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Illustrated Episode · Volume III, chapter 18 · 3 December 1763

They saved the North Briton

In a grey London street before an arcaded exchange, a young man in a knitted cap snatches a smoking paper from a hangman's torch as a packed crowd hurls wood, a gentleman watching from a carriage with a broken window.
Cornhill, London, 3 December 1763. As the hangman holds the North Briton to a torch at the Royal Exchange, a crowd of over five hundred pelts the sheriffs with wood, attacks their coaches and snatches the paper from the fire. Rothbard sees the same mass action that inspired the Americans: Londoners who refused to be swayed from their principles. Chapter 18 of Conceived in Liberty.

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Adapted from Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (Mises Institute, 2011), CC BY 3.0.

What happened

John Wilkes had printed his attack on the king's speech in issue number 45 of his newspaper, the North Briton, and the government answered with a general warrant and the Tower. By December 1763 his enemies had turned on him again, and Parliament ordered that number 45 be burned by the common hangman. At noon on Saturday 3 December the two sheriffs, Thomas Harley and Blunt, met the executioner before the Royal Exchange in Cornhill, with about two hundred constables around them. The wood was wet and would not light. Harley read the order and handed the paper to the executioner, who held it to a lighted torch. A crowd of over five hundred Londoners, Rothbard says, pelted the sheriffs with wood, attacked their coaches, and rescued the North Briton from the bonfire. A billet broke the glass of Harley's chariot. In its place the mob burned a boot and a petticoat, for Lord Bute and the king's mother. The Common Council of the City pointedly refused to thank the sheriffs. To Rothbard this was the same mass action against the same Tory rulers that the Americans were watching: Wilkite crowds that would not be swayed from principle (CiL, p. 847).

Sources

  1. Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 2011 single-volume ed.), vol. III, ch. 18, 'Wilkes and Liberty, 1763-1764', pp. 846-847. CC BY 3.0. Rothbard
  2. Journals of the House of Lords, vol. 30 (1761-1765), December 1763, pp. 430-450: the account of Sheriffs Harley and Blunt, City Marshal Osmond Cooke and the constables of the obstruction of the burning of the North Briton No. 45 on Saturday 3 December 1763 at the Royal Exchange; read on British History Online through a summary, not the page images. Primary source
  3. Walter Thornbury, Old and New London, vol. 1 (London, 1878), 'The Royal Exchange' (the building's piazza, statues and grasshopper tower); the Annual Register account of the boot and petticoat burnt opposite the Mansion House was reached through search-result excerpts of the same work and of Reginald Sharpe, London and the Kingdom, not reread. Secondary source
  4. The Annual Register for 1763 (chronicle of 3 December), as excerpted in search-result snippets of Old and New London and Malcolm's Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London (accessed 2026-09-30): the boot and petticoat burnt opposite the Mansion House 'in derision of Lord Bute and the princess-dowager'; Harley seizing them; a jackboot fired at Temple Bar that evening; not reread in full. Secondary source
  5. Era registry entry england-1763-1768 (data/cil/registry/eras/), dress and architecture for the Devon and London Episodes; its own sources are listed in its notes. Secondary source