[97] Mr. Jenkinson had also a powerful family interest in Oxfordshire, being the eldest son of Colonel Charles Jenkinson, whose father and brother, each a Sir Robert Jenkinson, had in turn represented the county for many years. His introduction to public life has been always ascribed to the zealous and effectual support he gave to Lord Parker and Sir Edward Turner in the famous contest for the county, in 1754, when many successful poetical squibs came from his pen. Sir Edward Turner or his friend Lord Harcourt, the chief of the Oxfordshire Tories, certainly obtained for him the post of private secretary to Lord Bute.--E.
[98] Lord Baltimore was properly acquitted, but the trial brought before the public such disgusting instances of his profligacy as to render the intervention of the Methodists to direct the indignation of the people against him quite superfluous. He soon after went abroad, and died at Naples in 1771, and having left no issue by his wife, a daughter of the Duke of Kingston, his title became extinct.--(Selwyn and his Contemporaries, vol. ii.)--He published in 1767 “A Tour in the Year 1763–4, with Remarks on the East, and the Turks, &c.” It was reprinted in 1768, and has since become very rare. A curious account of it and of its author is given in the “Bibliothèque des Voyages,” vol. ii. p. 79.--E.
[99] The report of these proceedings by Sir James Burrow would in some measure justify this observation of Walpole, for there seems from it to have been much coquetting between the Bench and the Attorney-General (De Grey), and an apparent desire by each to shift the responsibility upon the shoulders of the other. In delivering judgment upon the two cross motions then before the Court, viz. that of the Attorney-General for Wilkes’s committal, and that of Serjeant Glynn that Wilkes should be admitted to bail, Lord Mansfield makes this remarkable admission:--“I have no doubt we _might_ take notice of him upon his voluntary appearance as the person outlawed and commit or bail him, but we are not absolutely _bound_ to do it without _some_ reason to excuse the going out of the regular course.” And in reference to the conduct of the Attorney-General he thus expresses himself, “I don’t see why the Attorney-General should demand of _the Court_ to commit the defendant upon the outlawry, when he himself has suffered him to go at large without any attempt to take him up, or even issuing process against him.” (Rex _v._ Wilkes,--Burrow’s Reports, vol. iv. p. 2531–5.)--E.