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96 and immediately turned back and complied with his landlord." This famous anecdote is importantly illustrated by a letter from the Countess Dowager of Sunderland to her brother Henry Sidney, written five years after the mayoralty of Sir Robert Viner. The King had supped with the Lord Mayor; and the aldermen on the occasion drank the King's health over and over upon their knees, wishing every one hanged and damned that would not serve him with their lives and fortunes. But this was not all. As his guards were drunk, or said to be so, they would not trust his Majesty with so insecure an escort, but attended him themselves to Whitehall, and, as the lady-writer observes, "all went merry out of the King's cellar." So much was this accessibility of manner in the King acceptable to his people, that the Mayor and his brethren waited next day at Whitehall to return thanks to the King and Duke for the honour they had done them, and the Mayor confirmed by this reception was changed from an ill to a well affected subject.

It was an age of nicknames—the King himself was known as "Old Rowley," in allusion to an ill-favoured but famous horse in the Royal Mews. Nor