On the 25th the Lord Mayor attended the House. He was now accompanied by a prodigious concourse of people, who insulted both Lords and Commoners, hissed Lord Rochford, and ill-treated Lord March and George Selwyn, the latter of whom they mistook for George Onslow. He collared and struck one of the rioters, and was with difficulty saved from their rage. The Lord Mayor told the House that he had brought no counsel with him: first, because he was cramped in his defence by their vote; and secondly, because the two advocates he should have chosen were gone the circuit. Ellis then moved a resolution that the imprisonment of their messenger by the Lord Mayor was a breach of privilege; but before they could proceed farther, the Lord Mayor was so ill that they suffered him to retire. The debate, however, continuing, Sir George Saville moved the previous question, because, the Lord Mayor being restrained in his defence, it would be a partial trial. This being rejected on a division of 272 to 90, Sir George, with six or seven of his friends, protesting against their proceedings, walked out of the House. Alderman Oliver was then called on; he adhered to his assertion of having acted according to his duty, oath, and conscience. The Ministers wished only to reprimand him; and Sir John Wrottesley,[171] a young member, told him the House would be contented if he would but say he was sorry for what he had done; but he replied, he had done what he thought right, and would do it again. Sir Gilbert Elliot, whether to inflame his offence, or to induce him to yield, repeated the same offer--in vain. T. Pitt and James Grenville[172] the younger, who spoke with great applause for the second time, endeavoured to moderate; but the warm men prevailing, Colonel Barré rose and said he would have nothing to do with such infamous proceedings--that no _honest_ man could sit amongst them, and walked out of the House with four or five more. At that moment arrived Alderman Townshend, pale and ghastly from a sick-bed, his hair lank, and his face swathed with linen, having had his jaw laid open for an inflammation. He said directly that all those arbitrary proceedings were owing to the baneful influence of the Princess Dowager of Wales, and that he would move for an inquiry into her conduct. Yet all these insults could not dismount the passive phlegm of the Ministers; Lord North alone said, that Townshend could not know the truth or falsehood of his assertion, and for himself, in five years that he had been in the Administration, he had seen no influence of the Princess. At four in the morning they sent Alderman Oliver to the Tower, and ordered that the Lord Mayor should attend them again on the 27th.