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Ringleader   Listen
noun
Ringleader  n.  
1.
The leader of a circle of dancers; hence, the leader of a number of persons acting together; the leader of a herd of animals. "A primacy of order, such an one as the ringleader hath in a dance."
2.
Opprobriously, a leader of a body of men engaged in the violation of law or in an illegal enterprise, as rioters, mutineers, or the like. "The ringleaders were apprehended, tried, fined, and imprisoned."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ringleader" Quotes from Famous Books



... The ringleader here was plainly the Bassett. It was she who had started the whole imbroglio by chucking Gussie, and it was clear that before anything could be done to solve and clarify, she must be induced to revise her views and take ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse

... wife, two inoffensive old people suspected of witchcraft, they ducked them in a pond till the old woman died. After which, her corpse was put to bed to her husband by the mob, of whom only one person—a chimney-sweeper named Colley, who was the ringleader—was brought to trial and ...
— Witchcraft and Devil Lore in the Channel Islands • John Linwood Pitts

... to Crotchet Castle, to narrate his misadventures, and exhale his budget of grievances on Mr. Mac Quedy, whom he considered a ringleader ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock

... to his master, and inform him that I was induced to go away by Heddy's address. Accordingly I set off with him and the rest of my companions for our master's, and arrived there without any difficulty. I informed my master that Heddy was the ringleader of our revolt, and that he had used us ill. He immediately put Heddy into custody, and myself and companions were well received and ...
— A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, a Native of • Venture Smith

... river, there was a large cannon which could be turned round so as to cover all the approaches from the river in case there was an attack on the fort. We learned that the day before we arrived at Kapit, Mingo, the Portuguese in charge of the fort, had captured the worst ringleader of the head-hunters in the bazaar at Kapit, and small parties of loyal Dayaks were at once sent off to the homes of the other head-hunters with strict injunctions to bring back the guilty ones, and, failing persuasion and threats, to attack them. [11] In most ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker

... sentiment, or both combined—destroy him,' said Mr Tappertit. 'Miggs says so too. Miggs and me both say so. We can't bear the plotting and undermining that takes place. Our souls recoil from it. Barnaby Rudge and Mrs Rudge are in it likewise; but the villain, Joseph Willet, is the ringleader. Their plottings and schemes are known to me and Miggs. If you want information of 'em, apply to us. Put Joseph Willet down, sir. Destroy him. Crush him. ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... Laudonniere, and confined him to his bed. Improving their advantage, the malcontents gained over nearly all the best soldiers in the fort. The ringleader was one Fourneaux, a man of good birth, but whom Le Moyne calls an avaricious hypocrite. He drew up a paper, to which sixty-six names were signed. La Caille boldly opposed the conspirators, and they resolved to kill him. His room-mate, ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... Mrs. Woodward had been greatly out of health for the last few months, and kept much to her bedroom, while the children had been running wild in a quite deplorable fashion. Letty, who ought to have had some influence over the others, was the naughtiest of all, and the ringleader in every mischievous undertaking. Having occupied the position of "eldest" for thirteen weeks, she was not at all disposed to submit to her sister's authority, and there were many tussles ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil

... being at school I was of the highest form of the school, and chiefest of that form. I could then speak Latin as well as English; could make extempore verses upon any theme.' 'If any scholars from remote schools came to dispute, I was ringleader to dispute with them.' 'All and every of those scholars, who were of my form and standing, went to Cambridge, and proved excellent divines; only I, poor William Lilly, was not so happy, fortune then frowning on my father's condition, he not in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... there overcame me a sickening disgust at this universal greed, at this all-absorbing passion for gold which my momentary pre-eminence revealed to my view. Then sanity asserted itself, and I remembered that if there was a conspiracy I was its ringleader, that I myself for months past had thought intensely of nothing but dollars. Why, then, should I resent the eager desires of others to attach to their own bank accounts some of the money which I was ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... she was not guilty. She was not of the party. But it was composed of friends of hers who seated themselves near her, and when the words of Mr. Thomas concentrated the gaze of the audience upon the disturbers of the peace, her Majesty, known to everybody, was supposed to be the ringleader of the emeute. The story at once flew abroad, upon the wings of those swift birds of prey—as she called them—the Washington correspondents, and she was mentioned by name ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis

... ships at length finding their cause hopeless, hauled down the red flag. Some had previously made their escape from their midst. Ultimately, the crew of the Sandwich carried their ship under the guns of Sheerness, when a guard of soldiers coming on board, Parker, their ringleader, was delivered up. He, with the chief culprits, was tried, convicted, and executed; others were flogged through the fleet, and many were imprisoned for certain periods, a general pardon being granted to the seamen who had been misled ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston

... mutinous and riotous spirit on shore, and the Council professed to think Wingfield's life was in danger. He says: "In all these disorders was Mr. Archer a ringleader." Meantime the Indians continued to bring in supplies, and the Council traded up and down the river for corn, and for this energy Mr. Wingfield gives credit to "Mr. Smith especially," "which relieved the colony well." To the report that was brought him that he was charged ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... own two lads, and was evidently sorely anxious about his namesake, who, he feared, might be recognised by Alderman Mundy and brought forward as a ringleader of the disturbance; nor did he feel at all secure that the plea that he had no enmity to the foreigners, but had actually tried to defend Lucas and Abenali, would be attended to for a moment, though Lucas Hansen had promised to bear witness of it. Giles looked perfectly ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... generous offers. They were rejected with scorn. These thieves have one desire in mind, my friends, to starve you all, and to destroy your company and your jobs. To every appeal they heartlessly refused to divulge the key to the lock-in. And now this man—the ringleader who keeps the key word buried in secrecy—has the temerity to ask an audience with you. You're angry men; you want to know the man ...
— Meeting of the Board • Alan Edward Nourse

... astonished at your making such a request!" exclaimed Mrs Oldcastle, with suitable emphasis on every salient syllable, while her white face flushed with anger. "To ask Miss Oldcastle to accompany you to the dwelling of the ringleader of all the canaille ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

... fair weather theologian. His Protestantism out-lived King Edward. He sympathized with the demonstration in 1553 against the Spanish marriage. On the failure of the Devonshire movement his cousin, Sir Peter Carew, the ringleader at Exeter, is stated in official depositions to have effected his escape abroad through Walter Ralegh, whom he 'persuaded to convey him in his bark' to France from Weymouth. The wording implies active and conscious intervention. The strange thing is that he ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... was lying across the passage. He had been trodden underfoot by the stream of maddened peasants who had entered by this door which had been opened for them, whom Steinmetz had checked at the foot of the stairs by shooting their ringleader. ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman

