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J
ohn Wilkes, member for Aylesbury and now dangerously popular, was indeed made the first order of business when Parliament reopened in
November, to the exclusion of nearly all other business. By means of bribery and extortion of his printers, a Treasury solicitor obtained proofcopies of his carnal
Essay on Woman
and freshly printed texts of Number
Forty-five of
The North Briton
for the planned collection of that publication’s numbers.

The government, through its representatives in the Commons and
Lords, secured resolutions that the literature was “impious” and “seditious” libel. Number Forty-five was ordered burnt at the Royal Exchange by
both Houses, but a mob stoned the hangman and sheriffs assigned the task
and rescued the copy from destruction — in the same month that Wilkes
recovered, in the Court of Common Pleas, £1,000 from an under-secretary
of state. The Commons, in January, 1764, voted 273 to 111 to expel Wilkes,
thereby stripping him of the shield of Parliamentary privilege. A grand jury
of the King’s Bench, exploiting his unprotected status, in February cited
him for his libels, and the court ordered a writ for his arrest.

But Wilkes by now had fled to France, ostensibly to see his daughter,
but actually to recover from a wound he suffered in a duel with another
M.P. He was declared an outlaw by the court the following November when
he failed to appear to answer the charges against him. For the next few
years he lived on the charity of friends in the Opposition. He would return
to England a few years later, and cause a crisis greater than the one sparked
by his “impious” and “seditious” libels.

In the Commons, Sir Dogmael Jones, member for Swansditch, managed to capture the attention of Speaker John Cust, who pointed to him on
the second day and allowed him to make his maiden speech. Many who
were ready to vote with the government on the libel question wondered, as
they listened to him — and they had little difficulty hearing him, for he was
a practiced orator, and his every word reached their ears over the noise in
the crowded chamber — whether he, too, might someday be a candidate for
expulsion.

“…And do we not glory in our rightful power to contradict the sovereign in money and other kinds of bills? Are not our actions in those
instances far more cutting to his dignity than a handful of immoderate
words? Sir,” said Jones, addressing as was expected of him the Speaker —
even though he meant “Gentlemen,” for he wanted no cries of “Chair!
Chair!” interrupting his words — “do we not then also question a greater
portion of his wisdom? It would be fanciful folly indeed if we presume we
did not! Sir, you must allow that we do, and concede that it is most curious
that this House has never been charged with a similar offense — at least,
not since James the Second!”

Members on the government benches murmured and rustled in their
seats. Those on the Opposition benches were silent and attentive. Someone
shouted, “Hear, hear!” and Jones continued with his speech.

“As for Mr. Wilkes’s satire on Mr. Pope’s
Essay
,” he said, “well, that it
is lascivious and obscene cannot be denied. However, the logical action
taken by able-minded men in matters of indelicate literature is not punishment of its authors, but refusal to read it. I own that
I
have read the
Essay
at question here, and more: that I have read better! And better and worse
than this
Essay
may be had for a few shillings or pence on Duck Lane and
St. Paul’s Churchyard. It was, in a word —
dull
!!”

Members on both sides of the House chuckled at this remark. Jones
waited until they were quiet again. “My questions for the House, however,
are these: Is our hold on moral conduct and propriety so weak and feeble that
we fear the
power
of such a thing? I say that its power is derived from our
sheer funk and doubtful virtue! Are we clinging to the precipice of moral salvation with but one tiny finger, fearful that the slightest breeze of prurience
will send us tumbling into the fiery chasm of damnation? If we are, we ought
not to don the weighty mantle of judgment! Are we so unsure of the strength
of our moral uprightness that, in order to maintain our pretence of it, we
rush to censure a man whose words perhaps summon to our idle thoughts
memories or imaginings of the natural delights of connubial bliss?”

Many members on both sides of the House gasped open-mouthed.
Jones heard the reaction, and was glad that he had decided not to say, “the
natural delights of rogering our wives and mistresses,” as he had planned
to, for those words, he knew now, would have caused an uproar and moved
some members to demand that he be censured by the Speaker. He went on,
uninterrupted, thankful that he had decided wisely. “If we are, sir, then we
are either hypocrites and liars, or so saintly and heaven-sent that we cannot
credibly account for our children!”

This elicited a greater round of laughter than before, except, of course,
among the parsons and the devout, who wished to laugh, but would not.
“But, who among us are truly offended by Mr. Wilkes’s actions beyond
this chamber? And who are merely angry with him? If offended, we may
rest on the consolation that
his
character reflects on neither that of this
body, nor on our own virtues. And if one is angry with him, this troubling
state does not allow us the leave, individually or corporately in concert with
others similarly irked, to gag him, to fine him, imprison him, and void his
right to sit in this House! Anger of that kind has moved many a highwayman to murder his victim because his victim had little to surrender —
or even because he dared speak in protest of the robbery — and anger has
sent many a highwayman to Tyburn Tree!”
“Foul words, sir!” shouted a member from the government side.
“Insult, Chair! Insult to the House!” cried another. A confusing chorus bellowed at the Speaker, “Take down those words!” “Offense! Slander!”
“Apology! Apology!” “Move to censure that fellow!”
Speaker Cust was saved the trouble of deciding what to do when several members from the Opposition benches rose and out-shouted the government benches. “Hear! Hear!” “No outrage!” “Hear him! Hear him!”
“Let the honorable member speak!” He waited for the tumult to subside,
then nodded once to Jones to continue.
Jones nodded in thanks, then said, “I say that Mr. Wilkes libels neither
men nor women with his debauched and lecherous scribblings! I say that
the charge of libel against him on that matter is bilious and unfounded, and
for these reasons: For a libel to have any legal substance, it must have an
object capable of responding to it, and that object must be a
person
. To my
knowledge, neither of those great, idealized abstractions, Apollo and
Athena, have filed a suit for libel in any court of law in this nation!” After
an imperceptible pause, he added, “And no one, neither god nor mortal, can
object to a libel that remains
unpublished
, as this
Essay
is! Call it what you
will, sir: false, blasphemous, indecent, lewd, or gross — it remains unpublished! And if it were published, I dare the woman vain and inelegant
enough to claim that
she
was its ribald inspiration!”
After another pause, Jones said, “It is my sincere hope that this House
will pursue the truth, and not the man. As to Mr. Wilkes’s original remarks
about His Majesty, we propose to put him in a second jeopardy over that
matter, and, again, over an unpublished, alleged libel. Well, His Majesty is
a man. But, then, so was Adam….”
Henoch Pannell and Crispin Hillier, seated together on a tier above the
Treasury bench, listened to Jones, but were not among those who protested
his statements. They were taking the measure of the man and of their colleagues’ reactions to him. “He is effective,” remarked Pannell to his partner,
“very effective. I like his style. It may be his undoing. He stabs with words,
and wounds, and shames, and invites a round of stone-casting.”
Hillier nodded in agreement. “Others would say that he beggars his
questions. But, they are questions I believe he knows that few here would
dare answer with honesty. And that gives him a pile of stones to cast, while
they are armed with soft, worn pebbles. Hardly an equal contest, sir.”
Pannell smiled in smug satisfaction. “Well, there you are, sir! He asks
the House to elevate itself! What greater slight could one offer? He will ask
himself, I’ll wager, once he has absorbed the method of this House: Who
among us would wish to? Against his wounding words of stone will be the
emery of inertia and what he calls ‘sheer funk.’ Together, they will wear
down his stallion spirit! Yes, sir! For each stone he casts, a hundred emery
pebbles will answer!”
Sir James Parrot, sitting with his wife in the gallery that faced the
Opposition benches below, looked disdainfully down at the man he had
bested at the Pippin trial at the King’s Bench years ago. His wife leaned
closer to him and observed, “It is a wonder to me, James, that you outargued
him
at that rascal’s trial. He has almost convinced
me
to feel sorry
for Mr. Wilkes!”
Her husband shook his head, and sighed with the ennui of tired
wisdom. “No, my dear. He is merely an actor. A Garrick in gown. But, if I
outargued him, Lord Wooten outgaveled him. However, I am afraid for our
friend down there that all his speeches here will be but soliloquies spoken
to an empty House. You see, he has the hobbling habit of speaking to more
than just the question at hand.” He nodded to the nearly four hundred
closely packed members on the benches below. “He speaks over most of
their hats, and beyond their breadth.”
When he was finished speaking and able to sit down, Dogmael Jones
felt flushed with both the effort of his fifty-minute oration and the confidence that he had said everything that needed to be said. As a member
above the Treasury bench rose to reply, some members of the Opposition
picked their way through the press of bodies to compliment him. He
glanced up at the gallery between acknowledgments with a tentative smile
for Baron Garnet Kenrick, his wife the Baroness, and their daughter, Alice.
The Baron returned his smile with a nod of approval, the Baroness silently
pronounced the word “Bravo!” and Alice grinned proudly at him. Jones
doffed his hat in answer, and winked at Alice, then leaned on his cane to
listen to his respondent across the floor.
He subsequently voted against the House resolution that branded
Number Forty-five a “false, scandalous, and seditious libel,” argued with
other members in the Commons lobby and coffee room and in the Yard
against joining Lords in condemning it to be burnt, and, in January, voted
against Wilkes’s expulsion. He made copies of all his speeches for future
reference, and recorded from memory significant speeches delivered in the
House by friend and foe. He kept his promise to Hugh Kenrick, and sent
him transcriptions of his own addresses.
And, he came to the attention of Colonel Isaac Barré, member for Chipping Wycombe, a tall, swarthy man with a musket ball still lodged in one
cheek, a disfigurement he received in Canada. He had been at Wolfe’s side
when that man died on the Plains of Abraham outside Quebec. His frightening appearance, together with his own frank oratory, made him the
terror of other members and government ministers. He and Jones became
friends and allies.
Jones was also noticed by other Opposition members, who were less
certain than Barré that he was the kind of ally they wished to recruit.

