Address of the City of Winchester

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Address of the Mayor, Bailiffs, and Commonalty of the City of Winchester, in Guildhall assembled, presented to His Majesty by Henry Penton and Level Stanhope, Esqrs˙, their Representatives in Parliament.

Most Gracious Sovereign:

We, your Majesty' s loyal subjects, the Mayor, Bailiffs, and Commonalty of your City of Winchester, in Guildhall assembled, impressed with a due sense of your Majesty' s royal virtues, and of the innumerable blessings we enjoy under your mild and auspicious Government, beg leave to approach your Majesty with an humble offer of our duty, and to express our just abhorrence of the unnatural rebellion which prevails in many of your Majesty' s Colonies in America, too successfully fomented by the wicked designs of artful and ambitious persons in that part of your Majesty' s dominions, and traitorously abetted by a licentious and disappointed faction at home.

It would give your loyal citizens the most inexpressible satisfaction to find that the lenient measures adopted during the last session of Parliament had so far influenced the minds of such of our American fellow-subjects who might have been drawn aside from their duty, as to have induced them to return again to their obedience, in imitation of that conciliatory spirit, of which one part of the Legislature had set them an example.

But, Sire, should neither the moderation which your Majesty has ever made the rule of your conduct, nor the gentle though necessary interposition of the Legislature, operate to recall those deluded persons to a just sense of their allegiance, we rely on your Majesty' s known firmness and magnanimity for the prosecution of such measures as may convince all the world that we are not unworthy of the blessings we enjoy under such a Prince and such a Constitution, but that the supreme legislative authority of this Kingdom is able to enforce obedience to itself throughout your Majesty' s dominions.

That your Majesty may long reign over a people as conspicuous for their union as they are distinguished by their happiness, is the fervent prayer of your loyal citizens. In testimony whereof, we have caused our common seal to be hereunto affixed, the 16th day of October, in the fifteenth year of your Majesty' s happy reign over us.