves, “Friends and Countrymen, you shall not be misrepresented.” One of the calf contingent, mindful of slaughter, is bleating, “I hope they won’t drive us to St. George’s Fields,” the place of slaughter—otherwise, the scene of the recent wanton attacks of the Scottish soldiery on the people; while another of Dingley’s followers is expressing a wish that the famous saw-mills, which were the cause of a riot in which they were demolished, might prove the destruction of the speculator himself. In opposition to the “foolish Essex address,” it was, as described in the Gentleman’s Magazine, “resolved at a meeting of gentlemen held at Chelmsford, December 15, 1769, to support the right of election to Parliament, and to petition the king for a dissolution of Parliament.”
The Essex address was followed up, on the part of what were entitled London merchants, by a similar production, which was chiefly promoted by Charles Dingley; a version of this transaction is entitled “The Addressers.” It appears that “officious tools,” and interested, if not bribed, citizens, designated as “the Merchants of London,” attended, March 8, 1769, at the King’s Arms Tavern, Cornhill, at the invitation of Dingley and his followers. One shilling was charged at the door to keep away the crowd, ostensibly to defray the expense of the room; and one Lovell, having complied with this, found Dingley with a few others assembled. Mr. Muilmann, a German or Dutch stockbroker, professionally nicknamed “Van Scrip,” gave Lovell a copy of the address to read, and told him he could sign the original then on the table; but on Lovell’s expressing that “he did not approve of the address,” Dingley ordered him out; but, having paid his shilling, he stood on his right to remain. Then followed Reynolds (who was Wilkes’s attorney), and having paid his shilling, and refusing to sign the address, was also asked to leave, but elected to enjoy the privilege of remaining. Vaughan and others did the same. The room being then filled, when Mr. Charles Pole was invited to take the chair at the suggestion of the anti-addressers, their opponents “opposed all order,” repeating the cry of “No chair!” with the utmost fury, and threatening to “turn down stairs all who called for any chairman.” The chair itself became an object of contention between the hostile parties; one secured the seat, another the frame, and the “abhorrers of disorder” triumphed until another chair was obtained. The ticklish office of president was at last accepted by Mr. Vaughan. Attorney Reynolds was standing near the chairman, when Dingley, enraged at the success of this counter-demonstration, addressing him as a “d——d scoundrel,” struck him a violent blow in the face; on which provocation, Reynolds, being of commanding size, knocked Dingley down. “Many were the efforts made to dispossess Mr. Vaughan of the chair, strokes were aimed at him with canes and sticks, but the blows were warded off by his friends.”
Such is the disturbance set forth in the satirical engraving of “The Addressers” (March 8, 1769), in which is represented the fracas at the King’s Arms Tavern consequent on this insidious attempt to manufacture a bogus address. Attorney Reynolds’s wig is awry, from the blow inflicted by Dingley; he is knocking the latter out of the chair, and exclaiming, “I’ll make you pay for this.” Dingley is saying, “For this £2000 more;” while, in falling, from his pocket drops a paper, “Saw-mill, £2000.” “Van Scrip,” Muilmann, alluding to the cash considerations held out by the ministers to their allies, is extending his hand, and crying in dismay, “We shall lose this scrip!” A spectator, armed with a riding-whip, is asserting, “You’ll be Jockey’d, Mynheer.” The persons in the crowd are demanding, “A chair! a chair!” while others shout to the contrary; the chair itself is mounted on a table placed in the middle of the room. Mr. Apvan (Vaughan) is occupying this perilous distinction. “Why address, Gentlemen?” is his question to the meeting. A slight fencing-match is going on; the chairman holding his own, while those who attack him cry “Order.” A clergyman—no other than the “Brentford Parson” in person—is suggesting the propriety of “an Address to keep the streets clean,” the condition of the thoroughfares in London being the subject of complaint at this time. From the report of these proceedings published in the Gentleman’s Magazine, it appears that a speaker asserted that the “proper functions of such an assembly were to order the scavengers to clean the streets, and beadles to remove vagrants from them.” The fragments of the chair first dismantled, as described, are in the hands of some of the company by the door. A man has gone down in his exertions “to stand up for the Address.” The incendiary document in question is carried off by one Mr. Phelim O’Error, who is declaring, “I’ll take it to the Merchant Seamen’s Office,” to which it was removed on the next stage of its career.
Another version of these proceedings appeared, March 8, 1769, as “The Battle of Cornhill;” an engraving given in the Town and Country Magazine, with a short parody in the style of a drama on the subject, as detailed in the foregoing “Addressers.” The counter-assault upon Dingley is similarly illustrated. Reynolds, the Attorney Freeman of the drama, is depicted as a tall, burly man. Dingley is made to cry, “Murder, murder. Oh, the rascal. I’ll have him imprisoned seven years for this illegal attack. He has done me twelve hundred, if not two thousand pounds damage.” Van Scrip is much alarmed: “Heaven! what will become of me! I shall lose all my interest in the Treasury, if we fail in carrying it. I shan’t have a single government contract, not so much as a thousand pounds scrip.” An anecdote is related in the London Museum (ii. 1770, p. 32) concerning the use of lottery tickets as bribes by the Government, where Bradshaw, secretary to the Treasury, stigmatized by “Junius” as “the cream-coloured parasite,” is alleged to have “met the member for Buckinghamshire (Lowndes), and offered two hundred lottery tickets at ten pounds each, which were accepted.” Scrip and lottery tickets were freely employed for political bribery at this period, as Walpole mentions in his “Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Third,” and Sir H. N. Wraxall describes in his “Historical Memoirs.”
“The Inchanted Castle; or, King’s Arms in an Uproar” (March 8, 1769) is a further pictorial version of the same occurrence, with little variation as to the persons or incidents represented, but containing a reference, like the last, to the “London Tavern,” the recognized head-quarters and meeting-place for the Society of Supporters of the Bill of Rights, and consequently opposed to sycophantic admiration of ministerial illegalities. Beneath the print in question is a copy of verses, beginning—
“I sing the bloody fight and dire alarms
’Twixt London Tavern and King’s Arms.
Planning Addresses Dingley’s party sate,
And meditating on their Country’s fate.”
Horace Walpole thus describes the transactions represented in the foregoing:—
“The merchants of London, to the number of six or eight hundred, amongst whom were Dutch, Jews, and any officious tools that they could assemble, having signed one of those servile panegyrics [addresses], set out in a long procession of coaches, to carry it to St. James’s.”
The modus operandi by which the address was promoted is fancifully summed up in the plate of the Oxford Magazine, vol. ii., p. 134, “The Principal Merchants and Traders assembled at the Merchant Seamen’s Office, to sign ye Address.” This print represents a further stage in the progress of the transaction. The Public Advertiser, March 11, 1769, announces, “For these two Days past, numbers of the Merchants and principal Traders of London have attended at the Merchant Seamen’s Office, over the Royal Exchange, in order to sign an Address to his Majesty, etc.”
