The malcontents held their ground about the prison in threatening numbers, and resisted all efforts of the civil authority to disperse them, and the troops were called out. The riot act was read and after the warning the order given to fire, which was promptly obeyed with fatal results. A number of persons were killed and wounded, the shots aimed high after taking effect upon those at a distance. Further violent outrages were not committed. Later a mob attacked the house of Lord Bute, hated Prime Minister of that day, and the Mansion House and private apartments of the Lady Mayoress were invaded and wrecked. People were everywhere forced to illuminate their windows and the street echoed with cries of “Wilkes and Liberty.” The rioters were guilty of many outrages. Several quiet folk were killed, numbers wounded, windows were broken, furniture destroyed, royal residences even were threatened. The tumults extended to the provinces, the working classes were disaffected and demanded higher wages, and when denied went out on strikes, the earliest instances of them known. The disturbances were taken up by the seamen in the Pool, and a body of thousands of sailors marched in procession to the St. James Palace with drums beating and colours flying to present a petition to the King, praying for a relief of grievances. The following day they assembled in a great multitude in Palace Yard, boisterously clamouring for an increase of wages, but dispersed on an assurance from two M. P.’s that their requests should receive attention. A fresh tumult arose at Limehouse where several outward bound vessels were boarded and prevented from going to sea. All workers in London—sawyers, hatters, watermen and the Spital Fields weavers—combined in demanding an increase of wages, and confusion and unrest were general throughout London. The commotion gradually subsided and the principal rioters were brought to justice, while Wilkes still remained in the King’s Bench prison. The sympathy shown him took a very practical form. Some £20,000 were subscribed for the payment of his fines and debts, many valuable gifts were presented to him: plate, jewels, wine, furniture and purses embroidered in gold and containing specie.
A word or two about John Wilkes will illuminate the foregoing recital. He was born in 1727, the son of a brewer or distiller at Clerkenwell, and had been well educated at the University of Leyden. On his return to England at the early age of twenty-two he married an heiress, Miss Mead, ten years his senior. Although he was without personal attraction, his ready wit and charming manner gave him such an advantage with the fair sex that he was fond of saying that he was only ten minutes behind the handsomest man in a room. He kept a good table and soon won a large circle of friends, but his extravagant ways and love of dissipation involved him in difficulties. He quarrelled with his wife, they separated, and in the lawsuit his character and reputation were much damaged. When in 1757 he entered the House of Commons as a member for Aylesbury, he joined the agitation against that already most unpopular minister, Lord Bute, and founding the notorious North Briton, succeeded by persistent attacks in the paper in driving him from office. The next minister was no less fiercely assailed and Wilkes so far forgot himself as to charge the King (George III) with telling a lie. For this his house was entered and his papers seized and he himself committed to the Tower, but released on his claiming privilege as a member of Parliament. The North Briton was publicly burned by order of the House of Commons; Wilkes retaliated by an action against the Government for the improper seizure of his papers, and he was awarded £1,000 damages with a dictum from the Lord Chief Justice that general warrants were illegal.
Wilkes then was expelled from the House of Commons and went over to France. In his absence the Government proceeded to blacken his character by publishing an obscene poem of which he was the joint author, but it was shown that a printed copy had been obtained by underhand methods, the ministers incurring so much odium that they were driven from office. When the new Government was formed Wilkes returned to England and was now elected member for Middlesex. It was at this time that the riots described above occurred. Wilkes impugned the conduct of ministers and accused them of responsibility for the “massacre in St. George in the Field.” This was held in the House of Commons to be a seditious libel and Wilkes was again expelled from the House. The electors of Middlesex protested by returning him again and again, defying the House of Commons and glorifying Wilkes—who was still imprisoned in the King’s Bench—as the champion of national liberty. Wilkes was now the most popular man in England. Soon afterward he won a suit against Lord Halifax with £4,000 damages and in the following year was released on giving a bond for seven years’ good behaviour. Three years after he was made Lord Mayor of London and once again elected as member for Middlesex, which he now represented for several years. Wilkes in his last days sank into comparative obscurity and died an “extinct volcano” in 1792. Wilkes was not the immediate cause of the confinement in the King’s Bench prison of William Hone, but this well-known writer owed his protracted trials directly to the famous demagogue. He was arraigned at the Guildhall in 1817, charged with having printed and published the profane but curious “Wilkes’ Catechism,” which purported “to have been from the original manuscript in Mr. Wilkes’ handwriting and never before printed.” It was described as a catechism or “Instructions to be learned of every person before he be brought to be confirmed a placeman or pensioner by the minister.” The first questions and answers indicate its character. “Q. What is your name? A. Lickspittle. Q. Who gave you this name? A. My sureties to the ministry in my political change wherein I was made a member of the majority, the child of corruption and a locust to devour the good things of the kingdom.” Then follows the “belief,” which is too blasphemous for quotation, and the commandments, one of which ran, “Honour the Regent and the helmets of the Lifeguards, that thy stay may be long in the place which the Lord thy ministry giveth thee.” The general tenor of this catechism will be seen in the question “What is thy duty towards thyself?” and the answer, “My duty towards myself is to love nobody but myself and to do unto most men what I would not that they should do unto me; to sacrifice unto my own interest even my father and mother; to pay little reverence to the King, but to compensate that omission by my servility to all that are out in authority under him,” and so on.
