The National Archives
The North Briton was a political weekly newspaper published from June 1762 until 1771. It was launched by John Wilkes (1725–1797) as a radical alternative to Tobias Smollett’s (1721–1771) The Briton, which was seen as a mouthpiece of the Tory government led by Lord Bute.[1][2] Britain was at the time engaged in the Seven Years War with France, which lasted from 1756 until 1763. Bute’s government was committed to ending the conflict, but Wilkes and others believed that the terms under which he was proposing to do so would only save “England from the certain ruin of success”, and believed that better terms could be reached by continuing to press the war.[3]
In issue number 45 of The North Briton, published on 23 April 1763, Wilkes was very critical of a speech made by King George III in which the King praised the Treaty of Paris, which had been ratified by the British government on 10 February 1763, thus ending the Seven Years’ War. As a result Wilkes was charged with seditious libel and imprisoned for a short time in the Tower of London. Wilkes challenged the warrant for his arrest and seizure of his paper, eventually winning the case.[4]
Wilkes reprinted issue 45 later in 1763, which the government again seized. But before it could be burned, an assembled crowd rescued the text, and the ensuing events caused Wilkes to flee across the English Channel to France, and the courts to declare him an outlaw.[4] “Consumed by debt”, Wilkes had returned to England by 1768, and was once again imprisoned for seditious libel. He was released in April 1770, and went on to become a popular Lord Mayor of London in 1774.[3]