The Mayor nominated one Hockenhall, who refused to serve, and paid his fine. The Commons therefore elected Slingsby Bethel and Henry Cornish, both men of the Puritan party, and the former a strong republican and an enemy to everything that looked like feasting and joy. The nominees of the Court party who suffered defeat were Box and Nicholson. Cornish refused, for instance, to give the customary dinner to the Aldermen. He was regarded with great aversion by the Court party for his republican tendencies. In the following year the two Sheriffs, Pilkington and Shute, were of the same party and were elected against the same Court nominees as in the previous year. The King, when the Recorder and the two Sheriffs waited upon him, expressed in the presence of the latter the fact that they were personally unwelcome to him. One would think that the Common Council had had enough rebuffs over their petitions. But they drew up another, which they presented to the King, with the same result as before. In September 1681 the Court party got a Mayor of their own, one Sir John Moore. It was their first success. The King expressed his satisfaction at the election of so loyal and worthy a magistrate. And, in order to mark his sense of the late elections of Sheriffs, he issued, in January 1682, a writ calling upon the citizens to show by what warrant they claimed their liberties and franchises:— “These were (1) the right to be of themselves a body corporate and politic, by the name of mayor, commonalty and citizens of the city of London, (2) the right to have sheriffs of the city and county of London and county of Middlesex, and to name, elect, make and constitute them, and (3) the right of the mayor and aldermen of the city to be justices of the peace and hold Sessions of the Peace” (_Sharpe_, ii. 477). The City received the writ much as their ancestors had received notice of an Iter. It was troublesome, but it was lawyers’ work. They were not afraid of having exercised any usurpation of rights; let the lawyers deal with it. The lawyers, therefore, took it in hand for a time, and while they prepared the case, matters rested. [Illustration: LORD MAYOR AND ALDERMEN From Pennant’s London, in British Museum.] Meantime the people of the City were ranged definitely into two factions; on the one side were those who stood for rights and liberties; for toleration of religion—it was notorious that they would have no toleration while they were in power—and for Parliamentary government. This party contained the better class of citizens, the merchants, the responsible citizens, and the whole of the Nonconformists. The other party, which remembered the severe times when the theatres were closed and dancing and singing were criminal offences, contained the most of the clergy of the Church of England, all the Catholics, all those who were connected with the old Royalist families, and that powerful body, the ’prentices of London.