Author: [WILLIAM ALLEN]
Title: The Scotch Victory.
Description: [Matthias and Mary Darly], 1768. Etching, 300 x 285 mm. laid down on thin card. A previous owner has filled in the 'Earl of Bute' in pencil in the dedication, the printed version being blank. Supposed 2nd state according to the British Museum with additional diagonal lines to the building seen through the yard. Rare. BM Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires no. 4197. "Satire suggesting that Lord Bute is responsible for the killing of William Allen at the St George's Fields riots by supporters of John Wilkes on 10 May 1768. Showing the scene in a barn where Allen is shot by a grenadier, an officer points to the young man with a sword and another soldier raises his gun> the soldiers faces are caricatured to show them as merciless and the officer as determined> a muddy street or yard can be seen through an open door on the left. First state, before diagonal lines added to the house in the background to left. Etched lettering below, "To the E[ar]l of [Bute] Protector of our Liberties &c this Plate is Humbly Inscribed by L. Junius Brutus"> Bute is represented by a mock heraldic device of a boot above which hangs the petticoat of Princess Augusta, surrounded by thistles." The attribution of the publisher is made in the BM catalogue, neither our copy or theirs bears an imprint. William Allen, an innocent farm worker, was mistaken for a particularly obnoxious protester who was goading the troops protecting the gaol where the inflammatory radical MP John Wilkes was being held.

Keywords: Ephemera


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