 His skill as a caricaturist brought him into close personal relations with the politicians of his time, and in 1763 he was instrumental in saving John Wilkes, whose partisan he was, from death at the hands of James Dunn, who had determined to kill him.Darly, who described himself as Liveryman and block maker, issued his last caricature in October 1780, and as his shop, No.39 Strand, was let to a new tenant in the following year, it is to be presumed that he had by that time died, or become incapable of further work.