It is stated in the Oxford Magazine, “So eager were the ministers to procure a long list of subscribers that, it is credibly reported, some of the addresses of the then ‘City Merchants,’ were signed by cobblers, porters, chairmen, livery-servants, and the very meanest of the rabble; for as the number of hands was the chief point of view, they cared but little of what rank or condition they were.” The caricaturist has carried out this view of the signatories. The chairman or president is a butcher, whose tray, containing a shoulder of mutton, is laid down at his feet; he is filled with loyal frenzy, and, with his butcher’s knife grasped ready for action, is exclaiming, “I shall stick my knife in Magna Charta, and cut up the carcase of the Bill of Rights.” A porter, with his knot, is anathematizing Wilkes’s “swivel eyes,” and wishing he “may sink under his load.” The petition is being signed by a barber, with his bowl under his arm, together with an aldermanic wig just ordered: “Ah, I’ve got an order for a new wig, only for signing my name.” A Scotch pedlar, with pack and staff, one of Lord Bute’s followers, declares, “Sawney mun sign too, gin it be to the De’il, for my guid laird’s sake.” A journeyman baker, with a basketful of loaves on his back, is coming in succession, well paid for his assistance: “Brother Merchants, follow my example, and you’ll never want bread;” and even a sooty chimney-sweep has expectations of ministerial patronage, “Who knows but I may be appointed to a Chimney at Court?” Prominent among those at the table whereon is the much-denounced “Address,” is a Jew money-jobber, who is elated at his prospects of a Treasury “job,” “Oh! for a large portion of scrip!” and the Dutch stockbroker, Van Scrip, is exclaiming, “Ah! de gross Scrip for Mynheer too,”—the subscription scrip to government loans, profitable to those who secured preference allotments, and, as described, alleged to be manipulated by the ministry in the nature of bribery.
The strictures provoked upon the underhand methods by which these addresses were forced upon the public are exemplified in an “Epistle to the North Briton,” which appeared in the Oxford Magazine, to accompany the engraving of the “Addressing Merchants.” The epistle is lengthy, and we have only room for the opening passages. It is possibly written by the “Brentford Parson;” indeed, the manner as well as matter indicates the authorship suggested. The motto is given, “There is nothing new under the sun” (Eccles. i. 9)—
“And so, sir, what you have often foretold is at last come to pass. We are fairly fallen back into the very dregs of the Stuart reigns. The party of Abhorrers is once more revived; of those Abhorrers, who, in the reign of King Charles the Second, expressed their detestation of all the patriotic and public spirited, as I would say—but, as they were pleased to call them, the factious and insolent petitions that were presented to the king for assembling a parliament, and for securing the other rights and liberties of the People.
“That such wretches should have existed at a time when the Sovereign claimed, and many of his subjects were willing to allow him, a divine, indefeasible, hereditary right to play the tyrant, and to destroy the constitution is nothing strange; but that any such should be found in the reign of a prince, whose family was advanced to the throne in direct contradiction to this absurd principle, would be really surprising, did we not know that human nature is always the same, and that though the seeds of slavery may be smothered for a time, yet whenever they meet with the vivifying influence of court sunshine, they immediately begin to quicken, and to spring up with vigour. And never, sure, did these seeds meet with a more fertile soil, or a more benign sky, than under the present arbitrary and despotic administration, when every man is sure to be rewarded in exact proportion to the servility of his character.
“In this respect, indeed, the present ministers have greatly the advantage of all that have gone before them; for I do not remember a single compliment paid to the Abhorrers, in the reign of King Charles the Second, except the honour of knighthood conferred upon Francis Withers, Esq., who procured and presented the Address from the City of Westminster. But how much more grateful and generous have been our present ministers! They have made the late chief City Magistrate a Privy Councillor, and have given him a contract with government for clothing soldiers, worth £1000 per annum. They have pardoned the murderers MacLaughlin, Balfe, and McQuirk, and have even granted them pensions. This, say the ministry, is only supporting their friends; but, if murderers be their friends, I believe few people will envy them the credit of such a connection.
“Some of the addresses in the reign of the Stuarts breathed a very free and independent spirit. That of the Quakers, upon the accession of King James the Second, may serve as an instance. It was conceived in the following terms:—
“‘We come,’ said they, ‘to testify our sorrow for the death of our good friend Charles, and our joy for thy being made our governor. We are told thou art not of the persuasion of the Church of England, no more than we; wherefore we hope thou wilt grant us the same liberty which thou allowest thyself. Which doing, we wish thee all manner of happiness.’
“There we see the Quakers, with their usual plainness and simplicity, very roundly tell his majesty, that he was not a member of the church of England; a circumstance, which was then thought by many, and hath since been declared by law, to be sufficient to disqualify him for wearing the crown of these Kingdoms.
