A History of Parliamentary Elections and Electioneering in the Old Days: Showing the State of Political Parties and Party Warfare at the Hustings and in the House of Commons from the Stuarts to Queen VictoriaGrego, Joseph
History
A History of Parliamentary Elections and Electioneering in the Old Days: Showing the State of Political Parties and Party Warfare at the Hustings and in the House of Commons from the Stuarts to Queen Victoria
Grego, Joseph
Great Britain -- Politics and government; Great Britain. Parliament -- Election
Another version of these proceedings appeared, March 8, 1769, as “The
Battle of Cornhill;” an engraving given in the _Town and Country
Magazine_, with a short parody in the style of a drama on the subject,
as detailed in the foregoing “Addressers.” The counter-assault upon
Dingley is similarly illustrated. Reynolds, the Attorney Freeman of
the drama, is depicted as a tall, burly man. Dingley is made to cry,
“Murder, murder. Oh, the rascal. I’ll have him imprisoned seven years
for this illegal attack. He has done me twelve hundred, if not two
thousand pounds damage.” Van Scrip is much alarmed: “Heaven! what will
become of me! I shall lose all my interest in the Treasury, if we fail
in carrying it. I shan’t have a single government contract, not so much
as a thousand pounds scrip.” An anecdote is related in the _London
Museum_ (ii. 1770, p. 32) concerning the use of lottery tickets as
bribes by the Government, where Bradshaw, secretary to the Treasury,
stigmatized by “Junius” as “the cream-coloured parasite,” is alleged
to have “met the member for Buckinghamshire (Lowndes), and offered two
hundred lottery tickets at ten pounds each, which were accepted.” Scrip
and lottery tickets were freely employed for political bribery at this
period, as Walpole mentions in his “Memoirs of the Reign of King George
the Third,” and Sir H. N. Wraxall describes in his “Historical Memoirs.”
“The Inchanted Castle; or, King’s Arms in an Uproar” (March 8, 1769)
is a further pictorial version of the same occurrence, with little
variation as to the persons or incidents represented, but containing
a reference, like the last, to the “London Tavern,” the recognized
head-quarters and meeting-place for the Society of Supporters of the
Bill of Rights, and consequently opposed to sycophantic admiration of
ministerial illegalities. Beneath the print in question is a copy of
verses, beginning--
“I sing the bloody fight and dire alarms
’Twixt London Tavern and King’s Arms.
Planning Addresses Dingley’s party sate,
And meditating on their Country’s fate.”
Horace Walpole thus describes the transactions represented in the
foregoing:--
“The merchants of London, to the number of six or eight
hundred, amongst whom were Dutch, Jews, and any officious
tools that they could assemble, having signed one of those
servile panegyrics [addresses], set out in a long procession of
coaches, to carry it to St. James’s.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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