* * *

The business postponed by Parliament in its zeal to punish Wilkes
comprised an agenda of important matters. There was George the Third’s
Proclamation of October 7th, fraught with implications for the future of the
empire. Allied to it was the national debt, now standing at £130 millions,
and its annual interest of between £3 and £5 millions, and how best to
reduce it. There was the fate of the land and cider taxes to consider, and
other revenue issues that affected the royal and national coffers, such as a
dismal harvest, which was sure to spark more food riots, and what personal
allowances to vote His Majesty and his family.

More immediate matters distracted the colonies. In November, while Parliament was preoccupied with Wilkes, British astronomers and surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon arrived in Philadelphia, hired
by the Penn and Calvert families, proprietors respectively of Pennsylvania and Maryland, to settle the boundary dispute between the two colonies.
Also in that month, Pontiac and his Indian allies, frustrated in their obsession with immediate slaughter and destruction, and discouraged that the
French were not going to reappear, abandoned their seven-month siege of Detroit.

This was preceded in August by the rout of an Indian army at Bushy Run in Pennsylvania, not far from where the war had begun, by Colonel
Henry Bouquet, a Swiss mercenary commanding Scottish and regular troops, a victory that lifted the siege of Fort Pitt. The Indians would continue their raids on Western settlements for three more years, until a treaty
ended the unequal contest. Some time after its signing, Pontiac would be murdered by an Illinois, precipitating the extinction of the Illinois by a
vengeful Algonquin confederacy of tribes.
George the Third’s Proclamation was read by most members of Parliament with an insouciance abetted by an ignorance
of colonial conditions. It created four new colonies and governments for them: Quebec, East and West Florida, and Grenada.
It annexed the islands of St. John and Cape Breton to Nova Scotia. It provided
generous grants of land to officers and enlisted men who had served with the
army and remained in the colonies. It drew a boundary line along the mountains
from the headwaters of all rivers flowing to the Atlantic, prohibited colonial
settlement west of it, and prohibited colonial Governors and legislatures from
selling or patenting land west of it without Crown approval. It reserved to
the Crown the right to purchase land west of the line from the Indians. And,
it expressly authorized the “use of said Indians” by Crown officers to apprehend
any subject fleeing Crown law, regardless of his offense.
Bubbles of incipient rebellion against Crown arrogance by George’s “loving subjects,”
both at home and in the colonies, went largely unnoticed by those charged with
formulating and implementing the policy. There came into the hands of ministers
in office, in 1762, a pamphlet containing an address delivered in the Superior
Court of Massachusetts, by James Otis, a Boston attorney. It challenged the
legality of writs of assistance.
These were blanket sanctions, similar in spirit and intent to general warrants,
issued by courts under the authority of the king and Parliamentary law, that
permitted customs officers, on mere suspicion of evasion, to search and ransack
private homes and property for untaxed contraband or smuggled goods, and if
found, to seize the same in lieu of paid duties, fines, and jury decisions.
Otis argued that these writs were invalid because any act of Parliament or royally
assented law “against the Constitution was void,” and warned that the writs
represented a liberty-abridging power that “cost one King of England his head
