Another savage diversion of the Mohocks was their thrusting women into barrels, and rolling them down Snow or Ludgate Hill, as thus sung by Gay, in his _Trivia_:--
"Now is the time that rakes their revels keep; Kindlers of riot, enemies of sleep. His scattered pence the flying Nicker flings, And with the copper shower the casement rings. Who has not heard the Scourer's midnight fame? Who has not trembled at the Mohock's name? Was there a watchman took his hourly rounds Safe from their blows, or new-invented wounds? I pass their desperate deeds and mischiefs, done Where from Snow-hill black steepy torrents run; How matrons, hooped within the hogshead's womb, Were tumbled furious thence; the rolling tomb O'er the stones thunders, bounds from side to side: So Regulus, to save his country, died."
Swift was inclined to doubt these savageries, yet went in some apprehension of them. He writes, just at the date of the above _Spectator_: "Here is the devil and all to do with these Mohocks. Grub-street papers about them fly like lightning, and a list printed of near eighty put into several prisons, and all a lie, and I begin to think there is no truth, or very little, in the whole story. He that abused Davenant was a drunken gentleman; none of that gang. My man tells me that one of the lodgers heard in a coffee-house, publicly, that one design of the Mohocks was upon me, if they could catch me; and though I believe nothing of it, I forbear walking late; and they have put me to the charge of some shillings already."--_Journal to Stella_, 1712.
Swift mentions, among the outrages of the Mohocks, that two of them caught a maid of old Lady Winchilsea's at the door of her house in the Park with a candle, and had just lighted out somebody. They cut all her face, and beat her without any provocation.
At length, the villanies of the Mohocks were attempted to be put down by a Royal proclamation, issued on the 18th of March, 1712: this, however, had very little effect, for we soon find Swift exclaiming: "They go on still, and cut people's faces every night! but they sha'n't cut mine; I like it better as it is."
Within a week after the Proclamation, it was proposed that Sir Roger de Coverley should go to the play, where he had not been for twenty years. The _Spectator_, No. 335, says: "My friend asked me if there would not be some danger in coming home late, in case the Mohocks should be abroad. 'I assure you,' says he, 'I thought I had fallen into their hands last night; for I observed two or three lusty black men that followed me half-way up Fleet-street, and mended their pace behind me, in proportion as I put on to get away from them." However, Sir Roger threw them out, at the end of Norfolk Street, where he doubled the corner, and got shelter in his lodgings before they could imagine what was become of him. It was finally arranged that Captain Sentry should make one of the party for the play, and that Sir Roger's coach should be got ready, the fore wheels being newly mended. "The Captain," says the _Spectator_, "who did not fail to meet me at the appointed hour, bid Sir Roger fear nothing, for that he had put on the same sword which he made use of at the battle of Steenkirk. Sir Roger's servants, and among the rest, my old friend the butler, had, I found, provided themselves with good oaken plants, to attend their master upon this occasion. When he placed him in his coach, with myself at his left hand, the Captain before him, and his butler at the head of his footmen in the rear, we convoyed him in safety to the playhouse." The play was Ambrose Phillips's new tragedy of _The Distressed Mother_: at its close, Sir Roger went out fully satisfied with his entertainment; and, says _the Spectator_, "we guarded him to his lodging in the same manner that we guarded him to the playhouse."