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Wilkes had returned to Canada and had been at Montreal with Thomlinson, but Henry could get nothing out of him, as Thomlinson thought it best not to have any one know what was to be attempted unless they could aid in carrying it out; but he said the country would be startled very soon. Henry surmised what he meant, and as soon as he could get away from Wintergreen he left for home.
"He is not a bad apprentice, Nellie, and John Wilkes has but seldom cause to find fault with him, though I own that I have no great liking myself for him; he never seems to look one well in the face, which, I take it, is always a bad sign.
The once devoted Horne had squabbled with his idol over money matters, and was now as venomous an enemy as he had been a fulsome partisan. Alderman Townshend, an ex-Lord Mayor, strained all his influence, which was great in the City, against Wilkes.
After his election for Middlesex, he obtained a reversal of his outlawry on a point of technical form. He then came up for sentence under the original verdict. The court sent him to prison for twenty-two months, and condemned him to pay a fine of a thousand pounds. Wilkes was in prison when the second session of the new Parliament began.
Bring him with you sometimes; he is an honest fellow, and the talk of sailors so smacks of the sea that it seems almost to act as a tonic." Cyril stayed for an hour, and promised to return on the following evening. He said, however, that he was sure John Wilkes would not accompany him. "He never leaves the house unless I am in it.
Wildman's was notorious as being the favourite headquarters of the supporters of John Wilkes, and hence the lines of Churchill: "Each dish at Wildman's of sedition smacks; Blasphemy may be Gospel at Almacks. Peace, good Discretion, peace, thy fears are vain; Ne'er will I herd with Wildman's factious train."
With what in their degree must be called the minor events of the reign with the trial of Wilkes, with the trial of Warren Hastings he was no less intimately associated, and in each case his association has been the most important feature of the event.
For his followers are pre-eminently intellectuals, and there never lived upon the earth a great man who was so fundamentally different from his followers. Indeed, he felt this heartily and even humorously himself. "Wilkes was no Wilkite," he said, "and I am very far from being a Browningite."
The famous Medmenham monks, or "Hell Fire Club," as they were commonly called, and of whom the notorious Wilkes was a member, were a fraternity whose motto was "Do as you please," and that invitation still stands over the ruined doorway of the abbey.
Junius Brutus Booth, the oldest of them all, most resembles in feature his wild and wayward father; he is not as good an actor as was Wilkes, and kept in the West, that border civilization of the drama; he now lies, on a serious charge of complicity, in Capitol Hill jail. Joseph Booth tried the stage as an utility actor and promptly failed.
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