Cibber enjoyed another triumph this season. Steele, abandoning the responsibilities of management, to follow his pleasure, had submitted to a deduction of £1, 13s. 4d. nightly, to each of his partners, for performing his duties. Steele was at this time in Wales, dying, though he survived till September 1729. His creditors, meanwhile, claimed the "five marks" as their own, and the case went into the Rolls Court, before Sir Joseph Jekyll. Cibber pleaded in person the cause of himself and active partners, and so convincingly, that he obtained a decree in their favour. In presence of this new audience, the old actor confesses he felt fear. He carried with him the heads of what he was about to urge; but, says Colley, "when it came to the critical moment, the dread and apprehension of what I had undertaken so disconcerted my courage, that though I had been used to talk to above fifty thousand people every winter, for upwards of thirty years together, an involuntary and unexpected proof of confusion fell from my eyes; and as I found myself quite out of my element, I seemed rather gasping for life, than in a condition to cope with the eminent orators against me." Cibber, however, recovered himself, and vanquished his adversaries, though two of them were of the stuff that won for them, subsequently, the dignity of Lord Chancellor. The "Beggar's Opera" season at Lincoln's Inn Fields was the most profitable ever known there. Swift's idea of a Newgate pastoral was adopted by Gay, who, smarting under disappointment of preferment at Court, and angry at the offer to make him gentleman-usher to the youngest of the royal children, indulged his satirical humour against ministers and placement, by writing a Newgate comedy, at which Swift and Pope shook their heads, and old Congreve, for one of whose three sinecures Gay would have given his ears, was sorely perplexed as to whether it would bring triumph or calamity to its author. The songs were added, but Cibber, as doubtful as Congreve, declined what Rich eagerly accepted, and the success of which was first discerned by the Duke of Argyle, from his box on the stage, who looked at the house, and "saw it in the eyes of them." Walker, who had been playing tragic parts, and very recently Macbeth, was chosen for Macheath, on Quin declining the highwayman. Lavinia Fenton was the Polly; Peachum, by Hippisley; and Spiller made a distinctive character of Mat o' the Mint. Walker "knew no more of music than barely singing in tune; but then his singing was supported by his inimitable action, by his speaking to the eye and charming the ear." It was at the close of a long run of the piece that Walker once tripped in his words. "I wonder," said Rich, "that you should forget the words of a part you have played so often!" "Do you think," asked Walker, with happy equivocation, "that a man's memory is to last for ever?"