They smashed the windows that were not illuminated, and they pelted with flints the people who were lighting the candles intended to propitiate them. They stopped coaches, robbed those who rode in them, even of their wigs, and if the victims would not shout for Queen Anne, the rascalry stript them nearly naked. Right into a Sunday morning in April, this orthodox crew of incendiaries went about plundering, while they shouted God bless the Queen and High Church! They drank horribly the whole time, and toasted Bolingbroke frequently, but never King George. High Churchmen would not blame riot when it took the shape of burning down dissenters’ chapels, and the pious villains danced to the accompaniment of ‘High Church and Ormond.’ At Oxford, town and gown overstepped limits observed in London. In one of the many tumults there, before they burnt in the street the furniture of one of the dissenting ‘meeting houses,’ they fastened a Whig Beadle in the pulpit and rolled him about the town till he was bruised in every limb. The Whig papers, thereupon, significantly pointed out to their friends, that there was a nonjuring congregation who met over a coffee-house in Aldersgate Street. These people, it was said, prayed for ‘the rightful king,’ and such wretches, of course, merited all that a Whig mob could inflict on them. One of the most dangerous symptoms of the time occurred on the arrest of some strapping young ballad wenches, who were taken into custody, opposite Somerset House, for singing ballads of a licentious nature against King George. The soldiers on guard rescued the fair prisoners; and when much indignation was expressed at this fact, the officers excused the men on the ground that they did not interfere on political grounds, but out of gallantry to the ladies. [Sidenote: _BALLAD-SINGERS._] The street ballad-singers were irrepressible. They were the more audacious as they often sang words which were innocent in their expression, but mischievous by right application. The Jacobites were ever apt at fitting old words and tunes to new circumstances. There was a song which was originally written in praise of the Duke of Monmouth. That song which lauded the unhappy nephew of James II. was now revived in honour of that king’s son. ‘Young Jemmy’ was to be heard at the corner of many a street. Groups of listeners and sympathisers gathered round the minstrel who metrically proclaimed that Young Jemmy is a lad that’s royally descended, With ev’ry virtue clad, by ev’ry tongue commended. A German gentleman, who subsequently published his experiences, was astonished at the remissness or lenity of the magistrates generally, but especially towards one arch-offender who, by song, furthered the Pretender’s interests at the corner of Cranbourne Alley. ‘There a fellow stands eternally bawling out his Pye Corner pastorals in behalf of _dear Jemmy, lovely Jemmy_,’ &c. [Sidenote: _POLITICAL SONGS._]