This indulgence brought the Lieutenant of the Tower into trouble. He was summoned before the Peers, and was questioned as to the unseemly dining of the rebel lords in a tavern. The perplexed officer replied that those lords had complained of feeling faint, and he had therefore allowed them half an hour for dinner, at the _Fountain_, under rigorous guard; but he was peremptorily forbidden to do so on any future occasion. ‘If their lordships require refreshment,’ said the Chancellor, ‘they must refresh here.’ On January 30th, Addison preached a smart lay sermon in the ‘Freeholder,’ and loyal pulpits resounded the universal sameness. One of the exceptions was at St. George’s, Southwark. This place was said to be the mint where all the lies were coined which were afterwards put in circulation at the Royal Exchange. It is obvious that a sermon on the dethronement and martyrdom of a king could be made to serve two purposes. In the Whig pulpits, the discourse illustrated the wickedness of treason against the powers that be,――the Government of King George. In the Tory pulpits it was well understood that the Government of that king was daily committing High Treason against the power that ought to be,――that of James III. Accordingly, when the Rev. Mr. Smith, Tory curate of St. George’s, gave out his text on January 30th (1 Samuel xii. 25), ‘If ye shall still do wickedly, ye shall be consumed, both ye and your king,’――there was scarcely a person present who did not interpret its sense as antagonistic to King George. A Whig gentleman was there, and he began to take notes of the sermon. This disturbed the Jacobite preacher, who probably recognised in him a Government agent. At all events, he called upon the note-taker to desist, but the latter showed no signs of obedience. This led to the clergyman exclaiming, ‘Mr. Wicks, if you go on writing, I won’t preach any more!’ The imperturbable Wicks added this remark to his notes, and then the Tory parson called at the top of his voice, ‘Take away that fellow that writes, out of church!’ [Sidenote: _MUSCULAR CHRISTIANS._] The muscular christians of the congregation not only flung Wicks into the street, they hunted him home, assailed his house, and threatened to destroy it with all his family therein. They had committed much damage when a civil and an armed force arrived, and compelled the assailants to raise the siege and retreat. The virtuous mob, however, having heard that Wicks had recently buried his father, scampered to the neighbouring churchyard and commenced digging up the grave! They were on the point of committing still more horrible violation, when they were put to flight by the constables and a few soldiers. Whig writers in the papers ask, jeeringly, if the preacher objected to notes being made of his sermon, because he was about to say ‘something extraordinary and smutty.’ [Sidenote: _CHARLES I. KING AND SAINT._]