While the King was insulted and insulting, and longing to stifle opposition by the sword, John Wilkes in his prison was receiving new proofs of the place he held in public affection. He was elected alderman for the Ward of Farringdon Without. We are told that his table at the prison was daily supplied with the most rare and costly delicacies, presented to him by his admirers. The mysterious Chevalier d'Eon sent him a present of Russian smoked tongues, with the whimsical wish that they could have the eloquence of Cicero, and the delicacy of Voltaire, to do him honor. Friendly revellers sent him hampers of the wine he liked the best. More serious gifts were laid at his feet. For a while money literally rained in upon him. The leading Whigs provided him with an income. Nobles and great ladies sent him large sums. A number of politicians banded together under the title of the Society for Supporting the Bill of Rights, and raised a great deal of money, much of which went in meeting some of the heavy debts with which Wilkes was embarrassed, much of which went in keeping up the princely way of living which suited Wilkes's temperament, and which was perhaps not unsuited to the part he was playing as the rival of a prince. In the public press, on the platform, on the stage, his influence was enormous. His good pleasure sent politicians to Parliament; his good pleasure made London sheriffs, made provincial mayors. While the false rumor that he was the author of "The Letters of Junius" only swelled the volume of his fame, the author of those letters was adding to Wilkes's pride and power by public championship and by private letters, choking with an adulation that seems strange indeed from so savage a pen. If Garrick dared for a moment to run counter to popular feeling, as a little earlier he had dared to disdain the praise of Churchill, he had to give way in the case of Wilkes, as he had given way in the case of Wilkes's poet. The very name of Wilkes drove men on both sides of the quarrel into a kind of frenzy. Alexander Cruden, of the "Concordance," {135} showed his devotion to his King and his dislike of Wilkes by carrying a large sponge with him whenever he walked abroad in order that he might wipe out the ominous number, forty-five, whenever he saw it chalked up. As the number was chalked up everywhere by the Wilkites, Cruden soon found the task beyond his powers. It was lucky for him that he got no harm in his zeal, lucky for him that he did not come across that militant clergyman who pulled the nose of a Scotch naval officer for attacking Wilkes and then met his man in Hyde Park and wounded him. [Sidenote: 1770--A fight for the liberty of the Press]