"There is Mr. Burke," he were speaking against them. said, "the member for Bristol;" and, soon afterwards, "Do you know that Lord North calls you a mob?" Thus, their fury increasing, the House, at intervals, resounded with their cries of "No Popery!" and their violent knocks at the door. General Conway and Lord Frederick Campbell, that same evening at supper, said there was a moment when they thought they must have opened the doors, and fought their way out sword in hand. Lord North, however, at this crisis showed great firmness, animating the resolution of the House by his unperturbed demeanour, but sending privately, and in all haste, for a party of the Guards. Other members made it a personal matter with Lord George. Colonel Holroyd told him that he had hitherto ascribed his conduct to insanity; but now saw that there was more of malice than of madness in it; and that, if he again attempted to address the rioters, he, Colonel Holroyd, would immediately move for his commitment to Newgate. Colonel 66 66 Murray, one of Lord George's kinsmen, used still bolder language:- "My Lord George, do you really mean to 'bring your rascally adherents into the House of Commons? If you do, the first man of them that enters "I will plunge my sword, not into his body, but into "yours!" Lord George appears to have been daunted. Certainly, at least, he was silenced. Indeed, in one part of the evening, he quietly went up to the eating-room, where he threw himself into a chair and fell asleep, or nearly so, while listening to some excellent admonitions from Mr. Bowen, the Chaplain of the House.* Failing the incitements of Lord George, the crowd within the lobby grew less fierce. Out of doors, moreover, great exertions were making to allay the storm. Lord Mahon, who was known to many of the people as a recent candidate for Westminster, harangued them from the balcony of a coffee-house, and is said to have done good serv ce to the cause of law and order.† In Evidence, at his trial, of the Rev. Thomas Bowen. (State Trials, vol. xxi. p. 525.) Lord Mahon counteracted the incendiary, and chiefly contri"buted by his harangues to conjure down the tempest." (H. Walpole to Mason, June 4. 1780. See also his Letters to Lady 1780. ADJOURNMENT OF BOTH HOUSES. 23 this manner time was gained, until towards nine o'clock, when an active Middlesex Justice, Mr. Addington, appeared with a party of Horse Guards. Mr. Addington told the people in the streets, that he meant them no harm, and that the soldiers should retire if they would quietly disperse, which many hundreds of them did accordingly, first giving the Magistrate three cheers. A party of the Foot Guards was also drawn up in the Court of Requests, and the lobby was now cleared; thus, at length, enabling the House of Commons to divide. Only eight members were found willing to support Lord George in his ignominious proposal for immediate deliberation, at the bidding and in the presence of the mob. Against that proposal 194 votes, including tellers, were recorded; and the House was then adjourned until the Tuesday following. With the adjournment of both Houses, and the dispersion of the crowd in Palace-Yard, it was imagined that the difficulties of the day had closed. The magistrates returned home, and sent away the soldiers. Unhappily, several parties of the rioters were intent on further mischief. Repairing to the two Roman Catholic chapels of the Sardinian and Bavarian Ministers in Lincoln's Inn Fields and in Warwick Street — chapels which existed by the faith of treaties, and were not at all connected with the Acts of 1778-they set them in flames. Engines were sent for, but the mob prevented them from playing; while the benches from the Sardinian chapel, being flung into the street, afforded the materials for a bonfire, as a token of the public exultation. At length the soldiers came too late to prevent the havoc, in time only to seize and to secure thirteen of the rioters. Next morning the town was, to all appearance, perfectly tranquil. The House of Lords met in the forenoon, and on the motion of Earl Bathurst, agreed to an Address Ossory, vol. ii. p. 415. ed. 1848.) One of Lord Mahon's qualifications for addressing a large crowd with effect is satirically glanced at in the Rolliad : "Mahon outroaring torrents in their force, for prosecuting the authors and abettors of the recent outrages. The angry taunts that followed between the Government and Opposition members, may be readily conceived and need not be detailed. But it is well worthy of note, with how much of political foresight and sagacity Lord Shelburne suggested the idea of a new police. "Let their Lordships," he said, "at least those "who are in administration, recollect what the police of "France is; let them examine its good, and not be blind "to its evil. They would find its construction excellent; "its use and direction abominable. Let them embrace "the one, and shun the other." Notwithstanding the general and confident belief that the disturbances were over, they recommenced, in a slight degree, that very evening in Moorfields. On the next afternoon, that is, on Sunday the 4th, they became far more serious in the same quarter. Unhappily Kennett, the Lord Mayor, was, as Wilkes afterwards complained, a man wholly wanting in energy and firmness. The first outrages within his jurisdiction being unchecked and almost unnoticed, tended to