The Green Ribbon Club was one of the earliest of the loosely combined associations which met from time to time in London taverns or coffeehouses for political purposes in the 17th century. The green ribbon was the badge of the

Levellers The Levellers were a political movement active during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms who were committed to popular sovereignty, extended suffrage, equality before the law and religious tolerance. The hallmark of Leveller thought was its populis ...

in the English Civil Wars, in which many of them had fought, and was an overt reminder of the radical origins of the club's loyalties.

Meetings and name

The club met at the King's Head tavern at Chancery Lane End and therefore was known as the King's Head Club. It seems to have been founded about the year 1675 by men of a political faction hostile to the king's court. These associates wore on their hats a bow, or bob, of green ribbon, as a distinguishing badge useful for the purpose of mutual recognition in street brawls. The name of the club was changed, about 1679, to the Green Ribbon Club. The King's Head Tavern, described by North as "over against" (meaning opposite) the

Inner Temple The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, commonly known as the Inner Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court and is a professional associations for barristers and judges. To be called to the Bar and practise as a barrister in England and ...

Gate, was at the corner of

Fleet Street Fleet Street is a major street mostly in the City of London. It runs west to east from Temple Bar at the boundary with the City of Westminster to Ludgate Circus at the site of the London Wall and the River Fleet from which the street was na ...

and

Chancery Lane Chancery Lane is a one-way street situated in the ward of Farringdon Without in the City of London. It has formed the western boundary of the City since 1994, having previously been divided between the City of Westminster and the London Boroug ...

, on the east side of the latter thoroughfare.

Membership

The frequenters of the club were the extreme faction of the country party, the men who supported

Titus Oates Titus Oates (15 September 1649 – 12/13 July 1705) was an English priest who fabricated the " Popish Plot", a supposed Catholic conspiracy to kill King Charles II. Early life Titus Oates was born at Oakham in Rutland. His father Samuel (1610� ...

, and who were concerned in the

Rye House Plot The Rye House Plot of 1683 was a plan to assassinate King Charles II of England and his brother (and heir to the throne) James, Duke of York. The royal party went from Westminster to Newmarket to see horse races and were expected to make the ...

and

Monmouth's rebellion The Monmouth Rebellion, also known as the Pitchfork Rebellion, the Revolt of the West or the West Country rebellion, was an attempt to depose James II, who in February 1685 succeeded his brother Charles II as king of England, Scotland and Ir ...

. Roger North tells us that they admitted all strangers that were confidingly introduced, for it was the main end of their institutions to make

proselyte The biblical term "proselyte" is an anglicization of the Koine Greek term προσήλυτος (''proselytos''), as used in the Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) for "stranger", i.e. a "newcomer to Israel"; a "sojourner in the land", and in the G ...

s, especially of the raw estated youth newly come to town. According to

Dryden '' John Dryden (; – ) was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who in 1668 was appointed England's first Poet Laureate. He is seen as dominating the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the peri ...

(''

Absalom and Achitophel ''Absalom and Achitophel'' is a celebrated satirical poem by John Dryden, written in heroic couplets and first published in 1681. The poem tells the Biblical tale of the rebellion of Absalom against King David; in this context it is an allego ...

'') drinking was the chief attraction, and the members talked and organized sedition over their cups.

Thomas Dangerfield Thomas Dangerfield (c. 165022 June 1685) was an English conspirator, who became one of the principal informers in the Popish Plot. His violent death at the hands of the barrister Robert Francis was clearly a homicide, although whether th ...

supplied the court with a list of forty-eight members of the Green Ribbon Club in 1679; and although Dangerfield's numerous perjuries make his unsupported evidence worthless, it receives confirmation as regards several names from a list given to James II by Nathan Wade in 1685 (Harleian Manuscript 6845,), while a number of more eminent personages are mentioned in ''The Cabal'', a

satire Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming ...

published in 1680, as also frequenting the club. From such sources it appears that the

Duke of Monmouth Duke is a male title either of a monarch ruling over a duchy, or of a member of royalty, or nobility. As rulers, dukes are ranked below emperors, kings, grand princes, grand dukes, and sovereign princes. As royalty or nobility, they are ranked ...

himself, and statesmen like Halifax,

Shaftesbury Shaftesbury () is a town and civil parish in Dorset, England. It is situated on the A30 road, west of Salisbury, near the border with Wiltshire. It is the only significant hilltop settlement in Dorset, being built about above sea level on a ...

