While Wilkes was lying on what threatened to be his death-bed the feeling on both sides only increased in intensity. The Ministry were indifferent to the helplessness of their enemy. Wilkes was expelled from the House of Commons. He was expelled from the Militia. The common hangman was ordered publicly to burn the _North Briton_, but the hangman was not suffered to obey the order. An angry mob set upon him and upon the sheriffs who were assisting at the ceremony, rescued the _North Briton_ from its persecutors, and in rude retaliation burned instead the joint emblems of the popular disdain--a boot and a petticoat. The people's blood was up; the symptoms were significant enough for any save such a King and such ministers to understand. While the Ministry, with a refinement of cruelty, were sending daily the King's surgeons to watch Wilkes's health and proclaim the moment when he might again be attacked, the Corporation of Dublin was setting an example that was soon followed by the Corporation of London and by other corporations in presenting him with the freedom of its city. While Wilkes was slowly journeying towards Paris, where his daughter was, and passing, as he wrote, "the most unhappy days he had known," an angry mob gibbeted the effigy of Bute at one of the gates of Exeter, and kept the image swinging there in derision for a fortnight in defiance of the authorities. While Wilkes was languishing in foreign exile to save his liberty and his very life from the malignity of his enemies, his portrait, painted by Reynolds, was placed in the Guildhall with an inscription in honor of the jealous assertor of English liberty by law.