... king; a teacher who heals the leper, the blind, the deaf, the dumb, the lame, and who raises the mouldering corpse; a King of the Jews entering Jerusalem in triumphal procession, without opposition from the Roman legions of Caesar; an accused ringleader of sedition arrested by his own countrymen, and handed over to the imperial governor; a rebel adjudged to death by Roman law; a three hours' darkness over all the land; an earthquake breaking open graves and rending ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... you were the ringleader of that scheme, Jim," said his doctor-brother. "I have a mind to go. One good thing about the Whitneys is that you can invite yourself, ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas

... had before now quelled a mutiny with her pistol at the ringleader's forehead, and her brave, scornful words scourging the insubordinates for their dishonor to their arms, for their treason to the Tricolor; and she was equal to the occasion now. She ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... Diego having only the name of captain general, while he in fact exercised the whole authority. The intention of these malcontents being discovered, several of them were put to death as seditious people; among whom was Francisco de Chaves, who was put to the rack and afterwards hanged as a ringleader of this new conspiracy. One Antonio de Orihuela likewise, who had only arrived of late from Spain, was beheaded, having imprudently asserted that the Almagrians ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... have received the smallest damage; but to little purpose were they lighted, for most of them completely failed. The authour of The Rambler, however, may be considered, on this occasion, as the ringleader of a successful riot, though not as ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... outburst began with a tumultuous assembling of the crew, evidently, however, mistrustful of their cause. After vainly trying to restore order, the captain and first lieutenant rushed among them, each collaring a ringleader. The rest fell back, weakened, as men of Anglo-Saxon traditions are apt to be, by the sense of law-breaking. The culprits were secured, and at once taken to the flag-ship. A courtmartial was ordered for the next day, Saturday; and as the prisoners ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan

... Sir William immediately shot the young man who accompanied his brother in the execution of his duty. Such was the excitement, and the desperate menaces of Sir William and his party, that it became necessary for the magistrates to interfere to put a stop to the proceedings, by the capture of the ringleader of the party, from whose advice to his followers the most serious consequences were likely to ensue. At 12 o'clock, they assembled at a place called the Osier Bed, where every means were resorted to, to quell the disturbance, but without ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton

... steale men, and take them for a pray. He ranged into other countries taking as many captiues as he could, and ioining them vnto himselfe. Also hee allured the men of his owne countrey vnto him, who followed him as their captaine and ringleader to doe mischiefe. Then began he to make warre vpon the Sumongals or Tartars, and slewe their captaine, and after many conflicts, subdued them vnto himselfe, and brought them all into bondage. Afterwards he vsed their helpe to fight against the Merkats, dwelling by the Tartars, whom also hee vanquished ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt

... you won't get no answers. You just go to bed, and let them people stay in the parlor all night. They'll be able to take care of the house, I guess, and if they don't I'll make 'em suffer. In the morning you can see Mrs. Faulkner—for she's the ringleader—and tell her that you're goin' home to your mother, and that Miss Port expects her to pull down all the blinds in this house, and shut and bolt the doors. She is to see that the eatables is put away proper or else give to the poor—which will be you, I guess—and then she is to ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton

... brutal insult offered to a Christian gentlewoman at the late "World's Temperance Convention." I was witness of the conduct of that man and his abettors during that cowardly transaction, and I hereby charge him with being a ringleader in that ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... terribly mauled in the crowd. But he wouldn't fire a pistol at any of them. He brought some ringleader away prisoner,—he and two policemen. But they got all the cattle, and the tenants had to buy them back and pay their rent. When we try to seize cattle at Ballintubber they are always driven away to County Mayo. I do think that Captain Clayton is a ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope

... the arms of the police," sneered the ringleader. "We'll use the bank to escape, but we won't ask any ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster

... He sent also that detestable ringleader Apollonius with an army of two and twenty thousand, commanding him to slay all those that were in their best age, and to sell the ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous

... Captain to entreat Albuquerque to release the captains and other gentlemen whom he had imprisoned for insubordination in the harbour of Goa. Albuquerque accordingly released all except Jorge Fogaca, whom he regarded as the ringleader, and some of those to whom he showed clemency, notably the brothers Andrade, afterwards did him good service, and showed themselves worthy ...
— Rulers of India: Albuquerque • Henry Morse Stephens

... yesterday at a very pleasant party at Powell Place. Our general court martial is over, and will be published in orders to-morrow. A soldier, who was under sentence of death for desertion from the 101st regiment, and transferred to the 8th, and a Jonathan of the Canadians, who is considered a ringleader, are sentenced to be shot; the others, a dozen in number, are to be transported to serve for life in ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper

... shalt. Look on me, rebel lord! Thou that wert late a factious ringleader, And in the open field gav'st me fierce fight: Art thou again gathering another head, That with such rudeness thou dost entertain The gentle coming ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... within, and he feared that Bauer, hearing that the stranger had gone, would take the opportunity of telling the count of his visit. The count would, in his turn, warn Rupert of Hentzau, and the work of catching the ringleader would all fall to be done again. At no time did Mr. Rassendyll take count of odds against him, but in this instance he may well have thought himself, with his revolver, a match for the three ruffians. At any rate, before Bauer had time to give the signal, he sprang out suddenly from ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope

... he had taken the opinion of his council, pronounced with some reluctance the sentence of death. It was conceived in the following terms: "That Thascius Cyprianus should be immediately beheaded, as the enemy of the gods of Rome, and as the chief and ringleader of a criminal association, which he had seduced into an impious resistance against the laws of the most holy emperors, Valerian and Gallienus." [87] The manner of his execution was the mildest and least painful that could be ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... Adelie Land and, therefore, comrades in misfortune. Hoyle, as a pup, was treated benevolently by all the others, and entered the fellowship of the other three when he grew up. Among the rest, Mikkel stood out as a good fighter, Colonel as the biggest dog and ringleader against the Peary-Fix faction, Fram as a nervous intractable animal, and Mary as the sole representative ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... especially to one holding command in a distant part of the world. So they mutinied and took possession of one of the ships, and began to make preparations to return to Spain, but Magellan, with the rest of his men who had remained faithful to him, boarded that ship, and executed the ringleader and other leading mutineers, even some who could not legally be so treated: for they were royal officials, who were only liable to capital punishment by the emperor and his council. However under the circumstances no one ventured to resist. Yet there were some, who whispered ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair

... officer was a captain, to judge from certain stripes of red cloth, sewed on the shoulders of his brown jean blouse, but his men were far from prompt in obeying his command, evidently having no taste for the job. One among them, apparently their ringleader in incipient mutiny, an upstanding bully with the jaw of a prize-fighter, took it upon himself openly to defy the officer, exclaiming profanely that he'd be damned if he ever enlisted to do nigger work. The others laughed, and joined in the revolt, ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish

... along after them. It was an hour or two before I caught sight of 'em again. I was spitting cotton a heap. Dad always told me to carry water with me, and I sure was wishing I'd minded him. Well, I went 'way round and headed 'em off—and, dog-gone, they up and run round me. That Zip horse was the ringleader. Every time, just as I was about to get 'em turned, he'd make a break and the rest would follow, hellity-larrup! Old Heck has cut his feet all to pieces with the hobbles—old fool! I headed 'em four or five times—five, I guess—and they kept ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... his own house, and at parting asked as a favour in particular from him, That Mr. Guthrie might be overlooked, as knowing him to be an excellent man.——The bishop not only refused him, but did, with a disdainful haughty air, tell him, That shall not be done; it cannot be, he is a ringleader and keeper up of schism in my diocese,——and then left the chancellor very abruptly. Row, Allan, and some other presbyterian gentlemen, who were waiting on him, observing the chancellor discomposed when the ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... very soon came out that the whole country-side was infested with a body of smugglers, wreckers, poachers, robbers, and murderers, over all of whom 'Cruel Coppinger,' as he came to be called by the honest people in the neighbourhood, was captain and ringleader. ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... The ringleader in this work of destruction was a fanatic named Richard Culmer, commonly known as Blue Dick. A paper preserved in the Chapter library, in the writing of Somner, the great antiquarian scholar, describes the state in which the fabric of the cathedral was left, at the time of the Restoration of King ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers

... astrology—and been even suspected of a serious hunt after the philosopher's stone; another time he had narrowly escaped with life and liberty from a frantic conspiracy of the young republicans of his university, in which, being bolder and madder than most of them, he had been an active ringleader; it was, indeed, some such folly that had compelled him to quit Germany sooner than himself or his parents desired. He had nothing of the sober Englishman about him. Whatever was strange and eccentric had an irresistible charm for Ernest Maltravers. ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Government pressed this matter a little too fast and too far. The Colonists became piqued at last, and resolved, in 1764, not to purchase English stuffs for clothing, but to use articles of domestic manufacture as far as possible. Boston, always a ringleader in these mischiefs, diminished her consumption of British merchandise ten thousand pounds and more in this one year. The Harvard-College youth rivalled the neighboring town in their patriotic self-sacrifice, and the whole graduating class of 1770, with the names of Hutchinson, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... the Universe. The Goddess of Wisdom speaks for herself. Against them a heterogeneous rabble of monsters direct their artillery, under a dog-headed barking protagonist, (what a chosen symbol of an impudent, wide-mouthed, yelping Bayes!) the ringleader of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... clothes, he fled from this scene of many sorrows. At Dublin, Goldsmith's diligence, however faulty, was enough to gain for him commendation from time to time, but no distinction worth mentioning. His worst crime is seen in a riot in which he was not a ringleader. He scraped into his scrapes as ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland

... Lewis Flagg, who was usually the ringleader in all such little amenities, held his peace and ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews

... a manufacturing town, when a gig-mill was burnt to the ground, or a manufacturer's house was attacked, the furniture thrown into the streets, and the family forced to flee for their lives, some local measures were or were not taken by the local magistracy. A ringleader was detected, or more frequently suffered to elude detection; newspaper paragraphs were written on the subject, and there the thing stopped. As to the sufferers, whose sole inheritance was labour, and who had lost that inheritance—who could ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... water, and played so many heedless and ruthless boy-tricks that the period of these months of folly was known, long after, as the "Gottorp Fury," because the harum-scarum young brother-in-law, who was the ringleader in all these scrapes, was Duke ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... this moneth there came fiue of them to make a new truce: the master of the Admiral came to me to shew me of their comming, and desired to haue them taken and kept as prisoners vntill we had his anker againe: but when he sawe that the chiefe ringleader and master of mischiefe was one of the fiue, he then was vehement to execute his purpose, so it was determined to take him: he came crying Iliaout, and striking his brest offered a paire of gloues to sell, the master offered him a knife for them: so two of them came to vs, the one was ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt

... And thou, their precious captain!—commander-in-chief of cut-purses!—king of sharpers! Grand Mogul of all the rogues under the sun!—great prototype of that first hellish ringleader who imbued a thousand legions of innocent angels with the flame of rebellion, and drew them down with him into the bottomless pit of damnation! The agonizing cries of bereaved mothers pursue thy footsteps! Thou drinkest blood like water! ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... with his gun on his shoulder, came out of the grove from the side toward the shore, and to him Mr Knight eagerly appealed for assistance in securing the murderers of Mr Nichol. Pointing from the bleeding corpse at his feet, to Luerson, he said—'There is the ringleader—shoot him through the head at once, and that will finish the matter—otherwise we shall all be murdered—fire, I will answer ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer

... willingly returned. I then heard of their trials and the miseries they had encountered. The drovers also spoke of one prisoner who had disappeared and got away completely, but that there was a hot search after him, as he, it was supposed, was the ringleader in the late outbreak, and that it was planned and carried out by him. I felt that they alluded to myself, and that this place would grow too warm for me, as I knew that I was already an object of public remark, owing to my supposed infirmities and the extraordinary dexterity of my ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian

... at full length. It is perhaps as a member of the Garrick Club that he has attained his fullest development. All the good things of the Garrick which were not previously said by Sydney Smith may safely be put down to Eustace; and there is no doubt that he is the ringleader in all the subsequent practical jokes which have made the club famous. It was he who pinned to the back of an unpopular member of the committee a sheet ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne

... of these unruly fellows was Tim Bunker. He was the ruling spirit of their party, and had the reputation of being a notoriously bad boy. He was in the habit of lying, swearing, cheating, and stealing; and people, judging his followers by their ringleader, had got into the way of calling them ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic

... the ringleader in rebellion, that the issue was to be tried. It was then the most flourishing commercial town on the continent, and contained a population of about sixteen thousand, almost exclusively of English origin. Though there were ...
— Tea Leaves • Various

... on, and still he kept his right arm working. When he got within hailing distance, the man in the bows shouted my name. He was a brawny chap. I thought to myself that if it came to a row I would pot him first, for he was ringleader. ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... him in age, having just passed his tenth birthday, was the ringleader. Johnny did not possess particularly kindly feelings toward him. His life had early been embittered by continual giving over and giving way to Will. He had a definite feeling that Will was greatly in his debt and was ungrateful about it. In his ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London

... the brig Vineyard in 1830. It was the full confession of Dawes that brought about the conviction and execution of the ringleader, Charles Gibbs. ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse

... in company? I would act the hypocrite and feign a merry heart but at the same time would endeavor as much as I could to shun their company, oh wretched and unhappy mortal that I was! Everything I did, and wherever I went, I was still in a storm and yet I continued to be the chief contriver and ringleader of the frolics for many months after; though it was a toil and torment to attend them; but the devil and my own wicked heart drove me about like a slave, telling me that I must do this and do that, and bear this and bear that, and turn here and turn there, to keep ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... . . Seeing him again on the ranch, he admired the dash of the good looking youth, testing his muscles in order to convince himself of their strength, and making him to recount his nightly escapades as ringleader of a band of toughs in the Capital. He longed to go to Buenos Aires himself, just to see the youngster in the midst of this gay, wild life. But alas! he was not seventeen like his grandson; he had ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... pursued De Malet, 'I wish to ask this young man' (pointing to the son of the dead Arab, who was the ringleader of all the mischief) 'whether he will accept of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... libelled in this manner by the "Yellow Press," and represented both by pen and pencil as the ringleader and instigator of the so-called "conspiracies"; this accusation, at first tentative, later grew increasingly clear and unmistakable. The campaign of calumny in which even the more respectable Press took its share, was, however, directed more particularly against ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff

... crowds the chief is often nothing more than a ringleader or agitator, but as such he plays a considerable part. His will is the nucleus around which the opinions of the crowd are grouped and attain to identity. He constitutes the first element towards the organisation of heterogeneous crowds, and paves the way for their organisation in sects; in the ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon

... throats cut among your ranks. You were warned by Messer Gonzaga to hold your followers in better leash, and yet to-day, without so much as drunkenness to excuse them, we have this vile affair, with yourself for a ringleader in it." ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini

... pictures these men were all represented as dwarfs, like their ally. The miscreants got into power at one time, and, if we remember right, were called the Broad-backed Administration. One with shaggy eyebrows and a bristly beard, the hirsute ringleader of the rascals, was, it appears, called Charles James Fox; another miscreant, with a blotched countenance, was a certain Sheridan; other imps were hight Erskine, Norfolk (Jockey of), Moira, Henry Petty. As in our childish, innocence ...
— John Leech's Pictures of Life and Character • William Makepeace Thackeray

... long in that posture when the boatswain, who was the principal ringleader of the mutiny, and had now shown himself the most dejected and dispirited of all the rest, came walking towards them, with two more of the crew; the captain was so eager at having this principal rogue so ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe

... sprang into his place and faced round to the sailors, one of whom was now in the act of preparing to throw a huge stone at his head with both hands. Instantly the guard drew one of his pistols and covered the ringleader, who thereupon dropped on his knees imploring pardon, while his companions, previously so aggressive, scampered off in all directions like a ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde

... feed from the old woman at midday, made a rush at me and, surrounding me, made me nervous with their abominable rabid cackling. One tore at my tunic, another undid the lacings of my sandals and tugged at them, but one in particular, the ringleader and moving spirit of this savage attack, did not hesitate to worry at my leg with his serrated bill. Unable to see the joke, I twisted off one of the legs of the little table and, thus armed, began to belabor the pugnacious brute. Nor did I ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... country home, with all its holy influences, for the turmoil and heartlessness of a large school, where I soon became the ringleader in all sorts of mischief. Before long, accounts of my evil doing reached my father; but Louisa, incredulous of evil, as the pure ever are, persuaded him that her brother had been misunderstood, and not treated ...
— Hurrah for New England! - The Virginia Boy's Vacation • Louisa C. Tuthill

... ruffian for whom even the most patriotic historian finds it hard to say a redeeming word—was here the ringleader. On the same day—the 23rd of October—he got possession of the fort of Charlemont, the strongest position in the new plantation, by inviting himself to dinner with Lord Caulfield, the governor, and suddenly seizing him prisoner. Dungannon, Mountjoy, and several of ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless

... am sorry to say I have been ill again, and the doctor says I shall have to go abroad for some months. Before I go, I feel I must make a confession which will surprise you as much to read as it pains me to write it. I was the ringleader in the attack upon you last term at the door of Mr Railsford's house. I was very angry at the time at having been punished by you before all my house. But I am very sorry now for what happened, and hope you will in time forgive me. I ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed

... put beyond all exception? Many of the miracles of Christ are said to be done in the streets, nay even in the temple, under the observation of all the world; but the like is not so much as pretended as to this; nay, we have it upon the confession of Peter, the ringleader of the apostles, that Christ appeared, not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before of God. Why picking and culling of witnesses in this case more than in any other? Does it not import ...
— The Trial of the Witnessses of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ • Thomas Sherlock

... The captain, chief, or ringleader of the gang of misrule: in the cant language called ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.

... The ringleader was a man named Gordon; who had incited the rest to the crime, and killed the captain with his own hand. Obtaining command of the ship, they put her about, and commenced a piratical raid. One vessel they succeeded in disarming, ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood

... bother, great trouble. Plight, condition. Wharf, a platform on the shore of a harbor, river, or lake, extending some way into the water. Comrades, companions, playfellows. Magistrate, an officer of the law, justice of the peace. Ringleader, the leader of several persons acting together. Culprits, wrong-doers. Solemnly, with great dignity. Induce, lead persuade. Benefit, profit, accomodation. ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey

... last of the twelve, the worst of all, remains to be accounted for. He was a sort of ringleader; and being in the wine and spirit trade, his business was to take the head of the table at convivial parties, and sit up whole nights drinking and inducing others to do the same, never going to bed sober. He was an infidel, a blasphemer, a disciple of Tom Paine, both ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... no arrangements about this Solomin," Kollomietzev exclaimed plaintively. He had been on the alert all the while, trying to catch what the governor and Sipiagin were saying. "I assure you he's the principal ringleader! I have a wonderful instinct about ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev

... interlocutors and pushed past them. Of a sudden she was surrounded by a circle of red-garbed gnomes who danced round her. 'Let me pass, good people,' she said; and when they would not, she broke through the chain of their arms and hurried on. They would have followed, but a black mask caught the ringleader and whispered in his ear, and the laughing ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... deceived in the man; whether it was not rather his former good behaviour that was assumed, while his present delinquencies were the result of an outbreak of irrepressible evil in him. There were even times when I asked myself whether he might not be a ringleader in the very plot he professed to be so anxious to discover, and whether his anxiety to enlighten me might not be assumed for the purpose of blinding and misleading me the more effectually. Never in all my life had I witnessed so thorough and radical a ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood

... am happy to inform you, has been completely quelled, and the ringleader taken into custody. She had a pail of cold water thrown over her, previous to being locked up, and expresses great contrition and uneasiness. We are all in a fever of anticipation about to-morrow; but, now that we are within a few hours of the meeting of the association, and at last enjoy the ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... The ringleader in all these insults on majesty was John Knox; who possessed an uncontrolled authority in the church and even in the civil affairs of the nation, and who triumphed in the contumelious usage of his sovereign. His ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... upon Musa's conduct, that he felt strongly tempted to shoot Musa and another ringleader, but was, nevertheless, glad that he did not soil his hands with their vile blood. A day or two afterwards, another of his men—Simon Price by name—came to the Doctor with the same tale about the Mazitu, but, compelled by the ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... well-nigh pass from each other's recollection. One thing, however, on the other hand, might conduce to a mutual and permanent impression on their memories; during the year at the Lycee, young Servadac, never of a very studious turn of mind, had contrived, as the ringleader of a set of like caliber as himself, to lead the poor professor a life of perpetual torment. On the discovery of each delinquency he would fume and rage in a manner that was a source of ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne

... my Lord Regent, who said that he expected, if the Abbey was injured, your Knight would send him the head of the ringleader among the rioters." ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... comptroller. superintendent, supervisor, straw boss;. intendant; overseer, overlooker[obs3]; supercargo[obs3], husband, inspector, visitor, ranger, surveyor, aedile[obs3]; moderator, monitor, taskmaster; master &c. 745; leader, ringleader, demagogue, corypheus, conductor, fugleman[obs3], precentor[obs3], bellwether, agitator; caporal[obs3], choregus[obs3], collector, file leader, flugelman[obs3], linkboy[obs3]. guiding star &c. (guidance) 693; adviser &c. 695; guide ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... signed a petition to the court in Wheelwright's behalf, In respectful and even submissive language they pointed out the danger of meddling with the right of free speech. "Paul was counted a pestilent fellow, or a moover of sedition, and a ringleader of a sect, ... and Christ himselfe, as well as Paul, was charged to bee a teacher of New Doctrine.... Now wee beseech you, consider whether that old serpent work not after his old method, even in our daies." [Footnote: Wheelwright, ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... morning, and she could disbelieve it no longer. Esther had come to her bedside and kissed her sorrowfully, her beautiful face troubled and tender. She had begged as she had never done before for a remission of poor Judy's sentence, but the Captain was adamant. It was she and she only who was always ringleader in everything; the others would behave when she was not there to incite them to mischief and go she should. Besides, he said, it would be the making of her. It was an excellent school he had chosen for her; the ladies who ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner

... Raleigh? First, because Raleigh, as we have seen, was not the sort of man whom she needed. He was not the steadfast single-eyed statesman; but the many-sided genius. Besides, he was the ringleader of the war-party. And she, like Burleigh before his death, was tired of the war; saw that it was demoralising England; was anxious for peace. Raleigh would not see that. It was to him a divine mission which must be fulfilled at all risks. As long as the Spaniards were opposing ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley

... severely, the dominant faction were still dissatisfied; and Ormonde was obliged to threaten a dissolution, and to expel some members for complicity in a plot to overthrow the English Government, which had just been discovered, and of which the ringleader was a man named Blood. It was now ascertained that the Cromwellian distribution of lands had been carried out with the most shameful injustice towards the very Government which had sanctioned it; and that the soldiers, who went with ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... boys threateningly, whereupon they all ran away, with the exception of the ringleader of the mutineers of the last few days, who sat down on the box containing the trading-stock and said they had better go and see whether I was really dead before plundering my luggage. The situation must have grown rather strained, until some one had the good sense to go and look out for us, whereupon ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... appoint an adventurer, Edward Cranfield, governor; Cranfield went forth with hopes of much plunder; but they would not admit his legitimacy, and he took the unprecedented step of dissolving the assembly; the farmers revolted, and their ringleader, Gove, was condemned for treason, and spent four years in the Tower of London. It was another attempt to convince the spirit of liberty by "the worst argument in the world"; but it was ridiculous as well as bad in Gove's case; he ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... The ringleader then proceeded to go through some form akin to a trial, and asked his companions what should be done with Laurence Griffin, who had disregarded the notices served on him, and persevered in his villanous calling. It ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker

... man, candle-waxy, hollow-eyed, gaunt of face, pathetic to look at physically, but shrewd. He was an iron-molder by trade and had gotten into politics much as Stener had—because he was useful; and he had managed to make some money—via this triumvirate of which Strobik was the ringleader, and which was engaged in various peculiar businesses which ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... her threats and prohibitions had no effect. One day when Haydn was balancing himself aloft, far above his schoolfellows, the empress saw him from the windows, and requested her Hofcompositor to take care that 'that fair-headed blockhead,' the ringleader of them all, got 'einen recenten Schilling' (slang for 'a good hiding')." The command was only too willingly obeyed by the obsequious Reutter, who by this time had been ennobled, and rejoiced in the addition of "von" to his name. Many years afterwards, ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden

... 'and is this the way you love me! Is this the manner you obey the instructions I have given you from the pulpit! Thus to fly in the face of justice, and bring down ruin on yourselves and me! Which is your ringleader? Shew me the man that has thus seduced you. As sure as he lives he shall feel my resentment. Alas! my dear deluded flock, return back to the duty you owe to God, to your country, and to me. I shall yet perhaps ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith

... Kelly's liberation, and who was arrested merely because he happened to be an Irishman, and who, though perfectly innocent of the whole transaction, had been sworn against by numerous witnesses as a ringleader in the attack; and Edward O'Meagher Condon (alias Shore), a fine-looking Irish-American, a citizen of the State of Ohio, against whom, like his four companions, true bills had been found by the Grand Jury. It would take long ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown

... in all riots and disorders, that my name generally stood first in the roll of delinquents; and instead of being lamented as the unfortunate pupil of Sir George, I was now accused as the person who had misled and debauched that hopeful young gentleman; for though he was the ringleader and promoter of all the mischief, he was never so considered. I fell at last under the censure of the vice-chancellor, and ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... the same at school. No one understood me. They thought me meek; called me Dough-face. For three years they called me this, then I turned upon them. Choosing out their ringleader, I felled him to the ground, laid him on his back, and stamped upon him. He was handsome before my foot came down; afterwards—Well, it is enough he never called me Dough-face again. In the store I entered soon ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green

... hatching of a plot—an hour's arrangement and wrangle—whereby, through far-sighted activity, perjury, malpractice and infinite ingenuity, the ringleader would gain a pice and the follower a pie (a farthing and a third of ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... heard a great deal of the long and trying campaigns waged by the Army in revenge for the murder of General Canby in his council tent. We got small glory out of that war, perhaps, but at last we hanged the ringleader of the murderers; and the extreme Northwest remained free from ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough

... these boys; in fact, he always used to say he was the ringleader, but that may have been another form of his penance. As he grew up he began to work into his father's business of tanning leather, and by and by, when a man grown, he traveled down to a big tannery at Newtonville, in Massachusetts, to learn ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield

... it with her forefinger. "That's Tommy, the cabin boy; and yonder's Mr. Mathison, the beach-comber; and you"—indicating a giant of a man with an aquiline nose and a square-cut beard—"you are Mr. Bob Fletcher, the ringleader!" ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... respective characters than if they had been patterns of good behavior. Some of the others were not so fortunate. One young man, whose name is properly withheld from us, was expelled from the institution. He was supposed to have been the ringleader in this dubious business, but Hawthorne manfully resented the supposition that any one could have influenced him, or did influence him, in this matter. It is more likely that he was influenced by the spirit of investigation, and wished to ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... name of the writer of the proclamation they were silent. At this Major Gordon announced that unless the name was given up, he would shoot one out of every five of them. At this statement the men groaned, when Gordon, noticing the man who groaned loudest, and shrewdly conceiving him to be a ringleader, seized him with his own hands, dragged him from the ranks, and ordered two of his bodyguard to shoot the man on the spot. The order was at once carried out, and then Gordon, turning to the rest, gave them one hour ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... appeared beyond measure strange that the subject of which the season might have been supposed suggestive—the event in the hall at Boldwood's—was not agitating her at all; but instead, an agonizing conviction that everybody abjured her—for what she could not tell—and that Oak was the ringleader of the recusants. Coming out of church that day she looked round in hope that Oak, whose bass voice she had heard rolling out from the gallery overhead in a most unconcerned manner, might chance to linger in her path in the old way. ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... them belong to the other side, the side of M. le Chevalier's enemy, who does nothing but breathe threats of vengeance against you and all the nobles together. They all hope to ruin you through your nephew. The ringleader of the conspiracy is this sycophant of a du Croisier, the pretended Royalist. Du Croisier's wife, poor thing, knows nothing about it; you know her, I should have heard of it before this if she had ears to hear evil. For some time these wild young fellows ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac

... the ringleader," replied the captain. "The first suspicion of what he was up to came to me through an old sailor who has been with me on many a voyage. He overheard Campo talking with another man and he listened. Trust an old sea dog to use his ears and keep ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss

... top of a mound close to the palace a band of conspirators was assembled. These conspirators were screened from view by some thick bushes. Otto Rigonda was their ringleader, Teddy Malone and little Buxley formed the rest of the band. Otto had found a dead tree. Its trunk had been hollowed by decay. He and his fellow-conspirators had sawn it off near to the ground, and close to the root ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne

... Ancyra, distinguished himself by his zeal against the Arians, on which account he was banished by Constantius in 336.[1] Basil, a ringleader of the Semi-Arians, was intruded into that see, but was himself deposed by the stanch Arians, in 360; and is mentioned by Socrates to have survived our saint, though he continued still in banishment under Jovian. The holy martyr of whom we speak was also called Basil. He was priest of ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... heartily. 'Ah! young fellow, you're caught, are you? Lady Helen, this is one of the young hopefuls in our village, I have been told the ringleader in every bit of mischief set going! You wouldn't think it to look ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre

... never doubted of the justice of his course either in the slaying of the colony's avowed enemies, or the exposure of the ringleader's head; not even when a year or so later Bradford sorrowfully placed in his hands a letter just received from his revered Pastor Robinson at Leyden, who in commenting on the ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... Railroad. A continual espionage upon the movements of the Catholics was kept up. Traps were laid for self-committal. Bribes were offered and promises of security to any who would turn State's evidence. Threats were made here and there that leading Catholics should be arrested; at all events, the ringleader should be made to suffer. All seemed to settle down upon that Father Ryan must necessarily have been the aider and abettor, if not the suggestor, in such a high-handed proceeding. It mattered not, that during his five years' ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee

... chief with biting irony, "my friend? You—the ringleader of those who despise my laws. You are my worst enemy. You pray for pity? No! for you I have no pity. It is my duty to have pity on my people over whom God placed me, and I am going to show them pity to-day; and that is my duty to them ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews

... brawny twenty-one-year-older, spoiling for a fight. When I assayed to take a seat, the half-sawed-off hind legs of the chair gave way, and I fell heels in air upon the dirty floor amid the yells and cat-calls of this tumultuous army; then the stalwart ringleader came forward to throw me into the snow bank, where my predecessor was nearly smothered with his head under the snow and his feet uplifted ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... fellow there now," says Vickers; "Dawes. You remember him, of course—the ringleader of the mutiny in the Malabar. A dreadful ruffian. He was most violent the first year I was here. Barton used to flog a good deal, and Dawes had a childish dread of the cat. When I came in—when was ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... Makalo, is the ringleader, sir," said Melton, "but he is only acting for Rao Khan, the Emir of Harar, who has long desired ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon

... that he had been the object of murderous conspiracies. The Pall Mall Gazette had sneered at the rumours of plots against his life, and had pleasantly hinted that they were all a myth, concocted by Forster's friends in his interests. When James Carey, the infamous ringleader of the assassins, told his dreadful story in the witness-box in order to save his neck, the truth was made known, and the world learned that for months Forster, whilst meeting slander and hostile criticism in England, ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.

... Opposition, that he hoped his enterprise to-day might thrive; and when Cassias asked "What enterprise?" he only closed his left eye temporarily and said with simulated indifference, "Fare you well," and sauntered toward Caesar. Marcus Brutus, who is suspected of being the ringleader of the band that killed Caesar, asked what it was that Lena had said. Cassias told him, and added in a low tone, "I fear our purpose ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... him. He brought as captives two chiefs whom he caused to be seized. While the camp was weakened by the absence of so many men on these expeditions, the malcontents at the settlement took occasion to attempt another mutiny. The ringleader was a certain soldier named Carrion, who had been pardoned by Legazpi after being "condemned to death by the master-of-camp for a certain crime." He was exposed by a Frenchman, who, like Carrion, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume II, 1521-1569 • Emma Helen Blair

... such places after he began to lead a religious life. The story, therefore, most likely belongs to the experiences of his first youth after he left school; and there may have been many more of a similar kind, for, except that he was steady at his trade, he grew up a wild lad, the ringleader of the village apprentices in all manner of mischief. He had no books, except a life of Sir Bevis of Southampton, which would not tend to sober him; indeed, he soon forgot all that he had learnt at school, and took ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude

... Ringleader.] Yet hath this figure of [Single supply] another propertie, occasioning him to change now and then his name: by the order of his supplie, for if it be placed in the forefront of all the seuerall clauses ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham

... and sometimes killed the settlers; and when soldiers were sent round to keep him in order he surprised and killed some of them. But Rauparaha pretended to be friendly, though the Governor well knew he was the ringleader in the mischief. Grey quietly sent a ship, which by night landed 130 soldiers just in front of Rauparaha's house on the shore. They seized him sleeping in bed, and he was carried round to Auckland, where for some months he was kept a prisoner, though allowed to ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland

... very few of his comrades who survived were carried back to Neiss, and immediately, as the ringleader, he was brought before a council of war. He refused all interrogations which were made as to his real name and family. 'What matters who I am?' said he; 'you have me and will shoot me. My name would not save me were it ever so famous.' ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... senate. Yet he declared, that "the commonwealth was not entirely deserted, nor the consular authority altogether debased. That he alone would vindicate both his own dignity and that of the senators." When a daily mob, emboldened by licentiousness, stood round him, he commanded a noted ringleader of the sedition to be apprehended. He, as the lictors were carrying him off, appealed to the people; nor would the consul have allowed the appeal, because there was no doubt regarding the judgment of the people, had not his obstinacy ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius

