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Moral Panics, the Media and the Law in Early Modern England pp 221–244Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

The British Jacobins: Folk Devils in the Age of Counter-Revolution?

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Abstract

According to Edmund Burke, on 29 October 1795 the streets of London from St James’s Palace to the House of Lords were the stage for enacting a diabolical and dangerous performance. It was the day, he said, that ‘one of the most violent and dangerous seditions broke out …. menacing to the publick security, endangering the sacred person of the King, and violating in the most audacious manner the authority of Parliament’.1 As George III made his way to and from the opening of parliament, ‘a murderous yell’ reverberated through the crowded public thoroughfares along which the royal procession made its way.2 The ‘desperate Mob, consisting of the very dregs of the people’,3 greeted the king with impassioned shouts of ‘Down with George!’, ‘No King!’, ‘Bread, bread!’, ‘No Pitt!’. On several occasions, they turned their attention to the state coach, assailing it with mud, stones and other projectiles. One of these missiles made a small hole in a window of the king’s carriage, providing enough evidence to a nervous monarch that he had been shot at by an assassin. While nobody was arrested for the alleged attempt on the king’s life, despite the offer of a reward for information leading to the conviction of the regicide, the authorities concocted a range of charges to apprehend five men from the massive crowd of 150,000 to 200,000 people. One of the detainees was Kidd Wake, a twenty-seven-year-old journeyman printer, who was originally charged with high treason.

… the public mind cannot be long abused by delusions, supported only by the vague and unfounded assertions of a faction, however powerful.

John Thelwall (The Speech of John Thelwall, at the Second Meeting of the London Corresponding Society … November 12, 1795 (1795), p. iii)

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Notes

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Authors
  1. Michael T. Davis
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Adelaide, Australia

    David Lemmings (Professor of History) & Claire Walker (Senior Lecturer in History) (Professor of History) &  (Senior Lecturer in History)

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© 2009 Michael T. Davis

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Davis, M.T. (2009). The British Jacobins: Folk Devils in the Age of Counter-Revolution?. In: Lemmings, D., Walker, C. (eds) Moral Panics, the Media and the Law in Early Modern England. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230274679_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230274679_12

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-35806-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-0-230-27467-9

  • eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)

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