Buckingham Buckingham ( ) is a market town in north Buckinghamshire, England, close to the borders of Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire, which had a population of 12,890 at the 2011 Census. The town lies approximately west of Central Milton Keynes, sou ...

Macclesfield Macclesfield is a market town and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire East in Cheshire, England. It is located on the River Bollin in the east of the county, on the edge of the Cheshire Plain, with Macclesfield Forest to its east ...

, Cavendish, Bedford,

Grey of Warke Baron Grey of Werke (or Warke), of Chillingham in the County of Northumberland, was a title in the Peerage of England. It was created on 11 February 1624 for Sir William Grey, 1st Baronet. He had already been created a baronet, of Chillingham ...

, were among those who fraternized at the King's Head Tavern with third-rate writers such as Scroop, Mulgrave and

Shadwell Shadwell is a district of East London, England, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets , east of Charing Cross. It lies on the north bank of the Thames between Wapping (to the west) and Ratcliff (to the east). This riverside location has meant ...

; with remnants of the

Cromwell Oliver Cromwell (25 April 15993 September 1658) was an English politician and military officer who is widely regarded as one of the most important statesmen in English history. He came to prominence during the 1639 to 1651 Wars of the Three Ki ...

ian régime like

Lord Falconbridge Baron Fauconberg (also Falconberg or Falconbridge) is an hereditary title created twice in the Peerage of England. First created in 1295 when Sir Walter de Fauconberg, an Anglo-Norman, was summoned to parliament. Between 1463 and 1903 the peerag ...

John Claypole John Claypole (21 August 1625 – 26 June 1688)or John Claypoole . was an officer in the Parliamentary army in 1645 during the English Civil War. He was created Lord Claypole by Oliver Cromwell, but this title naturally came to an end with the ...

and Henry Ireton (two sons-in-law and a grandson of the old Protector); with such profligates as Lord Howard of Escrick and Sir Henry Blount; and with scoundrels of the type of Dangerfield and Oates. An allusion to Dangerfield, notorious among his other crimes and treacheries for a seditious paper found in a meal-tub, is found in connection with the club in ''The Loyal Subject's Litany'', one of the innumerable satires of the period, in which occur the lines: :"From the dark-lanthorn Plot, and the Green Ribbon Club From brewing sedition in a sanctified Tub, ''Libera nos, Domine''".

Activities

The club was the headquarters of the Whig opposition to the court, and its members were active promoters of conspiracy and sedition. The president was either

Lord Shaftesbury Earl of Shaftesbury is a title in the Peerage of England. It was created in 1672 for Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 1st Baron Ashley, a prominent politician in the Cabal then dominating the policies of King Charles II. He had already succeeded his fa ...

or Sir Robert Peyton, MP for

Middlesex Middlesex (; abbreviation: Middx) is a Historic counties of England, historic county in South East England, southeast England. Its area is almost entirely within the wider urbanised area of London and mostly within the Ceremonial counties of ...

, who later turned informer. The Green Ribbon Club served both as a debating society and an intelligence department for the Whig faction. Questions under discussion in parliament were here threshed out by the members over their tobacco and ale; the latest news from Westminster or the city was retailed in the tavern, for some or others were continually coming and going, says Roger North, to import or export news and stories. Slander of the court or the Tories was invented in the club and sedulously spread over the town, and measures were concerted there for pushing on the

Exclusion Bill The Exclusion Crisis ran from 1679 until 1681 in the reign of King Charles II of England, Scotland and Ireland. Three Exclusion bills sought to exclude the King's brother and heir presumptive, James, Duke of York, from the thrones of England, Sco ...

