Popular Politics and Public Policy: The Excise Riot at Smithfield in February 1647 and its Aftermath

Abstract

On 15 February 1647 hostility to the excise flared up at Smithfield market in London. A riot occurred when a purchaser of livestock refused to pay his excise and attempted to remove his livestock without doing so. When he was stopped by ‘the guard’ a crowd gathered in his defence. It was dispersed but another crowd gathered later burning down the excise office and ‘80. or 100.li [was] scattered and purloined’. The rioters were said to have drawn encouragement from excise disturbances in Norwich shortly before. The crowd that gathered later was led by butchers one of whom, William Taylor, was reported to have said that he would ‘bear down the Excise by Force’. The Kingdom's Weekly Intelligencer could not ‘heare of any man killed’, but remarked that the tumult ‘did arise to such a hight that many of the Officers of the excise were beaten, [and] their books torn’. The Weekly Account, emphasizing the seriousness of the riot, reported that the ‘Lord Mayor and Sherriffes of the City were forced to come in person to pacifie the tumult’.