He began by making war on the press.  John Wilkes, member of Parliament for Aylesbury, was singled out for persecution.  Wilkes had, till very lately, been known chiefly as one of the most profane, licentious, and agreeable rakes about town.  He was a man of taste, reading, and engaging manners.  His sprightly conversation was the delight of greenrooms and taverns, and pleased even grave hearers when he was sufficiently under restraint to abstain from detailing the particulars of his amours, and from breaking jests on the New Testament.  His expensive debaucheries forced him to have recourse to the Jews.  He was soon a ruined man, and determined to try his chance as a political adventurer.  In Parliament he did not succeed.  His speaking, though pert, was feeble, and by no means interested his hearers so much as to make them forget his face, which was so hideous that the caricaturists were forced, in their own despite, to flatter him.  As a writer, he made a better figure.  He set up a weekly paper, called the North Briton.  This journal, written with some pleasantry, and great audacity and impudence, had a considerable number of readers.  Forty-four numbers had been published when Bute resigned; and, though almost every number had contained matter grossly libellous, no prosecution had been instituted.  The forty-fifth number was innocent when compared with the majority of those which had preceded it, and indeed contained nothing so strong as may in our time be found daily in the leading articles of the Times and Morning Chronicle.  But Grenville was now at the head of affairs.  A new spirit had been infused into the administration.  Authority was to be upheld.  The Government was no longer to be braved with impunity.  Wilkes was arrested under a general warrant, conveyed to the Tower, and confined there with circumstances of unusual severity.  His papers were seized, and carried to the Secretary of State.  These harsh and illegal measures produced a violent outbreak of popular rage, which was soon changed to delight and exultation.  The arrest was pronounced unlawful by the Court of Common Pleas, in which Chief justice Pratt presided, and the prisoner was discharged.  This victory over the Government was celebrated with enthusiasm both in London and in the cider counties.

While the ministers were daily becoming more odious to the nation, they were doing their best to make themselves also odious to the Court.  They gave the King plainly to understand that they were determined not to be Lord Bute’s creatures, and exacted a promise that no secret adviser should have access to the royal ear.  They soon found reason to suspect that this promise had not been observed.  They remonstrated in terms less respectful than their master had been accustomed to hear, and gave him a fortnight to make his choice between his favourite and his Cabinet.