A MESSAGE in the most ingratiating terms was sent by the Mayor and Corporation of Worcester to George III at this time exactly 200 years ago. The King had just escaped another assassination attempt.

The message was reproduced in full in the Worcester Journal of March 1803 and read:

"We Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Mayor, Aldermen and Citizens of Worcester, being duly sensible of the many blessings which we enjoy under the paternal government of Your Majesty, beg leave to offer our sincere and heartfelt congratulations to you that, by the wisdom and vigilance of Your Majesty's Council, aided by Divine Providence, the wicked and traitorous conspiracies which so lately threatened to undermine the Constitution have been discovered and the daring and most flagitious attempts to assassinate Your Royal Person have been defeated.

"In viewing with indignation and abhorrence the traitorous machinations of the wicked conspirators, we cannot but feel an additional impulse of loyalty to Your Majesty's person and of reverence and attachment to our most excellent Constitution.

"The preservation of Your Majesty's life is so dear to every class of Your Majesty's subjects, and we shall unceasingly offer up our thanksgivings to the Almighty for the happy deliverance from the imminent danger with which Your Majesty was threatened, and pray that Your Majesty may long live to fill in glory and peace that Throne which Your Majesty has preserved unshaken and from which Your Majesty has dispensed the most signal blessings on your people."