_Regattaites._ Not a tribe or nation, but participants in the summer regattas on the Thames. In _The Annual Register_ for 1775 appears “Some Account of the new Entertainment, called a _Regatta_, introduced from _Venice_ into _England_, in the Course of the Year 1775,” from which the following sentences are extracted: Before five o’clock, Westminster bridge was covered with spectators, in carriages and on foot, and men even placed themselves in the bodies of the lamp-irons. Plans of the regatta were sold from a shilling to a penny each, and songs on the occasion sung, in which _Regatta_ was the rhyme for _Ranelagh_, and _Royal Family_ echoed to _Liberty_.... Before six o’clock it was a perfect fair on both sides the water, and bad liquor, with short measure, was plentifully retailed.... The Thames was now a floating town. All the cutters, sailing-boats, &c. in short, every thing, from the dung-barge to the wherry, was in motion (“Appendix to the Chronicle,” pp. 216, 217). _the Captain of the Licorne._ The _Licorne_ frigate, encountered and detained by Admiral Keppel on the 17th of June, yielded Keppel information respecting the strength of the French fleet. _the wretched deficiency in our late naval equipments._ War-profiteering is not of recent origin; in the Eighteenth Century the loose organization of finance and supply in both services gave large opportunities to contractors and commissaries. “You must not think of persuading us that you are no gainer,” Lord Loudoun remarked to Benjamin Franklin when the latter sought reimbursement for outlays in connection with Braddock’s expedition in 1755; “we understand better those affairs, and know that every one concerned in supplying the army finds means, in the doing it, to fill his own pockets” (Franklin, _Writings_, ed. A. H. Smyth, New York, 1905-07, I, 430). Satirists frequently exposed this form of parasitism. Samuel Foote produced a comedy called _The Commissary_ in 1765. In Sheridan’s _The Camp_, 1778, the commissary Gage supplied a regiment with lime (which he dug himself, at no expense) instead of hair-powder. It did very well, he reported, while the weather was fine, but when a shower came up the troops’ heads were all slacked in an instant. “I stood a near chance of being tied up to the halberts; but I excused myself by saying, they looked only like raw recruits before; but now they appeared like old veterans of service” (I, i). PAGE 42 _Mr. Penton._ Henry Penton (1736-1812), M.P. for Winchester and a Lord of the Admiralty. _a certain Great Personage._ On their tour of the militia camps at Winchester and Salisbury in September, the King and Queen “alighted at Mr. Penton’s house [in Winchester], where they were waited on by the Mayor and Corporation” (_The Annual Register_ for 1778, “Appendix to the Chronicle,” p. 235).