1780. LORD GEORGE GORDON. 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!"† 66 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. * Letter to R. Shackleton, June 13. 1780. (Corresp. vol. ii. p. 354.) While the Houses were still sitting, a portion of the mob attacked the official residence of Lord North in Downing Street. It was saved by the timely appearance of a party of soldiers. But during that afternoon, and the whole of Wednesday the 7th, the outrages rose to a far higher pitch than they had yet attained. It might be said, with but slight exaggeration, that for two days the rabble held dominion in the town. It might be said in the eloquent words of Gibbon, an eye-witness to these proceedings, that "forty thousand Puritans, such as they "might be in the time of Cromwell, have started out of "their graves.' In truth, however, within these two days the character of the mob was greatly changed. Many of the heated, but honest, zealots of the Protestant Association had withdrawn. Their places had been filled, and more than filled, by fiercer spirits; by men who thirsted for plunder, and by men who aimed at revolution. In many cases they now bore, not only blue cockades in their hats, but also oaken cudgels in their hands. Flinging aside all future reliance on their silly tool Lord George, they were, it was clear, directed by secret, but daring, leaders of their own. Still, however, "No Popery" was their cry, and in the main their motive; it was the Reformed Faith that gave a plea for some of the worst crimes which it condemns! On the Tuesday afternoon, about six o'clock, a vast multitude appeared in front of Newgate, shouting aloud for the freedom of their brother rioters committed on the Friday night. Mr. Akerman, the keeper, firmly refused to betray his duty or deliver the prisoners; upon which his house was attacked and presently in flames. The wines and spirits in his cellar supplied, and not in vain, opportunity for most brutal drunkenness. Meanwhile, the yells of the mob without the prison, were answered by the wild cry of the felons from within; some of these in hope of liberty, others in dread of conflagration. So strong was the prison itself that it might have been defended, at least against the rabble, by a mere handful of resolute men; such men, however, were wholly wanting * Letter to Mrs. Gibbon, at Bath, June 8. 1780. (Miscellaneous Works.) at that place and time. Sledge-hammers and pickaxes were plied with slight effect against the iron-studded doors; but they were set on fire by means of Mr. Akerman's furniture, which was drawn out and piled close upon them. The flames, also, from Mr. Akerman's house quickly spread to the chapel, and from the chapel to the cells, and made a gap for the mob to enter; thus, ere long, they were in riotous possession of the prison. All the prisoners, to the number of three hundred, comprising four under sentence of death and ordered for execution on the Thursday morning, were released. No attempts were made to check, and many to extend, the flames. Thus was Newgate, at that time the strongest, and as might have been supposed securest, of all our English gaols, which had lately been rebuilt at a charge of no less than 140,000l., lorded over that night by a frantic populace, and reduced to a smouldering ruin. Within a few hours, there was nothing left of the stately edifice, beyond some bare stone walls too thick and massy for the force of fire to bring down. On the same Tuesday evening, other detachments of the mob in like manner broke open the new gaol at Clerkenwell, and set free the prisoners. The dwellings of three active magistrates, Mr. Hyde, Mr. Cox, and Sir John Fielding, were also attacked and gutted by the rioters. In many districts the inhabitants found themselves compelled by threats to illuminate their houses. But far fiercer was the gang, which, towards midnight, gathered before the house of Lord Mansfield in Bloomsbury Square. Loud yells were raised against the Chief Justice, who with Lady Mansfield had barely time to escape by a back-door, and take refuge in the house of a friend. Directly afterwards the mob poured in, carrying havoc and destruction through all the stately rooms. They had brought with them torches and combustibles, and kindled a fire in the street below, which they fed not ouly with the furniture and hangings, but with the pictures, volumes, and papers, which they tore down and threw over from the windows. Then perished an excellent library, formed by one of the most accomplished scholars of his age; books enriched by the handwriting of Pope and Bolingbroke, and of his other literary 1780. THE GORDON RIOTS. 29 friends, or by his own notes upon the margin. Then was lost an invaluable collection of familiar letters which Lord Mansfield had been storing for well nigh half a century, as materials, it was said, for memoirs of his times. Yet amidst all this ferocious havoc well worthy of the Goths or Vandals, the leaders of the mob showed something of a higher spirit. They would not allow the valuables to be carried off as booty, declaring that they acted from principle, and not for plunder. One ragged incendiary was even seen to cast into the fire a costly piece of plate with an oath that it should never go in payment of Masses !* Unhappily, the same scruples did not apply to wine. Lord Mansfield's cellar being forced open, its contents were freely distributed, and supplied the rioters with fresh incentives to their fury. Meanwhile, the flames, extending to the mansion, reduced it long ere morning to a bare and blackened shell. Strange as it may seem, all these outrages were committed in the hearing, and almost in the sight, of a detachment of the Foot Guards, which had arrived at nearly the commencement of the fray. But they had been restrained by the doubts which then prevailed, whether the troops had any legal right to fire upon the mob, unless a magistrate were present, first to read forth at full length all the provisions of the Riot Act. When a gentleman, a friend of Lord Mansfield, went to the officer in command, requiring him to enter the house and defend it, the officer replied that the Justices of the Peace had all run away, and that consequently he could or would do nothing. † When at length a magistrate was caught, and made to mumble through the clauses, the soldiers did advance and fire two volleys. It was then too late. The discharge might kill *See Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chief Justices, vol. ii. p. 524. The lines of Cowper on this outrage, are perhaps among the most pleasing of his lesser poems. Well might he say of Lord Mansfield's books: "Their pages mangled, burnt, and torm, "Their loss was his alone; "But ages yet to come shall mourn "The burning of his own!" Evidence of Sir Thomas Mills. (State Trials, vol. xxi. p. 664.) |