in the contest with parliament which arose out of the publication of reports of the debates, and defied with impunity the speaker's citation to the bar of the House of Commons, on the ground that so long as his incapacity was maintained he was not within the jurisdiction of the house. He was elected sheriff of London and Middlesex in the same year (24 July), and courted popularity by disallowing the attendance of the military at executions. He also discountenanced the trying of prisoners in chains and the taking of money for admission to the court of Old Bailey. On 24 Jan. 1772 he was presented by the common council with a silver cup worth 100l. in recognition of his services to the city in the dispute about the debates. In this and the following year he was returned at the head of the poll for the mayoralty, but was rejected by the court of aldermen. The aldermen were probably influenced in some degree by the attack made upon him by Horne Tooke [for details see Tooke, John Horne]; but the unquestionable services rendered by Wilkes to the popular cause insured his election on the third return (8 Oct. 1774). Parliament was then just dissolved, and at the ensuing general election Wilkes was once more returned for Middlesex (29 Oct.) On 2 Dec. he took his seat without opposition. He continued to represent Middlesex throughout the remainder of his parliamentary career.
An obelisk in Ludgate Circus commemorates Wilkes's mayoralty. It coincided with the definitive adoption by the government of the policy of coercing America, against which Wilkes presented to the king the remonstrance of the livery on 10 April 1775, a duty which he discharged with such dignity and tact that the king was charmed, and confessed that he had never known so well bred a lord mayor. In December 1779 he was elected to the office of city chamberlain, which he held with credit for the rest of his life.
In parliament Wilkes supported the scheme of economic reform adopted by the Rockingham whigs, but went far beyond them by his proposals for the redistribution of seats (21 March 1776), which anticipated the salient features of the bill introduced by Pitt in 1783. Throughout the struggle with America he opposed the measures of the government with vigour and pertinacity. On 28 April 1777 he pleaded the claim of the British Museum to a more liberal treatment by the nation. In 1779 (10 March, 20 April) he supported the bill for the relief of dissenting ministers and schoolmasters from the limited subscription to the Thirty-nine articles of religion required by the Toleration Act. During the Gordon riots in June 1780 he was conspicuous by the firmness and courage with which he asserted the authority of the law. On the return of the whigs to power the erasure from the journals of the House of Commons of the record of his incapacitation, for which he had made annual motions since his re-entrance into parliament, was at length carried (3 May 1782). He took a strong line in opposition to Fox's East India bill (8 Dec. 1783), and on Pitt's accession to power gave him independent support, but broke with him decisively on the impeachment of Warren Hastings (9 May 1787). He did not seek re-election after the dissolution of 11 June 1790.
In his declining years Wilkes had a villa at Sandown, Isle of Wight; and two town houses, one in Kensington Gore, the other in Grosvenor Square (corner of South Audley Street). He died, as he had lived, insolvent, at the latter residence on 26 Dec. 1797. He was interred in Grosvenor Chapel without other memorial than a mural tablet bearing the inscription: ‘The Remains of John Wilkes, a friend to liberty, born at London 17 Oct. 1727 O.S.: died in this parish.’ His daughter Mary died unmarried on 12 March 1802. Wilkes had also two natural children, a son and a daughter.
Wilkes was rather above the middle height. His features were irregular to the point of ugliness, and a squint lent them a sinister expression, maliciously exaggerated in the celebrated caricature by Hogarth (see Catalogue of the Huth Library, v. 17, 43*). He was painted by Pine (Cat. Third Loan Exhib. No. 878), and with John Glynn and Horne Tooke by Houston (Cat. Guelph Exhib. No. 321); a portrait of Wilkes and his daughter was painted by Zoffany (Cat. Second Loan Exhib. No. 654). A sketch of him in chalks by Earlom is in the National Portrait Gallery, London; engraved portraits are in the British Museum.
Wilkes had fine manners and an inexhaustible fund of wit and humour which made his society acceptable even to those who, like Gibbon and Johnson, thoroughly distrusted him (Gibbon, Misc. Works, ed. Sheffield, 1837, p. 64 n.; Boswell, Life of Johnson, ed. Birkbeck Hill, iii. 64–79, 83). In his vices he was by no means singular; and his tender affection for his daughter and the constancy of his friendship (proved among others by D'Eon, with whom his intimacy, begun in France, was renewed in London and terminated only by death) are
