The popularity of Wilkes was gall and wormwood to the King, whose authority and wishes were openly set at defiance, and who was openly threatened by the mob. It was known he had taken an active part in the prosecution of the popular demagogue, and this was deeply resented. "If you do not keep the laws, the laws will not keep you," so ran the lettering of a placard thrown at this time into the royal carriage. "Kings have lost their heads for their disobedience to the laws." George III's courage was undeniable, and no threat could make him connive at any action likely to lessen the royal prerogative. "My spirits, I thank heaven, want no rousing," he wrote to Lord Chatham in May, 1767. "My love to my country, as well as what I owe to my own character and to my family, prompt me not to yield to faction. Though none of my ministers stand by me, I cannot truckle."[267] Lord North, too, was well acquainted with the royal firmness and intrepidity: "The King," he said, "would live on bread and water to preserve the constitution of his country. He would sacrifice his life to maintain it inviolate." [267] _Chatham Correspondence._ The courage George III displayed in politics was not lacking in moments of personal danger. Though, unlike George I and George II, he could not prove his valour on the field of battle, the several attacks upon his life gave him sufficient opportunity to show his fearlessness. It was, indeed, at these times he appeared at his best, not only in dignity, but in kind-heartedness and in tender consideration for his consort. The first murderous attack upon him was made August 2, 1786, as he alighted from his coach at the garden entrance of St. James's Palace. A woman, Margaret Nicholson, held out to him a paper, which, assuming it to be a petition, he took from her; but as he did so she struck at him with a knife, and the attempt to kill him only failed from the knife being so thin about the middle of the blade that, instead of entering the body, it bent with the pressure of his waistcoat.[268] The would-be assassin was at once seized, and seeing she was roughly handled, "The poor creature is mad," cried the King; "do not hurt her. She has not hurt me." He held the _levée_, and then drove hastily to Windsor to let the Queen know he was unhurt. "I am sure you must be sensible how thankful I am to Providence for the late wonderful escape of his Majesty from the stroke of an assassin," Mrs. Delany wrote to Miss Hamilton. "The King would not suffer any one to inform the Queen of that event till he could show himself in person to her. He returned to Windsor as soon as the Council was over. When his Majesty entered the Queen's dressing-room he found her with the two eldest Princesses; and entering in an animated manner, he said, "Here I am, safe and well!" The Queen suspected from this saying that some accident had happened, on which he informed her of the whole affair. The Queen stood struck and motionless for some time,