In 1746 _A Bowl of Punch_ appears as a novelty in the bill of a corporation dinner. When Coade was Mayor in 1737, sixteen bowls of punch were drunk at a corporation banquet. _Whitsun-ales_ were still in force. In the postscript of a letter from a minister to his parishioners in the Deanery of Stow, Gloucestershire, 1736, the author writes:-- What I have now been desiring you to consider as touching the evil and pernicious consequences of _Whitsun-ales_ among us, doth also obtain against Dovers Meeting ... and also against _Midsummer Ales_ and _Mead-mowings_; and likewise against the ordinary violations of those festival seasons commonly called _Wakes_. In the year 1735 occurred a scene which fairly gives colour to the _Secret History of the Calves’ Head Club_. The following account is given in the letters of L’Abbé Le Blanc:-- Some young men of quality chose to abandon themselves to the debauchery of drinking healths on the 30th of January, a day appointed by the Church of England for a general fast, to expiate the murder of Charles I., whom they honour as a martyr. As soon as they were heated with wine, they began to sing. This gave great offence to the people, who stopped before the tavern, and gave them abusive language. One of these rash young men put his head out of the window and drank to the memory of the army which dethroned this king, and to the rebels which cut off his head upon a scaffold. The stones immediately flew from all parts, the furious populace broke the windows of the house, and would have set fire to it. The Chapter Coffeehouse was opened at this time, famous for punch, pamphlets, and newspapers. Buchan, of _Domestic Medicine_ fame, was an _habitué_; so was Dr. Gower. These eminent physicians sat and prescribed for the maladies of their mates, _Chapter punch_; ‘If one won’t do, call for a second.’ But clubs, whatever they may have been, are anything but unfavourable to temperance _now_. The worst that can be honestly thought of them is--that they _may_ minister to selfishness. Thus are clubs an exception to the usual tendency of the moral law of gravitation--downwards. What is there in common, save the name, between the _Athenæum_ of to-day, and the _Roxburghe_ of the beginning of the century? The entertainments of the latter have found their way into print under the title ‘_Roxburghe Revels; or, An Account of the Annual Display_, culinary and festivous, interspersed incidentally with matters of Moment or Merryment.’[225] George III. was an example of _moderation_. One of his biographers, Edward Holt, observes:-- Exercise, air, and little diet were the grand fundamentals in the King’s idea of health and sprightliness: his Majesty fed chiefly on vegetables and drank little wine. The Queen was what many private gentlewomen styled whimsically abstemious.