Wilkes still kept up a flame: he was chosen Master of the Joiner’s Company, procured a remonstrance from the county of Surrey, and Richard Oliver, an unknown young citizen, but a member of the Bill of Rights, was chosen unanimously to represent the City of London in the room of Beckford. Eyre, the Recorder, an able man and spirited, offended the City by refusing to attend their remonstrance, which he affirmed was a libel. All the prejudice they could do to him was to refuse to consult him on points of law, by which he lost about 200_l._ a year.[106] They had a longer contest with the Adams, Scottish brethren and architects, who had bought Durham Yard, and erected a large pile of building with dwellings and warehouses, under the affected name of the Adelphi. These men, of great taste in their profession, were attached particularly to Lord Bute and Lord Mansfield, and thus by public and private nationality, zealous politicians. The citizens, on whose rights over the river they had encroached, went to law with them, and applied to Parliament, where Court partiality on one side, and party malice on the other, considered nothing but their several prejudices: the influence of the Crown decided, accordingly, in favour of the Adams. But the circumstance which makes that contest history, was, its giving date to a new subdivision of factions. Debates for and against the Adams had run very high amongst the Aldermen and Common Council. Their speeches, or rather their personal abuse, were printed in the public parades with the parade of Parliamentary orations. Alderman Harley said, he rejoiced at any disgrace that fell on the City; and that the Aldermen had been very indulgent to suffer Wilkes to stand candidate for the City when he was outlawed. Wilkes with equal modesty replied, that in so doing they had acted very illegally. But the person who took the lead in those wrangles was Alderman Townshend, the agent of Lord Shelburne, who, it now came out, was tampering to wrest the City out of Wilkes’s hands. He had even gained over Parson Horne, the publisher of those vulgar debates; and who, to serve his new friends, constantly gave the advantage to Townshend over Wilkes,--sources of a quarrel that blazed much higher afterwards, and ruined the Opposition in the City.