Stephen Sayre, sheriff of the City of…

Stephen Sayre, sheriff of the City of London, is alleged to have planned to kidnap George III with the help of the London mob.

The King was to be taken to the Tower of London, before being bundled off to his ancient patrimony in Hanover.

Sayre, a merchant and close associate of John Wilkes, the radical Lord Mayor of London, is a member of a thousand-strong American community living in London at the time of the outbreak of the War of Independence in 1775. 

Details of this improbable scheme are revealed to the British government in October 1775 by Lord Rochford, the minister responsible for domestic security.

It is a time of acute political tension, and the authorities are already alert to the possibility of some form of subversive action.

In the Proclamation of Rebellion, issued in the autumn, the population is asked to be aware of "diverse wicked and desperate Persons", and asked to inform the authorities of any "traitorous Conspiracies and Attempts against Us, Our Crown and Dignity."

A definitive conclusion to the "Sayre Plot" remains unclear.

It has been suggested that the whole thing was nothing more than an elaborate hoax, intended to test the constitutionality of the emergency provisions within the newly issued Proclamation of Rebellion.

There are significant sections of London opinion, including Wilkes, sympathetic to the cause of the disaffected colonialists, and who may very well wish to embarrass the government, and possibly bring a change of political direction.

There is a precedent here in Wilkes' prosecution for seditious libel in 1763, over the publication of the infamous issue 45 of North Briton.

Then "Wilkes and Liberty" had been the war-cry of the London mob.

The affair of 1775 certainly causes some temporary discomfiture; but there is no cry of "Sayre and Liberty" and no change of political direction.

Events across the Atlantic are moving too fast for that.