In 1663, Sir Charles Sedley, an intimate of Charles II, and two friends got themselves drunk and climbed to a balcony of the tavern, whereupon they removed their clothes and (the reports differ) either urinated on the crowd below or emptied bottles of urine on to them. In any event the crowds did not enjoy the proceedings and Sedley found himself in court. The case is often referred to as the first reported obscenity case, since it showed that common-law courts would, even in the absence of a statute, penalise conduct which was grossly offensive to the public. But in 1708, in the case of Reg. v. Read, where the defendant had published "The Fifteen Plagues of a Maidenhead" (said in court to be "bawdy stuff") for gain, Mr. Justice Powell dismissed the case saying there was no law under which it could be tried. In 1727, however, when a man named Curle published a pornographic book, the Attorney-General submitted that the publication was an offence at common law because "it tends to corrupt the morals of the King's subjects and is thus against the peace of the King." The submission was accepted with reluctance: the conviction of Curle's "Venus in the Cloister or the Nun in her Smock" became a precedent for further prosecutions.