Page "John Wilkes" Paragraph 10

In a famous exchange with John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, where the latter exclaimed, " Sir, I do not know whether you will die on the gallows or of the pox ," Wilkes is reported to have replied, " That depends, my lord, on whether I embrace your lordship's principles or your mistress.

" Fred R. Shapiro, in The Yale Book of Quotations ( 2006 ), disputes the attribution based on a claim that it first appeared in a book published in 1935, but it is ascribed to Wilkes in Henry Brougham's Historical Sketches ( 1844 ), related from Bernard Howard, 12th Duke of Norfolk, who claims to have been present, as well as in Charles Marsh's Clubs of London ( 1828 ).

Brougham notes the exchange had in France previously been ascribed to Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau and Cardinal Jean-Sifrein Maury.