This speech, which won Lord Chatham's "admiration, thanks, and affection," and was inscribed on the pedestal of Beckford's statue erected in Guildhall, has been the subject of bitter disputes. Isaac Reed boldly asserts every word was written by Horne Tooke, and that Horne Tooke himself said so. Gifford, with his usual headlong partisanship, says the same; but there is every reason to suppose that the words are those uttered by Beckford with but one slight alteration. Beckford died, a short time after making this speech, of a fever, caught by riding from London to Fonthill, his Wiltshire estate. His son, the novelist and voluptuary, had a long minority, and succeeded at last to a million ready money and £100,000 a year, only to end life a solitary, despised, exiled man. One of his daughters married the Duke of Hamilton.
A LORD MAYOR AND HIS LADY (MIDDLE OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY). From an Old Print.
The Right Hon. Thomas Harley, Lord Mayor in 1768, was a brother of the Earl of Oxford. He turned wine-merchant, and married the daughter of his father's steward, according to the scandalous chronicles in the "City Biography." He is said, in partnership with Mr. Drummond, to have made £600,000 by taking a Government contract to pay the English army in America with foreign gold. He was for many years "the father of the City."
Harley first rendered himself famous in the City by seizing the boot and petticoat which the mob were burning opposite the Mansion House, in derision of Lord Bute and the princess-dowager, at the time the sheriffs were burning the celebrated North Briton. The mob were throwing the papers about as matter of diversion, and one of the bundles fell, unfortunately, with considerable force, against the front glass of Mr. Sheriff Harley's chariot, which it shattered to pieces. This gave the first alarm; the sheriffs retired into the Mansion House, and a man was taken up and brought there for examination, as a person concerned in the riot. The man appeared to be a mere idle spectator; but the Lord Mayor informed the court that, in order to try the temper of the mob, he had ordered one of his own servants to be dressed in the clothes of the supposed offender, and conveyed to the Poultry Compter, so that if a rescue should be effected, the prisoner would still be in custody, and the real disposition of the people discovered. However, everything was peaceable, and the course of justice was not interrupted, nor did any insult accompany the commitment; whereupon the prisoner was discharged. What followed, in the actual burning of the seditious paper, the Lord Mayor declared (according to the best information), arose from circumstances equally foreign to any illegal or violent designs. For these reasons his lordship concluded by declaring that, with the greatest respect for the sheriffs, and a firm belief that they would have done their duty in spite of any danger, he should put a negative upon giving the thanks of the City upon a matter that was not sufficiently important for a public and solemn acknowledgment, which ought only to follow the most eminent exertions of duty.
WILKES ON HIS TRIAL. (From a Contemporary Print.)
In 1770 Brass Crosby (mayor) signalised himself by a patriotic resistance to Court oppression, and the arbitrary proceedings of the House of Commons. He was a Sunderland solicitor, who had married his employer's widow, and settled in London. He married in all three wives, and is said to have received £200,000 by the three. Shortly after Crosby's election, the House of Commons issued warrants against the printers of the Middlesex Journal and the Gazetteer, for presuming to give reports of the debates; but on being brought before Alderman Wilkes, he discharged them. The House then proceeded against the printer of the Evening Post, but Crosby discharged him, and committed the messenger of the House for assault and false imprisonment. Not long after, Crosby appeared at the bar of the House, and defended what he had done; pleading strongly that by an Act of William and Mary no warrant could be executed in the City but by its ministers. Wilkes also had received an order to attend at the bar of the House, but refused to comply with it, on the ground that no notice had been taken in the order of his being a member. The next day the Lord Mayor's clerk attended with the Book of Recognisances, and Lord North having carried a motion that the recognisance be erased, the clerk was compelled to cancel it. Most of the Opposition indignantly rose and left the House, declaring that effacing a record was an act of the greatest despotism; and Junius, in Letter 44, wrote: "By mere violence, and without the shadow of right, they have expunged the record of a judicial proceeding." Soon after this act, on the motion of Welbore Ellis, the mayor was committed to the Tower. The people were furious; Lord North lost his cocked hat, and even Fox had his clothes torn; and the mob obtaining a rope, but for Crosby's entreaties, would have hung the Deputy Sergeant-at-Arms. The question was simply whether the House had the right to despotically arrest and imprison, and to supersede trial by jury. On the 8th of May the session terminated, and the Lord Mayor was released. The City was illuminated at night, and there were great rejoicings. The victory was finally won. "The great end of the contest," says Mr. Orridge, "was obtained. From that day to the present the House of Commons has never ventured to assail the liberty of the press, or to prevent the publication of the Parliamentary debates."