f all," he says, "is the 'Mug-House
Club,' in Long Acre, where every Wednesday and Saturday a mixture of
gentlemen, lawyers, and tradesmen meet in a great room, and are seldom
under a hundred. They have a grave old gentleman in his own grey hairs,
now within a few months of ninety years old, who is their president, and
sits in an armed-chair some steps higher than the rest of the company,
to keep the whole room in order. A harp always plays all the time at the
lower end of the room, and every now and then one or other of the
company rises and entertains the rest with a song; and, by-the-by, some
are good masters. Here is nothing drank but ale; and every gentleman
hath his separate mug, which he chalks on the table where he sits as it
is brought in, and everyone retires when he pleases, as in a
coffee-house. The room is always so diverted with songs, and drinking
from one table to another to one another's healths, that there is no
room for politics, or anything that can sour conversation. One must be
up by seven to get room, and after ten the company are, for the most
part, gone. This is a winter's amusement that is agreeable enough to a
stranger for once or twice, and he is well diverted with the different
humours when the mugs overflow."

An attack on a Whig mug-house, the "Roebuck," in Cheapside, June, 1716,
was followed by a still more stormy assault on the Salisbury Court
mug-house in July of the same year. The riot began on a Friday, but the
Whigs kept a resolute face, and the mob dwindled away. On the Monday
they renewed the attack, declaring that the Whigs were drinking "Down
with the Church," and reviling the memory of Queen Anne; and they swore
they would level the house and make a bonfire of the timber in the
middle of Fleet Street. But the wily Whigs, barricading the door,
slipped out a messenger at a back door, and sent to a mug-house in
Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, for reinforcements. Presently a band of
Whig bludgeon-men arrived, and the Whigs of Salisbury Court then
snatched up pokers, tongs, pitchforks, and legs of stools, and sallied
out on the Tory mob, who soon fled before them. For two days the Tory
mob seethed, fretted, and swore revenge. But the report of a squadron
of horse being drawn up at Whitehall ready to ride down on the City
kept them gloomily quiet. On the third day a Jacobite, named Vaughan,
formerly a Bridewell boy, led them on to revenge; and on Tuesday they
stormed the place in ear