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Beckford and pubishers. On the 30th they were arrested and committed to the Tower. A week later they were (on 6 May), upon their being brought by writ of habeas corpus before Chief Justice Pratt, summarily discharged. But it was only upon the very morrow of the completion of the year of Beckford's mayoralty (15 Nov. 1763) that Wilkes's No. 45 was declared by parliament to be 'a scandalous and seditious libel,' and was ordered as such to be burnt by the common hangman. Beckford throughout that agitated twelvemonth was side by side with Wilkes. Beckford's, not Wilkes's, was the daring dictum then in everybody's mouth — that under the house of Hanover Englishmen for the first time had been able to be free, and for the first time had determined to be free. To him, almost as much as to Wilkes, the opposition looked for their guidance.

Seven years afterwards Beckford was reelected (25 March 1768) by the metropolitan constituency, and before the close of the following year he again became lord mayor. On 29 Sept. 1769, three persons having been returned by the livery of London to the court of aldermen, the nomination at once took place, when the show of hands was declared by the sheriffs to be in favour of two of them. A poll having been then demanded by the rejected candidate, Beckford, at the close of it on 6 Oct., was found to be at its head with 1,967 votes, the second candidate numbering 1,911, and the third 676. On the following day (7 Oct.) the aldermen scratched Beckford for sixteen, his opponent being able to secure no more than six supporters. The popular champion resolutely declined the proffered honour, pleading as his excuse, though he had not yet completed his fifty-ninth year, his age and infirmities. This intimation having been conveyed to the livery was received by them with signal marks of dissatisfaction. On 13 Oct. a great number of them waited upon Beckford and induced him to reconsider his decision. On 8 Nov. he was duly sworn in at the Guildhall. A stormy time was before him. Attended by the aldermen and common councilmen of London, he went from Guildhall to St. James's Palace on 14 March 1770, and there presented to the king a powerfully worded address complaining in the strongest terms of a certain false return made at the Middlesex election. In consequence of his majesty's answer to this address being couched in words of stern reproof, the agitation was intensified. On 23 May 1770 Beckford, accompanied by the aldermen and livery, again sought audience of the king, to whom he presented another address and remonstrance, equally resolute. The sovereign's answer was even more curt and emphatic than the last. Thereupon, in obedience to a sudden impulse, the lord mayor asked permission of his majesty to utter a few words in reply. Accepting the momentary silence which ensued upon this most unexampled request as indicative of assent, Beckford then delivered an impromptu speech which has since become historical, and the words of which have for more than a century past been legible in gold letters on the pedestal of his monument in Guildhall — a speech which when it was being uttered made the king's countenance flush with anger, while the court surrounding him listened to it with something like consternation.

A glance at the Earl of Chatham's correspondence will demonstrate the absurdity of the pretensions long afterwards put forth by Horne Tooke, that he himself wrote that speech, and that Beckford never delivered it. Those pretensions were first heard of by the public at large more than forty years after Beckford's death, when, in 1813, Stephens, in his 'Memoir of Horne Tooke' (i. 157), remarked that Mr. Horne (as he was then called) lately acknowledged to him that it (the speech) was his composition. Gifford, three years afterwards, in a truculent footnote to his edition of Ben Jonson (vi. 481), insisted upon the accuracy of that astounding statement. According to Isaac Reed, these claims were first put forth orally by Tooke in the midst of an informal club-house gossip. Turning now, however, to the 'Chatham Correspondence' (iii. 458-9), it will be seen that immediately after the delivery of Beckford's impromptu address to the king, one of the sheriffs present on the occasion, Mr. Sheriff Townshend, wrote to the Earl of Chatham on that very day, 23 May 1770, 'My lord, I take the liberty of enclosing to your lordship his majesty's answer to our petition. The lord mayor made a reply to the king which greatly disconcerted the court. He (the lord mayor) has promised to recollect what he said, and I fancy the substance will appear in the papers to-morrow.' To this the earl replied on that same day, 23 May, 'I greatly rejoice to hear that my lord mayor asserted the city with weight and spirit, and am full of impatience for the papers to-morrow.' Thereupon, in the 'Public Advertiser' of the morrow, 24 May 1770, the impromptu speech as recollected by the lord mayor duly appeared, with this sentence appended to it: 'The humility and serious firmness with which the Lord Mayor uttered these words