"Down with the house!"

In the mean time, the trained-band soldiers
went on sipping uneasily their punch and wine,
some alarmed, some eager to get home unseen,
but many longing to snatch up their firelocks,
draw their swords, and have at the irritating
mob. Porters, drawers, barmen, ostlers, came
up at different times, reporting progress,
describing what house had been last wrecked, and
which way the torrent seemed tending. Each
messenger appeared more frightened than the
last. About eleven, Major Adams, the landlord,
himself came up, and told them that the mob were
flinging firebrands and stones into the house.

This roused the trained-band captains, and,
headed by an officer named Lamb, they drew
their swords, and went down-stairs to drive the
mob out of the passages of the tavern. The
rabble drew back at the first flash of the swords,
but soon billowed back threateningly, armed
with clubs, missiles, and firebrands. Captain
Lamb, seeing the danger, snatched up a firelock
and cried out that he would fire at the first
man who offered to strike a blow. The mob
fell back. Captain Lamb and his men then
made a circuitous march round through Moorgate,
and on coming to Cripplegate again, read
the proclamation, guarded by two men with
swords and two with muskets. The mob was
very rebellious and violent, and kept shouting:

"No King George! No Hanoverian
proclamation! No King George! Mr. Williams
for ever!"

Loyal Captain Lamb, rigliteously indignant
at these treasonable cries, pursued, with his
drawn sword, one man, a smith, who was
crying "No King George," but could not overtake
him. On returning to the without side of
Cripplegate, Carter, a militiaman, laid hold of a
rioter; but the fellow was rescued by Lant, the
captain of the mob. Somebody then cried out:

"That is Lant, the captain of the mob; he
has been leading them all night."

Carter seized Lant, and Captain Lamb came
up, struggled with him, and cried, "Deliver
your stick, or it will be the worse for you." It
was then wrested from Lamb, and after a
struggle lie was dragged into the Crown Tavern,
the mob all the time shouting:

"Down with them! Down with the house!
Down with the Roebuck Tavern! Down with
the Roebuck Coffee-house!" (the Roebuck
mughouse, as we have seen, was a resort of Whig
gentlemen, and very obnoxious to the Jacobites).
"High church and Williams! The constable's
a fool for reading the proclamation!" In the
words of the disgusted Dogberry:

"There was never a mob so abusive to people
who never gave the least provocation in word
nor deed."

But the worst was, the mob did not rest
satisfied with abuse, but they also broke the
heads of worthy but "o'er parted" constables.

We can gather from Hogarth's election
pictures what sort of thing a London mob was in
the time of the first Georges. Rough sailors,
tough swearing soldiers, savage Irish
coalheavers, desperate costermongers, stalwart
sedan-chair men, burly porters, all fellows with
artificially bald heads, that presented irresistible
invitations to the quarter-staff and the
chairman's pole. Communication was slow from
one part of London to another; the constables
were mere fussy superannuated old women, and
the riot, unless the Guards came down and
blazed at the crowd in time, generally continued
till it burnt itself out, leaving a residium of a
dozen or two bruised, gashed, and bleeding men
and half a dozen dead bodies. It was a rough
age, and life was not valued then as it is now.

The sea was still rising. The mad cries of
"Down with the Rump and King George!"
continued up and down the street and on both
sides of Cripplegate. Passers-by were
compelled to pull off the hats as the cudgel-men
marched or danced round the bonfires, or
rushed to break in Whig shutters or smash
Whig lamps. Every moment some bleeding
man was borne into the Crown Tavern. Now
a Mr. Woodley, with a desperate cut, to the
bone on his forehead, then Major Adams's porter,
and so on, till seven or eight men are injured.
The militiamen charge again, shouting: "King
George for ever!" and Captain Bray and
Captain Lamb lead them on, waving their swords.
They dashed up to a bonfire opposite the Castle
Tavern. Captain Bray, conspicuous in his buff
and scarlet, struck them away with his
scabbard, and shouted:

"There shall be no bonfire."

But the people were obdurate: the moment
the militia soldiers returned to their tavern,
they gathered the still blazing billets, and
remade the bonfire. This time the Whig soldiers
returned in force; about a dozen of them
appeared with muskets and bayonets, and the
rest with swords. Suddenly one of the officers
remembered that they all had left their watches
out in the dining-room in their hurry, and
returned to collect them. Then all together,
the gentlemen in scarlet with swords, and the
Grenadiers with sticks, rushed out to the conduit,
where one of the bonfires still blazed, and
a gun was discharged. But even the terrible cry,
"Fire!" did not scare the mob this time, for
their blood was up, and they advanced to meet
the swordsmen and musketeers. The two
angry seas met in the centre of the street.
Down went the cudgels on Whig heads like
flails on a thrashing-floor; bayonets thrusted
and parried across the central gutter;
musket-butts swung savagely; swords probed
furiously, till at last, step by step, the men in
scarlet, leaving some of their number bleeding
on the pavement, fell back to the Crown Tavern,
and barricaded themselves until the constables
gathered in force, and the mob sullenly dispersed.

In December, 1723, Lant, Ayres, Kite, and
Ambler, four of the principal rioters, were tried
at the Old Bailey, but all acquitted except the
desperate Lant, who was found guilty of the
misdemeanour, and fined thirty pounds, or, in
default, three months' imprisonment.

In 1724, there was a riot at Tyburn at the