The change in _Punch's_ conception of his _rôle_ as regards the Court did not come in the twinkling of an eye. But from 1858 onwards he is less of the licensed Court Jester, more of the unofficial Laureate. The old _Punch_, who had his eye on Tsars and Kaisers (like the _Skibbereen Eagle_) and autocrats is not dead yet. He has a tremendous fling in the "Essence of Parliament" in July, 1858, _à propos_ of a contemplated revision of the Prayer-book:-- Lord Stanhope, a Peer exceedingly well entitled to be heard upon any such subject, then obtained an Address for cutting out of our Prayer Books the savage and abject forms of worship which our forefathers, at certain moments of excitement, thought it well to prescribe on certain anniversaries, as Guy Fawkes Day, the Martyrdom Day, and Oak Apple Day. When one reflects that the people who composed such things adulated the dirty old coward and fool, James the First; looked on while the body of the greatest of our English kings (except Alfred)--we mean, of course, King Oliver the First, and unfortunately the Only--was dragged from its grave to the gallows; and ecstatically murmured the _Nunc dimittis_ when the friend of Nelly Gwynn, by no means _his_ worst friend, returned to betray the public honour of England, and debauch that of her private life; one only wonders that such ecclesiastical profanities have been tolerated so long. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishops of London, Oxford, and Cashel, expressed the sentiments that might be expected from enlightened gentlemen; but the offensive services found defenders in the poor old Bishop of Bangor, in the Bishop of St. Asaph, who has _Mr. Punch's_ royal licence henceforth to sign himself A Sap, and in a brace of foolish Peers, called Marlborough and Duncannon: opposition which was the only thing wanting to show that every man of decent intellect feels alike on the subject. [Sidenote: _Marriage of the Princess Royal_] The disparaging allusion earlier in the same year to Prince Albert's Prize Pig and the attack on the bestowal of a K.C.B. on Colonel Charles Beaumont Phipps, the Prince Consort's Treasurer and Equerry to the Queen, are quite eclipsed by this explosion. But _Punch_ was always ready to speak disrespectfully of a dictator. Constitutional monarchy he could respect and even admire, as Herbert Spencer said of the moderate proficiency of an amateur billiard-player. The new voice, the voice of the unofficial Laureate, had already been heard in his "Epithalamium" on the Princess Royal in 1858, over whose engagement, when it was first announced, he had been far from enthusiastic:-- Farewell, young Royal Lady, Ne'er may your life wax shady, Still may your path be shiny, All rosy--nothing spiny. _Macbeth_, when sitting stately, You were beholding lately, A point, which I may mention, Perhaps won your attention: