More than a twelvemonth was taken up in preparing the long and technical pleadings(1489) preliminary to trial, and in the meantime another severe struggle took place in assertion of the right claimed by the citizens to elect both their sheriffs. The citizens ranged themselves in separate factions, the Whig party under sheriff Pilkington, the Tories under the mayor. Each leader entertained his supporters at dinner.(1490) There was to have been a banquet held on the 21st April at Haberdashers’ Hall, at which the Duke of Monmouth, Lord Shaftesbury and others of the Whig party were to have been present, but the proposal getting wind, the mayor was strictly enjoined by the Privy Council to prevent it as being a seditious meeting and tending to create factions among the king’s subjects.(1491) (M758) The Duke of York, who had for some time past resided in Scotland, had not increased in favour with the citizens of London. It is true that the mayor and aldermen of the city paid their respects to his highness (10 April, 1682) at St. James’s Palace, on his return from the north, after paying a similar visit to the king, who had recently returned to Whitehall from Newmarket;(1492) but a proposal to offer an address to the duke praying him to reside in London found but little response in the Court of Aldermen, and was allowed to drop.(1493) It was not so long ago that his picture hanging in the Guildhall was found to have been mutilated, an offer of £500 for the discovery of the perpetrator of the outrage being without effect.(1494) Just when Pilkington was about to lay down his office of sheriff the duke entered an action against him for slander, claiming damages to the extent of £50,000. For a time he managed to escape service of the writ,(1495) but if he was not served before, his presence in the Common Hall on Midsummer-day for the election of new sheriffs afforded ample opportunity to serve him then. (M759)