Meanwhile the Assembly had had its attention called to the papers and had declared the first to be “false, seditious and infamous,” and had branded the second as “an infamous libel,” and had requested the Lieutenant-Governor to issue his proclamation, offering a reward of £100 for the discovery of the author.[7] After the meeting in the Fields the Assembly ordered Lamb to appear before it, and examined him as to “his conduct about the two libels” but as it did not appear that his actions at the Fields had been in consequence of the two libels he was allowed to depart.[8] But the Assembly had not given up all hope of finding and prosecuting the author of the two pamphlets. One of Parker’s journeymen for the sake of the reward, gave information against him, and on Feb. 7th Parker was arrested and examined by the Governor and Council. While the latter was detained in a room off the Council Chamber, his apprentices were arrested, and brought before the Council, and although for a long time they stoutly refused to admit any knowledge of the papers, one of them by gross intimidation was finally brought to admit that the papers had been printed in his master’s office. Parker was then brought back before the Council, told that his apprentice had admitted that it had been printed by him, and threatened, in case he refused to name the author, with the loss of his position as Secretary of the Post Office. Finally Parker, being promised indemnity, gave information which resulted in the arrest on a bench warrant of Alexander McDougall, who was taken before the Chief Justice, and on refusal to admit the fact of authorship, committed to prison. Some seven years before this, in 1763, John Wilkes, member of Parliament, and editor of the “North Briton” had been arrested on a general warrant for having attacked in No. 45 of his journal the Bute administration and abused the King, charging the latter with falsehood. Wilkes was discharged on the ground of parliamentary privilege, and the question being carried before the Chief Justice, Lord Camden, the latter declared general warrants to be illegal. Wilkes was expelled by a subservient Parliament, but was regarded by great numbers in the nation as a martyr to the cause of liberty and freedom of discussion. Now it happened that the vote of the Assembly declaring the hand bills libellous had been printed on the forty-fifth page of the journal. For either this reason, or more probably because of No. 45 of the “North Briton” (which number was often used as a party-cry in England), “Forty-five” became the watchword of the Sons of Liberty, at this time a numerous body. McDougall was overrun with visitors at the jail and was forced to issue in the “New York Weekly Journal” for Feb. 15th, a card to his friends in which he appointed the hours from three to six in the afternoon to receive them. In the same number of the Journal appears an account of one of these receptions: