The year 1689 began a new era in the history of London, regarded from other aspects than the constitutional. It was as truly the beginning of another epoch as was the date of the accession of the Tudor kings. In the following century two fundamental changes were established: the one reorganized society within London ; the other altered the position of the capital with regard to the rest of the world.

The mediaeval machinery for the control of trade and industry, that of the companies, subsisted throughout the seventeenth century. But its restrictions were irksome to a growing commerce and were not adapted to the greater London which had come into existence.

For long ages Londoners had striven jealously to reserve to those free of their city the fruits of their labour and their traffic. But in the eighteenth century such an ideal had become an anachronism. The mercantilist theory which then had been adopted in England favoured the growth at all costs of manufactures, and to the attainment of this end any limitation of the journeymen whom a master workman might employ was an impediment. As such it was made prominent by the increased supply of unenfranchised workers available, the countrymen who settled in the growing district outside the liberties, and the highly skilled Huguenots.   The restriction of the number of apprentices tended in like manner to reduce productive power.    From about the year 1720 the Court of Aldermen usually connived at the employment of more than the prescribed number of non-citizen journeymen, and in 1750 an Act of Common Council practically legalized their engagement whenever it was convenient.  The limitation of the number of apprentices was finally abolished in 1787.

The ancient rights of search, by which the companies had more or less maintained a standard of worth among goods which came upon the market, likewise became obsolete.    In the exercise of them by the London companies there was an element of weakness, caused by the frequent divorce between the trade actually followed by a citizen and that which his company professed.     "When members of  the  Goldsmiths' company   were   butchers,  bakers,   grocers,  and   merchant adventurers, they had as inspectors of articles of gold and silver lost some efficiency.    The fact was patent to many; the parliaments of the Commonwealth and the Protectorate frequently received petitions that citizens might belong to the particular company of which they used the trade.    Acts of the Common Council which thus confined membership of some lesser companies were passed in the latter half of the seventeenth and the early eighteenth century, and produced a certain effect, for in 1837 nearly half the minor companies had a real connection with the trades which named them. In the greater companies,  however, the  ancient  anomaly continued   unmodified.      And   about   the   middle   of   the eighteenth century there ceased to be ground for its reform, because the rapidly growing industry of London had passed beyond the limits which the machinery of the companies could, in any case, control. Such control, moreover, was inconsistent with the tendency of economic thought. The mercantilist theory was leading rapidly to what seemed its logical conclusion ; the maximum of productivity could, it was believed, best be secured by freedom of competition. Therefore, not only were the inspectorial rights of companies abandoned, but there was also a cessation of the efforts of the central government to secure worthy manufactures, of the statutes regulating manufacture which had distinguished the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The principle of free contract was gradually adopted with that of free competition. As the companies discontinued their inspection of goods, their seizure of defective wares, they ceased also to lay down rules for the employment of labour, and parliament no longer legislated on behalf of the
employed.

The companies, it has been  seen, had been  originally associations   of   craftsmen,   and   their   powers   had   been engrossed by a section of their own number.    In the time ot the  Commonwealth and the   Protectorate there   was   an attempt to secure for the main body of their members representation in their government.    The movement had some success, but of a kind   only   temporary.     The  oligarchic constitution of the companies returned before the end of the seventeenth century, and has never been superseded.    Thus it was that they did not in any degree resume their early character, but lost, with their control over trade, all place in the economic machinery.    They retained only the power and the place which belonged to liverymen as members of the Court of Common Hall, together with those of any holders of property.

They became mere survivals ; the whole organization of 'ndustry collapsed, and, until the end of the eighteenth entury, little but anarchy took its place. In one section of the population, however, an exception was constituted by a form of that voluntary association which had so often, before the government of London had been finally settled, preceded the acquisition by a new class of political power.

The breakdown of the mediaeval system left the unenfranchised workmen of London unprotected.    At the same time the extension of the area of London, the growth of the population, and the increasing disabilities to which the small master  workmen were  subject,  had  largely  recruited the dependent workman class.    There arose among them associations more effective than any of the early confederacies of journeymen   workmen,    because    they    were    numerically stronger, because they met a more real need, and because, as an organised force, they were in isolation.    Their prevalence appears from a petition made in 1720 by the master tailors of London and Westminster.    " This combination of the Journeymen Tailors … is of very ill example to Journeymen  in  all  other   trades;   as  is   sufficiently  seen  in  the Journeymen Curriers,  Smiths, Farriers, Sailmakers, Coach-makers, and artificers of divers other arts and mysteries, who have actually entered into confederacies of the like nature; and the Journeymen Carpenters, Bricklayers, andjoynershave taken some steps for that purpose, and only wait to see the event of others."    A petition of 1745 alludes to the large number of monthly clubs which existed among the London handicraftsmen.

The journeymen tailors conducted, with some success, a long struggle with their masters. An Act of parliament in 1720 rendered illegal all their combinations in London and Westminster for the advancing of wages or the lessening of hours of work.    It ruled that they should work from six in the morning until eight at night, with an interval of an hour for dinner, and that their daily wage should be two shillings from March to June, and one and eightpence for the rest of the year, with an additional allowance of three half-pence for breakfast.    Master tailors who paid at a higher rate were made liable to a fine of £5.    This settlement of the matter in the interests of the masters did not however break up the confederacies.    In 1744, 15,000 journeymen tailors and stay-makers were said to have entered into " a very extraordinary combination"   for the  raising   of   their  wages  above  the statutory rate, and in 1746 forty of them were imprisoned by certain masters in the Wood Street Counter on a charge of unlawful combination, but were subsequently released by the alderman acting as justice at the Guildhall, because they had been committed without a warrant.    In 1752 a number of master  tailors  and  staymakers rendered  a  petition to parliament, from which it appears that the journeymen of Middlesex had succeeded in raising their daily wage to two shillings for the winter half year, and half-a-crown for the summer, and subsequently had demanded to be paid at the constant rate of two-and-sixpence a day.    The city journeymen had been encouraged, thereupon, to solicit the quarter sessions ; and they had obtained a rate of two shillings a day for three quarters of the year and two-and-sixpence for the remaining  quarter,  together with   the  lessening   of  their working day by one hour.    The Westminster journeymen had then again raised their demands.   The petitioners complained that " for some years past, at times," they had been " threatened and terrified and abused by  the journeymen tailors … in a riotous and tumultuous manner," and they prayed that the previous Act of parliament, which had been roved insufficient, might be amended. The journeymen however, in 1772, again brought the matter of their wages before the 'quarter sessions. Evidently they had, in the interval, continued to seek their ends by disorderly means, for they were congratulated on the legality of their present methods, and they obtained an addition of sixpence a day in ordinary seasons, and of one shilling in times of court mourning.

In 1770 the hat-dyers of Southwark violently seized a fellow workman  who  had  worked   overtime  without extra  pay. They mounted him on an ass, labelled him with a description of his offence, and then carried him, with music playing, to visit all the hatmakers in the borough and the city, and they compelled the workers of all of them to go on strike.    The coalheavers of the Thames caused, in 1769, a strike of all engaged in unloading ships.    In 1787 there is mention of a combination of bookbinders.

The problem of the opposition of the interests of employers and employed  had  thus already assumed  a  very modern aspect.

As regards the development of industry in London, the influence of the Huguenot settlers is noteworthy.    Especially they established in Spitalfields an important colony of silk weavers. In 1742 the foundation stone of a French church was laid at the north-east corner of Church Street, Spitalfields.    In 1768 machine looms were substituted for hand looms among the silk weavers and there were, in consequence, nots at Spitalfields in that year and the next.    Similar riots occurred in 1768 at  Limehouse, where the sawyers burnt down a sawmill into which machinery had been introduced. In commerce, as in industry, a radical change had passed °ver the methods of government.    In the year 1663 an Act of parliament permitted the exportation of bullion.   This
was the inauguration of the new commercial policy, which was no longer directed to the accumulation of treasure, but to the encouragement of the import of raw materials and the export of manufactured articles, a system of tariffs and of bounties.    With regard to continental powers, it sought to preserve a balance of trade which should incline favourably to England ; with regard to the Americas, the West Indies and the far East, it endeavoured to secure for England a sole market.    The colonial expansion of the seventeenth century, the activities of the East India Company, the plantations in  North  America,   Cromwell's  acquisitions  in  the West Indies, rendered possible the great success of such a policy. The treaties with Spain and with France, which followed on wars, kept its furtherance steadily in view.    " There is no place in the town," wrote Addison in the Spectator, in the early part of the eighteenth century, " which   I so much love to frequent as the  Royal  Exchange.    It gives me a secret satisfaction, and in some measure gratifies my vanity, as I am an   Englishman, to  see  so  rich  an   assembly of countrymen  and  foreigners consulting  together  upon  the private business of mankind, and making this metropolis a kind of emporium for the whole earth. . .    I have often been pleased to hear disputes adjusted between an inhabitant of Japan and an alderman of London, or to see a subject of the great Mogul entering into league with one of the Czar of Muscovy.    I   am   infinitely delighted in mixing with these several ministers of commerce, as they are distinguished by their different walks and different languages;  sometimes I am justled among a body of Armenians;  sometimes I am lost in a crowd of Jews ; and sometimes make one in a group of Dutchmen.    I  am  a  Dane,  Swede  or  Frenchman at different   times ;   or   rather   fancy   myself   like   the   old h'losopher, who, upon  being  asked  what countryman he replied that he was a citizen of the world."    Addison 'ments also on the cosmopolitan origin of the accessories English civilization.    " The fruits of Portugal are corrected b o the products of Barbadoes ; the infusion of a China plant sweetened with the pith of an Indian cane.    The Philippine Islands give a flavour to our European bowls.   The single dress of a woman of quality is often the product of a hundred climates.    The  muff and  the fan come together from the different ends of the earth.    The scarf is sent from the torrid zone, and the tippet from beneath the pole.    The brocade petticoat rises out of the mines of Peru, and the diamond necklace out of the bowels of Indostan. . . .    Our ships are laden with the harvest of every climate ; our tables are stored with spices, and oils, and wines ;  our rooms are filled with pyramids of China, and adorned with the workmanship of Japan ; our morning's draught comes to us from the remotest corners of the earth ; we repair our bodies by the drugs of America, and repose ourselves under Indian canopies.    My friend Sir Andrew calls the vineyards of France our gardens ; the spice islands our hotbeds; the Persians our silk-weavers ; and the  Chinese our potters. . .    Our   English   merchant converts the tin of his own country into gold, and exchanges his wool for rubies.    The Mahometans are clothed in our British manufacture, and the inhabitants of the foreign zone warmed with the fleeces of our sheep."

This description, even if some allowance be made for the hyperbole of a poet, is evidence of a very flourishing trade. Yet it was one which had not yet reached its zenith but was on an upward path. That part of the mercantilist policy which aimed especially at the encouragement of industry and the export  of manufactures  was begun only by Walpole in 1721. Under his guidance England attained to a higher degree of commercial prosperity. In 1739 it was stated by a pamphleteer that the number of adventurers in London had been trebled within the last twenty years. Progress continued after Walpole's fall, aided especially by the foreign policy of Chatham.

London was still the commercial capital of the kingdom o and, as England came to be the leading trading nation, the city advanced to the position of the metropolis of the trade of the world, and became indeed " a kind of emporium for the whole earth."    In the early days of prosperity English ships still carried usually mixed freights, which they collected in the city.    English woollen goods were brought to London to form part of a cargo which included also lead and tin, and the sugar and tobacco which had been shipped to the city across the Atlantic.    In 1718, however, Liverpool and Bristol, both easy of access for the ships which came from America and the West Indies, had risen to importance as ports; and in 1739 it was stated that " there was not a seaport, and scarce   an   inland   town   in   England,  that   was  without adventurers   who  exported  quantities  of   goods,  and did business directly with  most  of the  trading  companies in Europe and America."   Nor was London any longer isolated as  regarded  industrial  importance.    As  industrial centres Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield, Norwich and Newcastle, as well as Liverpool and Bristol, attained to prominence in the first half of the eighteenth century.    But in either sphere London maintained a great prominence.

Her position was supported by circumstances contingent on the presence in commerce of a new factor, and one which alone made possible the large enterprises of the day, the extensive use of credit.
 
The merchants of London had been in the habit of deposit-their gold in the Mint at the Tower. Charles I. however, o 1640 seized all the treasure which was there guarded, nd in consequence the whole business of keeping superfluous wealth devolved upon the goldsmiths of London, who had for some time acted as moneylenders on a small scale. In a tract of 1660 they are described as "just in the nature of the Bankers at Amsterdam . . . some Goldsmiths in Lombard Street keeping at this day many great Merchants' of London cashes and some noblemen's cash." A little later it became customary for them to receive rents of country estates, and allow on them interest while they retained them. In 1680 city men habitually made payments by bills drawn on goldsmiths with whom they kept accounts, and the bills were in free circulation. Finally, in 1694, by the formation of the Bank of England, the government adopted the expedient; they borrowed £1,200,000 from certain subscribers, who lent on the security that they would receive eight per cent, on their money. Thus credit became an integral part of the national financial and commercial system; and the system of credit centred in London. The freedom to export bullion, the restoration of the coinage from its debased state in 1696, and the growth of English trade, were steps on the road which led London finally to the place of the financial capital 01 the world. Before, however, such position was secure certain obstacles had to be overcome : the imperfect understanding of the uses of a paper currency, which caused the Bank of England to suspend payment in 1696,1797 and 1818; and the existence in England of a double metal standard until 1816.1
nild's Bank and Martin's Bank trace their descents from rom 1664 to 1717 there was a pure silver standard. The establishments of goldsmiths in the late seventeenth century.

The old companies of merchant adventurers had secured for their members participation in certain trading rights and monopolies conferred on them by the government. They were part of the superseded system of a strictly regulated trade. In the new conditions a new form of association for trading purposes was evolved, that of the joint stock companies, of which the Bank itself was an example. They were founded upon the use of credit. That instrument is one easily abused, and when first its employment became general the speculative spirit carried many to adventure their fortunes at hazards which are almost incredible. It was a gambling age; and on the Exchange men were as reckless as at the gaming tables. Yet, while some were ruined, others were made. Some London merchants, greatly enriched, were the founders of families who attained to high places. Such an one was the retired tradesman, embarrassed by leisure, whom Johnson represented as contributing, in 1753, a letter to the Adventurer, and who is a very modern type.

" SIR,-I have been for many years a trader in London. My beginning was narrow, and my stock small … I pursued my business with incessant assiduity, . . . and had upon every annual review of my books, the satisfaction of finding my fortune increased beyond my expectation.

" In a few years my industry and probity were fully recompensed, my wealth was really great; and my reputation for wealth still greater. I had large warehouses crowded with goods, and considerable sums in the public funds; I was caressed upon the Exchange by the most eminent merchants; became the oracle of the common council; was solicited to engage in all commercial undertakings; was flattered with of becoming, in a short time, one of the directors *6a 'wealthy company; and, to complete my mercantile °      Urs   enjoyed   the  expensive   happiness  of   fining   for " Riches, you know, easily produce riches; when I had arrived to this degree of wealth, I had no longer any obstruction or opposition to fear; new acquisitions were hourly brought within my reach, and I continued for some years longer to heap thousands upon thousands.

" At last I resolved to complete the circle of a citizen's prosperity by the purchase of an estate in the country, and to close my life in retirement. … An estate was at length purchased : I transferred my stock to a prudent young man who had married my daughter, went down into the country, and commenced lord of a spacious manor.

" Here, for some time, I found happiness equal to my expectation. I reformed the old house according to the advice of the best architects ; I threw down the walls of the garden, and enclosed it with palisades; planted long avenues of trees; filled a greenhouse with exotic plants; dug a new canal, and threw the earth in the old moat."

The constitutional history of the city has in this period an interest only second to that of trade and finance. In the Court of Common Council the aldermen, belonging, as they did, to the class of wealthy citizens, were Whig, but the mere councilmen, who had been chosen in the precinct meetings from among the householders in the several wards, were often persons of humble standing, and their politics were those of their neighbours, the small tradesmen and master craftsmen of the city, who were largely High Church and Tory. Between the two sections a perpetual conflict was waged in the first quarter of the century, and it centred around two issues, the qualifications of the electors of Common Council-men, and the powers of supervision and revision possessed over the council by the mayor and aldermen.

The unenfranchised ratepayers, who attended wardmotes repeatedly attempted to vote at the elections of Common Councilmen, so inconsistently with the whole spirit of the constitutional history of London that it is impossible not with the aldermen of the day, to regard them as presumptuous. It was ruled by an Act of Common Council passed in 1692, and confirmed in 1711, 1712, and 1714, that the right to elect Common Councilmen and nominate aldermen belonged to "The Freemen of the said City only, being Householders, paying Scot and bearing Lot."     Even however when the claims of non-freemen were set aside, grounds of dispute remained. " The Common Council hold," it was stated in 1715, " that the payment to church and poor is a sufficient qualification for a voter, as formerly it hath been, but the Mayor and Aldermen have held . . . that no less than actual payment to all taxes and rates . . . qualifies a voter."     Moreover the aldermen objected to a disqualification as voters of all who had  received  assistance from  the  companies,   which   was proposed by the Common Council.
The quarrel was peculiarly bitter, because the aldermanic party denied even that their opponents could, with pertinence, discuss the question. The first of the powers claimed by the mayor and aldermen, as the second chamber of the city's constitution, was that of " trying the validity of all contested elections in the city," and they denied, further, that the Common Council were competent to withhold or confer a franchise. They claimed that sole right, disregarded in i649> of presiding at the deliberations of the council, and hence an ability to adjourn its meetings by vacating the chair.   No. iatjve power, they contended, resided in the Common oj alone. They derived such from the concurrence … them of the Lord Mayor and the aldermen. So far it can hardly be disputed that their claims could be ' stifled by precedent, whether or not they were equitable. But in 1717 they interpreted their powers in an extreme manner. They then declared it to be the " ancient usage " that the proceedings of a meeting of the Common Council should be submitted to them at their own subsequent assembly, and they attempted to exercise a right of veto. They commissioned the recorder of the city to announce their dissent from an Act of the Common Council to that body at its next meeting. The due conveyance of this message produced a heated debate, and eventually it was not entered in the Journals of the Court of Common Council, because it was found " derogatory to the rights and privileges of the citizens." The aldermen in this instance claimed to revise in their private assembly the completed acts of the whole council.

In 1725 an Act of parliament gave the victory to them. The right to vote for Common Councilmen was confined to freemen of the city holding and occupying houses of the annual value of .£10, and paying as much as 30s. a year in rates; and the assent of a majority of the mayor and aldermen was made necessary to an enactment by the council. The immediate result was inactivity on the part of the Common Council; they almost ceased to exercise their powers on the terms, so unpopular with their great majority, which parliament had dictated. The citizens, however, continued to be po ltical, and directed their energies to procuring that vacant aldermanries should be filled by persons opposed to the a manic power of veto. By their successes the aldermen, a body, Were rendered more sympathetic to the wishes of the citizens at large, and a yet nearer correspondence of opinion followed on the general Whig reaction after the Jacobite rising of 1748. In 1746 the clause of the Act of 1725, which had rendered possible an aldermanic veto of the acts of the council, was repealed.

This measure made way for a real change in the balance of power within the constitution of the city. The Common Councilmen had been a mere advisory body, subservient to the supreme legislature, the mayor and aldermen, incapable of independent action. They were, after 1746, gradually transformed " into a supreme organ of administration," itself wielding the whole power of government, which reduced " the lord mayor and aldermen to a mere magistracy." In current opinion there was a tendency to regard the acquisition by the Common Council of this new character as a rehabilitation, a return to an ancient and customary state. There is, on the contrary, abundant proof that a revolution had occurred.

The Common Council, in their new organization, dealt with an increasing amount of administrative business. A system of committees was formed to deal with different departments, and it became customary to remunerate members of committees. In 1802 £4000 was annually devoted to their payment. There were also a variety of perquisite profits which the greedy councilman was wont to make at the expense of the corporation; and he had opportunities for jobbery and corruption, of which he did not fail to avail himself.

The manifold activity of the councilmen was, however, often well directed. They had business in connection with civic buildings, the prisons and markets of the city, and its port.   The management of the property of the corporation as its value was enhanced, increasingly complicated, the act for the rebuilding after the fire all the drainage A 11 the paving of the city had been delivered temporarily the charge of the council, and they had been authorized depute the power, thus devolving, on commissioners, whom thev appointed and who were known as the Commissioners of Sewers. An act of 1710 perpetuated such provision, and made compulsory the payment of a rate for the maintenance of sewers. The work of the commissioners was extended by various Acts of parliament, which transferred to the Common Council duties previously incumbent on individual householders. In 1736 an Act for the lighting of the city and liberties ruled that a " convenient and sufficient number of glass lamps " should be fixed on houses and buildings, as the council directed, and should burn from sunset to sunrise, and that the expense should be defrayed by a rate. Hitherto the city had depended for its lighting on an obligation, from 1416 repeatedly emphasized, which rested on every householder to hang a light outside his house. In 1765 another Act vested in the Commissioners of Sewers sole power in connection with the paving, cleansing, and lighting of the city and liberties. They were empowered to water the streets, to make pumps and dust-holes. They were ordered to remove the signs by which houses were still distinguished, and which often were, in the narrow streets, an impediment to traffic, and to replace them by the more practical invention of numbers, and to inscribe the names of streets. Householders were still responsible for the cleanliness of footpaths. Already, in 1759, a statute had made the deposit of refuse in streets or common passages, or in gutters, a penal offence.
Some particular improvements and alterations were also made.     The Stocks market at the end of Cheapside  was abolished, and on its site the Mansion House was founded in 1739. London Bridge was repaired, and all houses removed from it in obedience to an Act passed in 1757. \n 1761 the gates of the city, which often caused a congestion of traffic and had lost their military use, were taken down and sold. In 1765 the building and site of Gresham College were sold to the Government, and were replaced by an excise office. The Gresham lecturers were directed to read in rooms over the Royal Exchange. The Fleet ditch was covered over, and Blackfriars Bridge was made, and opened in 1769. In 1774 a much needed Act of parliament for the improvement of the navigation of the Thames was passed.
To all these changes there was the inevitable opposition. " 'As fine as London upon the bridge','' says a writer of 1771, " was formerly a proverbial saying in the city, and many a serious, sensible tradesman used to believe that heap of enormities to be one of the seven wonders of the world, and, next to Solomon's Temple, the finest thing that ever art produced. When first the reformation in the streets was begun, from the same cause every nuisance had its advocate. It was said to be for the ease of the houses that the midway should be paved with huge shapeless rocks, and the footpath with sharp pebbles for the benefit of their feet. The posts were defended to the last, and the pulling down of the signs, which choked up and disgraced the streets, regretted as a barbarous invasion on the monuments of national taste ; the cat and fiddle, goose and gridiron, and the like, being regarded as the greatest efforts of inventive genius; and Cheapside often compared to the Medicean gallery, for its choice collection of paintings, blue boars, green dragons, and kings' heads." It is incontestable that the " blue boars, black swans, and red lions, not to mention flying pigs, and
2s in armour, with many other creatures more extraordinary than any in the deserts of Africk,"1 and the legends displayed h side them, from which Steele complains that he learnt bad spelling, had made a strong appeal to fancy. There are frequent allusions to them in eighteenth century essays.

As regards the charity of the corporation, it was most notably displayed in this century by the institution of the Foundling Hospital, of which the first stone was laid in 1742. The hospitality of the city still found expression, from time to time, in munificent banquets.

