Read You the Riot Act

If someone is annoyed with you, they may “read you the riot act.” In colloquial English, that means they’ll scold you vigorously and threaten you with consequences.

But did you know there actually was a Riot Act?

The Riot Act was passed by the British parliament in 1714, in response to a period of political crisis.

Queen Anne had just died. Her nephew, James Francis Edward Stuart, had an indisputable claim to the throne. There was just one catch. James was Catholic. Even worse, James was living in exile in France, one of Britain's enemies. Worse still, British Catholics were known to favor monarchical absolutism.

Protestant and parliamentary-minded Brits – lords and commons alike – were aghast. They insisted that the throne go to one of Anne’s cousins, a German princeling named George. He took the throne in 1714 and became the first in a whole line of Protestant Georges.

But George was not universally popular. He was not outgoing. He was not cultured. He didn’t even speak English.

Queen Anne had raised taxes to pay for foreign wars. At the same time, wealth was highly unequal. Less than five percent of the population controlled a third of Britain’s wealth.

The result of all these factors was that public protests were very frequent, and very frequently protests became violent. In response, parliament passed a law that defined when force could be used to disperse an unruly crowd – the Riot Act.

One of the requirements of the Act was that a specific order to disperse had to be read before force could be used. In other words, someone had to “read the riot act.”

The wording that had to be read out to the assembled gathering was as follows:

Our sovereign lord the King chargeth and commandeth all persons, being assembled, immediately to disperse themselves, and peaceably to depart

to their habitations, or to their lawful business, upon the pains contained in the act made in the first year of King George, for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies. God save the King.

And that's why we still "read someone the riot act."