Priestley’s position in London for some time after his arrival there was very insecure, and so apprehensive were his friends of further outrage that it was thought necessary to provide him with a disguise and to arrange a plan of escape in case the house should be attacked. At first he was not allowed to appear in the streets. Ultimately he was moved to Tottenham, where he spent a month.
In the middle of October a house was taken for him in Hackney, but it was with difficulty that the landlord, who feared his property would be demolished, was persuaded to accept him as a tenant. Here, however, he proceeded to build himself a laboratory, and in a letter to Thomas Wedgwood, of October 18, 1791, he says:—
“As soon as convenient I shall be obliged to your father if he will supply me, as usual, with such retorts as you make, viz., earthen tubes closed at the end and open, and some with two necks. Small retorts, evaporating-dishes, mortars and levigators. Perhaps your servants here can tell me the price at which I must estimate those that were destroyed by the riot. I must soon give in an account of my losses, and I fear that some person on your part must attend at Warwick to attest the value. Mr Nairn, Mr Parker and others have promised to attend. But I have prepared [proposed] a conference between my appraiser and those for the county in London, which, if they be disposed to do justice, will save much trouble and expense.
“Whether I shall be invited to succeed Dr Price is uncertain. Many apprehend public disturbance in consequence of my coming. I could not get a house let in my own name. A friend took it in his. I have, however, very handsome proposals from France, particularly the offer of a house completely furnished, two miles from Paris, and another polite invitation from Toulouse, to take up my residence in the South of France in ‘a monastery which reason has recovered from superstition.’”
Priestley’s claim for damages amounted to £3628, 8s. 9d. Hutton says his real loss was upwards of £4500 (Jewitt’s Life of Hutton, p. 255). The Court allowed £2502, 18s. In the town of Birmingham property to the value of £50,000 was destroyed, of which sum £26,961, 2s. 3d. was finally paid by a rate on the Hundred, in which Birmingham is included (Sam Timmins, Trans. Midl. Inst., 1875).
Lindsey, writing to his friend, Alexander of Yarmouth, under date October 15, 1791, mentioning Priestley, says:—
“He is very well, and with his wonted cheerfulness, which has never forsaken him. Sunday last he preached for me for the first time since he has been expelled by fire and destruction out of his own place of worship, and he does me that favour to-morrow again. He has at last, though very reluctantly, and much to the concern of his late beloved people, given up the thought of continuing the pastoral office among them, as the exercise of it would not probably be consistent with his personal safety and liberty; such is the temper of his many adversaries still, and so hostile to him.”
The managers of other Dissenting chapels had not the courage of Lindsey and begged that he would refrain from preaching to their congregations. Eventually he was invited to take the position formerly occupied by his friend Price.
The rancour of his enemies now broke out afresh, and the most persistent efforts were made to damage and disparage him in the eyes of his congregation. His friends in the neighbourhood were advised to move their effects to some place of greater safety, as it was common rumour that his house was to be attacked on the succeeding anniversary of the Birmingham riot. His servants were afraid to remain for any length of time with him, and the tradespeople hesitated to take his custom. He was several times burnt in effigy along with Tom Paine. Coloured caricatures of him, of the grossest and coarsest kind, in which he was described as “the treacherous rebel and Birmingham rioter” were scattered broadcast. Insulting letters, in some of which he was likened to Guy Fawkes or the devil himself, were sent to him from all parts of the country, even from men calling themselves ministers of the Gospel. In one of these he was threatened with being burned alive before a slow fire. The Rev. Dr Tatham, Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford, whose biographer compared him with Warburton (“There is much of the same rough, unpolished strength in his language”), thus addressed him:—
“Long have you been the Danger of this country, the Bane of its Polity, and the Canker-worm of its Happiness. Long, too long, have your Principles tended to bereave it of its Religion, its Constitution, and consequently of its King.”
Burke, to his everlasting shame, inveighed against him in the House of Commons, and many of his associates in the Royal Society shunned him.