¹ Cit. de Castro, J. P., The Gordon Riots (Oxford, 1926), 249.Google Scholar

² Cambridge University Library, Cholmondeley (Houghton) MSS., Group P/70, file 2/14.

³ See Sutherland, Lucy S., ‘The City in Eighteenth-Century Polities’, in Essays presented to Sir Lewis Namier (1957), 66.Google Scholar

⁴ Rudé, G., ‘“Wilkes and Liberty”, 1768–69’, [The] Guild[hall] Misc[ellany], no. 8, July 1957, 13.Google Scholar

⁵ For fuller details of sources, see the articles listed in n. 7 below.

⁶ Cholmondeley (Houghton) MSS., Group P/70. I am indebted to the Most Hon. the Marquess of Cholmondeley, G.C.V.O., for his kind permission to use these papers.

⁷ For a fuller treatment of these episodes, see G. Rudé, ‘“Mother Gin” and the London Riots of 1736’ [to appear shortly in The Guildhall Miscellany (hereafter cited as ‘London Riots, 1736’, with page-references relating to the typescript)]; ‘“Wilkes and Liberty”, 1768–69’, Guild. Misc. no. 8, July 1957 (cited as Guild. Misc. (1957)); ‘The Gordon Riots: a Study of the Rioters and their Victims’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, vol. 6, 1956 (cited as Transactions (1956)); and ‘Some Financial and Military Aspects of the Gordon Riots’, Guild. Misc., no. 6, Feb. 1956 (cited as Guild. Misc. (1956)).

⁸ For the numerous London trade disputes of 1768–9, see Guild. Misc. (1957), 15–20.

⁹ ‘London Riots, 1736’, 10; Transactions (1956), 103.

¹⁰ See Transactions (1956), 102. I have found no trace of any such lists in the sessions records consulted; but, as arrests were frequently made as the result of information received some days after the event, it is not suggested that this is clear proof of their never having existed.

¹¹ ‘Pulling down’ rarely meant total destruction: most frequently it involved the pulling out of windows and smashing of shutters, banisters, doors, movable furniture and other accessible woodwork. Even in the Gordon Riots, when some 100 houses were ‘pulled down’, only about one-third of these were damaged substantially or beyond repair. Though personal effects were frequently burned in the streets, houses themselves were seldom fired. See also Transactions (1956), 95 n. 4, 100.

¹² ‘London Riots, 1736’, 9–10.

¹³ Guild. Misc. (1957), 6. Cf. the Treasury award of £69. 4s. 7d. as compensation to Richard Capel and of £491. 5s. 6d. to Edward Russell, both Southwark magistrates, whose houses had been ‘pulled down’ after the ‘massacre’ of St George’s Fields on 10 May 1768 (ibid. II).

¹⁴ Transactions (1956), 100; Guild. Misc. (1956), 33–7.

¹⁵ Transactions (1956), 108.

¹⁶ ibid. 102–3, 103, n. I.

¹⁷ ‘London Riots, 1736’, 9 and n. 32.

¹⁸ ibid. 12–13; Transactions (1956), 103, n. I.

¹⁹ ibid. 103.

²⁰ ‘London Riots, 1736’, 12–13.

²¹ The Letters of Horace Walpole, Fourth Earl of Orford ed. Cunningham, P. (9 vols., 1906), v, 91–2.Google Scholar

²² Guild. Misc. (1957), 8, 21–2.

²³ Transactions (1956), 95, 105–6.

²⁴ ‘London Riots, 1736’, 12, n. 42.

²⁵ ibid. 11, n. 38; Guild. Misc. (1957), 10, ns. 55 and 59, 13, n. 85; Transactions (1956), 109–10; Guild. Misc. (1956), 32–3, 32, n. 10.

²⁶ Transactions (1956), 104–6.

²⁷ Dickens, Charles, Barnaby Rudge (1894), 133.Google Scholar

²⁸ Letters, VII, 387, 388, 390–1, 400.

²⁹ Coxe, W., Memoirs of the Life and Administration of Sir Robert Walpole (3 vols., 1798), III, 349–50.Google Scholar

³⁰ Letters, VII, 400. More pointedly, he wrote to another correspondent: ‘Anti-Catholicism seems not only to have had little, but even only a momentary, hand in the riots’ (ibid. 407).

³¹ For this point and a more detailed examination of the whole problem see Transactions (1956), 106–8.

³² See the evidence of Robert Jones, Esq., J.P., of Fanmouth Castle, Glam., at McQuirk's and Balfe's subsequent trial for murder at the Old Bailey in Jan. 1769 (Old Bailey Proceedings (1769), 69, cit. in Guild. Misc. (1957), 13, n. 92).

³³ Gent[leman’s] Mag[azine] (1737), 374.

³⁴ ‘London Riots, 1736’, 19–20.

³⁵ ibid. 21.

³⁶ See, e.g., Walpole's, HoraceLetters, VII, 408.Google Scholar

³⁷ Transactions (1956), 100–2.

