'After dinner, the Duke was ceremoniously ushered to the chair, and invested with an orange coloured ribbon, to which a silver medal, in the form of a gridiron, was appended.... I was astonished to see how little effect the sturdy port wine of the Society produced on his adamantine constitution; for the same abhorrence of a vacuum, which had disposed him to do such ample justice to his dinner, showed itself no less in his unflinching devotion to the bottle.'[65] Sir N. Wraxall, in his 'Historical Memoirs of My Own Time ... 1772 to 1784,' writes thus of him: 'Drunkenness was in him an hereditary vice, transmitted down, probably, by his ancestors from the Plantagenet times, and inherent in his formation. His father indulged equally in it, but he did not manifest the same capacities as his son, in resisting the effects of wine. It is a fact that, after laying his father and all the guests under the table at the Thatched House Tavern in St. James's Street, he has repaired to another festive party in the vicinity, and there recommenced the unfinished convivial rites.' The caricaturists openly made fun of his hoggish propensities, as did the public press, _vide_ these two extracts from the _Times_ (March 1, 1793): 'ON THE LATE INUNDATION IN OLD PALACE YARD. 'On one side, Duke Norfolk pushed forward with strife, FOR HE NEVER LIKED WATER throughout his whole life.' _February 17, 1794._--'The Duke of NORFOLK is attacked by the _Hydrophobia_, he can't bear the sight of _water_. His physicians have prescribed WINE. The Marquis of _Stafford_, Marquis of _Bath_, and Lord _Thurlow_ who were present, sanctified this prescription with their most hearty consent.' And yet it is over this wretched old sensualist that Thackeray, in his 'Four Georges,' gets maudlinly sentimental! 'And now I have one more story of the bacchanalian sort, in which Clarence and York, and the very highest personage of the realm, the great Prince Regent, all play parts. The feast took place at the Pavilion at Brighton, and was described to me by a gentleman who was present at the scene. In Gillray's caricatures, and amongst Fox's jolly associates, there figures a great nobleman, the Duke of Norfolk, called Jockey of Norfolk in his time, and celebrated for his table exploits. He had quarrelled with the Prince, like the rest of the Whigs; but a sort of reconciliation had taken place; and now, being a very old man, the Prince invited him to dine and sleep at the Pavilion, and the old Duke drove over from his Castle of Arundel with his famous equipage of grey horses, still remembered in Sussex.