The prosecution was no doubt inspired by the fierce party spirit prevailing at the time and caused great excitement; the Court, that of the King’s Bench in Guildhall, was densely crowded by an audience by no means in sympathy with the Attorney General when he unsparingly denounced the publication, and the violent coughing and other marks of disapprobation during his address roused the judge, Mr. Justice Abbott, to declare that he would clear the court. Mr. Hone defended himself ably, pleading that the whole publication was intended as a parody, but that he had stopped its sale directly he found it was looked upon as profane. A verdict of “not guilty” was speedily brought in by the jury, which was received with loud demonstrations of approval. Mr. Hone was again put on his trial, first for publishing a parody entitled “The Political Litany,” and again for publishing a parody on the “Athanasian Creed” styled the “Sinecurist Creed.” His defence, which he again conducted personally with such great boldness that the sitting judge, Lord Ellenborough, designated it as outraging decency and propriety, resulted in another verdict of “not guilty,” a decision greeted with loud cheers extending far beyond the limits of the court. These matters would have no permanent interest nor would William Hone call for reference here, but that he was afterward arrested by a creditor and lodged in the King’s Bench when he was engaged upon the production of his “Everyday Book,” a work full of curious and useful information, completed within the walls of the prison. He also began and finished there his “Table Book” and his “Year Book,” productions that have long survived the personality of their author.
An interesting character, the hero of many striking adventures and who passed through some strange vicissitudes and misfortunes, found himself more than once in the King’s Bench at the latter end of the eighteenth century. This was Colonel Hanger, commonly known as George Hanger, for although he eventually succeeded to his father’s title of Lord Coleraine, he steadfastly objected to assume it. He was a man of substance in his time, having property in his own right, and he early entered the army as an officer in the 1st regiment of Guards, from which he passed during the war with the American Colonies into the service of the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel. He was a prominent dandy in his time, lived fashionably, spent large sums on his clothes, and although he played little at cards, he gambled continually and for large sums on the turf. It was the rule for well-born youths in his time to dress extravagantly; young Hanger tells us in his memoirs that one set of winter dress clothes cost him £900 and he adds, “This should not so much astonish the reader as the fact that I actually paid the tailor.” The expense of appearing properly on the King’s birthday was enormous, an officer of the Guards being obliged to have two suits, and he says: “My morning vestments cost me nearly £80 and those for the state ball above £180. It was a satin coat and the first that had made its appearance in this country; shortly after, satin dress clothes became common among well-dressed men.... I had no office of emolument, advantage or trust about his Majesty’s person, except an ensigncy, the pay of which did not amount to four shillings per day, a sum insufficient to meet the tailor’s charges for one single button and button-hole to my gala suit; the very stitching of a button-hole in those days cost me more, and the embroidered gold clocks on my stockings in which I never failed to appear at a ball were very expensive.” Hanger became one of the chosen companions of the Prince of Wales (George IV) and lived at the same pace. He kept race-horses, backed them for considerable sums and once stood to win or lose 3,000 guineas on one race. “I can with truth say the turf had done me justice,” he writes, “but the extravagance of the times, the delightful pleasure of that age and the frailty of my own nature were my ruin.” He lived in fact far above his income which never exceeded eleven hundred pounds a year, and presently he became seriously involved. He had recourse to a mortgage on his estate for £13,000, and as he became more and more indebted was obliged in due course to sell it when it fetched rather less than half the sum at which it had been originally valued. He accompanied his regiment to America, took part in the war of Independence, but made the mistake of leaving the British Guards for the Hessian service. He found friends in Sir Harry Clinton and Colonel Tarleton, by whom he was appointed to the British Legion, and distinguished himself in the field.
