The day of Wilkes’s election appeared the portrait of “John Wilkes, elected Knight of the Shire for Middlesex, March 28, 1768, by the free voice of the people,” with, according to the allegorical taste of the time, Hercules and Minerva as supporters, the latter crowning the elect M.P. with a wreath, while the former tramples upon the serpent of Envy; the genius of Liberty is holding the staff of maintenance, surmounted by the cap of liberty (as invariably associated with Wilkes), and is pointing to the portrait as her champion. Simultaneously appeared an engraving commemorative of other incidents of the return from Brentford, showing the valour of the chief magistrate of the city. The guards on duty at St. James’s Palace had orders to be in readiness to march at beat of drum to suppress any riots which might take place; it has been described how certain drummers took to drumming for Wilkes, while his sympathizers marched through Westminster to the city, upsetting all in their way, chalking doors, breaking window-glass, both in houses and carriages, inscribing vehicles and foot-passengers impartially with “45.” “Wilkes and Liberty” was the cry, and woe to those who did not join in shouting, for they, without further inquiry, were promptly knocked down. In the city, the mob grew more outrageous, the lord mayor being the Hon. Thomas Harley, who had been elected for the city, at the top of the poll, when Wilkes, his name lowest on the list, had been defeated ignominiously; moreover, the lord mayor was a courtier, and was denounced subsequently in the _North Briton_ as “a political gambler,” nor was the charge groundless. The mob accordingly attacked the Mansion House and the lord mayor’s private residence in Aldersgate Street; neither of these places being illuminated in honour of Wilkes was a sufficient offence in the sight of the mob, who proceeded to demolish the windows: every pane of glass was broken, even to those of the lady mayoress’s bed-chamber. Then they erected a gallows, on which was suspended a boot and petticoat to symbolize the Princess of Wales, only too well-known, according to popular clamour, in association with the Earl of Bute, the “Laird of the Boot” thus indicated in close proximity; these suggestive emblems of hated “secret influence” were also marked “45” for the nonce. The pictorial satire evoked on this topic, “The Rape of the Petticoat” (March 28, 1768), exhibits the lord mayor making a sally from the Mansion House, supported by constables armed with long staves; the chief magistrate has himself seized the obnoxious boot and petticoat, amid the ridicule and laughing resistance of the rabble, who are treating his lordship to indignities. Below the design is inscribed, “He valiantly seiz’d the Petticoat and Boot at the portal of his own Mansion.--_Daily Advertiser._”