The genius of Shaftesbury found in the Green Ribbon Club the means of constructing the first systematized political organization in England. North relates that "every post conveyed the news and tales legitimated there, as also the malign constructions of all the good actions of the government, especially to places where elections were depending, to shape men's characters into fit qualifications to be chosen or rejected." In the general election of January and February 1679 the Whig interest throughout the country was managed and controlled by a committee sitting at the club in Chancery Lane. The club's organizing activity was also notably effective in the agitation of the Petitioners in 1679. This celebrated movement was engineered from the Green Ribbon Club with all the skill and energy of a modern caucus. The petitions were prepared in London and sent down to every part of the country, where paid canvassers took them from house to house collecting signatures with an air of authority that made refusal difficult. The great "pope-burning" processions in 1680 and 1681, on the anniversary of Queen Elizabeth's accession, were also organized by the club. They ended by the lighting of a huge bon-fire in front of the club windows; and as they proved an effective means of inflaming the religious passions of the populace, it was at the Green Ribbon Club that the _mobile vulgus_ first received the nickname of "the mob." The activity of the club was, however, short-lived. The failure to carry the Exclusion Bill, one of the favourite projects of the faction, was a blow to its influence, which declined rapidly after the flight of Shaftesbury, the confiscation of the city of London's charter, and the discovery of the Rye House Plot, in which many of its members were implicated. In 1685 John Ayloffe, who was found to have been "a clubber at the King's Head Tavern and a green-ribon man," was executed in front of the premises on the spot where the "pope-burning" bon-fires had been kindled; and although the tavern was still in existence in the time of Queen Anne, the Green Ribbon Club which made it famous did not survive the accession of James II. The precise situation of the King's Head Tavern, described by North as "over against the Inner Temple Gate," was at the corner of Fleet Street and Chancery Lane, on the east side of the latter thoroughfare. See Sir George Sitwell, _The First Whig_ (Scarborough, 1894), containing an illustration of the Green Ribbon Club and a pope-burning procession; Roger North, _Examen_ (London, 1740); Anchitell Grey, _Debates of the House of Commons_, 1667-1684, vol. viii. (10 vols., London, 1769); Sir John Bramston, _Autobiography_ (Camden Soc., London, 1845). (R. J. M.)