When the war ended and Major Hanger was due to return to England, his affairs were so straitened that he took refuge in Calais, leaving friends to act for him at home and arrange with his creditors. But for the generous assistance of Mr. Richard Tattersal he could not have landed in England, for he was now completely beggared, and when directly he reappeared in the world, was arrested by his creditors. It was at this time that his estate was forcibly sold at such a loss. He now surrendered himself at the King’s Bench, where he was detained for some months but by the help of friends was admitted to take the “Rules.” His detention was brief, but his experiences as told in his “Life and Adventures” throw a strong light upon the iniquitous system still in force with regard to debtors as described later.
A distinguished naval officer, Lord Cochrane, afterward Earl of Dundonald, was committed a prisoner to the King’s Bench in 1815, on conviction of seeking to influence the stock markets by the dissemination of false news. His eminent services in the late war with France were forgotten and he was denied a fair, unprejudiced trial. It was clear that he was the victim of a dastardly plot and was sacrificed to the treachery of the villainous author of it. Lord Cochrane had recently been given the command of a King’s ship, and was on the point of sailing for the North American station. One day a visitor named de Berenger called at his house, pretending to be an officer and prisoner for debt, within the Rules of the King’s Bench. He said he had come to Lord Cochrane to implore him to release him from his difficulties and give him a passage across the Atlantic. His application was refused,—it was forbidden indeed according to naval rules,—and de Berenger was sent away. But before he left the house he pleaded piteously that to return to the King’s Bench prison in full uniform would attract suspicion. It was not stated how he had evaded its jurisdiction, but he no doubt implied that he had escaped and changed into uniform somewhere. Why he did not go back to the same place to resume his plain clothes did not appear. Lord Cochrane only knew that in answer to his urgent entreaty he lent him some clothes (the room was at that moment littered with clothes, which were to be sent on board the Tonnant). He unguardedly gave de Berenger a “civilian’s hat and coat.” This was a capital part of the charge against Lord Cochrane.
De Berenger had altogether lied about himself. He had not come from within the Rules of the King’s Bench but from Dover, where he had been seen the previous night at the Ship Hotel. He was then in uniform and pretended to be an aide-de-camp to Lord Cathcart, who was the bearer of important despatches. He made no secret of the transcendent news he brought. Bonaparte had been killed by the Cossacks, Louis XVIII proclaimed and the allied armies were on the point of occupying Paris. To give greater publicity to the intelligence he sent it by letter to the port-admiral at Deal, to be forwarded to the Government in London by means of the semaphore telegraph. The effect of this startling news was to send up stocks ten per cent., and many speculators who sold on the rise realised enormous sums.
De Berenger, still in uniform, followed in a post-chaise, but on reaching London he dismissed it, took a hackney coach and drove straight to Lord Cochrane’s. He had some slight acquaintance with his lordship and had already petitioned him for a passage to America but the application had been refused. There was nothing extraordinary, then, in de Berenger’s visit. His lordship, again, claimed that de Berenger in calling on him, instead of going straight to the Stock Exchange to commence operations, indicated that he had weakened in his plot and did not see how to carry it through. “Had I been his confederate,” says Lord Cochrane in his affidavit, “it is not within the bounds of credibility that he would have come in the first instance to my house and waited two hours for my return home in place of carrying out the plot he had undertaken, or that I should have been occupied in perfecting my lamp invention for the use of the convoy of which I was in a few days to take charge, instead of being on the only spot where any advantage to be derived from the Stock Exchange hoax could be realised had I been a participator in it. Such advantage must have been immediate, before the truth came out; and to have reaped it, had I been guilty, it was necessary that I should not lose a moment. It is still more improbable that being aware of the hoax, I should not have speculated largely for the special risk of that day.”
We may take Lord Cochrane’s word, as an officer and a gentleman, that he had no guilty knowledge of de Berenger’s scheme; but here again the luck was against him, for it came out in evidence that his brokers had sold stock for him on the day of the fraud. Yet the operation was not an isolated one, made on that occasion only. Lord Cochrane declared that he had for some time past anticipated a favourable conclusion to the war. “I had held shares for the rise,” he said, “and had made money by sales. The stock I held on the day of the fraud was less than I usually had, and it was sold under an old order given to my brokers to sell at a certain price. It had necessarily to be sold.” It was clear to Lord Cochrane’s friends—who, indeed, and rightly, held him to be incapable of stooping to fraud—that had he contemplated it he would have been a larger holder of stock on the day in question when, actually, he held less than usual. On these grounds alone they were of opinion that he should have been absolved from the charge.