About this time Mr. Matthew Prior shocked his old Jacobite friends by taking the oaths at Hicks’s Hall, in order to prove that he was a good Whig. Trimming Tory gentlemen who took the same oaths, on the first day of Sessions, excused themselves for doing so, by writing pointless epigrams to prove they had committed perjury. Jacobites, on the other hand, greeted with hurrahs Swan, the Mayor of Newcastle-under-Line, and two other Magistrates of that place, as they passed to Newgate in custody, for having shown kindness to some of the destitute Preston prisoners, as they were being escorted through that midland town. Tories, in coffee-house debates, held Cuthbert Kynaston, M.P. for Salop, to be a fool for having surrendered himself a prisoner. Soon they had other things to think of. There was the fair on the hard frozen Thames. That grand festival of the time was got up by the Whigs. They roasted an ox whole on the ice near Whitehall, in honour of the ninth anniversary of the birthday of Prince Frederick, and they made night hideous with their toasts and drunken revelry. [Sidenote: _ROYALTY ON THE ICE._] Roasting oxen whole soon became an ordinary occurrence. The frozen-out watermen were made glad by contributions of joints; to which were added liberal donations from the royal family. While the ice was still in solid block, a little procession of sedan-chairs was seen, one bracing morning, going rapidly from St. James’s to Westminster. The hard-trotting bearers set down their honourable load in Old Palace Yard. The Prince of Wales and the Duke of Marlborough issued from their respective chairs. Noblemen and gentlemen had come by similar and by other conveyances. When all were afoot they went down to the river which they crossed on the ice to Lambeth, and then returned, seeing ‘all the fun of the fair,’ as they walked, or sometimes, as they tarried. The prince was unguarded, though well accompanied, and the enthusiasm gave extraordinary warmth to the occasion. When the king went publicly, a few days after, to stand as godfather to the second son of the Earl of Portland, Jacobites admired his fearlessness, and Whig ladies began to call their new-born sons by the monarch’s Christian name. [Sidenote: _IMPEACHMENT OF THE REBEL LORDS._]