John Wilkes, the Wilkite Lawyers and Locke’s Appeal to Law
John Wilkes, the Wilkite Lawyers and Locke’s Appeal to Law

Summary/Abstract: England’s Wilkite movement of the 1760s has usually been viewed as a functional and instrumental effort to enlarge political consciousness and political participation through the use of new communicative strategies and techniques. Most historians have judged the consequences of these efforts to be largely transitory. Generally overlooked is the substantial and enduring contribution made by Wilkite lawyers, most notably John Glynn and John Dunning, but others as well, who instituted a series of well-coordinated lawsuits against the allegedly illegal acts of an executive believed to be insidiously enlarging its power at parliament’s expense. These lawsuits were intended to be more than simple attempts to embarrass the government of George III or crass efforts to extract a bit of financial retribution for the excesses of government functionaries. Inspired by John Locke’s ‘appeal to law’ and his political philosophy which privileged the rights of the individual over the interests of the state, these lawyers asserted the individual’s right to be free from the intrusive searches of government particularly when those searches were intended to obtain evidence against a potential criminal defendant. These lawsuits, collectively the first of their kind in English legal history, served as a form of active political resistance to the policies of George’s government. The victories won by the Wilkite lawyers helped redefine the idea of ‘English liberties’, an achievement which continues to be pertinent today.

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