Probably, popular fears exaggerated the proceedings;
but it is equally probable that demonstrations
of an anti-royalist character were
sometimes indulged in by the young and thoughtless.

Political clubs were common in the early years
of last century. The most famous were the
Mug-house Clubs, which were originally nothing
more than associations for ale-drinking (no other
liquor being allowed) and the singing of songs.
Politics were at first studiously excluded; but,
on the death of Queen Anne, the question of
the succession so agitated men's minds that
the Mug-house gentlemen took a decided stand
on the Hanoverian side, and became a formidable
power. They held their meetings in various
parts of the town, organised themselves into
armed bodies, and made public demonstrations
on every anniversary which was capable of
receiving a political or religious colour. This was
a species of defiance which the Jacobites were
not slow in accepting, and a series of formidable
riots ensued. Downright battles took place in
the leading streets; the Mug-houses were more
than once besieged by Tory mobs, and people
were sometimes killed. The combatants on each
side were, for the most part, armed with oaken
staves; but other weapons were not
unfrequently used. In the year 1716, the Jacobite
mob, enraged by a defeat they had recently
suffered at the hands of the Muggers (who seem
generally to have had the best of it), attacked a
famous Mug-house in Salisbury-court, Fleet-
street. They were led by one Vaughan, who is
described as having been " formerly a Bridewell
boy;" and with shouts of " High Church and
Ormond! down with the Mug-house!" they
advanced against the premises. Read, the landlord,
threw up a window, and, presenting a
blunderbuss, vowed he would shoot the first man
who should try to force his way in. Vaughan,
however, pushed on, followed by the others;
Read fired, and the Bridewell boy fell mortally
wounded. The mob, rendered furious by this
deed, burst open the door, sacked the house,
and would have hung up the landlord to his own
sign-post, as they threatened to do, had he not
already escaped by the back door. It was now
proposed to set fire to the whole street; but
before this could be accomplished, the sheriffs
sent to Whitehall, where a squadron of horse
had been already drawn up in anticipation of
some such disturbance, and the arrival of the
soldiers speedily caused the dispersion of the
crowd. Read was afterwards tried for murder,
but found guilty of manslaughter only; and five
of the rioters, who had been captured by the
military, were ultimately hanged at Tyburn.

Another political club was the Kit-Kat,
established, about the close of the seventeenth
century, in Shire-lane, Temple-bar, by thirty-nine
noblemen and gentlemen attached to Whig
principles. Authorities differ as to the origin of the
grotesque name of this club; but it seems
probable that it arose from the members meeting at
the house of one Christopher Katt, a famous
maker of mutton-pies, or from the fact of the
pies themselves forming a standing dish at the
club suppers. The club is mentioned in No. 9
of the Spectator, and among its supporters were
no less a hero than the Duke of Marlborough,
no less a statesman than Sir Robert Walpole, no
less a lawyer than Somers, and such wits and
authors as Addison, Steele, Congreve,
Vanbrugh, and Garth, not to mention others of less
celebrity. It is unfortunate that the name of
Shire-lane has been changed during the last
twenty years to Lower Serle's-place. The
glories of an old city are in its memories; and,
seeing that with so many of the Tatlers are
associated Shire-lane (or, as it was then written,
Sheer-lane), it would be pleasant, as one passes
through Temple-bar, still to behold the familiar
words painted up at the corner of the obscure
and narrow turning round which the brilliant
writers of Queen Anne's days have passed to
and from their mirthful gatherings. Many of
the houses of Shire-lane are, for the most part,
old enough to be the identical buildings which
were standing when the Whig statesmen and
wits assembled at the Kit-Kat, and when " Mr.
Bickerstaff" wrote lively sketches of society
from his apartments there. The lane has
miserably fallen in the social scale since then:
wretched little workshops occupy the ground
floors; dirty children welter about the gutters;
the dust and soot of nearly two centuries
incrust the walls and ceilings; yet this dingy
defile is irradiated by a light which can never
die out of English letters. A thousand pleasant
thoughts of graceful humour and kindly
moralising—a thousand pictures of a bright
gay phase of manners, now sufficiently
removed to be already acquiring the tender
and freakish light of the past—are associated
with the very words, " Shire-lane." A good
anecdote of Garth is told in connexion with the
Kit-Kat. He paid a visit to the club one night,
but said he must shortly go, as he had fifteen
patients to attend. Some good wine,
however, being produced, Garth forgot all about his
patients until reminded by Steele. Hereupon
the jovial author-physician said, " It's no great
matter whether I see them to-night or not; for
nine of them have such bad constitutions that all
the physicians in the world can't save them, and
the other six have such good constitutions that
all the physicians in the world can't kill them."

The Royal Society Club was, as may be
supposed, originally an association of philosophers,
and so, to some extent, it is still, though men of
intellect generally are admitted. It arose out of
some very informal meetings over which Dr.
Halley, the astronomer, presided, and which
used to be held on Thursday evenings at a house
kept by one Reynell in Dean's-court. This was
about 1731, and Reynell afterwards took the
King's Arms in St. Paul's-churchyard, where
Halley and his companions continued their meetings.
The club was at first called " The Club of
Royal Philosophers." These learned gentlemen