“To Connoisseurs.—This day is published a satirical scratch in the style of Rembrandt, entitled The Scotch Triumph; with the representation of their amazing exploits in St. George’s Fields; the murder of the innocent, and the sacrifice of Liberty, by Molock; with some curious anecdotes.”
In the first version, Wilkes and his friends are driving to surrender in state; their coach is about to crush a Scotch thistle by the way; the mob have taken the horses from the vehicle and are dragging it themselves on the road to the Bench; Wilkes is thus addressing his vociferous supporters—“Gentlemen and Friends, let me beg you to desist; I’m willing to submit to the laws of my country.”
All the leading political personages are introduced as spectators. Lord Holland, an alleged adviser of Lord Bute, is observing, “We have got him safe in a trap at last.” “Jemmy Twitcher” (Lord Sandwich) is responding, “Yes, but I much doubt whether we shall be able to keep him there.” On the 27th of April, Wilkes again came up for judgment, and was then committed to the King’s Bench Prison. On his way thither, in the custody of two tipstaffs of Lord Mansfield, the coach was stopped by the people, a further popular demonstration was made, the horses were removed, and the vehicle drawn through the city by an enthusiastic crowd, the marshal’s deputies being invited to get out. He finally was escorted to a public-house, the Three Tuns Tavern, in Spitalfields (or Cornhill, according to Walpole’s account); from thence, after the departure of his demonstrative admirers, Wilkes judged it prudent to make his escape, and surrender himself again, this time at the prison gates and to the marshal of the King’s Bench. When the news of his incarceration reached the mob there was a fresh uproar; the day following, the prison was surrounded, the palings enclosing the footpath were torn up and made into a bonfire, and the inhabitants of Southwark found themselves under the necessity, either of illuminating their houses, or of taking the consequences; the mob dispersed on the arrival of a small guard.
Meanwhile Sergeant Glynn was arguing before all the judges of the Court of King’s Bench respecting the errors of Wilkes’s outlawry; while, from his place of confinement, Wilkes next proceeded to address his sympathizing constituents:—
“TO THE GENTLEMEN, CLERGY, AND FREEHOLDERS OF THE COUNTY OF MIDDLESEX.
“Gentlemen,
“In support of the liberties of this country against the arbitrary rule of ministers, I was before committed to the Tower, and am now sentenced to this prison. Steadiness, with, I hope, strength of mind, do not however leave me; for the same consolation follows me here, the consciousness of innocence, of having done my duty, and exerted all my abilities, not unsuccessfully, for this nation. I can submit even to far greater sufferings with cheerfulness, because I see that my countrymen reap the happy fruits of my labours and persecutions, by the repeated decisions of our Sovereign courts of justice in favour of liberty. I therefore bear up with fortitude, and even glory, that I am called to suffer in this cause, because I continue to find the noblest reward, the applause of my native country, of this great, free, and spirited people.
“I chiefly regret, gentlemen, that this confinement deprives me of the honour of thanking you in person, according to my promise; and at present takes from me, in a great degree, the power of being useful to you. The will, however, to do every service to my constituents remains in its full force; and when my sufferings have a period, the first day I regain my liberty shall restore a life of zeal in the cause and interests of the county of Middlesex.
“In this prison, in any other, in every place, my ruling passion will be the love of England and our free constitution. For those objects I will make every sacrifice. Under all the oppressions which ministerial rage and revenge can invent, my steady purpose is to concert with you, and other true friends of the country, the most probable means of rooting out the remains of arbitrary power and Star-chamber inquisition, and of improving as well as securing the generous plans of freedom, which were the boast of our ancestors, and I trust will remain the noblest inheritance of our posterity, the only genuine characteristic of Englishmen.
“JOHN WILKES.
“King’s Bench Prison, May 5th, 1768.”
By this letter it will be seen that Wilkes chiefly appealed to what is best described as clap-trap sensationalism; he continued, however, to be the cause of constant apprehension, the military and other authorities taking every precaution to preserve the peace of the metropolis.
While Wilkes was kept a prisoner in the King’s Bench, the authorities made demonstrations of resorting to armed force for the ostensible purpose of preserving the peace of the metropolis, and, taught precaution by the famous “45” demonstration which followed Wilkes’s election for Middlesex, to check further rioting with firmness, which unfortunately degenerated into ferocity.
Parliament met on the 10th of May, Lord Camden being now lord chancellor. It seems the misconception had arisen that Wilkes’s outlawry would be reversed, and that in any case he would be suffered to attend the assembling of parliament. With the design of conveying him thither in triumph, a great body of people were gathered at the King’s Bench. Finding their expectations disappointed of seeing the idol of the hour set at large and reinstated as “the tribune of the people,” they demanded him at the prison, and grew very tumultuous; whereupon the Riot Act was read by two justices of Surrey, but the mob threw stones and brickbats while it was reading, when one of the spectators, seeing other persons run, ran too, but was unhappily singled out by a picket of the Scotch Guards, who broke their ranks—a breach of military discipline—and followed him about five hundred yards into a cowhouse, and there shot him dead. “Soon after this, the crowd increasing, an additional number of the Guards was sent for, who marched thither, and also a party of horse grenadiers (two regiments had, it appears, been under arms in St. George’s Fields throughout the disturbances), when, the riot continuing, the mob were fired on by the soldiers, and five or six were killed on the spot, and about fifteen wounded, among them being two women, one of whom subsequently died of her wounds. She was, it appears, trying to move her oranges out of danger. Another account says (Gentleman’s Magazine) several of the people killed were passing along the road at a distance; and, later on, it is said not one of the persons actually concerned in the rioting were hurt by the firing. Several versions of the fatal affair appeared immediately. The case of the inoffensive youth who was thus barbarously slaughtered excited general sympathy; his name was William Allen, and his father was master of the Horseshoe Inn and Livery Stables, Blackman Street, Southwark. On the Scotch faction was heaped all the opprobrium of this regretable transaction.”
Among others, appeared the illustration of “The Scotch Victory,” 1768; on the wall of the outhouse, to which the lad had fled for shelter when pursued, is “’45,” an allusion to the cruelties of the Highland raid in 1745, as well as to the “XLV. North Briton.” Alexander Murray, the officer, Donald Maclury, a corporal, and MacLaughlin, a grenadier, are shown in the act of assassinating Allen. A halter which lies near the feet of the soldiers and a sketch of a gallows and a man hanging indicate the public sentiments on the matter. The letterpress is to this effect:—