, or for promoting the pretensions of the Duke of Monmouth. The popular credulity as to Catholic outrages in the days of the

Popish Plot The Popish Plot was a fictitious conspiracy invented by Titus Oates that between 1678 and 1681 gripped the Kingdoms of England and Scotland in anti-Catholic hysteria. Oates alleged that there was an extensive Catholic conspiracy to assassinate C ...

was stimulated by the scandalmongers of the club, whose members went about in silk armour, supposed to be bulletproof, in which any man dressed up was as safe as a house, says North, for it was impossible to strike him for laughing; while in their pockets, for street and crowd-work, they carried the weapon of offence invented by Stephen College and known as the Protestant Flail. The genius of Shaftesbury found in the Green Ribbon Club the means of constructing the first systematized political organization in England. North relates that every post conveyed the news and tales legitimated there, as also the malign constructions of all the good actions of the government, especially to places where elections were depending, to shape men's characters into fit qualifications to be chosen or rejected. In the general election of January and February 1679 the Whig interest throughout the country was managed and controlled by a committee sitting at the club in Chancery Lane. The club's organizing activity was also effective in the agitation of the Petitioners in 1679. This celebrated movement was engineered by the Green Ribbon Club with all the skill and energy of a modern caucus. The petitions were prepared in London and sent down to every part of the country, where paid canvassers took them from house to house collecting signatures with an air of authority that made refusal difficult. The great pope-burning processions in 1680 and 1681, on the anniversary of Queen Elizabeth's accession, were also organized by the club.In fact, the actual Pope in Rome,

Pope Innocent XI Pope Innocent XI ( la, Innocentius XI; it, Innocenzo XI; 16 May 1611 – 12 August 1689), born Benedetto Odescalchi, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 21 September 1676 to his death on August 12, 1689. Poli ...

, was a staunch foe of the French King Louis XIV, and far from promoting the Duke of York gaining the throne, he would ten years later openly endorse the

Glorious Revolution The Glorious Revolution; gd, Rèabhlaid Ghlòrmhor; cy, Chwyldro Gogoneddus , also known as the ''Glorieuze Overtocht'' or ''Glorious Crossing'' in the Netherlands, is the sequence of events leading to the deposition of King James II and ...

. They ended by the lighting of a huge bonfire in front of the club windows; and as they proved an effective means of inflaming the religious passions of the populace, it was at the Green Ribbon Club that the mobile vulgus first received the nickname of the mob. The activity of the club was short-lived.

Decline

The failure to carry the

, one of the favourite projects of the faction, was a blow to its influence, which declined rapidly after the flight of Shaftesbury, the confiscation of the city of London's charter, and the discovery of the

, in which many of its members were implicated. In 1685 John Ayloffe, who was found to have been a dubber at the King's Head Tavern and a green-ribbon man, was executed in front of the premises on the spot where the pope-burning bonfires had been kindled; and although the tavern was still in existence in the time of Queen Anne, the Green Ribbon Club which made it famous did not survive the accession of James II.

Notes

References

;Attribution * Endnotes: **Sir

George Sitwell Sir George Reresby Sitwell, 4th Baronet (27 January 1860 – 9 July 1943) was a British antiquarian writer and Conservative politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1885 and 1895. Biography Sitwell was born in London, the son of Sir Si ...

, ''The First Whig (Scarborough, 1894)'', containing an illustration of the Green Ribbon Club and a pope burning procession; ** Roger North, ''Examen'' (London, 1740); **

Anchitell Grey The Hon. Anchitell Grey (c. 1624 – 8 July 1702) was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons in two periods between 1665 and 1695. Although he spoke rarely, he kept a detailed diary of proceedings in the House of Commons, summaris ...

, ''Debates of the House of Commons'', 1667-1684, vol. viii. (10 vols., London, 1769); **Sir

John Bramston, the younger Sir John Bramston, the younger (September 1611 – 4 February 1700), was an English lawyer and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1660 to 1679. The son of Sir John Bramston, the elder and his first wife Bridget Moundeford, daughter o ...

, Autobiography (Camden Soc., London, 1845). * Humphreys, Arthur Lee (1892), ''Some sources of history for the Monmouth rebellion & the Bloody assizes'', Taunton : Athenaeum Pres
(Hathi Trust)