Small printed handbills to the same effect were stuck about poor neighbourhoods, and the chance of a cheap loaf, or the love of mischief, caused a mob of over a thousand to assemble in Mark Lane by nine in the morning. An hour later, and their number was doubled, and then they began hissing the mealmen, and cornfactors, who were going into the market. This, however, was too tame, and so they fell to hustling, and pelting them with mud. Whenever a Quaker appeared, he was specially selected for outrage, and rolled in the mud; and, filling up the time with window breaking, the riot became somewhat serious—so much so, that the Lord Mayor went to Mark Lane about 11 a.m. with some of his suite. In vain he assured the maddened crowd that their behaviour could in no way affect the market. They only yelled at him, “Cheap bread! Birmingham and Nottingham for ever! Three loaves for eighteenpence,” &c. They even hissed the Lord Mayor, and smashed the windows close by him. This proved more than his lordship could bear, so he ordered the Riot Act to be read. The constables charged the mob, who of course fled, and the Lord Mayor returned to the Mansion House. No sooner had he gone, than the riots began again, and he had to return; but, during the daytime, the mob was fairly quiet. It was when the evening fell, that these unruly spirits again broke out; they routed the constables, broke the windows of several bakers’ shops, and, from one of them, procured a quantity of faggots. Here the civic authorities considered that the riot ought to stop, for, if once the fire fiend was awoke, there was no telling where the mischief might end. So the Lord Mayor invoked the aid of the Tower Ward Volunteers—who had been in readiness all day long, lying _perdu_ in Fishmongers’ Hall—the East India House Volunteers, and part of the London Militia. The volunteers then blocked both ends of Mark Lane, Fenchurch Street, and Billiter Lane (as it was then called). In vain did the mob hoot and yell at them; they stood firm until orders were given them, and then the mob were charged and dispersed—part down Lombard Street, part down Fish Street Hill, over London Bridge, into the Borough. Then peace was once more restored, and the volunteers went unto their own homes.