He accepted the professorship of English literature and composition at Queen's College, Harley Street, of which Mr. Maurice was president, and went up to London once a week to lecture. He became the devoted friend of Thomas Hughes, author of "School Days at Rugby;" of Bishop Stanley of Norwich and his distinguished son, Dean Stanley, and of many others. During this year, 1847-48, on account of great distress among the people, there were riots in London and in other large cities. The troops were called out under Wellington to disperse the Chartists, who demanded a "People's Charter" from Parliament, with more rights for the laborers. Kingsley threw himself heartily into the conflict. He wrote a conciliatory letter to the "Workmen of England," which was posted up in London. "You say that you are wronged. Many of you are wronged, and many besides yourselves know it. Almost all men who have heads and hearts know it--above all, the working clergy know it. They go into your houses; they see the shameful filth and darkness in which you are forced to live crowded together; they see your children growing up in ignorance and temptation, for want of fit education; they see intelligent and well-read men among you, shut out from a freeman's just right of voting; and they see, too, the noble patience and self-control with which you have as yet borne these evils. They see it, and God sees it." And then he urges them "to turn back from the precipice of riot, which ends in the gulf of universal distrust, stagnation, starvation.... Workers of England, be wise, and then you _must_ be free; for you will be _fit_ to be free." For four years, 1848-52, he wrote for three periodicals, _Politics for the People_, _The Christian Socialist_, and the _Journal of Association_. Many friends and relations begged him to desist from fighting the battles of the people, as such sympathy "was likely to spoil his prospects in life." But he wrote his wife in reference to this matter, "I will not be a liar. I will speak in season and out of season. I will not shun to declare the whole counsel of God.... My path is clear, and I will follow in it. He who died for me, and who gave me you, shall I not trust Him through whatsoever new and strange paths He may lead me?" He always felt "that the party-walls of rank and fashion and money were but a paper prison of our own making, which we might break through any moment by a single hearty and kindly feeling." In the autumn of 1848, while writing "Yeast," a novel which was first published in _Fraser's Magazine_, doing the work at night, when his other duties were finished and the house was still, he broke down, and for months was unable to do more than walk along the seashore and gather shells, even conversation being too exhausting for him. Friends came to show their sympathy and fondness for the great-hearted man--among them Mr. Froude, who met Charlotte, the sister of Mrs. Kingsley, and married her.