Following suit, Sir W. Beauchamp Proctor also addressed a letter to the freeholders of Middlesex, rebutting the charges made against him. After referring to twenty years, during which, by fair and honourable means, he had endeavoured to obtain their esteem,—
“Calumniated as I have been during a long-depending canvass, I was in hopes that every topic of defamation had been exhausted; and I never expected that the daring and tumultuous interruption of last Tuesday’s poll would have been ascribed to me in so illiberal and inflammatory a style as my antagonist has thought proper to use. For his conduct in the course of this business the serjeant appeals to me, and I appeal to the sense of mankind, whether a band of writers has not been let loose to be the assassins of my reputation? whether the serjeant has not, in a manner unworthy of a gentleman and a lawyer, exerted every effort to set up usage in opposition to the law of the land, and endeavoured in a dictatorial manner to compel the sheriffs to close the poll in one day, to the prejudice of the electors, and in violation of the authority vested in the returning officers, by the wisdom of the legislature.”
Proctor declared that he was not only struck by “the banditti,” but in the utmost peril of his life.
“If a signal was given,—if Proctor and Liberty appeared in the hats of the ruffians, how that might be contrived by the election arts of my adversaries need not now be mentioned. It was the opinion of my counsel, when a riot was artfully talked of by my opponents, above an hour before it happened, that the sheriffs in that case should resort immediately to the protection of parliament.” Finally, he expressed hopes “to bring this dark transaction into open daylight, and to show the world who has been the man of blood;” moreover, the writer “has full confidence that on the last day of the poll lawless men will not again dare to invade the rights of the freeholders.”
The disavowal, which “doth protest too much” as published by Proctor, goaded the virtuous indignation of the friends of freedom up to fever heat, and acted like a red rag on an infuriated bull in the instance of John Horne (Tooke), “the Brentford parson;” he addressed a scathing philippic to Proctor, declaring that Sir William’s refutations “subscribed his own guilt, and that the Court candidate had signed his name to a lie:”—
“I here declare in form, that you, Sir William Beauchamp Proctor, did both hire and cause to be hired, that mob which committed the outrages at Brentford; that mob, which immediately after the total interruption of the poll, demanded which was the house that belonged to the parson of Brentford; and to whose fury a neighbouring clergyman, who heard them ask after my house, was apprehensive of falling a sacrifice, by the mistake of a person who called himself by my name. Boast of your humanity, Sir William, to Captain Read; that gentleman, to save his own life, declared himself your friend. Persuade Mr. Allen they were not your mob; that gentleman brought you to the side of the hustings where they were, and heard them answer to his question, and to your face, that you, Sir W. Beauchamp Proctor, were the person that gave them orders for what they were about.”
As to the “band of writers,” Parson Horne frankly avowed himself the author of most of the letters that appeared against Proctor in the papers, and concluded with a stinging reference to those “new-fashioned constables,” as Sir John Fielding termed the hireling bullies.
“Where you endeavour to justify your proceedings by the usage of all contested popular elections, and where you affect to consider your hired ruffians, the Irish chairmen, as ‘assistants to the civil magistrates.’ The business of the approaching poll prevents my saying half what I have to tell you; but I promise you, you shall hear from me again and again, if you will please to issue out your orders to your ruffians to grant me a Reprieve till after the election.”
The main features of this ill-advised attack, which, it was believed, was intended to put an end to the election should the polling prove adverse to the party in whose pay the hired mob acted, are given in the Oxford Magazine:—
“Thursday, Dec. 8, 1768. This day being appointed for the Middlesex election, the candidates appeared on the hustings at ten minutes before nine. Notwithstanding this, the opening of the poll was delayed till near eleven. One of the narrow avenues leading to Brentford butts was occupied very early by a hired mob, with bludgeons, bearing favours in their hats, inscribed, ‘Proctor and Liberty.’ A much larger, but very compact body, armed as the former, and with the same distinctions, were placed near the hustings, on an eminence, and in a disposition which was evidently the arrangement of an experienced sergeant. The rest of these banditti were stationed in different quarters of the town, to strike a general terror into the honest part of the freeholders; there was besides a ‘corps de reserve’ which was to sally forth on a signal given.
“When these dispositions were secured, a chosen party of butchers, in the same interest, traversed the town, and insulted the hustings with marrow-bones and cleavers. When Sir William Beauchamp Proctor’s numbers were nearly exhausted, and the course of the Poll declared decisively for Mr. Serjeant Glynn, who had still great multitudes unpolled, the signal was given. An instantaneous and furious, but regular attack, was made on the hustings. The sheriffs, the candidates (Glynn declares himself as having been the last to depart), the clerks, and the poll-books, all vanished in a moment.
“The whole town was presently a scene of blood. It was not enough to knock down an unhappy man; the blow was followed till he was utterly disabled. Those who have been exposed to riots declare they never saw such cruelty. All doors and windows were barricaded. There was no shelter, nothing was safe; nor can anything equal the consternation of the frightened people but the abhorrence and execration with which every tongue repeats the name of Proctor.
“It appears from every account of the above proceedings, that the people who began the riot there were the friends of the court candidate; and, in particular, it is affirmed that when the Irish chairmen, and the professed bruisers at their head, had proceeded so far in their cruel and villainous intention of murdering and wounding the people, that the gentlemen upon the hustings began to be in danger of their lives,—one gentleman went up to the court candidate, and expostulated with him on the base conduct of his mob. ‘My mob!’ replied the courtier. ‘Yes, sir, your mob!’ and the gentleman added, ‘Sir, I insist upon your speaking to those fellows who are knocking down the people there.’ But the courtier refused to say anything to appease their fury; upon which the gentleman who had spoken to him, finding himself in danger of his life, seized him by the greatcoat, and showed his star to the armed ruffians, who instantly took off their hats and huzza’d him; while the ruffians were thus huzzaing, the gentleman escaped.”