Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty (commonly known as Barnaby Rudge) is a historical novel by Charles Dickens. The plot is a murder mystery interwoven with the historical events of England's Gordon riots of 1780, a violent and bloody clash between fanatical, anti-Catholic Protestants, who vehemently opposed Parliament's recent legislation, the Catholic Relief Act of 1778, which loosened some of England's stringent, Anti-Catholic Penal laws. This opposition is alluded to throughout the novel by some of the characters' recurring demotic cries of "no-popery". The action is seen through the eyes of the good-hearted title character, the idiot Barnaby Rudge.