As in the seventeenth century, the Court of Common Council sought to influence the rulers of the kingdom by petitions to parliament, and their politics were usually " against the government." " The City was proud of the fact that, in the days when the House of Commons was anything but a representative assembly, the Court of Common Council furnished the most prominent platform for the expression of the popular will." 2 The circumstance had weight in the struggle against the aldermanic veto. " Consider, gentlemen," said on one occasion a leader of the popular party, "that it is in the power of a majority of the Court of Aldermen to put a stop to the most vigorous efforts of your public virtue. Not all the convictions of common sense, nor the universal voice of mankind, nor the apparent and approaching ruin of Liberty, can avail you to procure justice from Parliament should a corrupted majority (among the 26 aldermen) prevail m putting a negative upon your just complaints and remonstrances." 3

The Common Council were particularly zealous in their Addison in Spectator No. 23. Webb.    Local Government.    The Manor and the Borough, II., 653. 8 Ibid, 654. opposition to Walpole's excise bill, to the treatment by th government of John Wilkes, and to the war with America.

The burning of Number 45 of the " North Briton " at the Royal Exchange, in 1763, was an act very unpopular in the city.     Serious   riots  were   caused,   and   after the   public proclamation of peace in March no congratulatory address was offered by the Common Council.    The freedom of the city was  presented to  Chief Justice  Pratt,  who,  on the occasion of Wilke's trial gave an opinion favourable to him. Wilkes, in 1768, failed to secure from the liverymen election as member for the city, but his subsequent success in the Middlesex election provoked enormous  enthusiasm  among the citizens.    In 1769 he was chosen alderman of Farringdon Within.    When he was for the second and for the third time elected to represent Middlesex in Parliament, and was refused admission  to the House,   great  crowds  of his  supporters paraded the city streets, and certain persons who would have demonstrated adversely to him were mobbed.    It was desired by his friends to summon a Common Hall to consider the situation, but the Lord Mayor was unwilling.    In the following November, however, by passing over the alderman who stood next in the order of rotation, the election of a compliant mayor,  the popular Beckford, was procured.    He called a Court of Common Hall, which adopted an address to the king.     " Since, therefore, the misdeeds of your Majesty's ministers," ran its conclusion, " in violating the freedom of election and depraving the noble constitutions of Parliament, are notorious, as well as subversive of the fundamental laws and liberties of this realm, and since your Majesty, both by honour and justice, is obliged inviolably to preserve them, according to   your   coronation oath,   we,  your  remonstrants,  assure ourselves that your Majesty will restore the Constitutional Government and quiet  of your people  by dissolving  this liament, and removing those  evil Counsellors for ever from your councils."    In May 1770 the Court of Common
r uncil also resolved an address of remonstrance to the king n the violated right   of election,  and   the   lord   mayor, ccompanied by  two aldermen,  the  sheriffs,  and certain councilmen, presented it in person, and made a short speech in defence of the city's right of petition, and the principle in this instance defended.    Beckford died a month later, but he was succeeded by the equally valiant Barlow Trecothick. In 1771 the arrest of a certain printer of the city, in obedience to an order of the House of Commons, was attempted.   The printer resisted, and was protected by the lord mayor, who, as guardian of the city's liberties, declined to deliver him to the serjeant of the House sent to fetch him.    The mayor, therefore, was summoned to the bar of the Commons, and subsequently sent to the Tower, together with an alderman who had abetted him.    Both were released at the prorogation of parliament, but meanwhile there had been riots in the city; the expenses at the Tower of the two magistrates had been voted by the Common  Council;   they  had received compliments from the Society of the Bill of Rights, and six cities and towns had conferred their freedom on the mayor. A true bill was found by the Grand Jury against the messenger who had sought to arrest the printer.
In July 1771, the mayor, with a numerous company, presented to the king an address of remonstrance as to the late violations of the right of election and of the city's privileges.

Wilkes, who had figured in the resistance to the action of the House of Commons, was this year chosen sheriff. In January, 1772, the Common Council made presents of plate
0 Trec°thick,  then  ex-mayor,  to  Wilkes, and to several