Nevertheless, there was much uneasiness in this same July, 1718, as to the temper of the army. It was not only that a drunken soldier would now and then shout for King James in the street, but that sergeants and men met in taverns, and talked or plotted treason against King George. Some of these latter, as they passed handcuffed through the Strand to the Savoy prison, were hissed by the Whigs and cheered by the Tories. Early in July the ‘Scottish regiment of Foot Guards’ was paraded in the Park, and the Articles of War were read aloud to them, at the head of every company. This was the regiment most suspected of faithlessness, and whose members had been most watched. At this parade persons attended ‘incognito in Hackney Coaches,’ as the newspapers state, to identify any of the men whom they might have seen at private meetings held with treasonable ends in view. The spies failed to identify any; and when the significant War Articles had been read with distinct emphasis, the regiment marched, in sullen silence, out of the Park. [Sidenote: _MILITARY DIFFICULTIES._] Later in the year, the public had the not too cheering spectacle of the 3rd Regiment of Guards having the oath of allegiance administered to them at the drumhead. Subsequently came an order that such of the gentlemen of the 4th troop of Horse Guards (commanded by the Earl of Dundonald) as followed trades, should abandon such lay occupations within three months, or dispose of their posts. This strange order becomes easier to understand, when it is remembered that ‘gentlemen’ is the word still applied to the whole regiment; and that, in 1718, Government did not like the practice of the soldier being half the day a civilian. Some solace was awarded to the army generally for various restrictions. Pay was advanced to 5_s._ a week; and clothes were to be furnished, as in the last Charles’s days, without deductions. This Stuart practice did not satisfy the perverse soldier. Two or three times a week, privates who had talked in too laudatory terms of King James, or who had deserted King George, were to be seen by thousands of spectators in the Park, undergoing the severe punishment――some of running, other of walking, the gauntlet. In either case the flagellation was severe. In October, when it was thought expedient to reform several regiments, which were accordingly ordered to be ‘broke,’ some men and, it is said, a whole regiment at Nottingham, refused to lay down their arms. Great discretion was required to tide smoothly over these perils. [Sidenote: _SCENES AT COURT._]