give rise to many more. Again assembling in large bodies, the mob attacked both the chapels and the dwelling-houses of the Roman Catholics in and about Moorfields. The houses they stripped of the furniture, and the chapels of the altars, pulpits, pews, and benches, all which served to make bonfires in the streets. On the ensuing afternoon, that is, on Monday the 5th of June, a Drawing Room had been appointed at St. James's, in celebration of the King's Birthday. Previous to the Drawing Room a Privy Council was held, at which the riots were discussed. But as yet they were deemed of so slight importance that no one measure was taken with regard to them, beyond a Proclamation offering a reward of 500l. for a discovery of the persons concerned in setting fire to the Sardinian and Bavarian chapels. Even Lord Mansfield, who had not only seen, but felt, the fury of the mob, fell into the same error of underrating it. When in the course of this day Mr. Strahan, the printer, who had also been insulted, called upon his Lordship to express his fears from the licen 1780. LORD GEORGE GORDON. 25 25 tiousness of the populace, the Chief Justice, we are told, treated it as a very slight irregularity.* That delusion, however, was dispelled by the events of the same day. The blue cockades, growing bolder and bolder by indulgence, mustered in high spirits and with increasing numbers. While some parties proceeded to destroy the Romanist chapels in Wapping and East Smithfield, others broke open and plundered the shops and houses of Mr. Rainsforth and Mr. Maberly, two tradesmen who had given evidence against the rioters secured on Friday night. But the principal object of attack was the house of Sir George Savile, obnoxious as the author of the first relaxation in the Penal Code. Savile House, which stood in Leicester Fields, was accordingly carried, as it were, by storm, and given up to pillage. Some of the furniture derived from the chapels or the private dwellings, was, previously to its being burned in the adjacent fields, dragged in triumph and displayed through Welbeck Street, before the house of Lord George Gordon. That foolish young fanatic now began to shrink from the results of his own rashness. In the name of his Protestant Association he put forth a handbill, disavowing all share in the riots; but he soon found how far easier it was to raise than to allay the storm. By this time the alarm had spread far and wide. Burke, who had most zealously supported Savile in the good work of religious toleration, found it requisite, with his family, to take refuge beneath the roof of his friend General Burgoyne. Throughout these troubles, and amidst all the anxious scenes of the next day, his demeanour was courageous and composed, and his wife showed herself not unworthy such a husband. “Jane,” thus writes their brother Mr. Richard Burke, "Jane has "the firmness and sweetness of an angel; but why do I say an angel? of a woman!"† On Tuesday the 6th, according to adjournment both Houses met. A detachment of Foot Guards had been ranged in Westminster Hall, and in great measure over * Dr. Johnson to Mrs. Thrale, June 9. 1780. The passages from these letters, relating to the riots, are inserted in Boswell's Life. † See Burke's Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 351. awed the mob; nevertheless, one of the Ministers, Lord Stormont, was slightly wounded, and his carriage altogether demolished. The Peers, after a short discussion, adjourned. In the Commons, notwithstanding the alarms of personal violence, there mustered about 200 members. Lord George Gordon was there as before, decked with a blue cockade. Upon this an independent member of high spirit, Colonel Herbert, soon afterwards raised to the peerage as Lord Porchester, declared that he could not sit and vote in that House whilst he saw a Noble Lord in it with the ensign of riot in his hat; and he threatened that, if his Lordship would not take it out, he would walk across the House and do it for him. Lord George with rather tame submission, or only yielding, as he said, to the entreaties of his friends, put the obnoxious symbol in his pocket. Neither Savile, nor yet Burke, was absent from his place. Burke, on his way down, had been surrounded by the mob, and was for some time in their hands. He did not conceal his name, nor yet dissemble his sentiments, but remonstrated with them, and they, honouring his firmness, let him go. "I even found," he says, "friends and well"wishers among the blue cockades." Of his subsequent speech that day in Parliament, he adds: "I do not think "I have ever, on any occasion, seemed to affect the "House more forcibly. However, such was the con"fusion that they could not be kept from coming to a "Resolution, which I thought unbecoming and pusil"lanimous; which was, that we should take that flagi"tious petition which came from that base gang called "the Protestant Association, into our serious consi"deration. I am now glad that we did so; for if we "had refused it, the subsequent ravages would have "been charged upon our obstinacy."* The Resolution to which Burke thus objects, had been moved by General Conway. It went no further than to pledge the House to consider the petitions as soon as the tumults subside, which are now subsisting." With this promise the Commons adjourned. 66 66 *Letter to R. Shackleton, June 13. 1780. (Corresp. vol. ii. p. 354.) |