Difficulties, and with an Hint to the Company to avoid Ceremony, stole off and made towards his Coach, which stood ready for him in Guild-Hall Yard:  But the Mayor liked his Company so well, and was grown so intimate, that he pursued him hastily, and catching him fast by the Hand, cryed out with a vehement Oath and Accent, Sir, You shall stay and take t’other Bottle.  The airy Monarch looked kindly at him over his Shoulder, and with a Smile and graceful Air, (for I saw him at the Time, and do now) repeated this Line of the old Song;

    ‘He that’s drunk is as great as a King.’

  and immediately [turned [1]] back and complied with his Landlord.

I give you this Story, Mr. SPECTATOR, because, as I said, I saw the Passage; and I assure you it’s very true, and yet no common one; and when I tell you the Sequel, you will say I have yet a better Reason for’t.  This very Mayor afterwards erected a Statue of his merry Monarch in Stocks-Market, [2] and did the Crown many and great Services; and it was owing to this Humour of the King, that his Family had so great a Fortune shut up in the Exchequer of their pleasant Sovereign.  The many good-natured Condescensions of this Prince are vulgarly known:  and it is excellently said of him by a great Hand which writ his Character, That he was not a King a Quarter of an Hour together in his whole Reign. [3] He would receive Visits even from Fools and half Mad-men, and at Times I have met with People who have Boxed, fought at Back-sword, and taken Poison before King Charles II.  In a Word, he was so pleasant a Man, that no one could be sorrowful under his Government.  This made him capable of baffling, with the greatest Ease imaginable, all Suggestions of Jealousie, and the People could not entertain Notions of any thing terrible in him, whom they saw every way agreeable.  This Scrap of the familiar Part of that Prince’s History I thought fit to send you, in compliance to the Request you lately made to your Correspondents.

  I am, SIR,
  Your most humble Servant.

T.

[Footnote 1:  return’d]

[Footnote 2:  Stocks-market, upon the site of which the Mansion House was built in 1738, received its name from a pair of stocks erected near it as early as the year 1281.  Sir Robert Viner here erected, in 1675, his white marble statue of Charles II., that he bought a bargain at Leghorn.  It was a statue of John Sobieski trampling on a Turk, which had been left on the sculptor’s hands, but his worship the Mayor caused a few alterations to be made for the conversion of Sobieski into Charles, and the Turk (still with a turban on his head) into Oliver Cromwell.  After the building of the Mansion House this statue lay as lumber in an inn yard till, in 1779, the Corporation gave it to a descendant of the Mayor, who had the reason above given for reverencing Charles II.]