1715 England riots
In the spring and summer of 1715 a series of riots occurred in England in which High Church mobs attacked over forty Dissenting meeting-houses.
According to Nicholas Rogers, the High Church clergy of the Church of England played a role in fomenting discontent: they were "by reputation the progenitors of mob violence" and after George's accession the "high-flying clergy strove desperately to revive the flagging fortunes of their party, mobilising their congregations in defence of the Anglican inheritance and warning them of the dangers of Whig rule".
[6] The anniversary of Queen Anne's accession day and William III's death, 8 March, was met in London with bell-ringing, flag-waving and closed shops.
Referring to the 1710 Sacheverell riots, they also proposed "to sing the Second Part of the Sacheverell-Tune by pulling down [Dissenting] Meeting Houses" but they were persuaded not to do so.
In response, undergraduates and townsfolk attacked those celebrating George's birthday and broke into the Presbyterian meeting-house and made a bonfire of its pulpit, pews and window, with an effigy of its minister.
[10][11] On 10 June Anglican churches in Clerkenwell and St Dunstan-in-the-West rang their bells to celebrate James Stuart's birthday, a Dissenting meeting place in Blackfriars was gutted by the mob, and James's declaration was nailed to the door of the former Dissenting chapel in Lincoln's Inn Fields (which had been destroyed five years previously during the Sacheverell riots).
[14] Robert Holland of Bilston urged the mob: “Now boys goe on we will have no King but James the third & he will be here in a month and wee will drive the old Rogue into his Country again to sow Turnipps”.
The historian Paul Monod said "[t]his methodical destruction must have passed on to Dissenters the chilling message that the Manchester Jacobite crowd wanted their presence totally extinguished.
[18] Lord Cobham's dragoons eventually restored order but the rioting had by then spread to Monton and Houghton, where Dissenting chapels were attacked on 13 June.
[18] In Shrewsbury during the riots a paper was posted: We Gentlemen of the Loyal Mob of Shrewsbury, do issue out this Proclamation to all Dissenters from the Church of England, of what Kind or Denomination soever, whether Independent, Baptists or Quakers: If you, or any of you, do encourage or suffer any of that damnable Faction called Presbyterians, to assemble themselves amongst you, in any of your Conventicles, at the time of Divine Worship, you may expect to meet with the same that they have been treated with.
[14]Paul Monod has said that the hostility shown towards the Dissenters, especially Presbyterians, was astonishing and that "[p]opular Tory rage...centred on religious rather than secular objects – in particular, on the hated meeting-houses".
