The Man-Hunting Club was composed chiefly of young limbs of the law; uncultivated youths, though they were law students, formed themselves into an association to hunt men over Lincoln’s Inn Fields and the neighbourhood whom they might happen to meet crossing them at ten or eleven o’clock at night. They would be concealed upon the grass in one of the borders of the fields till they heard some single person coming along, when they would spring up with their swords drawn, run towards him, and cry: ’That’s he; bloody wounds, that’s he!’ Usually the person so attacked would run away, when they would pursue him till he took refuge in an alehouse in some neighbouring street. But if the man-hunters encountered a person of courage, ready to fight them, they would sneak off, like the curs they really were. Their meeting-place was at a tavern close to Bear Yard, Clare Market. The Yorkshire Club held its meetings on market-days at an inn in Smithfield. It was composed of sharp country-folk, who assumed the innocence of yokels. The most flourishing members among them, says one authority, were needle-pointed innkeepers; nick and froth victuallers, honest horse chaunters, pious Yorkshire attorneys; the rest good, harmless master hostlers, two or three innocent farriers, who had wormed their masters out of their shops, and themselves into them. When met for business, their deliberations were about horseflesh, blind eyes, spavins, bounders and malinders, and how to disguise defects and get rid of the animals. The Mock-Heroes Club met at an alehouse in Baldwin’s Gardens, and was composed chiefly of attorneys’ clerks and young shopkeepers. On admission the new member assumed the name of some defunct hero, and ever afterwards was at the meetings called by that name; and as the club held its meetings in the public room, though at a separate table specially reserved for them, this formal and ridiculous way of addressing one another caused no slight amusement to the other persons frequenting the room. In other respects their language was high-flown. Thus, one would face about to his left-hand neighbour, with his right hand charged with a brimming tankard, saying: ’Most noble Scipio, the love and friendship of a soldier to you. The thanks of a brother to my valiant friend Hannibal, whom I cannot but value, though I had the honour to conquer.’ ’My respects to you, brave Cæsar,’ cries one opposite, ’remembering the battle of Pharsalia.’ And so on, till they had drunk themselves under the table.