and another his throne.”
These words, had they been uttered in either House by a member of Parliament,
would have cost him his seat in the Commons, or his title in Lords, and earned
him imprisonment and a trial on the charge of treason. But they were spoken
by a mere colonial lawyer in an “inferior” colonial court that subsequently
demurred the issue in deference to Crown interpretation, and so they carried
neither weight nor threat nor hint of unrest.
And while men in London were fulminating against Wilkes in December of 1763,
and wondering whence came the unruly crowds that rallied to his support, the
ministers and lords there were naturally oblivious to the address that month
by another lawyer to a jury of another “inferior” court in faraway Hanover County,
Virginia; very likely, too, they would have been unmoved even had the address
been communicated to them.
The Privy Council had disallowed the General Assembly’s Two-Penny Act of 1758,
which, as an emergency economic measure, fixed the salaries of the state-appointed
clergy in Virginia below the market price of tobacco — or rather reduced the
tax on a pound of sold tobacco, imposed to support the Anglican clergy, from
six pence to four. These vestry-paid salaries were disbursed in the form of
crop notes, transfer notes, and depreciating Virginia currency, all tied to
the widening gulf in the exchange rate between Virginia paper and British sterling.
The clergy not only felt cheated, but did not feel that they, God’s spokesmen,
should be the recipients of curt reminders from London merchants about their
mounting debts.
Reverend John Camm, divinity professor at William & Mary College and pastor
of York-Hampton Parish, voyaged to London on their behalf and waged a successful
campaign with the Privy Council and Board of Trade to have the Act repealed,
or disallowed. Reverend James Maury of Hanover, emboldened by his colleague’s
success, sued his parish for back pay. The Hanover County Court recognized the
disallowance, and a jury was selected to determine what he was lawfully owed.
Patrick Henry, representing the parish, persuaded the jury that when “a King…degenerated
into a Tyrant,” he forfeited “all right to his subjects’ Obedience.” He asserted
the right of the colony to enact its own laws, and asked the jury to “make such
an example of the plaintiff, as might hereafter be a warning.” His unambiguous
hostility to the established Anglican Church was underscored by his reference
to Maury and his colleagues as “rapacious harpies,” ready to snatch food and
shelter from the poor and distressed.
The jury, charged with deciding the amount of Maury’s entitled back pay, awarded
him the grand sum of one penny. The disallowed Act, passed by the colony’s own
General Assembly, was a regulatory law, which, in the mercantilist scheme of
things then, was complementary to and as intrusive and pernicious as any passed
by Parliament. Still, it was an act of self-governance by Virginians that was
arbitrarily annulled by the Crown. The Hanover jury both obeyed the Crown, and
defied it.
Some historians date the first serious articulation of revolution to Otis; others,
to Henry. It is a moot point. Their words, verging on the received definition
of treason, were not “shots heard ’round the world,” but rather presageful alarms
that stung the restive consciousness of any man accustomed to thought. They
set the tone and terms for everything that was to follow.
Jack Frake and Hugh Kenrick, rebels from two distinct strata of English society,
and moved by differing visions of liberty, would now become dedicated revolutionaries:
one imbued with a steady, quiet certitude; the other, with an articulate, impassioned
patriotism.