London in the Time of the Stuarts

by Walter Besant

They were considered by the Council. All were of the opinion that the preacher ought to be prosecuted; there were differences as to the method and as to the court by which he should be tried. It was finally resolved that he should be impeached before the two Houses of Parliament.

There were delays before the impeachment could be carried out. Meantime the High Church party and the clergy in general were actively engaged in proclaiming that the Church was in danger, and in inflaming the minds of the people against the Dissenters. And then occurred one of those strange tumults in which the lowest classes in London have risen up, from time to time, in favour of religion and morality, as if they understood in the least what these words mean. The ’prentices waging war against disorderly houses, the craftsmen destroying the Savoy in defence of their Bishop, the mob tearing down Mass-houses, the mob throwing up their hats for Sacheverell, the mob following Lord George Gordon—all these are risings of the same kind. Other reasons are assigned in each case; the one and only reason, apart from the general love of a fight, which lies always in the heart of the Londoner, was a blind desire for truth and justice. Who were the Dissenters? They were Puritans; they were the people, who, when they had the power, forbade the old sports, and persecuted those who would still play them; they were the masters who commanded the way of their people in matters of religion as in matters of politics; they had turned merry London into morose London. It is generally believed that the common people did not go to church, and therefore had no love for the church. This is most untrue. The City was still full of the craftsmen; all those who lived in the City went to church. How many of those who lived outside the walls, what proportion of those who were settled beyond the walls, went to church one has no means of ascertaining. But within the walls all the people went to church. So that when we hear that ’prentices, butchers, chimney-sweepers, scavengers, fellowship porters, and the like made up the mob which bawled in the streets the cry of “The Church in danger,” we need only remark that respectable people never join a mob and never bawl in the streets for any cause whatsoever. In a word, there is every reason to believe the mob to have been filled with an honest conviction that this cause was that of religion, pure and undefiled.

On the 27th day of February, Dr. Sacheverell was brought to the bar before the Lords and Commons in Westminster Hall. Immense importance was attached to the case; the Queen was present, but privately. Seats were arranged for the Commons and for the noble ladies who were here in crowds; galleries were set up at the end of the hall for the people, and a raised platform for the managers of the impeachment and for the defendant. We need not follow the course of the trial. On the 23rd day of March, more than three weeks after it began, the case ended. The Doctor was ordered to abstain from preaching for three years. Meantime the mob had been showing the sincerity of its conviction not only by cheering the defendant every day as he went to the Hall or returned, but by wrecking the Dissenting chapels. They broke into the Gate Street Chapel, took out everything—pulpit, pews, Bibles, cushions, sconces—and carried the whole into Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where they made a bonfire of the things, shouting “High Church and Sacheverell!” In Blackfriars, Clerkenwell, Long Acre, Shoe Lane, and Leather Lane they also wrecked the chapels. The rioters were dispersed by a detachment of Guards without any bloodshed.

HENRY SACHEVERELL, D.D. (1674?–1724)

The sentence passed upon the Doctor was considered as an acquittal. Bonfires illuminated the City in the evening; drink flowed; every one was made to drink the health of the Doctor. The subsequent career of Sacheverell was tame. He made a kind of triumphal progress through the country, though some of the towns refused to admit him. Oxford received him as if he was a martyr, or a confessor at least. Finally, he settled down at St. Andrew’s, Holborn, where he died at the age of fifty. Such a man must needs make many enemies. Among them was the Duchess of Marlborough. She calls him “a lewd, drunken, pampered man,” and says that “he had not learning enough to speak or write true English, but a heap of bombast, ill-connected words at command.” He had a “haughty and insolent air” which helped him with the public. She acknowledges, however, that he had “a good assurance, clean gloves, white handkerchief, well managed, with other suitable accomplishments, which moved the hearts of many at his appearance.” She says that his speech in defence was written for him; that many of the “weaker” ladies were more like mad or bewitched than like persons in their senses. It might seem to us, who live so very far from passive obedience and non-resistance, as if the occasion were enormously exaggerated. That, however, was certainly not the case. The clergy were only too ready, one and all, to join in the prosecution of the Nonconformists, in the suppression of free thought, and in the corresponding doctrines of non-resistance. It was most certainly desirable, above all things, if the Protestant succession were to be secured, that these doctrines should be placed before the people in their true light; whatever the mob might bawl, whatever ecclesiastics might preach, the men of sense and understanding must not only go on their way, but must show the world the reason of their action. By the impeachment of a greatly overrated preacher before both Houses of Parliament the Government committed both Houses to the maintenance of religious toleration, to the Protestant succession, and to the liberties of the country. Considered from that point of view the case of this person must be regarded as the most important State trial. The Doctor is reproached with having his head turned by the honours bestowed upon him. We may forgive him. Who would not have his head turned, first, by the enormous success of a sermon; next, by being thought worthy of a State trial in Westminster Hall; lastly, by receiving every evidence of popular approval that a shouting, bawling mob can give, to say nothing of the gifts, the letters, the assurances of great ladies and noble lords? Of course his head was turned.

When the Sacheverell tumults were finished and over, the Lord Mayor issued an order for the suppression of such assemblies of rude and disorderly persons by the constables. We have already noted the appearance of these documents and proclamations and their futile character, because without sufficient force of police in reserve such general orders are powerless.

The Statute for the erection of fifty new churches in the suburbs of London indicates the growth of the City outside the walls. Fifty churches would provide accommodation for fifty thousand people; or, allowing for the infants, the aged, the infirm, and those who attended service only once a day, probably a hundred thousand. At the present day the parishes of Greater London frequently include eight thousand to twenty thousand souls.

The last years of Queen Anne were distracted, as readers of history know, by secret conferences, correspondence, and conspiracies to secure the succession of the elder Pretender, James Francis. The reports and whispers of these things kept London in a state of continual alarm and ferment; rumours were constantly spreading around; it was said that a large number of disaffected persons calling themselves Mohocks and Hawkabites came out at night and scoured the streets, assaulting and wounding harmless persons; it was also said that they flattened the noses of those they seized, or slit them; that they cut off their ears; that they stretched their mouths or gagged them; that they cruelly pricked and stabbed them; that they set women on their heads, with other terrible things. The citizens were afraid to go into the streets at night for fear of being “mohocked.” A proclamation was issued offering a reward of one hundred pounds for the conviction of every such offender. But no one was apprehended, nor could any one be found who had suffered from the cruelties of the so-called Mohocks and Hawkabites. In fact it was a scare, baseless except for the occasional acts of violence which took place in the streets. Another scare was started about the same time. It was bruited abroad that the suburbs and fields around London were haunted by a wretch called Whipping Tom, whose practice it was to seize on all the women he met with and flog them. No one asked how this could be done if the woman resisted or ran away, because one would want both hands for the purpose, and the fields—meaning Moor Fields—and suburbs were not so lonely that a woman’s cries could not be heard. However, the women of London were put into a state of great terror in consequence of this report, and for a long time none would venture abroad without an escort.

At this time there were complaints that many shopkeepers employed assistants who were not Freemen of the City. The Mayor and Common Council passed a strict order that this practice was to cease, and that the persons employed in the City in any capacity should be Freemen of the City.