In 1789 Cooke was made captain to the sheriff’s troop. “About this time there were commotions by the mobility in London against his Majesty’s minister, Mr. Pitt. I went into the pot-houses at Exeter, and treated with mugs round, and gave loyal toasts and sentiments--my own motto, Any income-tax sooner than a French-come-tax; a long pull and a strong pull and a pull altogether-mind how the fox served the chicken, and said the grapes were sour--a speedy necklace to all traitors--Old England for ever, and those who don’t like it, leave it. “There has been but one small riot in Devonshire, to its honour and credit, and that was stopped in its infancy. It was for breaking into a miller’s house to get corn by violence; one Campion, a blacksmith, a young man called out from his work inadvertently to join the mob; from farmhouse to house they got liquor, got inebriated. He became a leader and carried a French banner, the old story. Campion was desired to desist by gentlemen; but he would not. He was apprehended in a day or two, committed to gaol, and tried at the Assizes, 1795, before the late Justice Heath; the jury found him guilty of the felony--riot and sedition. He suffered death. This prompt measure put an end and stopped the contagion in the West. There were thousands of spectators on the road, besides a thousand military of dragoons, artillery and volunteers of the district, who escorted him thirteen miles to the place of execution, Bovey-heathfield, in sight of his own village, Ilsington, as a rescue was talked of. “At a foolish County Meeting in 1797, to petition his Majesty to remove his late Minister, Mr. Pitt, I called up my apprentices at 3 o’clock in the morning; we got a ladder, and scaladed the walls of the Castle of Exeter, got in unperceived, I wrote conspicuously _No petition, no civil war_, and at many more lofty hazardous places in the city, that the freeholders might read it when they came to the meeting; we (had) done the whole before the people were up. I again put out handbills warning the mobility of Exeter of riot; and at the show of hands by the Sheriff the mob held up both their hands, and there was a great majority of legal (loyal) votes.