The social system of the polite world had been slowly changing with the successive Georges. The familiar events in the lives of the well-to-do classes were growing steadily later. The dinner hour, which was generally at noon or one in the reign of Queen Anne, had crept on to three o'clock under the first, and to four o'clock under the second George. Under the third it was to grow later and later, until it made Horace Walpole rage as if the world were coming to an end because among fashionable folk it had settled itself at six o'clock. In the country, indeed, for the most part people lived the quiet lives and kept the early hours of Sir Roger de Coverley. But, however, London lived, and whatever London chose to do, England's simple honest King and England's simple honest Queen would have no concern with the follies of fashion and the luxuries of late hours. However much the rashness and wrong-headedness of his public policy forced him to accept the services and prime the pockets of a gang of drunkards and debauchees who called themselves and were called the King's friends, the evil communications had not the slightest influence upon the royal good manners, and did not alter by one jot the rigid frugality of George's life and that of his royal consort. The King's friends were only the King's jackals; they never were suffered for a moment to cross the line which severed the {19} sovereign's private life from his public actions. Indeed, it may be assumed that few of the hard-drinking, hard-living, gambling, raking ruffians who battened on the King's bounty, and who voted white black and good bad with uncompromising pertinacity and unappeasable relish, would have welcomed the hard seats at the royal table, the meagre fare on the royal platters, the homely countrified air the royal couple breathed, and the homely countrified hour at which the royal couple took up their candles and went to bed. George the Third would be long asleep at an hour when his friends would be thinking of paying a visit to Ranelagh, or preparing to spend a pleasant evening over their cards, their dice-box, and their wine.