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Updated: June 2, 2025
But till a week ago we would not believe that they had a hand in the matter. It is seven nights since Cyril caught them creeping along the roof, and called me to the window in John Wilkes's room, whence he was watching the yard, not thinking the enemy was in the house." "And how did you come to suspect that robbery was going on, Cyril?"
The conversation having turned on Bon-Mots, he quoted, from one of the Ana, an exquisite instance of flattery in a maid of honour in France, who being asked by the Queen what o'clock it was, answered, 'What your Majesty pleases . He admitted that Mr. Burke's classical pun upon Mr. Wilkes's being carried on the shoulders of the mob, ... Numerisque fertur Lege solutus ,
Thence to White Hall, with Sir W. Batten and Sir W. Pen, to Wilkes's; and there did hear the many profane stories of Sir Henry Wood damning the parsons for so much spending the wine at the sacrament, cursing that ever they took the cup to themselves, and then another story that he valued not all the world's curses, for two pence he shall get at any time the prayers of some poor body that is worth a 1000 of all their curses; Lord Norwich drawing a tooth at a health.
It is pretty nearly pitch dark; there is not a star to be seen, and it looked to me, when I turned out before supper, as if we were going to have a storm." It was settled that Cyril was to take the first watch, and that the Captain should relieve him at one o'clock. At nine, the family went to bed. A quarter of an hour later, Cyril stole noiselessly from his attic down to John Wilkes's room.
Luttrell abandoned an impossible position and did not stand. Ten years after Wilkes's first appearance in the House of Commons he returned to it again in triumph as the member for Middlesex and the Lord Mayor of London. And here, on the top of his triumph, Wilkes may be said to drop through the tissue of our history.
I had been away but seven months, and yet here was a perceptible change. In these dignified and determined gentlemen England had more to fear than in all the mobs at Mr. Wilkes's back. How I wished that Charles Fox might have been with me. The sun beat down upon the street. The shopkeepers were gathered at their doors, but their chattering was hushed as the dreaded committee passed.
It is a significant proof of the power of Wilkes's popularity that the House did not take any steps to punish his contumacy. While it affected to find a consolation in the assurances of the King that Wilkes was "below the notice of the House," it had to endure as best it might an affront resentment of which would only have added to Wilkes's popularity.
Nobles and great ladies sent him large sums. A number of politicians banded together under the title of the Society for Supporting the Bill of Rights, and raised a great deal of money, much of which went in meeting some of the heavy debts with which Wilkes was embarrassed, much of which went in keeping up the princely way of living which suited Wilkes's temperament, and which was perhaps not unsuited to the part he was playing as the rival of a prince.
Wilkes's name was sent up as Lord Mayor at the top of the list in 1772 and 1773, but he was in each case passed over by the Court of Aldermen. It was not till 1774 that he was elected by a kind of 'Hobson's choice. The Aldermen had to choose between him and the retiring Lord Mayor, Bull. See Boswell's Hebrides, post, v. 339.
"Wilkes pretends to have found a continent, but his account of it makes it quite evident to my mind that he saw nothing but ice. I believe that Wilkes's antarctic continent will some day be penetrated by ships, which will sail for hundreds of miles farther south. All that is wanted is a favorable season. But mark the coincidence between Ross's report and More's manuscript.
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