druggist's traveller, and distinguished himself by his exertions for
poor persecuted Queen Caroline. He served as Lord Mayor two successive
years, and represented the City in nine parliaments. His baronetcy was
the first title conferred by Queen Victoria, in 1837, as a reward for
his political exertions. As a namesake of "Jemmy Wood," the miser banker
of Gloucester, he received a princely legacy. The Vice-Chancellor Page
Wood (Lord Hatherley) was the mayor's second son.

The following sonnet was contributed by Charles and Mary Lamb to
Thelwall's newspaper, _The Champion_. Lamb's extreme opinions, as here
enunciated, were merely assumed to please his friend Thelwall, but there
seems a genuine tone in his abuse of Canning. Perhaps it dated from the
time when the "player's son" had ridiculed Southey and Coleridge:--

SONNET TO MATTHEW WOOD, ESQ., ALDERMAN AND M.P.

"Hold on thy course uncheck'd, heroic Wood!
Regardless what the player's son may prate,
St. Stephen's fool, the zany of debate--
Who nothing generous ever understood.
London's twice praetor! scorn the fool-born jest,
The stage's scum, and refuse of the players--
Stale topics against magistrates and mayors--
City and country both thy worth attest.
Bid him leave off his shallow Eton wit,
More fit to soothe the superficial ear
Of drunken Pitt, and that pickpocket Peer,
When at their sottish orgies they did sit,
Hatching mad counsels from inflated vein,
Till England and the nations reeled with pain."

In 1818-19 Alderman John Atkins was host at the Mansion House. In early
life he had been a Customs' tide-waiter, and was not remarkable for
polished manners; but he was a shrewd and worthy man, filling the seat
of justice with impartiality, and dispensing the hospitality of the City
with an open hand.

In 1821 John Thomas Thorpe (Draper), mayor, officiated as chief butler
at the coronation feast of George IV. He and twelve assistants presented
the king wine in a golden cup, which the king returned as the
cup-bearer's fees. Being, however, a violent partisan of Queen Caroline,
he was not created a baronet.

In 1823 we come to another determined reformer, Alderman Waithman, whom
we have already noticed in the chapter on Fleet Street. As a poor lad,
he was adopted by his uncle, a Bath linendraper. He began to appear as a
politician in 1794. When sheriff in 1821, in quelling a tumult at
Knightsb