The next day when I went down to the House, I found all the members standing on the floor in great hubbub, questioning, hearing, and eagerly discussing I knew not what. I soon learned that Wilkes about two hours before had been dangerously wounded by Martin in a duel. In the foregoing spring, Wilkes, in one of his North Britons, had pointed out Martin by name as a low fellow, and dirty tool of power. Martin had stomached, not digested this; but in the debate on No. 45 the day before, he had risen and called the author of that paper on himself a cowardly, scandalous, and malignant scoundrel, and had repeated the words twice, trembling with rage. Wilkes took no notice; and as he did not, the House did not interfere, as is usual, when personalities happen, and seem to threaten a duel. The next morning Wilkes wrote to Martin, to ask if the words used the day before were meant to be addressed to him as the supposed author of the paper in which Martin had been abused. If Martin had thus intended to point the words, Wilkes owned he had written that paper. Martin replied, he had meant him, Wilkes; and as the latter had avowed himself the author, he should not deny, added Martin, what he had said before five hundred people, and gave him a challenge. About noon they went into Hyde-park; Martin alone; Wilkes, with Humphrey Cotes[381] in a post-chaise, knowing if he killed Martin that he should have no chance of pardon. Cotes waited at a distance. They changed pistols, both fired, and both missed. Martin fired a second time, and lodged a ball in Wilkes’s side, who was going to fire, but dropped his pistol. The wound, though not mortal, proved a bad one.
It was thought an ill symptom of Martin’s heroism, that he had smothered the affront for so many months, nor had given vent to his resentment, till the affair with Forbes had left a doubt on Wilkes’s courage. If Martin got rid of this imputation, it was but at the expense of a worse charge. It came out, nor could he deny it, that his neighbours in the country had observed him practising to fire at a target for the whole summer. I shall not be thought to have used too hard an expression, when I called this a plot against the life of Wilkes. Churchill wrote _The Duellist_, one of his finest satires, on this occasion.