“But how much more courtly and polite is the language of our present Addressers. They not only pay the highest compliments to the King, which he certainly deserves, they even offer the most nauseous and fulsome flattery to his ministers and servants, and express their entire approbation of every part of their conduct. They must therefore approve of the robbery committed upon the Duke of Portland, of the massacre in St. George’s Fields, of the riot and murders at Brentford, of withdrawing MacLaughlin from the cognizance of the laws, and of pardoning Balfe and McQuirk after they had been fairly tried and condemned by their country.
“But, not satisfied with declaring their approbation of the conduct of the ministry, they express their utter abhorrence and detestation of the conduct of those who have had the presumption to oppose them. They must, therefore, abhor the conduct of the Freeholders of Middlesex, who chose Mr. Wilkes and Mr. Serjeant Glynn, their representatives in parliament, in spite of all the violent, outrageous, and illegal attempts which the ministry made to prevent them. They must abhor the conduct of the 139 independent members who voted against the expulsion of Mr. Wilkes from an august assembly, of which they form the respectable, and perhaps even the most wealthy, tho’ not the most numerous part. They must abhor the conduct of the Citizens of London, of the Citizens of Westminster, of the Freeholders of Middlesex, and of all the other counties and corporations, who, in their instructions to their representatives, have disapproved of those very measures which the Addressers approve. In a word, they must abhor the conduct, at least the sentiments, of ninety-nine parts in a hundred of the people of England, who, if taken separately, and fairly interrogated, would be found to entertain opinions very different from those of the Addressers.”
The “Battle of Cornhill,” otherwise the fight for the signatures to the servile loyal address as already described, was followed by another stage in the contest, an attempt to carry the address in state through the city, the procession being stopped by a conflict in Fleet Street, of which turbulent episode a caricature appeared, March 22, 1769, under the title of the “Battle of Temple Bar.” The engraving offers a vista of Fleet Street; the Devil Tavern, the arched entrance to the Temple, and Nando’s Coffee-house are shown to the right; the gates of the bar are closed, and around is a scene of confused conflict. The decapitated heads of Fletcher and Townley, stuck on poles over Temple Bar, are represented in conversation. The Jacobites executed for their share in the Scottish raid of 1745 are inquiring whether the Addressers are not “friends to the cause which we all love so dear,” and which had planted their heads on the bar over twenty years before. A carriage, drawn by two horses, is the centre of the struggle; the coachman is observing “They all seem in a fair way;” the rabble are pelting the vehicle, from which the person charged with the care of the loyal address is making his escape. Another member of the party bound for St. James’s is seeking shelter from the shower of missiles at the entrance to Nando’s. Other coaches have been subjected to similar indignities; the servants are declaring, “Our masters are finely bedaubed!” The city marshal and his charger are under fire from the mob; grasping his baton and holding his hat to protect his face, the marshal declares, “I find I must go to ye Devil!” The Devil, perched on the sign of the famous tavern christened after his name, is crying, with a Scotch twang, “in compliment to my Lord Bute,” “Fly to me, my Bairns!” This plate is given in the London Magazine, with an account of the pelting and flight of those who were engaged in carrying the address to the king.
SEQUEL TO THE BATTLE OF TEMPLE BAR—PRESENTATION OF THE LOYAL ADDRESS AT ST. JAMES’S PALACE. 1769.
[Page 201.
