Throughout the year the Nonjurors continued to be harassed by the Government. Their chapels were pointed out by the Whig press to the mob, for destruction. Sometimes the pulpit was protected by a burly butcher or two. No man was admitted who did not wear a black ribbon at his button-hole. Every woman was suspected who came to divine service without a black necklace. Loyal officials, notwithstanding, would force their way in, tender the oath of allegiance to the congregation, and arrest all those who declined to take it, unless they could show they had been already sworn. When a report was circulated that the Nonjurors had ‘some design’ afoot, the Whig press piously hoped they ‘might all be blasted, like their departed brother, _Sheppard_!’ [Sidenote: _A WHIG WHIPT._] One at least of these pious loyalists came to grief himself. His name was Burridge. He was editor (‘writer’) or sub-editor (‘corrector’) of one of the three ‘Weekly Journals’――that one which had for its second name ‘The British Gazetteer.’ Loyal and pious Burridge got so drunk in a tavern as to lose all control over his tongue. He let it loose in the utterance of inexpressibly horrible blasphemies, for which he was indicted and found guilty. Loyal as he was, Burridge did not escape. His own paper very coolly recorded that he had, on such a morning, been whipt from the New Church in the Strand to Charing Cross, and then sent to prison for a month, there further to remain till he had paid a fine of 20_s._ The ‘Jacks’ were jubilant, and cheered lustily when the hangman ‘laced’ the poor wretch’s back with his whip, as Burridge passed at the cart’s tail slowly along the Strand. These ‘Jacks’ who gloried in seeing a blasphemous Whig thus mauled were not very religious people themselves. There was complaint being constantly made that Jacobites who went through the formality of attending church――and particularly the ladies――made a practice of laughing, sneering, or otherwise showing their contempt, whenever the king and royal family were prayed for. [Sidenote: _TREASON IN THE PULPIT._]