The copies of Shaftesbury’s speech intended for such fatal use in Scotland were said to have been made in the Green Ribbon Club.[420] That famous society, founded in the year 1675, quickly acquired ascendency over the Whig party. To-day it has been almost forgotten; its influence was unknown to the classic historians of England, who were in politics mostly Whig; but during seven tumultuous years of English history it played a part that can only be compared to the work of the more notorious Jacobin organisation of a century later across the Channel. The club met at the King’s Head Tavern at the corner of Chancery Lane and Fleet Street. Its character may be known at once from the fact that its members organised and paid for the imposing ceremonies of pope burning, by which the most fiendish lies of Oates were yearly sustained and the worst passions of the London mob, a word, it may be noted, itself derived from the club, systematically inflamed. Oates himself was a member, and Aaron Smith, his legal adviser; and under the leadership of Shaftesbury the club was filled with men of the same kidney, who crowded on to the balcony with pipes in their mouths and wigs laid aside to witness the papal holocaust with which each great procession ended opposite their windows. Here was the fountain of the inner counsels of the Whig party and the seat of its executive. Within the walls of the club the decision had been taken to agitate for the dissolution of Parliament after the long prorogation of 1677; here a few years later the Rye House conspiracy was schemed; here the actual assassination plot was hatched. Over the country the Green Ribbon Club enjoyed a profound influence. It was the centre of the party pamphleteers who devoted keen ability to incite the nation and defame the government, and their productions were scattered far and wide by means of a highly effective service of correspondents. While policy was debated and action resolved by the chiefs of the club, their agents at the coffee-houses in London and throughout the country obeyed orders from headquarters. At the elections their activity was unparalleled. Tracts poured into the constituencies. Industrious agents attacked the character of the court candidates and firmly organised the national opposition. It was the Green Ribbon Club which introduced the “Protestant flail” to London and clothed the town in silk armour as a defence against the expected daggers of papists. The club almost usurped the functions of Parliament. Many members of that body belonged to it, attended its consultations, took their cue from its decisions. Agents thronged the lobby of the House of Commons, posting members with arguments for debate, whipping in sluggards to a division, carrying the latest news back to the club. Men of all classes and various character belonged to the society, broken scoundrels and wealthy statesmen, pious enthusiasts and tired profligates, the remains of the Cromwellian