Irish night

The Irish Night was a name given by Londoners to the period of hysteria in that city after James II fled London during the Revolution of 1688.

James left London on 11 December 1688, during widespread rioting targeting the homes of ambassadors from Catholic countries and the homes and businesses of Catholic Londoners. The hysteria grew when rumours spread that James's Irish army, recently disbanded without their final pay, was converging on London with a plan to sack the city. The inaccurate rumours were of the sort that English Protestants had been fed for years about Ireland.

Terror spread through the city on 12 December. The militia assembled and the residents of the city barricaded major streets. Some bands of the unpaid and starving Irish soldiers had actually been seen in the countryside, but they only begged for food and a way to return home to Ireland, and no violence was reported. The next day (13 December 1688) the rumors were discovered to be false, and the city returned to relative calm; rioters destroyed huge amounts of Catholics' property, but none were killed.

Fear of the Irish spread through towns and cities elsewhere in England and Wales, peaking on 14 and 15 December, but continuing in some places as late as 19 December.

James was returned to London against his will on 16 December to rousing acclaim, but soon fled again, this time to France.

Comparisons are sometimes drawn between the Irish fright of 1688 in England and the "Great Fear" of 1789 in France.

References

• Ashley, Maurice, The Glorious Revolution of 1688, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1966, p. 172 ISBN 0-340-00896-2
• Macaulay, Thomas Babington, The History of England, Penguin Books, 1986, see pp. 283-285 ISBN 0-14-043133-0
• Jones, George Hilton, "The Irish Fright of 1688: Real Violence and Imagined Massacre," Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, vol. 55, no. 132 (Nov. 1982), pp. 148-153.