The Alehouse and the Algorithm: From the Glorious Revolution to Britain’s New Censorship

What alehouse informants and 17th-century sedition laws reveal about our modern war on public dissent.

In 1688, England experienced one of the most celebrated transitions of power in its history. The Catholic James II fled the country, and the Protestant William of Orange—invited by English elites—ascended the throne with his wife Mary, daughter of the very king he replaced.

Historians still call it "Glorious" because it was bloodless. But as Edward Vallance reminds us in The Glorious Revolution, the reality on the ground was anything but tranquil. While Parliament rebranded rebellion as liberty, the government quietly waged war against what we now call wrongthink.

Nowhere was this more evident than in the alehouses of England—the 17th-century equivalent of Twitter, talk radio, and the pub roundtable all rolled into one. These were the spaces where political frustration brewed with beer, and where sedition, real or imagined, was feared above all else.

One alehouse customer in Wiltshire, for example, raised a toast "to ye late King James" and was reported for saying that "ye said Hibbert [had] taking [sic] a glass of beer several times in his hands began and proposed severall healths to ye late King James saying withall our present King William was brought in with a East wind and was driven out again by a West wind." A poetic turn of phrase, perhaps, but also one that reportedly compared King William’s forces to “locusts… from off the earth.”

Elsewhere, an informant named Symonds reported that another man had said William was merely an “Elective King” and that “the Late King James would be here again within halfe a yeare.” More scandalously still, the man allegedly claimed that King William was under “the power of the Devill then und[e]r the present [meaning Williamite] Government.”

Statements like these, uttered in passing, after a few pints, in moments of private political despair, were prosecuted as criminal offences. A customer named Ralph Lacey was fined £5 for “speaking scandalous words against the King and Queen.” Others were “fined a further 3s 4d for keeping a ‘disorderly alehouse.’” One could be imprisoned simply for saying that the “present majesties” William and Mary were “a Rouge & A Bastard.”

As Vallance details, many alehouse keepers became reluctant collaborators with the state. Under pressure from local authorities, and fearing for their licences, they reported their customers to the magistrates. “In private homes, too, alcohol acted to loosen tongues and embolden its imbibers to make seditious statements.” The private was becoming political—and punishable.

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The Coffeehouse and the Crown

But the battle for control over speech wasn’t limited to alehouses. London in the 1680s and 1690s was also home to an explosive new space of political exchange: the coffeehouse.

By the time of the Glorious Revolution, there were an estimated over 2,000 coffeehouses in London—densely packed, noisy, argumentative spaces where merchants, writers, spies, and ideologues gathered to consume pamphlets as eagerly as they drank coffee. Unlike the alehouse, which was grounded in local community, the coffeehouse attracted more literate and politically engaged clientele. Here, Whigs and Tories each had their preferred haunts, and the circulation of ideas was fast, dangerous, and uncontrollable.

As Vallance notes and contemporary sources attest, coffeehouses became headquarters of opposition. They were places where the debates over succession, sovereignty, divine right, and foreign alliances unfolded in real time—fuelled by caffeine and subversion.

James II, recognising their power, attempted to clamp down. In 1675, well before his eventual overthrow, a royal proclamation briefly banned coffeehouses entirely, accusing them of spreading “false, malicious and scandalous reports.” Public outcry forced him to withdraw it within days—but the sentiment endured. He continued to push informants into coffeehouses and attempted to license and restrict printers and pamphleteers who supplied them.

Ironically, when William III came to power—allegedly in defence of English liberties—he too found himself unnerved by the unruly independence of these establishments. William’s ministers tried to contain radical Whigs who now demanded further reforms. Surveillance and censorship were again deployed.

In other words, both monarchs feared free speech, particularly when it was informed, caffeinated, and distributed across the wooden benches of a smoky Covent Garden coffeehouse.

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From Taverns to Terms of Service

Fast-forward to 2025 and, once again, the UK government appears increasingly unsettled by what its citizens say in public—and even in private. Only now, it isn’t Jacobite toasts or mutterings about Popery that are taboo. It's criticisms of immigration policy, gender ideology, vaccine mandates, or the EU.

In Southport last year, protests broke out after reports involving migrant men and local girls sparked public fury. Amid the chaos, Lucy Connolly and Peter Lynch and others were sentenced to prison. Their crimes? Not violence, not incitement—but participating in an unapproved demonstration and daring to speak too directly about the racial dynamics of grooming gangs.

Meanwhile, Tommy Robinson, whose warnings about Pakistani rape gangs were initially dismissed as Islamophobic scaremongering, was hounded through the courts, imprisoned, and effectively silenced. Years later, much of what he claimed has been substantiated by police investigations and national reviews—but the man remains an unperson in polite society.

These modern punishments echo the 17th century with alarming precision. Then, as now, the real offence was not violence—it was heresy against the state’s moral narrative.

This time, the alehouse has gone digital—and yet, pubs themselves are not immune. Reports now abound of landlords being investigated for hosting "problematic" conversations, removing political material, and even being warned not to permit discussions that could be construed as offensive under evolving hate speech laws.

The Alehouse Goes Digital

Today, it’s not just pubs and protests under surveillance—it’s the internet, group chats, WhatsApp messages, and social media timelines.

The Online Safety Act has given the state sweeping new powers to silence dissent in the name of “harm reduction.” Algorithms now do the work that tavern informants once did. But the logic is unchanged: speech is dangerous when it does not conform.

We see landlords warned about political posters in pubs. Customers ejected for “offensive” opinions. Public figures investigated for hate speech simply for stating biology or quoting crime statistics. In this new regime, the border between treason and truth is once again thin—and shifting.

Just as in the 1680s, the state recruits ordinary people—publicans, tech workers, even your Uber driver—to act as enforcers of its ideology. What was once shouted in the alehouse is now whispered on Signal or encrypted away from the eyes of Big Brother Britain.

Conclusion

The lesson from the Glorious Revolution is as clear as it is urgent: when a government begins to fear speech, it also begins to fear its own people. And when it recruits landlords, tech companies, or even your fellow pub-goers to suppress that speech, it only ensures one thing: discontent will grow—not vanish.

In 1736, long after William had died, mobs still attacked alehouses that had collaborated with state repression. From Shoreditch to Tiverton, public anger exploded not just at the authorities—but at the ordinary men and women coerced into becoming their eyes and ears.

It is a pattern Britain risks repeating.

We ought to remember, before it's too late, that a society in which people are afraid to speak openly—whether over a pint or a post—is not a society at peace. It is a society on edge. And, eventually, it is a society in crisis.