The fourth year of this unfortunate king, 1724, opened with a reform that augured well. It consisted in the destruction of all the convents outside the city gates, especially outside the West Gate which was at that time about half a mile west of the present New Gate. The reasons are not specifically given, but these convents had obviously become dangerous to the morals of the people, and hot-beds of sedition. But the king was not permitted to continue his reforms, for he died in the eighth moon, of poison, it is said, administered in a shrimp salad. It is further alleged that it was the work of his brother, probably on the principle that he was the one to gain most by the king’s death. But we may well doubt the truth of the rumor, for nothing that is told of that brother indicates that he would commit such an act, and in the second place a man who will eat shrimps in mid-summer, that have been brought thirty miles from the sea without ice might expect to die. Of course all the Soron officials were willing to believe the heir did it and one of them advised that a silver knife be stuck into the king’s dead body, for it is popularly believed that poison in the system will tarnish silver; but it was not done. There was no way to prevent the hated heir assuming his royal prerogative, which he did the same year, 1724. The new king, known by his posthumous title of Yŭng-jong Tă-wang, now entered upon the longest and one of the most brilliant reigns in the annals of the present dynasty; a reign which proves, so far as circumstantial evidence can prove, that he was not guilty of the murder of his brother. As may be surmised, his deadly enemies, the Sorons, were driven from office and the Norons reinstated. It is probable that the king found it impossible to restrain the Norons from taking revenge upon their enemies and we are told that a thousand men were killed each year for some years. That this was done in spite of the king, rather than by him, will be seen from the strenuous efforts which he made to destroy the lines of party demarcation. He began his reign with a statement of his inability to rule the people rightly, and blaming himself for the sufferings of the people from famine and plague. He immediately proclaimed his son crown prince, so that from the very first there might be no question as to the succession. He had to give way to the importunities of his councillors and decapitate Kim Il-gyŭng who had charged him with the murder of his brother.