John Wilkes had begun his parliamentary career as a follower of William Pitt the Elder and has enthusiastically supported Britain's involvement in the Seven Years War.

When the Scottish John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute, came to head the government in 1762, Wilkes starts a radical weekly publication, The North Briton, to attack him, using an anti-Scots tone.

Typical of Wilkes, the title makes satirical reference to the pro-government newspaper, The Briton, with "North Briton" referring to Scotland.

Wilkes becomes particularly incensed by what he regards as Bute's betrayal in agreeing to overly generous peace terms with France to end the war.

On October 5, 1762, Wilkes fights a duel with William Talbot, 1st Earl Talbot.

Talbot is the Lord Steward and a follower of Bute; he had challenged Wilkes to a pistol duel after being ridiculed in issue 12 of The North Briton.

The encounter takes place at Bagshot—at night to avoid attracting judicial attention.

At a range of eight yards, Talbot and Wilkes both fire their pistols but neither is hit.

Somewhat reconciled, they then go to a nearby inn and share a bottle of claret.

When the affair later becomes widely known, some view  it as comical, and a satirical print makes fun of the duelists.

Some commentators even denounce the duel as a stunt, stage-managed to enhance the reputations of both men.

Wilkes faces a charge of seditious libel over attacks on George III's speech endorsing the Paris Peace Treaty of 1763 at the opening of Parliament on April 23, 1763.

Wilkes is highly critical of the King's speech, which he attacks n an article of issue 45 of The North Briton.

The issue number in which Wilkes publishes his critical editorial is appropriate because the number 45 is synonymous with the Jacobite Rising of 1745, commonly known as "The '45". Popular perception associates Bute—Scottish, and politically controversial as an adviser to the King—with Jacobitism, a perception which Wilkes plays on.

The King feels personally insulted and orders the issuing of general warrants for the arrest of Wilkes and the publishers on April 30, 1763.

Forty-nine people, including Wilkes, are arrested, but general warrants are unpopular and Wilkes gains considerable popular support as he asserts their unconstitutionality.

At his court hearing he claims that parliamentary privilege protects him, as an MP, from arrest on a charge of libel.

The Lord Chief Justice rules that parliamentary privilege does indeed protect him and he is soon restored to his seat.

Wilkes sues his arresters for trespass.

As a result of this episode, people are chanting, "Wilkes, Liberty and Number 45", referring to the newspaper.

Parliament swiftly votes in a measure that removes protection of MPs from arrest for the writing and publishing of seditious libel.

Bute had resigned (April 8. 1763), but Wilkes opposes Bute's successor as chief advisor to the King, George Grenville, just as strenuously.

On November 16, 1763, Samuel Martin, a supporter of George III, challenges Wilkes to a duel. Martin shoots Wilkes in the belly.

Wilkes and Thomas Potter write a pornographic poem dedicated to the courtesan Fanny Murray entitled "An Essay on Woman" as a parody of Alexander Pope's "An Essay on Man".

Wilkes's political enemies, foremost among them John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, who is also a member of the Hellfire Club, obtains the parody.

Sandwich has a personal vendetta against Wilkes that stems in large part from embarrassment caused by a prank of Wilkes involving the Earl at one of the Hellfire Club's meetings; he is delighted at the chance for revenge.

Sandwich reads the poem to the House of Lords in an effort to denounce Wilkes's moral behavior, despite the hypocrisy of his action.

The Lords declare the poem obscene and blasphemous, and it causes a great scandal.

The House of Lords moves to expel Wilkes again; he flees to Paris before any expulsion or trial.

He is tried and found guilty in absentia of obscene libel and seditious libel, and will be declared an outlaw on January 19, 1764.

Grenville faces the problem of not only paying for these troops but servicing the national debt.

The debt had grown from £75,000,000 before the Seven Years' War to £122,600,000 in January 1763, and almost £130,000,000 by the beginning of 1764.

George Grenville does not expect the colonies to contribute to the interest or the retirement of the debt, but he does expect the Americans to pay a portion of the expenses for colonial defense.

