In 1793 Mr. Read, a Past Overseer, detained the box because his accounts were not passed. An action was brought for its recovery, which was long delayed, owing to two members of the society giving Read a release, which he successfully pleaded as a bar to the action. This rendered it necessary to take proceedings in equity, and a bill was filed in Chancery against all three, Read being compelled to deposit the box with Master Leeds until the end of the suit. Three years of litigation ensued. Eventually the Chancellor directed the box to be restored to the Overseers’ Society, and Mr. Read paid in costs £300. The extra costs amounted to £76 13s. 11d., owing to the illegal proceedings of Mr. Read. The sum of £91 7s. was at once raised, and the surplus spent upon a third case of octagon shape. The top records the triumph: Justice trampling upon a prostrate man, from whose face a mask falls upon a writhing serpent. A second plate, on the outside of the fly-lid, represents the Lord Chancellor Loughborough pronouncing his decree for the restoration of the box, March 5, 1796. On the fourth case is shown the anniversary meeting of the Past Overseers’ Society, with the churchwardens giving the charge previous to delivering the box to the succeeding overseer. He, on his side, is bound to produce it at certain parochial entertainments, with at least three pipes of tobacco, under the penalty of six bottles of claret, and to return the whole, with some addition, safe and sound, under a penalty of 200 guineas. In more recent days additions to this box, forming records of various important public events, have from time to time been added. A tobacco-stopper of mother-of-pearl, with a silver chain, is enclosed within the box, and completes this unique memorial. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER III CLUBS OF ST. JAMES’S STREET—BOODLE’S, ARTHUR’S, AND WHITE’S The original clubland of the West End was St. James’s Street, where the first clubs originated from coffee-houses. In this historic thoroughfare—the “dear old Street of Clubs and Cribs,” as Frederick Locker called it—most of the sociable institutions founded many decades ago still flourish. Such are White’s, Arthur’s, Brooks’s, the Cocoa-tree, and Boodle’s, the latter of which, after passing through a crisis which came near closing its doors for ever, now once again flourishes as of yore. This club-house was built about 1765 by John Crunden, from the designs of Adam, but between 1821 and 1824 certain alterations and additions were carried out from the designs of John Papworth, an architect of that day. From an architectural point of view, Boodle’s is an admirable specimen of the work of Robert Adam; its street façade possesses many fine qualities, whilst the ironwork is of good design.