Before the aldermen again met (29 Nov.) the city solicitor, acting (apparently) upon instructions from Wilkes, had defended Hart's _mandamus_, and at the next Court that officer was severely questioned on the matter, and was told that the Court would not allow him his costs. A motion was at the same time made to the effect that the lord mayor having refused to put a question which the Court of Aldermen was competent to decide, had violated the right of election in the freemen of the city, as represented in that Court. It was, of course, the business of Wilkes to put this question, but unlike Trevor, the Speaker, who stultified himself before the House of Commons in 1695, Wilkes positively declined, telling his brother aldermen that he thanked God he was "not quite idiot enough" for that.[378] A week later (6 Dec.) the Court passed a resolution to the effect that Neate had not been duly elected, and Wilkes again protested. The Court thereupon proposed to swear in Hart, but Wilkes again refused to put the question for the reason that the parties had not been heard.[379] Matters were thus brought to a deadlock. At length--on the 17th January, 1775--the Court put itself in order by hearing Neate, and immediately afterwards passed a resolution for calling in and swearing Hart. Wilkes no longer raised any objection, and Hart was sworn.[380] Hart did not long enjoy his victory, for by a judgment of the King's Bench, pronounced in Easter term, 1776, he was excluded from intermeddling with the aldermanry, and on the 18th June Thomas Wooldridge (_not_ Neate) was admitted in his place.[381] As between Wilkes and the Court of Aldermen the honours certainly lay with the former, and he did not hesitate to tell the Court that he intended to pursue the same line of conduct throughout his year of office in spite of all the Court might think or do;--"I declared that I never would put a question to decide the merits of a cause before this Court until both the parties had been heard. The Court at last consented that Mr. Neate should be heard, and only after he had been heard did I put the question.... The same line of truth and impartiality I will steadily pursue thro' the whole course of my mayoralty, regardless of any resolutions of this Court which are repugnant to the great principles of justice or the fair rights of the chief magistrate."[382] [Sidenote: The new Parliament and the American colonies, 1775.]