The concluding stage in the progress of the address and the cavalcade of carriages which attended it, was marked by the appearance of the satirical engraving entitled the “Sequel to the Battle of Temple Bar,” 1769, of which a reduced fac-simile is given. The spot represented is the front of St. James’s Palace, facing St. James’s Street. The remnants of the procession of merchants charged with the address in support of the ministry in power are escaping down Pall Mall, the carriages, with broken windows, being followed by galling volleys of stones and dirt on the part of the mob, while a hearse exhibiting inflammatory placards is accorded an enthusiastic reception. The spectators gathered at the St. James’s Coffee House and around the palace are encouraging the hostile demonstration; the courtiers are surveying the tumult from the gateway and windows of St. James’s Palace. A person mounted on the tower, and assumed to be intended for Lord Bute, is pointing to the weathercock, exclaiming, “High north wind,” i.e. a Scotch wind. The Guards are making attacks upon individuals; a gentleman is being surrounded; the violence of the soldiers is watched by a clergyman, evidently intended for Parson Horne, whose eye was upon those who infringed the rights of the subjects or unlawfully maltreated any of the people. A burlesque funeral procession diversified the proceedings, headed by a mounted mute, wearing a crape weeper, with mourning staff, the hearse drawn by two wretched screws, one black and one white; the coachman is equally odd—the person who drove was declared to have been a frolicsome lordling, it is said young Earl Mountmorres. The body of this vehicle displays a flaring placard—the presentment of an Irish chairman striking with a bludgeon a person who is knocked down and defenceless; this moving picture, inscribed “Brentford,” represents the fate of Mr. Clarke, whose fractured skull, caused by the brutal attack of Proctor’s hired ruffians, ended in his death. Similar placards, “St. George’s Fields” and “Scot Victory,” are posted on the hearse to remind the ministers that the odium of the massacre of the people at St. George’s Fields, and the deliberate assassination of William Allen (May 10, 1768), by a grenadier of the Scottish Regiment, were not forgotten; a coloured picture of this episode was displayed on the other side of the hearse. A diversion is attempted at the entrance to the palace gates, where the figure of a short nobleman is distinguishable by the star on his coat; he is using his broken official staff like a sword. This personage, who actually seized one of the rioters, and who is intended for Earl Talbot, lord steward of the household, is bareheaded, his wig having been displaced in the scuffle with the people, and, finally, a knock on the head cooled his courage; the Guards are coming to his support. Further details of the ending of this vexed question of the address are given in the political intelligence of the time. From all accounts, Mr. Boehm, in whose charge was the fateful roll, was too occupied in securing his own safety to trouble about the fate of the address. It appears that the scattered procession went on to St. James’s without the presenter of the document which had entailed so many embarrassments. According to the Political Register, a messenger was despatched back to the coffee-house for the address; where “Mr. Boehm, having missed it, remained in great suspense.” After many inquiries and great alarm, the roll was found under the seat of the coach, where, by a miracle, it had escaped the search of the mob; the address was immediately forwarded to St. James’s, where it was expectantly awaited.
The history of this incident is taken up by the Political Register for 1769:—
“The merchants and traders who retired with the address mentioned in the account of the proceedings at the ‘King’s Arms,’ having by means of repeated advertisements and private letters obtained a considerable number of persons to sign the said address at the Merchant Seamen’s Office over the Royal Exchange; ... Wednesday, the 22nd March, at two in the afternoon, being appointed, on that day at noon, a great number of the merchants, etc., of this city, set out from the Royal Exchange in their carriages, in order to present an address to His Majesty, attended by the City Marshal and constables; before they got to Cheapside, the mob showed them many marks of their resentment, by hissing, groaning, throwing dirt, etc., but when they arrived at Fleet Street, the multitude grew quite outrageous, broke the windows of the coaches, threw stones and glass bottles, and dispatched a party to shut up the gates at Temple Bar, on which the cavalcade was obliged to stop. Mr. Cook, the City Marshal, going to open the gates with his attendants, was very severely treated; his clothes were torn off his back and his head cut in two places. The populace then attacked the gentlemen in their carriages; Mr. Boehm (who carried the roll) and several of his friends being covered with dirt, were obliged to take refuge in Nando’s Coffee-house. Some of the coaches then drove up Chancery Lane, Fetter Lane, and Shoe Lane; but the greater part of the gentlemen, finding it impossible to proceed, returned home. The Addressers, however, did at length reach St. James’s, but the mob threw dirt at the gentlemen as they got out of their carriages at St. James’s Gate.”
