Trying To Change A Sovereign.

precinct hard by , " said the active magistrate ; " you know under special licence that house is open for an hour after midni ght . I'll be back in ten minutes , " and he trotted off with much alacrity . Fortune favoured his worship . You will remember that it was on a Monday night . Now , some half-dozen coalies had been religiously keeping that saint ' s day after their manner . They hadit is truestarted from their homes

, , somewhat late in the morning , rather bemuddled from the effects of the previous day ' s booze , carrying their implements with them , and virtuously resolved to devote what remained of the day to honest and remunerative employment ; but , as usual , finding that at the accomodating " Eox " they could anticipate or discount their prospective week ' s earnings in beer , there they had remaineddrinkingdancingquarrellingand fihtinguntil late in the

, , , , g , evening , when the proprietor desiderated their room rather than their company—the former being required for the dashing Howards , Percies , Ratcliffs , Seymours , and Talbots ( not the dogs , though sometimes there are puppies to be found even among aristocratic families ) , who nightly resorted to the shades under the'hill . So Boniface bade his stout barman and willing potboy hale the begrimed ones into the parvise of his establishment , and fling their

fantails and mattocks out after them . There Sir Thomas found the rejected customers tranquilly slumbering , and with difficulty awakened them sufficiently to make them understand that he required their instant services . The sturdy labourers , however , stoutly asserted , with many superfluous expletives , that they would not handle coal shovel that night for love nor money , and the worthy magistrate ' s expedition was wellnigh proving fruitless , for , having tried the latter inducementhe probably concluded that the former was not

, likely to prove more potent . The stubborn half-dozen , too , were still further incited to stand out b y one of their number who was in the habit of spouting the rights of man and denouncing tyrannical capitalists and a bloated aristocracy from beneath the Reformer ' s Tree in Hyde Park , to a numerous but dirty audience , on fine Sunday afternoons , to the accompaniment of a brass bandbedecked with orange and green and bine ribbonsand red

rosetteslay-, , , p ing the " Marseillaise " woefully out of tune . This patriot essaj ^ ed to stir up the spirit of resistance among his companions , hy rather irrelevantly I'eminding them that they were ruined by Scottish cheap labour , but one of them , who was too far gone in drink to follow a logical proposition , bade him rather rudely , " Shut up ! " and effectually silenced him by offering to fight him there and then " for a pot . "

In this strait Sir Thomas happily bethought himself of the powers of the law , and so successfull y applied some propositions expressed in bad Latin , explanatory of the Statutes of Purveyors , from the " Mirror of Magistrates , " that he convinced the—b y this time—trembling plebeians that to refuse the King ' s press to assist at providing His Grace ' s stuff or performing His Grace ' s needful labour would expose the recalcitrants to the penalties of a proimunire , orat leasta danger of such intangible terrorthat at length they shouldered

, , , their spades and grnmblingly followed him . By two in the morning of the memorable Tuesday , the fifth of November , 1605 , the widow Critchett ' s coals and faggots of firewood had been packed in sacks and panniers , and removed to His Majesty ' s cellars underneath the royal kitchens in the palace hard by , and then , while the perspiring labourers refreshed themselves with large measures of Barclay and Perkins , the

astounded magistrate and policeman , who had by this time been joined by my Lord Chamberlain , emancipated from frieze and again clad in embroidered doublet and hose , wearing his chain of office and carrying his white staff—the awe-struck trio , I say , discovered—what ?—Imprimis—as Sir Thomas wrote in his report : — So many dozen of Guinness and Bass ' s empty beer bottles . So many more dozen of glass vessels that had once contained Gilbey ' s sherry and Poster ' s port .