A month later (21 Feb.) Wilkes was found guilty in the King's Bench of being the author of the offensive _North Briton_ and of the _Essay on Woman_, and as he failed to appear sentence of outlawry was pronounced against him in the following November.[196] The same day that judgment was pronounced in the King's Bench the Common Council passed a vote of thanks to the city members for their endeavours to obtain a Parliamentary declaration as to the illegality of general warrants, whilst it voted Pratt the Freedom of the City, and invited him to sit for his portrait. The chief justice acknowledged the compliment paid him by the City--"the most respectable body in the kingdom after the two Houses of Parliament"[197] as he termed it,--and his portrait, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and formerly bearing a Latin inscription ascribed to Dr. Johnson, now hangs in the Guildhall Art Gallery. The vote of thanks to the city members well nigh cost the City dear; for when application was shortly afterwards made to Parliament for pecuniary assistance to help the City to discharge the debt on Blackfriars Bridge--a debt which had been augmented by the destruction by fire of a temporary bridge that had been erected--a member rose and abused the Common Council for its late behaviour, declaring that the City was entitled to no favour.[198] [Sidenote: Chatham and the East India Company, 1766.] Having quarrelled in turn with Grenville and Rockingham, the king found himself compelled in July, 1766, to resort again to the "Great Commoner" whom he created Earl of Chatham and made Prime Minister with the office of Lord Privy Seal. His acceptance of a peerage produced a general burst of indignation. According to Horace Walpole--who never misses an opportunity of girding at the City in return for its treatment of his father--"the city and the mob" (convertible terms in his estimation), were angry, because in his new position, Pitt would have less opportunity of "doing jobs" for them than when he was in the House of Commons.[199] But however this may be, the state of the Prime Minister's health had before the end of the year rendered him incapable of "doing jobs" for the City or anybody else, and he left the control of affairs in the hands of the Duke of Grafton and Charles Townshend. Before withdrawing, however, he intimated his intention to the House of bringing in a bill for regulating the East India Company's affairs. Strange to say, the City failed to grasp the full portent of such a bill, or to see any danger to themselves in this meditated attack upon the chartered rights of others. Later on, when Fox introduced his East India Bill, the City was wider awake. The motion for carrying out Chatham's plan was not only made by a city alderman, viz., Beckford,[200] but the Common Council offered (June, 1767) Townshend, a supporter of the motion, the Freedom of the City, in recognition of "his well-tempered zeal in support of the undoubted legislative