Stephen Sayre

"[1] That same month Sayre had a meeting in a London coffeehouse with Lieutenant Francis Richardson, a fellow American who also happened to be serving in the British Army as an adjutant in the Tower.

Sayre, needing Richardson's support, told him that plans had been laid to intercept George on his way to the State Opening of Parliament on 26 October.

Lord Mayor Wilkes, according to Sayre, approved of the scheme, and a proclamation would be issued in the name of the conspirators annulling the authority of all those in civil or military office of whom they disapproved.

To secure his co-operation, Sayre appealed to him as an American patriot and a true Briton, because a change of political direction was necessary to avoid the ruin of both countries.

Sayre had been arrested, so it was reported, "upon an Information so romantic, so foolish, so absurd, that if they thought the Accused could have done what he was charged with, he ought to have been committed to Bedlam, not the Tower."

In the end, though the law was on his side, the action came to nothing, because the escalation of the war in North America turned Sayre from a defender of liberty, in the mould of John Wilkes, into an enemy alien.

Sayre left England in the summer of 1777, going on to serve the United States as a diplomatic agent in various parts of Europe, from Prussia to Russia, where he tried unsuccessfully to charm the Empress Catherine.

Back in the United States he continued to argue the French case, giving him the reputation of a political extremist, which seemed to be confirmed by his hostility to the emerging Federalist Party.

There were significant sections of London opinion, including Lord Mayor Wilkes, sympathetic to the cause of the disaffected colonialists, and who may very well have wished to embarrass the government, and possibly bring a change of political direction.