The challenge or _cartel_ took different forms; and it was supposed to be good style to keep all arrangements within the strictest etiquette and politeness imaginable. This particular challenge in the highest Society stated: 1. The cause of offence. 2. The reason why the cause should be noticed. 3. The name of a friend. 4. A request for an appointment of time and place. The choice of seconds was an important matter, and any one who accepted the office had a position of great responsibility. His first duty was to try and prevent the meeting, then to choose the ground, to charge the pistols, to decide the distance the duellists should stand from each other, and when they called “All’s ready?” the second replied “All’s ready,” and at once dropped a handkerchief as token to begin. Two surgeons generally attended; they were supposed to turn their backs in order not to see the actual duel, but to run forward as soon as they heard the shots, to render aid to the wounded. When George III. came to the throne duels could no longer be entered into lightly, and became much more formal affairs, being arranged in detail beforehand, with various points of etiquette. In many cases the combatants tossed for first fire. Dr. Millingen states that there were one hundred and seventy-two encounters fought during this reign; sixty-nine individuals killed and ninety-six wounded—forty-eight desperately so, and forty-eight slightly. One hundred and seventy-two known encounters,—but of course by far the greater number remained unrecorded. The following instances, culled from records of the eighteenth century, and all connected with Hyde Park, give some idea of the variety of pleas and the personality of the combatants figuring in duels of the period. So many writers of renown—including Defoe, Swift, Thackeray, Martin Hume, and others—have described the circumstances of the great and fatal duel between the Duke of Hamilton and Lord Mohun, which was fought early in the eighteenth century in Hyde Park, that we need merely allude to it. A lawsuit had been raging between these two nobles, and it is alleged that this was used as a shield for a political scheme to get rid of the Duke of Hamilton, who had just been appointed Ambassador to the Court of Versailles, where the Old Pretender was a refugee.