The few that reached the palace were so covered with dirt as to be unpresentable, and those of the courtiers who came within reach of the mob were also bespattered. The document which was the main cause of this disturbance was within an ace of never reaching its destination.
“When Mr. Boehm was obliged to get out of his coach at Nando’s Coffee-house to avoid the mob, in his hurry he left the address under the cushion on one of the seats, and immediately ordered the coachman to go home; some of the mob opened the coach door, and began to search for the address, but the coachman declaring ‘it was sent before’ (though he knew not where it was), they were the less diligent in their search, and missed laying hold of it, by not feeling six inches farther on the seat.”
On the road thither, by the Strand, the additions already mentioned were made to the cavalcade, to the consternation of those who formed part of it:—
“When some of the coaches got to Exeter Exchange, a hearse came out of Exeter Street, and preceded them, drawn by a black and white horse, the driver of which had on a rough coat, resembling a skin, with a large cap, one side black, the other white, whose whole figure was very grotesque. On one side of the hearse was painted on canvas a representation of the rioters killing Mr. Clarke at the Brentford election; and on the other side was a representation of the soldiers firing on young Allen in the cow-house.”
The Town and Country Magazine (1769) divulges that the driver of the decorated hearse was “a man of fortune;” moreover, another account avers—
“I have always understood that the late Lord Mountmorres, then a very young man, was the person, who on that occasion, personated the executioner [of Charles I. ?], holding an axe in his hands, and his face covered with crape.” (See Wraxall’s “Historical Memoirs;” also the “Letters of the First Earl of Malmesbury,” etc.)
The hearse attended the cavalcade, making a short stop at Carlton House, where the Princess of Wales lived, also at the residence of the “Cumberland Butcher,” and at Lord Weymouth’s, in Pall Mall (as the author of the St. George’s Fields massacre); thence the hearse, with its “humiliating insignia, was driven into the court-yard of St. James’s, followed by the mob, after which it went off to Albemarle Street.” A copy of the address is given in the Political Register (iv. 1769).
The address and its supporters were in a sad plight when the levee-room was reached, after the foregoing vicissitudes. The Duke of Chandos wrote Mr. Grenville—
“Out of one hundred and thirty merchants who went up with the address, only twelve could get to the King, and they were covered in dirt, as indeed was almost the whole Court.”
The riotous crowd continued to create a disturbance at the palace gates, “accompanied with threats of a most dangerous kind” (as declared in the royal proclamation); while the Earl of Malmesbury wrote, “Many of the mob cried, ‘Wilkes and no King,’ which is shocking to think of.” At last, the proclamation against tumultuous assemblies was read, and—
“Several persons taken into custody by the soldiers; and two were taken by Lord Talbot, who was the only minister who had sufficient resolution to come down among the mob; his lordship had secured another, who was rescued, and his lordship received a violent blow on the head, by being thrown against a coach, and then thought it prudent to take shelter among the soldiers.”
A grand council at St. James’s was held on the afternoon of these events, and in the evening a Gazette Extraordinary was published, with a proclamation by the king—who had in person witnessed the disturbances attending the sham address,—“for suppressing riots,” etc., beginning—
“Whereas it has been represented to us that divers dissolute and disorderly persons have most riotously and unlawfully assembled themselves together, to the disturbance of the public peace, and have, in a most daring and audacious manner, assaulted several merchants and others, coming to our palace at St. James’s, and have committed many acts of violence and outrage before the gates of our palace,” etc.
The proclamation further charges the lord mayor, and justices of the peace for the cities of London and Westminster, borough of Southwark, and counties of Middlesex and Surrey, to prevent and suppress all riots, tumults, and unlawful assemblies, etc.
Another engraving on the same topic—as described by Mr. Edward Hawkins, from whose collection, bequeathed to the British Museum, many of these early illustrations are selected—was entitled:—