BY HORACE BLEACKLEY

11

LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD

NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
TORONTO: S. B. GUNDY

MCMXVII

NO VINU AMBORLIAO

Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & Co. at the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh

T

INTRODUCTION

HE materials for a biography of John Wilkes are as adequate as those concerning any other politician of the eighteenth century. The Wilkes MSS. in the British Museum occupy two dozen volumes or more-i.e. Add. MSS. 30865-88-and contain many thousand letters written by the demagogue and his numerous correspondents. Some of these have been printed in Almon's Life of Wilkes and more in The Letters, from the Year 1774 to the Year 1796, of John Wilkes, Esq., addressed to his Daughter, but the majority are still unpublished. The Diary and the Address Books in particular are invaluable for biographical purposes.

In addition to these documents there are many other papers in the Manuscript Room of the British Museum relating to Wilkes. Add. MSS. 22131-2 contain many hundred pages about his trial. There are the innumerable references cited by Mr. J. M. Rigg in his excellent monograph in the Dictionary of National Biography. The Hardwicke and the Newcastle MSS. are full of letters dealing with the case of Wilkes.

In the Guildhall Library there is a large dossier, bound in three volumes, including many invaluable records of the prosecution of the agitator, which, as far as I am aware, have never been examined previously.

The MSS. sold at Sotheby's on August 1, 1913, now in the possession of the author, throw much light upon the boyhood of Wilkes. They embrace over a hundred of his autograph letters and many others written by his mother,

his brothers, and his sister. Much of his early married life, too, is revealed in his correspondence with John Dell, a copy of which is in the possession of Mrs. Lee of Hartwell. Some extracts from this were published in Robert Gibb's History of Aylesbury. In Mr. A. M. Broadley's collection, also, there are many Wilkes' autographs.

A full account of the proceedings against the demagogue may be seen in the Home Office Papers at the Public Record Office. Here also in the Crown Rolls, Court of King's Bench, is a copy of the Information brought against him by the Attorney-General for publishing The North Briton and the "Essay on Woman."

A very accurate biography of Wilkes could be written from the information in contemporary newspapers alone, few men having been so voluminously paragraphed in the press. One annual file at least of a daily journal has been. examined for the purpose of this biography from the year 1760 until the patriot's death, and at important periods several others have been collated. In like manner all the principal magazines of the day have been explored.

For the rest, it is almost impossible to turn over any printed book of memoirs or collection of letters, written during the latter half of the eighteenth century, that does not contain some reference to the famous agitator. It may be said without exaggeration that his life is a history of the period.

My thanks are due to Sir George Sherston Baker and to the director of the Aylesbury Museum for permission to make use of the various portraits in this volume; also to Mrs. Lee of Hartwell, Col. Prideaux-Brune, the late Major Molineux-Montgomerie of Garboldisham, and the late Mr. A. M. Broadley of Bridport for allowing me to inspect their MSS., and to Mr. Henry Farnham Burke, Norroy King of Arms, for the copy of the Wilkes pedigree at Heralds' College.