John Wilkes
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John Wilkes was a British radical, journalist, politician, magistrate and writer. He was first elected a Member of Parliament in 1757. In the Middlesex election dispute, he fought for the right of his
Portrait by Richard Houston, 1769
Lord Bute, prime minister between 1762 and 1763, and a major target for Wilkes' paper The North Briton. It angered Wilkes that Bute had displaced Pitt the Elder, and he attacked the terms of the Treaty of Paris (1763).
Riots in 1763 to stop the burning of issue No. 45 of The North Briton
"John Wilkes Esq; before the Court of King's Bench", engraving from The Gentleman's Magazine for May 1768
The Massacre of St George's Fields occurred on 10 May 1768 when government soldiers opened fire on demonstrators that had gathered at St George's Fields, Southwark, in south London. The protest was ag
John Wilkes
…his voters – rather than the House of Commons – to determine their representatives. In 1768, angry protests of his supporters were suppressed in the Massacre of St George's Fields. In 1771, he was instrumental in obliging the government to concede the right of printers to publish verbatim accounts of parliamentary debates. In…
1769 cartoon criticising the Grafton ministry's reaction to the massacre
c. 1751 painting of a Horse Grenadier Guards trooper