"Given at our Court at St. James's the 11th day of May, 1768, in the eighth year of our reign."
Two days before the appearance of the King's Proclamation the Lord Mayor had published others, which follow:
"Mansion-house, London, May 9, 1768.
"Whereas information has been given to me that great numbers of young persons, who appear
to be apprentices and journeymen, have assembled themselves together in large bodies in different parts of this city and liberties thereof, for several evenings last past, and behaved themselves in such manner that, if continued, may greatly endanger the peace of the said City: this is therefore to caution all masters to use their best endeavours to prevent their apprentices and servants from assembling themselves together in the public streets, as whoever shall hereafter be found offending in the manner aforesaid will be prosecuted according to law: and for the better preserving the peace of the said City and Liberties, the Freemen thereof are at this juncture reminded of the two following clauses contained in their oath of admission before the Chamberlain:
'You shall keep the King's peace in your own person. You shall know no gatherings, conventicles, or conspiracies made against the King's peace, but you shall warn the Mayor thereof, or hinder it to your power.'
"If a Freeman breaks through this oath he forfeits his freedom; and if having one, two, three, or more apprentices, and does not in a time of public disorder restrain him or them from going abroad, and from encreasing the said public disorder, he may be deemed and construed an accessary thereto, and guilty of a breach of his oath.
"Thomas Harley, Mayor."
"Whereas a paragraph appeared in the public papers the 5th instant setting forth, 'That 790 quarters of wheat had been laid up upwards of six months in two lighters below bridge, and was become rotten and thrown overboard into the Thames:' and as such paragraphs are frequently void of truth, and tend only to inflame the minds of people, who at this time are too much deluded and deceived by what they read in public newspapers; I think it necessary to inform the publick of the state of that matter from the best information I could obtain; viz. the Lady Adleheit, John Segal Ken, took on board at Bremen, the 17th day of December last, 70 last of wheat in bags, being 1400 bags; the frost setting in immediately she was detained by the ice there, and did not arrive at the port of London till the 4th of April; and the cargo by being so long on board, and by the damage the ship sustained among the ice, proved in a most terrible condition, and was disposed of in the following manner: