outside the City he had the support of Rockingham and his friends, who had already discovered that "Wilkes was not a Wilkite."[1] On the other hand, the majority of the Court of Aldermen was on the side of Townshend. Two years in succession was the name of Wilkes sent up by the Livery as one of their two nominees to the post of Lord Mayor, and twice in succession did the Court of Aldermen reject it. In 1772 Townshend himself was elected.
Wilkes, who had fully expected a contrary result, was thunderstruck. His friends accused Alderman Oliver of having taken the vote of the Court before their party had arrived, and their rage broke out in every kind of outrage against Townshend and Shelburne, who, they said, had sold them to the King. A figure of Parson Home was burnt in full canonicals outside the Mansion House. On the Lord Mayor's Day, Wilkes' mob attacked the Guildhall at night during the ball; Townshend, with characteristic energy, proposed to sally out with drawn swords, and was with difficulty restrained. The surprise at the result of the election was indeed general. "Eh bien, milord," the abbé Morellet had written only a short time before to Shelburne, "Wilkes va pourtant être Lord Mayor, au moins nous y comptons ici, c'est-à-dire nous autres philosophes et amis de la liberté; car vous pouvez compter que notre ministère payerait beaucoup pour l'empêcher. Un homme qui résiste à la volonté ou aux simples désirs du souverain est appelé ici séditieux, et les fauteurs du despotisme n'aiment pas qu'il y ait une sédition même au Congo. Au reste, il me semble que si notre ami Townshend était élu, le roi ne gagnerait pas beaucoup à ce marché. Ce serait toujours un séditieux."[2]
- ↑ When Wilkes was Lord Mayor in 1775 and presented an address, "the King himself owned he had never seen so well-bred a Lord Mayor" (Walpole, Journal of the Reign of George III., i. 484). On a later occasion, after the Lord George Gordon riots in 1780, the King asked Wilkes after his friend Serjeant Glyn. "My friend, sir," says Wilkes to the King, "he is no friend of mine." "Why," said the King. "he was your friend and your counsel in all your trials." "Sir," rejoined Wilkes, "he was my counsel, one must have a counsel; but he was no friend; he loves sedition and licentiousness, which I never delighted in. In fact, sir, he was a Wilkite, which I never was." Twiss's Eldon, ii. 356.
- ↑ Morellet to Shelburne, 1772.
