When the discourse was ended, the congregation fell upon the note-taker. They demanded his papers, and were not enlightened by his exclamation:――‘Ah! you’ve spoilt my design!’ Each party took him for an adversary, and the man would have been murdered had not Sacheverel ordered his clerk and servant to go to his rescue. When it was discovered that the victim was ‘one Mologni (_sic_), an Irish Papist,’ the Whigs were probably sorry that they had not rolled him in the gutter that then ran down the centre of Holborn Hill. [Sidenote: _CALUMNY AGAINST SACHEVEREL._] Every possible (and impossible) sin was charged upon Sacheverel for this sermon, especially by the notorious bookseller and pamphleteer, John Dunton. This worthy ally of Hanover, in his ‘Bungay, or the false brother proved his own executioner,’ which was circulating in London, immediately after the sermon of January 20th, roundly accused Sacheverel of being ‘a man of the bottle that can sit up whole nights drinking until High Church is drunk down, and laid low or flat under the table, as you were at Sir J. N――――rs in Oxfordshire, which occasioned that sarcasm, _There lies the pillar of our Church_.’ Sacheverel was accused of being guilty of the most profligate gallantry. His own clerk, it was said, had to rouse him up from cards, on a Sunday, when service time was at hand! and as for blasphemy, Sacheverel, it was affirmed, could never make reference to Dissenters without damning them for Hanoverians, and consigning them to their master, the Devil! The list of crimes would have been incomplete if it had not closed with the assertion that Sacheverel was at heart really an Atheist! Tavern Whigs waxed religiously wrathful against Sacheverel. One Dunne, in a Southwark tavern, after roaring over his drink against the Tory parson, reeled forth on a dark and stormy night, and happened to come on a funeral by torch-light, on its way to St. Saviour’s. A clergyman walked with it, as was then the custom. ‘D―――― me!’ exclaimed Dunne, ‘here’s the Doctor of Divinity! I’ll have a bout with him.’ The clergyman was not Dr. Sacheverel, but his curate, Mr. Pocock. It was all one to Dunne, who assaulted the curate, pulled off his hat, tore off his peruke, and finally knocked him down. Dunne was conveyed away by the watch. The Tory ‘Post Boy’ was sarcastic on the incident, ‘The clergy,’ it said, ‘within the bills of mortality, who are about six feet high and wear black wigs, are desired to meet at Child’s coffee-house, St. Paul’s Churchyard, next Thursday, in order to consider proper methods to distinguish themselves from Dr. Sacheverel, that they may not be murthered by way of proxy instead of the said Doctor.’ The other side remarked, that there would be no safety for tall men with flaxen wigs till Sacheverel was hanged out of the way. [Sidenote: _DANGER IN THE DISTANCE._]