“I have desired the printer to send you a copy of my Appeal on the subject of the riots, in order to have your opinion and advice with respect to publishing of it. Several of my friends in Birmingham, viz., Dr Withering, Mr Keir and Mr Galton, think that it had better be suppressed, or published with many alterations by way of softening. Others, and especially my friends here, are for its speedy publication, or about the time of the meeting of Parliament. In this state of suspense I beg your perusal of it and your free opinion. I think that if I write at all it should not be with less spirit than I have usually shown, and that there is nothing more violent or offensive in this than in several of my preaching publications. But as others are interested in the event of this publication I am willing to be advised by them.”
On August 24, 1791, at the Warwick Assizes, John Green, John Clifton and Bartholomew Fisher were indicted for that they, with one William Jones, at large, with others, to the number of fifty and more, did, on the 15th of July, unlawfully and riotously assemble and with force of arms begin to pull down the dwelling-house of Joseph Priestley, LL.D. The jury found Green and Fisher guilty and Clifton not guilty.
John Stokes, for beginning to pull down the Old Meeting-House in Birmingham, was acquitted, on account of the defects in the indictment. The following was Baron Perryn’s sentence:—
“Prisoners, you have been convicted by very human and attentive juries of the enormous crimes of setting fire to and destroying the houses and property of your fellow-subjects in a manner as wanton as it was unprovoked. Your cry of ‘Church and King!’ was nothing but a pretext to commit depredation and robbery. The Law and Constitution is a sufficient shield to protect the Church and the sacred person of His Majesty and all his good subjects in their lives and property.
“At the same time the Law possesses sufficient energy and vigour to make examples of those bad citizens who wickedly and wantonly violate it.
“You, miserable criminals, are of that number, and it is necessary that your lives should atone for your crimes, as a public example. You must therefore be removed from this world; and I most earnestly recommend you to employ the short space of time which will be allowed to you to make your peace with your offended Creator, who alone can grant that mercy which you must not expect from your country.”
Priestley’s own account of these proceedings, as given in his Memoirs, is very naïve and even studiously dispassionate. He says:—
“About two years before I left Birmingham, the question about the ‘Test Act’ was much agitated both in and out of Parliament. This, however, was altogether without any concurrence of mine. I only delivered, and published, a sermon on the 5th of November 1789, recommending the most peaceable method of pursuing our object. Mr Madan, however, the most respectable clergyman in the town, preaching and publishing a very inflammatory sermon on the subject, inveighing in the bitterest manner against the Dissenters in general and myself in particular, I addressed a number of ‘Familiar Letters to the Inhabitants of Birmingham’ in our defence. This produced a reply from him and other letters from me. All mine were written in an ironical and rather a pleasant manner, and in some of the last of them I introduced a further reply to Mr Burn, another clergyman in Birmingham, who had addressed to me ‘Letters on the Infallibility of the Testimony of the Apostles concerning the Person of Christ,’ after replying to his first set of letters, in a separate publication.
“From these small pieces I was far from expecting any serious consequences. But the Dissenters in general being very obnoxious to the Court, and it being imagined, though without any reason, that I had been the chief promoter of the measures which gave them offence, the clergy, not only in Birmingham but through all England, seemed to make it their business, by writing in the public papers, by preaching and other methods, to inflame the minds of the people against me. And on occasion of the celebration of the anniversary of the French Revolution, on July 14, 1791, by several of my friends, but with which I had little to do, a mob, encouraged by some persons in power, first burned the meeting-house in which I preached, then another meeting-house in the town, and then my dwelling-house, demolishing my library, apparatus and, as far as they could, everything belonging to me. They also burned, or much damaged, the houses of many Dissenters, chiefly my friends.
“The criminality of the magistrates and other principal High Churchmen at Birmingham in promoting the riot remains acknowledged. Indeed, many circumstances which have appeared since that time show that the friends of the Court, if not the Prime Ministers themselves, were the favourers of that riot, having, no doubt, thought to intimidate the friends of liberty by the measure.”
“The years following the riot of 1791,” wrote Mr Matthew Devonport Hill, “witnessed various displays of hostile sentiment. In preparation for a municipal dinner shortly after that event, of which a member of the powerful and wealthy party opposed to French principles bore the cost, the list of guests accustomed prior to the outbreak to be invited on public occasions had been sedulously cleared of adverse elements. By inadvertence, however, the name of Dr Parr was retained; and the sturdy divine, although he must have surmised that he would be the only representative of his opinions, duly obeyed the summons. The cloth being drawn, the Chairman proposed, as the Doctor no doubt expected, the toast of ‘Church and King.’
“Parr instantly started to his feet, proclaiming in a stern voice his dissent. ‘No, sir,’ said he, ‘I will not drink that toast. It was the cry of Jacobites; it is the cry of incendiaries. It means a Church without the Gospel, and a King above the Law!’”
CHAPTER X
Determines to leave England—His arrival in America—Settles at Northumberland—His closing days—His death.