George had this deep feeling for religion from his childhood, and before he was six years old had without direction learnt by heart several pages of Doddridge's "Principles of the Christian Religion"; while, from the time he grew up to the end of his life, he devoted one hour in the early morning to reading the Scriptures and to meditation. He was well acquainted with the works of Andrews, Sanderson and Sherlock, and asked a fashionable preacher of the day if he, too, were acquainted with them. "No, please your Majesty, my reading is all modern. The writers of whom you speak are now obsolete, though I doubt not they might have been very well at the time." The King looked at him, thinking of the man's own sermons, and replied: "There were giants on earth in those days."[181] One day George missed an under-gardener, and inquired as to the reason of his absence. "Please your Majesty, he is of late so very troublesome with his religion and he is always talking about it." "Is he dishonest? Does he neglect his work?" "No, your Majesty, he is very honest. I have nothing to say against him for that." "Then send for him again. Why should he be turned off? Call me Defender of the Faith!" he thundered. "_Defender of the Faith!_--and turn away a man for his religion!" [181] _Genesis vi_, 4. George III was not so bigoted but that he would visit a Quaker, and he and his consort witnessed the Lord Mayor's Show in 1761 from the house of Robert Barclay, one of the sect; and he could speak kindly of Nonconformists. On one occasion at Windsor he saw a maid-servant in tears and learnt that her distress was occasioned by the refusal of a superior to allow her to attend a dissenting meeting, whereupon he sent for the housekeeper and admonished her severely: "I will suffer no persecution during my reign!" "The Methodists are a quiet good kind of people and will disturb nobody; and if I can learn that any persons in my employment disturb them, they shall be immediately dismissed," he said when an attempt was made to interrupt the service at a Methodist chapel; and when a Bible Society was formed at Windsor, and the name of the Independent minister omitted, he desired that the name of "that good man" should without delay be added. But though George III could tolerate Nonconformists, on the other hand nothing could induce him to abate his prejudice against the Roman Catholics, and when urged to make concessions to them: "Tell me who took the coronation oath, did you or I? Dundas, let me have no more of your Scotch sophistry. I took the oath, and I must keep it."