After George's accession Dr. Thomas Wilson, Prebendary of Westminster, thought, by flattering him in a sermon delivered in the Chapel Royal, to ingratiate himself with the new King, only to be summoned to receive, to his great surprise, a stern rebuke: those who preached before him, the monarch warned Dr. Wilson, must remember "I go to church to hear God praised and not myself." George had, indeed, a high ideal for those in clerical orders, and this he enforced on all classes. "I could not help giving you the notification of the grief and concern with which my breast was affected at receiving an authentic information that routs have made their way into your palace," he wrote to Archbishop Cornwallis, when in 1772 he was informed by the Countess of Huntingdon that the prelate's wife had given a ball. "At the same time I must signify to you my sentiments on this subject, which hold these levities and vain dissipations as utterly inexpedient, if not unlawful, to pass in a residence for many centuries devoted to Divine studies, religious retirement, and the extensive exercise of charity and benevolence--I add, in a place where so many of your predecessors have led their lives in such sanctity as has thrown lustre upon the pure religion they professed and adorned. From the dissatisfaction with which you must perceive I behold these improprieties, not to speak in harsher terms, and still more pious principles, I trust you will suppress them immediately; so that I may not have occasion to show any further marks of displeasure, or to interpose in a different manner. May God take your Grace into His Almighty protection." "I wish that every poor child in my dominion shall be able to read his Bible,"[182] he said rightly enough; but sometimes his fervour led him into excesses, such as the striking out in his copy of the Prayer-Book in the prayer for the Royal Family the words "our most Gracious King and Governor," and substituting an "unworthy sinner." It was this and similar examples of misdirected fervour that prompted Byron to write: "All I saw further, in the last confusion, Was, that King George slipped into Heaven for one; And when the tumult dwindled to a calm, I left him practising the hundredth psalm."[183] [182] Southy: _Memoirs of George III_. [183] Byron: _The Vision of Judgment_. The King in later years would sometimes visit the book-shop of Charles Knight at Windsor, and there was accustomed to sit on a high stool at the counter to glance at the latest publications. One day he saw there Bishop Watson's "Apology for the Bible," the title of which volume excited him. "What!--what!--what!--Apologize for the Bible!--what--what--what!" On another occasion he was startled to find among the latest acquisitions a copy of Paine's "Age of Reason." He sharply rebuked Knight, and quitted the shop, never again to enter it.