Priestley Riots in Birmingham

Background. Birmingham had a long history of rioting, and in 1714 and 1715 a "Church-and-King" mob had attacked Dissenters—Protestants who did not adhere to the Church of England. By the late 1780s, Birmingham Dissenters were agitating for repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, which barred them from Oxford or Cambridge and from public office. Repeal efforts failed in 1787, 1789, and 1790, and the resulting agitation dissolved the semblance of unity among the town's elite.

Causes and Grievances. William Hutton, in his Narrative of the Riots in Birmingham (1816), identified five sources of religious friction: disputes over including Priestley's books in the local public library; Dissenters' attempts to repeal the Test and Corporation Acts; religious controversy, particularly involving Priestley; an "inflammatory hand-bill"; and a dinner celebrating the French Revolution. Priestley himself, in An Appeal to the Public on the Subject of the Birmingham Riots (1791), revealed that disputes over the local library, Sunday Schools, and church attendance had divided Dissenters from Anglicans. Economic complaints by lower-class rioters and their Anglican leaders against middle-class Dissenters compounded these tensions.

Revolutionary Context. Dissenters largely supported the French Revolution, which questioned monarchy's role in government. Most Britons initially celebrated the 1789 storming of the Bastille. After Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) broke with liberal Whig colleagues to support the French aristocracy, a pamphlet war began. Radicals such as Priestley, William Godwin, Thomas Paine, and Mary Wollstonecraft argued for republicanism and broader reform, while liberals like Charles James Fox supported the Revolution and religious toleration. In summer 1791, Priestley and his friends planned a Warwickshire Constitutional Society for electoral reform, matching societies in Chester and Manchester.

Aftermath and Responsibility. Priestley and other Dissenters blamed the government, believing William Pitt and his supporters had instigated the riots, though evidence suggests local Birmingham officials organised them. If Birmingham's Anglican elite mounted a concerted effort, it was likely the work of minister Benjamin Spencer, Justice of the Peace Joseph Carles, and attorney-coroner John Brooke. The riots revealed the Anglican gentry's willingness to use violence against Dissenters viewed as potential revolutionaries. James Watt wrote that the riots "divided [Birmingham] into two parties who hate one another mortally."