terribly wounded. One of them, Vaughan, a seditious weaver, to whom the inside of Bridewell was not unfamiliar, was stretched dead on the threshold by a shot from the end of the passage of Read’s house. The Jacks declared that Read was the murderer. The coroner’s jury were as much divided as the mob and the gentlemen who met at Read’s mug-house, ‘only to drink prosperity to the Church of England, as by law Establisht.’ Half were for a verdict of wilful murder against Read. The other half stuck out for justifiable homicide. An adjournment ensued, to enable each side to sleep, think, and drink over it. Meanwhile, the husseydom of Fleet Street, a sisterhood rough and readily named in another way by the papers, sustained the riot in the Jacobite interest. These nymphs were described quaintly as ‘walking the streets a nights without impunity by constables.’ [Sidenote: _A JACOBITE JURY._] At the judicial enquiry, the evidence was against Read, despite his loyalty. Witnesses swore to the attack, repulse, devastation, robbery of till and liquor, and also to the fact that Read had deliberately shot Vaughan as the former stood at his door, and the latter, an unarmed and innocent victim, as the witnesses with Jacobite bias described him, was standing doing no harm and thinking no evil, in front of the attacking force. The coroner’s jury, on reassembling, proved more Jacobite than ever. They would agree to no other verdict but that of wilful murder against Read. The coroner refused to receive this verdict, and while the dispute was pending, private individuals with Hanoverian sentiments subscribed handsome sums, and awarded liberal compensation to the owners of mug-houses who had suffered so much for their integrity and loyalty, and who met only to drink health to the royal family and ‘good luck to the Church of England by law establisht.’ [Sidenote: _THE MUG-HOUSES._] Then arose an individual, the proto-special correspondent. He made a tour of the mug-houses, chiefly because the Jacobites had accused the guests of drinking ‘damnation to the Church,’ and similar consummation to the prelates. This early original correspondent gives testimony to the contrary. ‘He was struck into an amazement,’ he tells us, ‘at the piety, charity, courtesy, and good liquor which abounded in all the Mug houses in London.’ We hear too that some baser sort of Tory would go to mug-houses to decoy Whig gentlemen by ‘damning and cursing Queen Anne.’ One Adams, a medical student or apprentice, in Lothbury, tried this game, but he had to ask pardon for it on his knees, and was afterwards sent to the Compter to digest his humiliation. At length, the coroner’s jury, again suffering political changes, declared themselves, seven for wilful murder; five for manslaughter. The perplexed coroner washed his hands of it, and sent the matter for decision to the judges at the Old Bailey; when Read narrowly escaped the gallows; but Beau, and a few others, swung at Tyburn.