ABSTRACT
Shortened from the Latin phrase mobile vulgus; 'the mob' was first used to denote rioters in London during the Exclusion Crisis. Many types of riots were unlikely to result in prosecutions, especially political disturbances and incidents in which crowds apprehended and punished suspected criminals. Nevertheless, the massive increase in the number of riots prosecuted during this period could be indicative of a significant change in the actual level of disorder in London. The London 'mob' was composed of a cross section of the London population who were likely to be in the streets; most, but not all, of its members were from the middle and lower classes. London riots shared many characteristics with the rural disorders studied by E. P. Thompson and others. In his influential study of English food riots, Thompson provided a model for understanding rural disorder: 'It is possible to detect in almost every eighteenth-century crowd action some legitimizing notion'.