Estimating the expenses of maintaining an army in the Continental colonies and the West Indies to be approximately £200,000 annually, Grenville has devised a revenue-raising program that will raise an estimated £79,000 per year.

The first tax in his program to raise a revenue in America, a modification of the Molasses Act of 1733, is the Sugar Act, also known as the American Revenue Act or the American Duties Act, passed by the Parliament of Great Britain on April 5, 1764.

The preamble to the act states: "it is expedient that new provisions and regulations should be established for improving the revenue of this Kingdom ... and ... it is just and necessary that a revenue should be raised ... for defraying the expenses of defending, protecting, and securing the same."

The earlier Molasses Act of 1733, which had imposed a tax of six pence per gallon (equal to £3.74 today) of molasses, had never been effectively collected due to colonial evasion.

The Molasses Act of 1733 had been passed by Parliament largely at the insistence of large plantation owners in the British West Indies.

Molasses from French, Dutch, and Spanish West Indian possessions is inexpensive.

Sugar (from the British West Indies) is priced much higher than its competitors and they also have no need for the large quantities of lumber, fish, and other items offered by the colonies in exchange.

In the first part of the eighteenth Century, the British West Indies had been Great Britain's most important trading partner, so Parliament was attentive to their requests.

However, rather than acceding to the demands to prohibit the colonies from trading with the non-British islands, Parliament had passed the prohibitively high tax on the colonies on molasses imported from those islands.

If actually collected, the tax would have effectively closed that source to New England and destroyed much of the rum industry.

The purpose of the Molasses Act was not actually to raise revenue, but instead to make foreign molasses so expensive that it effectively gave a monopoly to molasses imported from the British West Indies.

It did not work; colonial merchants avoided the tax by smuggling or, more often, bribing customs officials.

The Sugar Act reduces the tax to 3 pence per gallon (equal to £1.60 today) in the hope that the lower rate will increase compliance and thus increase the amount of tax collected

The Act also taxes additional imports and includes measures to make the customs service more effective.

These incidents increase the colonists' concerns about the intent of the British Parliament and help the growing movement that will become the American Revolution.

John Wilkes had started the newspaper The North Briton in June 1762.

After one article was published on April 23, 1763, severely attacking George III, the king and his ministers had tried to prosecute Wilkes for seditious libel.

However, Lord Chief Justice Lord Mansfield had ruled at his trial that as an MP, Wilkes was protected by parliamentary privilege so he was released without conviction.

Wilkes then proceeded to publish more material that was deemed offensive and libelous to The Crown.

It was only after the House of Lords declared one of his poems to be obscene and blasphemous, that moves were made to expel Wilkes from the House of Commons, but he fled to Paris before any expulsion or trial.

In absentia, he had been found guilty of obscene libel and seditious libel and was declared an outlaw on January 19, 1764.

Wilkes had hoped for a change in power to remove the charges, but this had not come to pass.

As his French creditors began to pressure him in 1768, he had little choice but to return to England.

Wilkes had returned intending to stand as an MP on an anti-government ticket; the government had not issued warrants for his immediate arrest as it had not wanted to inflame popular support.

Wilkes had stood in London but came bottom of the poll of seven candidates, possibly due to his late entry into the race for the position, but he had been quickly elected MP for Middlesex where most of his support is located.

In April he surrenders himself to the King's Bench after waiving his parliamentary privilege to immunity.

He is sentenced by Judge Joseph Yates to a year's imprisonment and fined £500; reduced to ten months for his time already spent in prison.

The Lords' sentence of outlawry is overturned.

Wilkes is taken to King's Bench Prison in Southwark, south London.

With news of Wilkes's conviction and imprisonment, crowds had begun assembling on a large open space between Southwark and Lambeth called St. George's Field.

Over the next two weeks numbers had increased daily.

On May 10 as many as fifteen thousand people have gathered near the prison.

They begin chanting "Wilkes and Liberty", "No Liberty, No King", and "Damn the King! Damn the Government! Damn the Justices!" outside the prison.

Concerned about the intent of the crowd, four Justices of the peace from Surrey ask for military protection.

