He was renowned for hospitality. The clergy, even the meanest curates, were welcome at his table; and people of quality, travelling between London and Exeter, stopped at the Wiltshire city, and dined at the palace. He was a hearty entertainer, we are told, assuring his guests that he accounted himself but a steward, and pressing upon them the enjoyment of the fare which he plentifully provided. He would not ask, “Will you drink a glass of wine?” says his biographer, with amusing minuteness; but he would call for a bottle, and drink himself, and then offer it to his friends. The poor were relieved at his gates. He had a band of weekly pensioners; and when he went out for a walk in the streets or on the plains, he gave money to all who solicited alms; and when children saw him in his coach or on horseback, they would rush from their play, to shout, in expectation of a largess, “The Bishop is coming.” Being a capital horseman, he would ride twenty miles before dinner, and not mind following the hounds, if he “by chance chopt upon” them. After dinner and “a dish or two of coffee or tea,” as soon as the bell “tilled,”--to use the Salisbury phrase,--he called for his robes, and went to church, taking with him his visitors.[339] Of another kind of dignitary an example is afforded in the memoirs of the Honourable and Reverend Dr. John North. He was Clerk of the Closet to Charles II.; possessing “a very convenient lodging in Whitehall, upon the parade of the Court, near the presence-chamber,” where his table was provided from the Royal kitchen, and he enjoyed the company of His Majesty’s chaplains. People who had nothing else to do, would say to one another--so North’s brother reports--“Come, shall we go and spend half-an-hour with Mr. Clerk of the Closet?” but when they went with the expectation of getting “a glass of wine or ale,” the wary Divine, by the advice of an old Courtier, would not offer so much as “small beer in hot weather,” lest he should be overdone with visitors. In consequence of this prudent determination, he lived “like a hermit in his cell, in the midst of the Court, and proved the title of a foolish French writer, _La Solitude de la Cour_.” “Divers persons,” however, particularly ladies, “far from Papists,” were wont to repair to this spiritual officer for a different purpose, thinking “auricular confession, though no duty, a pious practice,” and seeking “to ease their minds” by means of that Anglo-Catholic custom. He did “the office of a pastor or _parochus_ of the Court,” somewhat after the fashion of the mediæval Clerks of the Closet, who were, in fact, Court confessors. “And I have heard him say,” proceeds his brother, “that, for the number of persons that resided in the Court, a place reputed a centre of all vice and irreligion, he thought there were as many truly pious and strictly religious as could be found in any other resort whatsoever; and he never saw so much fervent devotion,