ABSTRACT
In the early hours of 13 December 1688, there was an unnerving conclusion to the disorder which had gripped London for the previous day and a half. Ever since news of James’s flight had spread on the 11th, mobs had vented their anger on papist targets. The embassies of Catholic powers had been torched by angry crowds; the king’s Catholic printer, Henry Hills, had seen his works go up in flames; and the night sky had been lit by a huge bonfire on Lincoln’s Inn Fields fuelled by the furnishings and ornaments of Romish chapels. Now, past midnight on the second evening of rioting, rumours began to spread that a huge band of Irish troops had destroyed Uxbridge and were marching on London to slaughter its inhabitants. Within half an hour, nearly 100,000 people were on the streets. Panicking, banging drums, and running backwards and forwards with no plan or organisation, they enforced an illumination of the town by demanding that all householders fill their windows with candles and barracking those who did not do so immediately. It was, one witness recorded ‘the greatest uproar that ever perhaps was known in London’. 1 The disturbance did not subside until a group of peers meeting at the Guildhall took vigorous action. They sent horsemen along the road to Uxbridge to verify the reports of an Irish army, and then arranged to calm the populace down when these outriders found no such force. By dawn, Londoners who had spent the night racing along the city’s thoroughfares, or nervously guarding their own front doors, began to retire to bed. From then, tiredness took its toll. The following days were more subdued as overexcited crowds found they could no longer throng without proper sleep.
