A Revised Date for a Note from John Wilkes to Bonnell Thornton

Abstract

In my essay, Have At You All: or, Bonnell Thornton's Journalism, Huntington Library Quarterly, 44 (1981): 278, I constructed circumstantial case for assigning date of 3 May 1763 to note from John Wilkes to Bonnell Thornton (Huntington Library Ms. HM 22782) in which Wilkes asks Thornton to plant an excerpt from the Parliamentary History in the Public Advertiser. Access to more perfect file of the Public has allowed me to locate the excerpt in the issue of 10 November 1763, pp. 1-2, and thus definitively to date the note as being written on Tuesday 8 November 1763. Rather than squib meant to prepare the public for Wilkes' appearance in the Court of Common Pleas on 6 May 1763, the excerpt, instead, was intended to anticipate Wilkes' complaint of breach of privilege before the House of Commons at its opening session on 15 November 1763. In the event, Wilkes' complaint was superseded by George Grenville's delivering message from the king asking that the House consider the case against North Briton No. 45. After debate lasting into the early morning hours, North Briton No. 45 was voted a false, scandalous, and seditious libel and ordered to be burnt by the common hangman. On the same day, in the House of Lords, the earl of Sandwich launched his notorious attack on Wilkes' (and Thomas Potter's) Essay on Woman. The next day Wilkes was gravely wounded in duel with Samuel Martin resulting from remarks made by Martin during the Commons debate of the previous date. In all, 15 November, the day anticipated by Wilkes in the note of 8 November, proved nearly to be his undoing. Let me add that the revised dating of the note in no way alters my general conclusions about Thornton's relations with Wilkes. Thornton in November was only continuing what he had been doing since at least May: serving as an important ally in Wilkes' campaign to manipulate the media.