In 1764 there appears to have been formed here, by a guinea subscription, a Club of nearly 700 members--the nobility, foreign ministers, gentry, and men of genius of the age; the large front room on the first floor being the card-room. The Club flourished, so that in 1768, "having considerably enlarged itself of late," Thomas Haines, the then proprietor, took in the front room of the next house westward as a coffee-room. The front room of No. 17 was then appropriated exclusively as a card-room for the subscription club, each member paying one guinea annually; the adjoining apartment being used as a conversation-room. The subscription-books are before us, and here we find in the long list the names of Sir Thomas Robinson, Bart., who was designated "Long Sir Thomas Robinson," to distinguish him from his namesake, Sir Thomas Robinson, created Lord Grantham in 1761. "Long Tom," as the former was familiarly called, was a Commissioner of Excise and Governor of Barbadoes. He was a sad bore, especially to the Duke of Newcastle, the minister, who resided in Lincoln's Inn Fields. However, he gave rise to some smart things. Lord Chesterfield being asked by the latter Baronet to write some verses upon him, immediately produced this epigram:-- "Unlike my subject now shall be my song, It shall be witty, and it shan't be long." Long Sir Thomas distinguished himself in this odd manner. When our Sovereign had not dropped the folly of calling himself "King of France," and it was customary at the Coronation of an English Sovereign to have fictitious Dukes of Aquitaine and Normandy to represent the vassalage of France, Sir Thomas was selected to fill the second mock dignity at the coronation of George III., to which Churchill alludes in his _Ghost_; but he assigns a wrong dukedom to Sir Thomas: "Could Satire not (though doubtful since Whether he plumber is or prince) Tell of a simple Knight's advance, To be a doughty peer of France? Tell how he did a dukedom gain, And Robinson was Aquitain." Of the two Sir Thomas Robinsons, one was tall and thin, the other short and fat: "I can't imagine," said Lady Townshend, "why the one should be preferred to the other; I see but little difference between them: the one is as broad as the other is long."