GREEN RIBBON CLUB, THE, had its at the King's Head tavern in Chancery lane, and was originally known as the "King's Head club." Founded about the year 1675 as a resort for members of the political party hostile to the court, the name was changed about 1679 to the Green Ribbon club, in reference to the bow or "bob" of green ribbon which the members were in the habit of wearing in their hats, as a badge convenient for mutual recognition in street brawls. The president was either Lord Shaftesbury or Sir Robert Peyton, M.P. for Middlesex, who afterwards turned informer. Roger North tells us that "they ad mitted all strangers that were confidingly introduced, for it was a main end of their institutions to make proselytes, especially of the raw estated youth newly come to town." Thomas Dangerfield (q.v.) supplied the court with a list of 48 members of the Green Ribbon club in 1679; and although Dangerfield's numerous per juries invalidate his unsupported evidence, it receives some con firmation from a list given to James II. by Nathan Wade in 1685 (Harleian mss. 6845), while a number of more eminent person ages are mentioned in The Cabal, a satire published in 168o, as also frequenting the club. Among those who appear to have been members are the duke of Monmouth, Halifax, Shaftesbury, Buck ingham, Macclesfield, Cavendish, Bedford, Herbert of Cherbury; Scroop, Mulgrave and Shadwell; Falconbridge, Henry Ireton and Claypole ; and rogues o'f 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 Subjects' Litany, 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.
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 quali fications to be chosen or rejected." The club was responsible for promoting the Exclusion bill ; and the popish plot was deliberately stimulated by members who went about in silk armour, supposed to be bullet proof, and carrying in their pockets the weapon of offence invented by Stephen College and known as the "Prot estant flail." In the general election of Jan. and Feb. 1679, the Whig interest throughout the country was managed and controlled by a committee sitting at the club in Chancery lane; and the agi tation of the petitioners in 1679 was engineered there. The peti tions 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 168o and 1681, on the anniversary of Queen Elizabeth's accession, were also or ganized by the club. 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 however, short-lived. The fiasco of the Exclusion bill damaged its influence, and after the flight of Shaftesbury, the confiscation of the City of London's charter, and the discovery of the Rye House plot, in which many of its members were implicated, it declined rapidly. In 1685 John Ayloffe, who was found to have been "a clubber 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" bon fires had been kindled; and although the tavern was still in ex istence in the time of Queen Anne, the club which made it famous did not survive the accession of James II. The precise situation of the King's Head tavern, described by North as "over against the Inner Temple gate," was at the corner of Fleet street and Chan cery lane, on the east side of the latter thoroughfare.
See Roger North, Examen (1740) ; Anchitell Grey, Debates of the House of Commons, 1667-84, vol. viii. (1760 ; Sir John Bramston, Autobiography (1845) ; Sir George Sitwell, The First Whig (Scar borough, 1894) , containing an illustration of the Green Ribbon Club and a pope-burning procession.