A detachment of the Horse Grenadier Guards is sent to the prison.

When the troops arrived, people shout insults at the soldiers.

A particularly obnoxious man wearing a red coat repeatedly goads the troops.

After a unit of soldiers is sent to apprehend him, he is chased to a barn.

One of the soldiers shoots a person inside wearing a red coat.

However, the victim turns out to be an innocent young man named William Allen who worked at the farm.

He is buried in the churchyard at Newington where a monument was erected to his memory.

The news of the death only inflames the crowd, and the situation is made worse when the JPs address the restless mob ordering it to disperse.

Fearing that the situation is rapidly deteriorating and an attempt will be made to free Wilkes, the Riot Act is read while a call is made for more soldiers (from the 3rd regiment of Foot guards).

The crowd grows restless; stones are pelted at the soldiers who open fire.

Some fire into the crowd but others fire over the heads.

Several people are killed (as many as eleven in contemporary sources) including a passer-by who is struck by bullets that had been fired over the crowd.

At least fifteen people are wounded.

With the outbreak of shooting, the crowd rapidly breaks up but word of the killings quickly spreads, triggering fierce riots throughout the capital.

Benjamin Franklin, who is in London at the time, reports of "sawyers destroying saw-mills; sailors unrigging all the outward bound ships [...] Watermen destroying private boats and threatening bridges."

The crisis is so severe, it is rumored that the king contemplates abdication.

Samuel Adams’s circular letter is subsequently published alongside a Massachusetts petition in London by Thomas Hollis, a British publisher in support of the American cause, who publishes the combined work under the title "The True Sentiments of America".

The publication has a profound impact on both American and British readers.

Britain feels this is an act of defiance, and cries to "send over an army and a fleet" are soon heard.

Also in early 1768, commissioners had complained to London that troops are needed to enforce the Townshend Acts, as their "officers were resisted and defeated in almost every attempt to do their duty."

Britain responds in May 1768, by sending soldiers to Boston.

The imprisonment, on May 10, 1768, of John Wilkes for writing an article for the North Briton severely criticizing King George III, provokes rioting in London.

Two soldiers are brought before a grand jury on August 8 at the Surrey Assizes charged with the murder of William Allan.

However, neither is indicted because one escapes (or is freed) from the jail attached to the courthouse.

The grand jury also decides the other deaths at St George's Fields were caused by "chance medley".

The Irish playwright and government supporter Hugh Kelly makes a defense of the government's right to use force against Wilkes' supporters.

In 1770 Wilkes' supporters will start a riot at the production of Kelly's new play A Word to the Wise at the Drury Lane Theatre forcing the abandonment of the production.

On his release from prison in March 1770, Wilkes will be appointed a sheriff in London.

In 1774 he will become Lord Mayor of London.

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.

The Riots damage the reputation of Britain across Europe, where many see British constitutional monarchy as an inherently unstable form of government.

This comes at a time when Britain is searching for allies, particularly Catholic Austria, in the American War of Independence to challenge the strong coalition the French have built.

After hearing of the riots, the Spanish government breaks off peace negotiations with Britain, believing that the disorder will lead to a widespread collapse of Britain and wishing to take advantage of it.

The riots highlight the problems Britain faces by not deploying a professional police force, a notion which is opposed as it is considered foreign and absolutist.

The Earl of Shelburne had shocked many the day after the riots broke out by proposing in parliament that Britain should consider forming a force modeled on the French police.

The riots destroy the popularity of radical politician John Wilkes, who led troops against the rioters.

Many of his followers see this as a betrayal; some of them may have been among the rioters.

A pamphlet and a book of poems defending the role of Gordon are written and published by the polemicist and hymn-writer Maria De Fleury.

The events at the Bank of England start a tradition where a detachment of soldiers, usually from the Brigade of Guards marches to the bank to perform security duties.

Until 1963 the duty will be performed by the Guards in Home Service Dress with bearskin, though tennis shoes are worn inside the bank.

On March 31, 1973 the detachment will become more functional than ceremonial, doing their duties in service dress with automatic weapons.