The lords agreed in the decision of the commons, though a protest against the surrender of privilege was signed by seventeen peers. On December 3, the day fixed for the burning of No. 45 in front of the Royal Exchange, a large mob broke the windows of the sheriff's coach and pelted the constables. Encouraged by gentlemen at the windows of neighbouring houses, they tore a large part of the paper from the executioner with shouts of "Wilkes and liberty," carried it in triumph outside Temple Bar, the boundary of the city, and there made a bonfire into which they threw a jack-boot and a petticoat, the popular emblems of Bute and the Princess of Wales. Yet Wilkes was in an unpleasant position. A Scot went to his house intending to murder him; was arrested and found insane. A summons was sent to him to appear at the bar of the house of commons; his surgeons stated that he was too ill to attend, and a later day was fixed. Before it came he went off secretly to Paris, and while there excused himself from obedience to the order of the house by sending a medical certificate. The commons refused to give any weight to it, declared him in contempt, and guilty of a seditious libel, and on January 19, 1764, expelled him the house. An information was laid against him in the court of king's bench for reprinting and publishing No. 45; he was convicted and, as he did not appear to receive sentence, was outlawed. While little sympathy seems to have been felt for Wilkes personally, except among the lower classes, the attack upon him was widely resented because it was regarded as an encroachment on national liberty. Parliament was not in accord with public feeling. A strong effort was made to induce the commons to declare that general warrants were illegal. Pitt acknowledged that he had issued them during the war, when it was necessary to find out and remove suspected persons; but no such necessity existed at present, and he urged the house to do justice to the nation, the constitution, and the law, by condemning them. The ministers managed to shelve the question, but carried the adjournment only by 234 to 218. Though on other matters they commanded a large majority, several members from whom they expected support voted against them in the debates arising out of Wilkes's arrest. Among these were General Conway and Colonel Barre. Conway, the brother of the Earl of Hertford, had gained much credit in the war in Germany; he was a dashing officer and a respectable general, a man of refined tastes and high principles. As a politician he was thoroughly honest, of small ability and utterly wanting in decision of character. He was the dearest friend of Horace Walpole; and Walpole, who regarded politics in a personal light, exercised an unfortunate influence upon him. Barre, who had served with distinction in Canada, was a coarse man, eloquent, and feared by his opponents on account of his remarkable power of invective.