On the last day of the month Lord Rockingham, with a train of Lords and Commoners in sixteen coaches, went to the Tower to visit the Lord Mayor. They disapproved his conduct, they said, yet paid him that regard because he had been obstructed from making his defence; yet these ingenious persons wondered they had not more followers and devotees, while they took such pains to show how carefully they kept themselves out of difficulties, and how passively they left their friends in them! Alderman Oliver, in answer to a compliment from the Common Council, wrote a very bold letter to them, in which he set forth the unhappiness of the King’s Government through the councils of an Administration, _abject abroad and insolent at home_. April the 1st, a great mob went to Tower Hill with two carts, in which were figures representing the Princess Dowager and Lord Bute, attended by a hearse. The figures were beheaded by chimney sweepers, and then burnt. A like ceremony was performed a few days after with figures of Lord Halifax, Lord Barrington, Alderman Harley, Lord Sandwich, De Grey, member for Norfolk, Colonel Lutterell, and George Onslow; and their supposed dying speeches were cried about the streets. The committee of Common Council, appointed to guard the interests of the Lord Mayor and Alderman Oliver, directed their solicitor to apply to Serjeant Glynn, Dunning, or Lee, and under their direction to move for the _habeas corpus_ of the prisoners, unlawfully (as the committee conceived) detained in the Tower. On this the two magistrates, the writ being obtained, were carried before the Lord Chief Justice De Grey, and then before Lord Mansfield, but were remanded to prison by both, each Chief Justice refusing to release them, as they had been committed by Parliament then sitting. The grand jury did not pay an equal deference to the House, but found bills of indictment against their messenger for the assault and false imprisonment of Miller, the printer; and against Edward Twine Carpenter for a like assault on John Wheble, under pretence of the King’s proclamation. Still the cause of the magistrates did not gain ground. The merchants were offended at a report spread by Wilkes’s faction that there was a run on the Bank. But an open quarrel between Wilkes and Horne contributed more than all the efforts of the Court to ruin their cause. The total breach happened at the Society of the Bill of Rights, which Horne moved to dissolve, but was overruled by 26 to 24. Horne, however, with Townshend, Sawbridge, and others, withdrew their names, because the other faction would not consent to rescind the vote of restricting the subscription to the payment of Wilkes’s debts. A motion, too, that was made in the company of City Artillery, for thanking the imprisoned magistrates for their behaviour, was rejected by a majority of three voices.