ministry, which, as he hoped, might bring into power some to whom he might look for greater favor.  But when, though in the course of the next two years two fresh administrations were formed, it was seen that neither Lord Rockingham, the head of the first, nor the Duke of Grafton and Mr. Pitt (promoted to the Earldom of Chatham), the heads of the second, had any greater sympathy with him than Mr. Grenville, he became desperate, and looked out for some opportunity of giving effect to his discontent.  He found it in the dissolution of Parliament, which took place in the spring of 1768.  In spite of his outlawry, he instantly returned to England, and offered himself as a candidate for London.  There, indeed, he did not succeed, though the populace was uproarious in his support, and drew his carriage through the streets as if in triumph.  But, before the end of the month, he was returned at the head of the poll for Middlesex, when the mob celebrated his victory by great riot and outrages, breaking the windows of Lord Bute, as his old enemy, and of the Lord Mayor, as the representative of the City of London, which had rejected him, and insulting, and even in some instances beating, passers-by who refused to join in their cheers for “Wilkes and Liberty.”

He had already pledged himself to take the necessary steps to procure the reversal of his outlawry; and, in pursuance of his promise, he surrendered in the Court of King’s Bench.  But his removal to prison caused a renewal of the tumults with greater violence than before.  The mob even rescued him from the officers who had him in custody; and when, having escaped from his deliverers, he, with a parade of obedience to the law, again surrendered himself voluntarily at the gate of the King’s Bench Prison, they threatened to attack the jail itself, kindled a fire under its walls, which was not extinguished without some danger, and day after day assembled in such tumultuous and menacing crowds, that at last Lord Weymouth, the Secretary of State, wrote a letter to the Surrey magistrates, enjoining them to abstain from no measures which might seem necessary for the preservation of peace, even if that could only be effected by the employment of the soldiery.  The riots grew more and more formidable, till at last the magistrates had no resource but to call out the troops, who, on one occasion, after they had been pelted with large stones, and in many instances severely injured, fired, killing or wounding several of the foremost rioters.  So tragical an event seemed to Wilkes to furnish him with exactly such an opportunity as he desired to push himself into farther notoriety.  He at once printed Lord Weymouth’s letter, and circulated it, with an inflammatory comment, in which he described it as a composition having for its fruit “a horrid massacre, the consummation of a hellish plot deliberately planned.”  Too angry to be prudent, Lord Weymouth complained to the House of Lords of this publication as a breach of privilege,