³⁸ The Act levied a duty of 20s. per gallon on all ‘ spirituous liquors’ sold by retailers and obliged innkeepers, brandy-shopkeepers and others dealing in spirits to hold a £50 licence (Commons Journals, XII, 585–7).

³⁹ ‘London Riots, 1736’, 20—1, 14, 3—4.

⁴⁰ A circular letter addressed to a Mr Moor, distiller of Long Ditch, Westminster, claimed that the Gin Act ‘struck at the very roots of Property’ and was ‘a prelude to general Excise next Session’ (ibid. 16).

⁴¹ ‘London Riots, 1736’, 22.

⁴² Gent. Mag. (1736), 357, 425, 489, 554, 612, 676. Unfortunately the price of the wheaten peck-loaf (17 lb. 6 oz.), quoted daily at the Assize of Bread in London, is not given for this period.

⁴³ For a fuller discussion, see Guild. Misc. (1957), 23—4.

⁴⁴ Postgate, R. W., That Devil Wilkes (2nd edn., 1956), 158.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Horace Walpole even wrote that sailors petitioning Parliament for higher wages on 11 May ‘declared for the King and Parliament and beat down and drove away Wilkes’s mob’ (Letters, v, 100).

⁴⁶ See Guild. Misc. (1957), 15–20.

⁴⁷ ibid. 23.

⁴⁸ Annual Register (1768), 96.

⁴⁹ Cit. Brooke, John, The Chatham Administration 1766–1768 (1957), 357–8.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Guild. Misc. (1957), 23.

⁵¹ The price of the wheaten peck-loaf, 2s. 9d. in Oct.—Nov. 1767 and Feb.—July 1768, was Is. IId. in Jan.-June 1780 and only rose to 2s. in July (ibid. 23, n. 192).

⁵² Transactions (1956), 112—13.

⁵³ ibid. 107—8.

⁵⁴ ibid. 108–9.

⁵⁵ Guild. Misc. (1956), 32–3.

⁵⁶ For further evidence see Transactions (1956), 111–12.

⁵⁷ For prices of bread and wheat, see the Gent. Mag. for the appropriate years.

⁵⁸ For English rural and provincial riots of the period, see Wearmouth, R. W., Methodism and the Common People of the Eighteenth Century (1945), chaps. 1–3; for Paris, see my The Crowd in the French Revolution (Oxford, 1959).Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Guild. Misc. (1957), 5–6.

⁶⁰ Transactions (1956), 100–1; Guild. Misc. (1957), loc. cit.

⁶¹ Coxe, op. cit. in, 349; ‘London Riots, 1736’, 15–16 (my italics.)

⁶² Guild. Misc. (1957), 13.

⁶³ Guild. Misc. (1956), 38 ff. The St Marylebone Associates, headed as they were by seven noblemen and fifty-seven gentlemen and esquires, were more in the nature of a milice aristo-cratique (ibid. 40—1).

⁶⁴ See the Court Minutes for July-Oct. 1780 of the Apothecaries, Barber-Surgeons, Blacksmiths, Butchers, Carpenters, Cordwainers, Dyers and Fishmongers (Guild. Lib., MSS. 8201/13, 5258/8, 6443/9, 4329/20, 7353/7, 4329/20, 8154/4, 5571/4). Among twenty-two Companies whose Court Minutes and/or Account Books I have examined for this period and for this purpose, the Upholders at first voted £20 towards the cost of the upkeep of troops and later rescinded it (MS. 7141/2), and the Grocers alone seem to have been fully co-operative (MSS. 7302/10, 7305/1).

⁶⁵ ‘London Riots, 1736’, 9.

⁶⁶ Gent. Mag. (1774), 283, 444; (1775), 348; Lecky, W. E. H., A History of England in the Eighteenth Century (7 vols., 1906), Iv, 299–300.Google Scholar The Earl of Shelburne was repeating this demand as late as June 1780 (Christie, I. R., The End of North’s Ministry 1780–1782 (1958), 25).Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Guild. Misc. (1956), 37.

⁶⁸ Transactions (1956), 96, 113.

⁶⁹ Gash, Norman, ‘ English Reform and the French Revolution in the General Election of 1830’, in Essays presented to Sir Lewis Namier, 258–88.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ George, M. D., London Life in the XVIII Century (1925), 117–19.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Transactions (1956), no.

⁷² Namier, Sir Lewis, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III (1957), 101–2.Google Scholar

⁷³ Guild. Misc. (1957), 10, n. 53.

⁷⁴ Lecky, , loc. cit.; Gent. Mag. (1774), 283, 444.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Transactions (1956), 113, n. 1.

⁷⁶ See Maccoby, S., English Radicalism 1762–1785 (1955), 79–88.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ Gent. Mag. (1776), 528. Within a month, however, under Sawbridge’s successor, Sir Thomas Halifax, the Press gangs were once more freely operating in the City (ibid. 530).

⁷⁸ Cit. Dr L. S. Sutherland, op. cit. 73.