NOTES
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The Gentlemen trading to the East-Indies, &c. The publisher’s advertisement burlesques a practice of the bookseller John Almon (1737-1805), friend and biographer of John Wilkes, and between the years 1761-81 publisher-in-ordinary to the Whig Opposition. Almon had extensive connections in the American colonies and was the compiler of The Remembrancer, 1775-84, a valuable collection of materials relating to the Revolution. In his satire on the French ministry, The Green Box of Monsieur de Sartine, 1779, Tickell represents a French spy in London reporting ruefully:
News-papers, pamphlets, parliamentary debates, remembrancers, and all the infinite variety of periodical libels, under the conduct of our good friend Mr. Almon, leave but a scanty and beaten field of politics for private discovery (pp. 12-13).
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Sir Francis Molyneux. Sir Francis Molyneux (d. 1812), Knt.; succeeded his father as seventh Baronet, 1781.
the Speaker. Sir Fletcher Norton (1716-1789), Knt.; M.P. for Guildford; Speaker of the House of Commons, 1770-80; cr. Baron Grantley of Markenfield, 1782.
the merit of those speeches. Since the speech from the throne rarely contains more than generalities, Tickell was able to approximate its substance fairly closely. In the debate on the opening day John Wilkes had the temerity to say that there were only two particulars in the King’s speech to which he could assent: “They are, that we are called together in a conjuncture, which demands our most serious attention, and that a restoration of the blessings of peace ought to be our first wish” (Parliamentary History, XIX, 1334).
the new Attorney General. Alexander Wedderburn (1733-1805), M.P. for Bishop’s Castle; succeeded Edward Thurlow as Attorney-General, June 1778; elevated to the Chief Justiceship of the Common Pleas as Baron Loughborough of Loughborough, 1780; cr. Earl of Rosslyn, 1801. In the spring of 1778 Sir Fletcher Norton, by a threat of impeachment, had blocked Wedderburn’s intrigue to obtain the Chief Justiceship; see Walpole to Mason, 31 May 1778 (Letters, ed. Toynbee, X, 254).