Mr. Fox was true to his word. He set about his new duties with alacrity. Bribes were offered in cash and in the form of titles; and places in the Government were given in order to form one which would be solidly behind Fox and obey his commands to vote as performing dogs at the crack of the whip.
The Dukes of Devonshire, Newcastle and Grafton were expelled from their offices to make way for complacent men; and by December Fox was ready to go into the attack. Crowds surrounded the Houses of Parliament knowing what issues were at stake. Pitt was still the hero of the piece; Bute the black-hearted villain.
In the Lords, Bute had to defend Fox's policy; and in the Commons, Fox had to face Pitt, who had arrived, swathed in bandages, wrapped in flannel, suffering hideously from his old complaint of gout. Pitt harangued the Government for three hours; he pointed out that their enemies had not yet been beaten; that if peace were made now they would recover and get to their feet again. Peace was a danger to England. Pitt's eloquence was, as ever, spellbinding, but his gout got the better of him and before he had delivered the final summing up he was obliged to retire to his seat. Then Fox rose and with reasoning, cold against Pitt's heat, logical against emotionalism, he defended the Government's policy for peace. France and Spain had agreed to great concessions, and England was suffering from acute taxation.
Listening, Pitt seemed to sense defeat; in any case he was in agony. While Fox was speaking he got up and hobbled from the House, thus leaving his supporters without a leader.
The motion was carried for the Government 319 to 65. A triumph for the Government, for Fox's policy and for peace.
It was hardly to be expected that Pitt's supporters would quietly accept this state of affairs. It was known how the Government majority had been achieved. Bribery! was whispered throughout the streets; and the mob marched carrying a jackboot and petticoat which they ceremoniously hung on a gibbet. The feeling against Bute was rising. He was the arch enemy, the Scot who had dared to try to rule England, the lover of the Princess Dowager who with her ruled the King, and therefore ruled England. Even the King came in for his share of criticism and his popularity waned alarmingly.
When he went to call on his mother, crowds following his carriage shouted. "Going to have your napkins changed, George?" And: "When are you going to be weaned?”
George did not like it. It wounded him deeply; when he came back to his apartments he would weep and his headaches would begin; he felt that everyone was against him. When he could escape to Richmond, to the quiet life with Charlotte, he felt better. But he could not be a King and live the quiet life of a country gentleman.
Bute was feeling ill; he had lost his swagger. It was an uncomfortable feeling, every time he went out, wondering whether the mob were going to set on him and murder him. Power such as this had been his goal; now it was his it was very different from the dream.
And then John Wilkes went into the attack.
John Wilkes was the son of a malt distiller of Clerkenwell, who had started a paper, in conjunction with a friend named Charles Churchill, in which he determined to attack the anomalies of the day. He had a seat in Parliament and was an ardent supporter of Pitt. As a man who must be in the thick of any controversy, the conflict between Pitt and the Government, under Fox's leadership, was irresistible to him.
Wilkes was an extremely ugly man; his features were irregular and his squint diabolical; to counterbalance this he had developed a very keen wit and courtly manners, and with these he endeavoured to bring down what he called the unworthy mighty from their seats. The first of these was of course Lord Bute.
As a young man Wilkes had been sent on the Grand Tour; on his return his parents had wished him to marry Mary Mead, the daughter of a London grocer, a very rich one and he had obliged.
The marriage was a failure. Poor Mary could not keep pace with her husband's wit and brilliance.
Wilkes came well out of the affair for he acquired not only a large slice of his wife's fortune but the custody of his daughter, Mary, who was the one person in his life for whom he cared.
His great energy had had to find an outlet and he joined societies of ill repute such as the Hell Fire Club and Sir Francis Dashwood's club, the latter known as the Order of St. Francis. The motive of these clubs was profligacy and obscenity, all to be conducted in the most witty manner. The members of the Order of St. Francis met in a ruined Cistercian Abbey at Medmenham and there indulged in practices with which they tried to shock each other, by mocking the Church, and they were said on one occasion to have given the sacrament to a monkey.
Membership of this society had brought Wilkes influential friends, among whom were Pitt's supporters, Sir Francis Dashwood and Lord Sandwich, and through them Wilkes became the High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire; and after an unsuccessful attempt to enter Parliament for Berwick- on-Tweed he was elected for Aylesbury.
He was not a great success in Parliament, lacking the necessary eloquence; but his wit and humour secured him many friends; he was a most entertaining companion; he even made fun of his ugliness. He had never, he said, like Narcissus, hung over a stream and admired his countenance; one would not find him stealing sly glances at a mirror, a habit he had noticed among those to whom Nature had been a little more kind when dealing out good features. He made a cult of his ugliness. He was extremely virile; he had a deep need of sexual satisfaction; and in a short time he had gone through his fortune and his wife's and was looking for a means of making money.
He discovered a talent for journalism; it was an exciting profession. To express one's views in print, to hear them quoted, to be a power in the land that was exactly what Wilkes wanted. If there was one man in the country whom Wilkes wished to send toppling from his pedestal, that man was Lord Bute. Bute was all that he was not: handsome, pompous and a lover to whom the Dowager Princess of Wales had been faithful for years; Wilkes was envious; he was cleverer than Bute, but Bute was a rich man and he a poor one. Bute had become head of the Government and he, brilliant Wilkes, was a failure in Parliament. And now Bute was forcing his desires on the country and he had done it through bribes. Here was a subject for a journalist.
One of the papers, The Monitor, was criticizing the Government, but it was a scrappy little sheet, hardly worthy to be called a newspaper; and in retaliation Lord Bute had founded two papers, The Briton and The Auditor, and had set up the novelist Tobias Smollett as editor of the former. Under brilliant editorship The Briton was attracting some attention and was helping to put the case for Bute, who was becoming less unpopular as a result. This was something which Wilkes could not endure. He went to his crony Charles Churchill, a man who lived as disreputably as Wilkes himself, had separated from his wife as Wilkes had, and had made some reputation as a poet.
"We should found a rival paper to The Briton," he suggested. "In it we could keep the country informed on Mr. Bute.”
"What could we tell them that they don't already know?”
That made Wilkes laugh. "We'll find plenty, never fear. Bribes! And what a gallant gentleman! I'll swear the people would like to know how very well he performs in the Princess's bed.”
"Wilkes, you're a devil," cried Churchill.
"And doing you the honour of accepting you as the same, my friend. Now to business.”
In a very short time they were ready to bring out their paper.
"What shall we call it?" Churchill wanted to know.
Wilkes was thoughtful; then a lewd smile spread across his ugly face.
"Why not The North Briton? After all it is going to be dedicated to the destruction of a gentleman from across the Border. Yes, that is it. The North Briton.”