The radical MP John Wilkes attracted loyal support for his outspoken criticism of the government. However, as Danny Bird explains, outrage at his 1768 arrest for libel paved the way for bloodshed and anarchy
THIS MONTH IN... 1768 ANNIVERSARIES THAT HAVE MADE HISTORY
On 10 May 1768, a crowd of about 15,000 people gathered on St George’s Fields in Southwark, south London. The focus of their protest was the adjacent King’s Bench Prison, where their champion, the radical MP John Wilkes, had recently been incarcerated for seditious libel.
As tensions escalated, magistrates appealed for armed support. Before long, word of a man’s murder by soldiers inflamed the febrile situation. When the Riot Act was read out, projectiles rained down on the troops, prompting them to fire at the crowd. Panic surged across the large open space, the multitude dispersed, and riots erupted all over London.
RABBLE-ROUSING
Six years prior, Wilkes had founded a satirical newspaper, The North Briton. Its editorial line was particularly scathing of the Earl of Bute, the prime minister and mentor to the young George III. The conclusion of the Seven Years’ War in 1763 led to the king hailing the peace terms before the House of Lords – something Wilkes deemed outrageous. Days later, The North Briton’s 45th issue denounced the king’s address and attacked his ministers for encouraging him to accept the Treaty of Paris’ “most odious measures”.
The issue number was opportune, recalling the year of the last Jacobite rising (1745) against the reigning Hanoverian dynasty. It also fuelled rumours of Bute’s alleged Jacobitism (support for the deposed James II and his heirs, whose strongest support had come from Catholic clans in the Highlands) because of his Scottish heritage. Conversely, however, it presented Wilkes’ enemies with an opportunity to silence him. George III, already flustered by The North Briton’s scurrilous innuendos about Bute’s rumoured affair with his mother, Princess Augusta, issued a general warrant for Wilkes’ arrest on a charge of seditious libel.
Radical elements within British society, notably the London mob, rallied to Wilkes. After rebuking general warrants as an affront to England’s “ancient freedoms”, Wilkes was released when a judge ruled that parliamentary privilege (legal immunity for members of both houses of Parliament) absolved him from prosecution. His supporters lauded the outcome, adopting the slogan “Wilkes and Liberty!”, and he reprinted the issue along with a lewd parody of Alexander Pope’s famous poem An Essay on Man.
But this
