In the meantime, sheriff Parkins had continued to make himself as obnoxious as he could. He refused to attend at church on Michaelmas-day, and on the following day, when he should have accompanied his fellow sheriff, to be presented at Westminster to the Barons of the Exchequer, he wrote a rude letter to the mayor, excusing himself joining the procession on the score that he was busily engaged in his duties at the Old Bailey, and could not be "at two places one and the same time." Later in the day, he presented himself at Westminster, but without any state, and declined to invite the Barons of the Exchequer to the entertainment usually provided by the sheriffs on such occasions. He, in fact, gave no entertainment at all. He ought to have accompanied the mayor to the Court of Aldermen on the 8th October, but he again excused himself, on the plea of a headache, which he had the coolness to attribute to "the incessant noise and dreadful screams" at the last Common Hall. The mayor complained to the Court of Aldermen, and the sheriff was called upon to explain his conduct at the next Court.[751] When the Court met, Parkins read a long statement, which for sheer impudence will bear comparison with some productions of Wilkes or Junius, whilst lacking their cleverness. The reason he gave for not having accompanied the lord mayor to Westminster was that he did "not choose to divide with the lord mayor those marks of popular feeling which everywhere follow the track of the city state carriage during the present mayoralty." The lord mayor and the other sheriff had made the best part of the journey to Westminster by water, as was then the custom, but Parkins had reverted to the more ancient custom of riding thither on horseback.[752] It was true (he said) that he was not accompanied by any member of his company, but that was because "it would have been neither decorous nor prudent to have set on foot or even on horseback any rival procession, since it might have been deemed by the lord mayor a demonstration of hostility against his own supremacy," and so on and so on. His whole defence was after the same manner, but all that the Court of Aldermen did was to refer his conduct to a Committee of Privileges (12 Oct.), and there the matter appears to have ended.[753] [Sidenote: Accession of George IV, 29 Jan., 1820.]