... board to support law and order! (He afterwards settled in the Brazils, and received his pardon from England.) The ship was carried by the mutineers into Monte Video and there given up to the Spaniards, who later, finding the true character of the people on board of her, hanged the ringleader and delivered up others of her crew to the English naval authorities. The female convicts had been carried off by the soldiers, and when the Rev. William Gregory arrived at Monte [Sidenote: 1798-1807] Video (a prisoner of war ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery

... had Matt made the reply than the three colored men glanced at each other, and the ringleader ...
— Young Auctioneers - The Polishing of a Rolling Stone • Edward Stratemeyer

... Lennon's suspicions of the Dead Hole partners were clarified and confirmed. The gang were not only moonshiners but horse and cattle thieves. Slade was the ringleader and brains of the gang, while Cochise and his followers were the crafty and probably murderous rustlers ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet

... Posterity believe, that, in Favour of mercenary Adventurers, who advanced Money to provide for a desperate regicide Army; in Favour of the Officers of this same Army, whom their Ringleader Cromwell, seared as his Conscience was, indulged with no more than temporary Grants of the Estates belonging to the King's most faithful Subjects: Will Posterity, I say, believe, that, in special Favour of such ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke

... dawned was rudely disturbed when the Great War crashed into civilization. The extreme Nationalists rebelled and it was Botha, aided by Smuts, who crushed them. Beyers, the ringleader, was drowned while trying to escape across the Vaal River, DeWet was defeated in the field, De la Rey was accidentally shot, and Maritz became a fugitive. Botha then conquered the Germans in German South-West Africa and Smuts ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson

... romance, and that was his manly utterance in behalf of Jefferson Davis, who was then confined in prison under rather disagreeable circumstances at Fortress Monroe. He said, "If there was guilt in any, there was guilt in nigh all of us, between Maryland and Mexico; Mr. Davis, if he be termed the ringleader of the Rebellion, was so, not by virtue of any instigating act of his, but purely by the unanimous will and appointment of the Southern people; and the hearts of the Southern people bleed to see how their ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims

... if by magic. Donovan, though so much taller and stronger, was longer in reaching the foot of the steps, and when at length he had pushed his way through the thickest part of the throng he was hindered for the haggard-looking man who had been the ringleader in the assault ran into his very arms. He was evidently struck with horror at the result of his mad enterprise and now meditated flight. ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... ringleaders of the discontent urged the doctor to put poison in his medicine. But the doctor refused. Next they formed a plot to hide a barrel of gunpowder under his bed and blow him up. But Laudonnire discovered that plot, and the ringleader fled ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall

... their disapprobation of the ten per cent. exacted by the Church for grinding corn in the ecclesiastical mills. Near the Pont de Robec and the Rue du Pere Adam flour and wheat were forcibly stolen, but Archbishop Odo Rigaud soon asserted his authority, by fining the ringleader 100 marks of silver, equivalent to about L2000 sterling, and the dissatisfaction ceased. In the next year a rising, that had some slight degree of religious colour in it, gave a good deal of trouble, not to Rouen only, but to the rest of France. Bands of peasants, styling ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook

... fed one, a pitiful and forlorn look. Some cows have a masculine or ox expression; others are extremely feminine. The latter are the ones for milk. Some cows will kick like a horse; some jump fences like deer. Every herd has its ringleader, its unruly spirit,—one that plans all the mischief, and leads the rest through the fences into the grain or into the orchard. This one is usually quite different from the master spirit, the "boss of the yard." The latter ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... The ringleader was a locksmith named Jean Duval, who had been at Port Royal and narrowly escaped death from the arrows of the Cape Cod Indians. Whether he framed his plot in collusion with the Basques is not quite clear, but it seems ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby

... at the outset. I don't want the credit of being the ringleader in this scrape after what ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic

... Don't let 'em get away!" called Hawley. "Hold on, it's all right," he quickly added as he perceived Mott in the room. "We don't care for anybody else for we've got the ringleader right here. Let 'em go! Let 'em all go! We don't want ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson

... the Albemarle, during the passage, attempted to seize on the ship, and the ringleader, having knocked down a centinel, and seized his sword, got on the quarter-deck, and was going to kill the seaman at the helm; but the master of the ship, hearing a noise, took up a blunderbuss, which was ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter

... novelties, even talking cats, soon cease to be novelties, and towards afternoon when the villagers saw how much of their money lay at Tommie's feet, some of them began to be discontented. Of these the tanner was the ringleader, and he said to the other grumblers, "If we can get that lying cat off the pump, we can then take his money. I have three big rats in the trap at the tannery, and I know Tommie is starving hungry by this time. We'll let 'em loose on the ground in front of the pump. ...
— The Faery Tales of Weir • Anna McClure Sholl

... penalties, had fettered all free inquiry into religious truth. Puritanism began to walk upright; and as the restraints imposed upon Divine truths were taken off, in the same proportion restraints were imposed upon impiety, profaneness, and debauchery. A ringleader in all wickedness would not long continue without reproof, either personally, or as seen in the holy conduct of others. Bunyan very properly attributed to a gracious God, those checks of conscience which he so strongly felt even while he was apparently ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... of your English cheeks. And if they catch a glimpse of your ungloved fingers, then again will they make the air ring with their sweet screams of wonder and amazement, as they compare the fairness of your hand with their warmer tints, and even with the hues of your own sunburnt face. Instantly the ringleader of the gentle rioters imagines a new sin; with tremulous boldness she touches, then grasps your hand, and smoothes it gently betwixt her own, and pries curiously into its make and colour, as though it were silk of Damascus, or shawl of Cashmere. And when they see you even then still ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake

... that I can't fathom is the young scoundrel's motive for taking the ship, and what he proposes to do with her now that he has her. By the way, Mr Temple, it was you, I think, who first named Bainbridge as the ringleader of this rascally job; what led you to fix it upon ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood

... the watch below came tumbling up, headed by a big Nova Scotian A.B. He was a tremendously powerful fellow, and had armed himself with the carpenter's broad axe, and in a few minutes he cut down five of the natives, one of whom was the ringleader. Then the steward and supercargo turned up with nine-bore double-barrelled shot-guns, loaded with No. 1 shot, and they and the bluenose{*} practically saved the ship, or with their four shots they laid out nearly a dozen more natives, and the others bolted down to the hold and asked ...
— John Frewen, South Sea Whaler - 1904 • Louis Becke

... he walked along, that he had never started the hike. He had seen Mr. Wall's eyes travel in his direction as though picking him out as the ringleader in whatever mischief had been afoot. He wondered what ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger

... thus Mr. Black began. "Thinking you must wish to know who started the riotous procedure which disgraced our town to-day, I have brought the ringleader here to answer for himself—that is, if you wish ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green

