In October, Whigs heard with some surprise that Lords Carnwath, Nairn, and Widdrington were, as the papers put it, ‘allowed the liberty of the Tower to walk in.’ The public was, subsequently, more concerned with an incident which took place at the theatre. On the 6th of December, the Prince of Wales was in his box, at Drury Lane, heeding, as well as he could, the utterances of Wilks, Booth, Cibber, and Mrs. Oldfield, when an excited gentleman, named Freeman, endeavoured to pass into the house. The Grenadiers crossed their bayonets and prevented his ingress. That Freeman was a mischievous Tory seemed clear enough to the Guards, when he drew a pistol from his pocket and fired it point blank into the body of one of the Grenadiers. The shot was heard within the house, where no one was unmoved but the Prince. Of the ladies, all who did not indulge in shrieking, went off silently swooning into gentlemen’s arms. Of the gentlemen, all who were not thus pleasantly employed, put their hands to their swords. Some drew their weapons and held them aloft. Others rushed sword in hand into the lobbies, and drew up there ready for the onslaught of any number of Jacobites. While this hubbub prevailed, the officer on duty reported the exact state of things to the Prince. Freeman was a lunatic, the Jacobites were not rising, and the Prince, in token of his complete satisfaction, sent out five guineas to the Grenadiers; and the man who was shot into did not find himself sufficiently hurt to prevent his getting drunk with his fellows. The _beaux_ who had held the fainting ladies, rather than draw swords for the Prince, called the next day to make enquiries, and were to be seen combing their periwigs as they tripped up the door-steps. ◆[Sidenote: _AFTERNOON CALLS._]◆ The belles received them, with a laugh on their lips, and the fashionable _guittara_ in their hands. Highly-spiced compliments passed in the afternoon as the orange brandy, aniseed, citron and cinnamon waters were handed round with the tea. The stouter champions took the sack and toast presented to them on a salver, or were divided between hock with a dash of palm in it, a glass of noble canary with a squeeze of Seville orange, or a tankard of cyder, sweetened with a little old mead, and a hard toast. It was a perspiring time for Running Footmen, who beat the post in carrying the news of ‘Freeman’s shot’ into the country. The runners are well described in a comedy of the period, in the query of a gentleman who encounters one of them, ‘How now, Pumps, Dimity, and Sixty miles a day! Whose Greyhound are you?’ [Sidenote: _ESCAPE OF CHARLES RADCLIFFE._]