John Wilkes by Cash Arthur H

Author:Cash, Arthur H.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2006-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

13. Hieroglyphics. Attorney General Norton and First Minister Grafton as hounds attack Wilkes. Courtesy of Farley Library, Wilkes University.

Wednesday, 1 February, the House debated how to respond to Wilkes’s petition. Wilkes’s lawyers argued that Mansfield’s changing of the record in February 1764 had invalidated his conviction, for Wilkes had been indicted on one document and sentenced on another. This was too nice for William Black-stone, the Oxford law professor and author of the widely read Commentaries on the Law, who pointed out that the House of Lords, the highest appeals court of the land, had already heard Wilkes’s complaint about Lord Mansfield’s changing of the record and had declared that the chief justice had acted legally. He moved that Wilkes’s complaint against Mansfield was “frivolous, trifling, and scandalous.” Glynn opposed. “Norton and the Crown lawyers were warm on the other side,” said Walpole, but their forces, said Barré, “resembled the elephants in Eastern armies, which fall back upon and put their own troops in confusion.” General Henry Seymour Conway finally moved to amend the motion to read that the charge against Mansfield was groundless and that Lord Mansfield’s alteration of the record was “according to law and justice.” Carried. So ended the first of the two matters in the petition Wilkes was allowed to argue, that Mansfield’s changing the word had invalidated his conviction.20

The second, that Curry’s subornation invalidated Wilkes’s conviction, was dispatched handily. Edward Thurlow, flying in the face of the evidence, moved that Wilkes had not made good his charge against Webb. Thomas Townshend Jr. spoke up: “I pitied Mr. Carteret Webb when he appeared at your bar; and indeed it might have gone hard with him.... It is evident that Curry received five guineas as a security for the copy being returned to him: the word ‘security’ does not wipe off the imputation of a bribe.” But no one wanted to condemn a pitiful old blind man, so they decided to declare that Wilkes had not shown him to have committed any wrongdoing. Ergo, Curry was honest and Wilkes justly convicted.21

So ended the hearing on Wilkes’s petition for redress of grievances. Wilkes was not in the least surprised, but he had had his day. If he had lost in law, he had been morally vindicated and, more important still, had gained a critically important body of allies. Many highly placed gentlemen who had been loath to involve themselves in a cause championed by a scandalous man backed by riffraff and the middling sort now began quietly to support it.

What remained for the House of Commons was to get rid of this man. The next morning he was again brought to the bar. Mr. Speaker Cust solemnly announced that the House of Commons had been informed by the House of Lords that John Wilkes had been charged with libel as the author and publisher of the preface to the published letter of Lord Weymouth in the St. James’s Chronicle. A hush fell on the assembly, for they understood that the ministerial party was moving toward the expulsion of Wilkes.

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