... and the greater part of the people held to the "old faith." She had arrested certain "old believers," who at the discussion in the Palace of Facets had challenged the patriarchs and orthodox prelates, and she had caused the ringleader to be executed. Khovanski, chief of the streltsi, whether from sympathy with the raskol or whether he wished to please his subordinates, affected to share their discontent. The court no longer felt ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... it, Edgar Doe," said this graceful person, leisurely taking a seat and watching Doe dress. "I'm Cardinal Pennybet, papal legate from His Holiness Stanley the Great. Bickerton had the sauce to send for me and to describe me as a ringleader in all your abominations. I represented to him that he was a liar, and had been known to be from his birth, and that he probably cheated at Bridge; and he told me to jolly well disprove his accusation by fetching you ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... "Unyoro is a dangerous country," though they had been there before without any more than they now had in pouch. The fact was, my men, in consequence of the late issues on the river, happened to have more than Grant's men, and every man must have alike. The ringleader, unfortunately for himself, had lately fired at a dead lion, to astonish the Unyoro, and his chum had fired a salute, which was contrary to orders; for ammunition was at a low ebb, and I had done everything in my power to nurse it. Therefore, as a warning to the others, the guns of these two ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... "'Shall we?' cried the ringleader to his men. Most of them were against it; but at length, in obedience to Steelkilt, they preceded him down into their dark den, growlingly disappearing, like ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... Canterbury, convened a council of the bishops and clergy, who met by adjournment, in full numbers, at St. Paul's, on the 26th of June 1413;[9] and adopted most rigorous measures for the extirpation of heresy, levelled professedly with a more especial aim against the ringleader of Lollardism, as he (p. 008) was called, the valiant and unfortunate Lord Cobham. On these proceedings we purpose to dwell separately in another part of this work; and, in addition to what we shall there allege, little needs be observed here by way of anticipation. ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler

... discipline, and for that particular sort of discipline which may require the element of shame in it, must all be considered. He must be able to discover and note whether the discipline should be meted out to a ringleader, and whether the other employes, supposed to be blameworthy, are really only guilty in acquiescing, or in failing to report one who has really furnished the initiative. He must differentiate acts which are the result of following a ringleader ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth

... obedience to the orders of Baron Wenk, an officer with some of the Elector's bodyguards had arrived from the palace, Sir Kunz gave him a short account of the shameful way in which the burghers of the city permitted themselves to instigate revolt, and called upon the officer to place the ringleader, Master Himboldt, under arrest. Seizing the Master by the chest, the Chamberlain accused him of having maltreated and thrust away from the cart the groom who, at his orders, was unhitching the black horses. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... Acrisius[84] courage enough to despise the vain Deity, and to shut the gates of Argos against his approach; and shall this stranger affright Pentheus with all Thebes? Go quickly, (this order he gives to his servants), go, and bring hither in chains the ringleader. Let there be no slothful delay in {executing} ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... to have a' his work undone, and by such a fool as Boucher, who must needs go right again the orders of Committee, and ruin th' strike, just as bad as if he meant to be a Judas. Eh! but father giv'd it him last night! He went so far as to say, he'd go and tell police where they might find th' ringleader o' th' riot; he'd give him up to th' mill-owners to do what they would wi' him. He'd show the world that th' real leaders o' the strike were not such as Boucher, but steady thoughtful men; good hands, and good citizens, who were friendly to ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... it. Some young men hired a four-oared boat to come to the evening service, intending to disturb the congregation. They arrived in good time, but, for all that, they were too late to get a seat. One young man, the ringleader of the party, instead of causing a disturbance, stood still and listened most attentively. I preached that evening from the words, "And the door was shut," referring to the ark, and the awful desolation ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam

... thing else his ship afforded. I had now the pleasure of enjoying my command as fully as ever, and my whole remaining crew, from the highest to the lowest, expressed their satisfaction at our present prospects. Morphew, the ringleader of all our disorders, fearing my resentment might fall heavily on him, contrived to insinuate himself into the favour of the captain and officers of the Success, by a submissive deportment, and presents, and, in the end, left me on the 14th March, being received on board that ship. On the 15th, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr

... from his lips, weighed on his conscience with remorse. "Is then the blood that flows so pure?" he exclaimed at the first murder of the Revolution. This phrase had branded him on the brow with the mark of a ringleader of faction. Barnave was not this, or only as much so as was necessary for the success of his discourses; nothing in him was extreme but the orator: the man was by no means so, neither was he at all cruel. Studious, but without imagination; copious, but without warmth, his intellect ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... ventures, what the Germans call a gluecksritter; a 'swindler,' in the German from which we got it, one who entered into dangerous mercantile speculations, without implying that this was done with any intention to defraud others. Christ, according to Bishop Hall, was the 'ringleader' of our salvation. 'Time-server' two hundred years ago quite as often designated one in an honourable as in a dishonourable sense 'serving the time.' [Footnote: See in proof Fuller, Holy State, b. iii. c. 19.] 'Conceits' had once nothing ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... the disturbance that the president, the late excellent Rev. Dr. John B. Smith, investigated the matter at prayers that evening in the chapel hall. When he demanded the reason of the riot, a ringleader in wickedness rose up and stated that it was occasioned by three or four of the boys holding prayer-meetings, and they were determined to have no such doings there. The good president heard the statement with deep emotion, and, looking at the youths ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... at times on his allowing such a wolf to prowl around their lamb. To tell the truth, Fritz had an evil name in Keinplatz. Never was there a riot or a duel, or any other mischief afoot, but the young Rhinelander figured as a ringleader in it. No one used more free and violent language, no one drank more, no one played cards more habitually, no one was more idle, save in the one ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... tone of aggrieved virtue, and regarded the other with a scowl. The men guffawed, and after a second the boys also. Then a little fellow behind the ringleader offered additional testimony. ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... know that at Athlone Terence was the ringleader of all the mischief that went on. Still, you were a good second, Ryan; that is, if that position does not really belong ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty

... reply that our quarrel was not with them, and so long as we remained unmolested, not the slightest injury should be done to them, their villages, or their crops; but that we were determined to reach the country of Lalbura, the Chief who had been the ringleader in ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... father's neighborhood, and was then sent to the Charter House. The anecdotes which are popularly related about his boyish tricks do not harmonize very well with what we know of his riper years. There remains a tradition that he was the ringleader in a barring out, and another tradition that he ran away from school and hid himself in a wood, where he fed on berries and slept in a hollow tree, till after a long search he was discovered and brought home. If these stories be true, it would be curious to know ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... of cavalry, of which he was appointed colonel. While the recruiting was going on, a serious mutiny broke out, but the man who, like Cromwell's soldiers, "rejoiced greatly" in the day of battle was entirely capable of meeting this different trial. He shot the ringleader dead, and by the force of his own strong will quelled the outbreak completely and ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt



Words linked to "Ringleader" :   provoker, instigator, firebrand



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