THE GORDON RIOTS.
[Sidenote: 1778-80--Sir George Savile's Catholic Relief Bill]
In the year 1778 Sir George Savile earned for himself an honorable
distinction by passing his measure for the relief of Roman Catholics.
Sir George Savile was a man of advanced views; he fought gallantly in
the House of Commons through five successive Parliaments, in which he
represented York County, for all measures which he believed to be
sincerely patriotic, and against all measures which he believed to be
opposed to the honorable interests of his country. He gained the
laurel of praise from Burke, who, in one of his famous Bristol
speeches, spoke of him as a true genius, "with an understanding
vigorous, acute, relined, distinguishing even to excess; and
illuminated with a most unbounded, peculiar, and original cast of
imagination." The man whom Burke thus generously praised deserved the
praises. He strove earnestly against the American war. He
enthusiastically supported Pitt's motion in 1783 for a reform in
Parliament. He was the author of an admirable Bill for the Limitation
of the Claims of the Crown upon Landed Estates. But his name is
chiefly associated with his Bill for Catholic Relief, both because of
the excellent purpose of the measure itself, and because of the
remarkable outburst of fanaticism which followed it.
Sir George Savile's measure did away with certain restrictions, certain
barbarous restrictions, as they now seem, upon English subjects
professing the Catholic faith. The famous Act of the eleventh and
twelfth years of King William the Third, the Act known as the Act for
the Further Preventing the Growth of Popery, had instituted certain
very harsh penal enactments against Catholics. {192} That Act Sir
George Savile proposed largely to repeal. This was a measure of relief
of no great magnitude, but it did at least recognize the common
humanity of Catholic Englishmen with Protestant Englishmen; it did at
least allow to Catholic Englishmen some of the dearest and most obvious
rights of citizenship. The savage penal laws which for so long
afflicted the sister island of Ireland were tempered and abrogated in
this measure as far as England was concerned, and rumor spread it
abroad that a similar relief was soon to be extended to the Catholics
of Scotland. Straightway a Bill which had passed both Houses without a
single negative aroused the fiercest opposition beyond the Border. The
announcement of the recall of the Stuarts could not have spread a
greater panic through the ranks of the Scottish Protestants. A violent
agitation was set on foot, an agitation which could not have been more
violent if the Highlanders had once again been at the gates of
Edinburgh. An alarmist spirit spread abroad. All manner of
associations and societies were called into being for the defence of a
faith which was not menaced. Committees were appointed to inflame
faction and serve as the rallying points of bigotry. Sectarian books
and pamphlets of the most exaggerated and alarming kind were sown
broadcast all over the country. The result of this kind of agitation
showed itself in a religious persecution, which gradually developed
into a religious war. The unfortunate Catholic residents in Edinburgh,
in Glasgow, and in other great Scottish towns found themselves suddenly
the victims of savage violence at the hands of mobs incited by the
inflammatory utterances and the inflammatory propaganda of the
Protestant committees. In the face of the disorder which a suggestion
of mercy aroused in Scotland, the Government seemed to take fright, and
to abandon all thought of extending the clemency of the Relief Bill to
Scotland.
But the Scottish agitation against the Catholics soon spread across the
Border, soon directed itself, not against the imaginary Bill which it
might be the intention of the Government to pass, but against the
actual Bill which the {192} Government had passed for the benefit of
English Catholics. The bigoted bodies, societies, and committees in
Scotland soon found their parallels in England. The English Protestant
Association rose into being like some sudden evocation of a wizard, and
chose for its head and leader the man who had made himself conspicuous
as the head and leader of the movement in Scotland--Lord George Gordon.
[Sidenote: 1750-80--Lord George Gordon]
Lord George Gordon lives forever, a familiar figure in the minds of the
English-speaking race, thanks to the picture drawn by Charles Dickens.
Englishmen know, as they know the face of a friend, the ominous figure
"about the middle height, of a slender make and sallow complexion, with
an aquiline nose, and long hair of a reddish brown, combed perfectly
straight and smooth about his ears and slightly powdered, but without
the faintest vestige of a curl." It is a living portrait of that
solemn gentleman in the suit of soberest black, with those bright large
eyes in which insanity burned, "eyes which betrayed a restlessness of
thought and purpose, singularly at variance with the studied composure
and sobriety of his mien, and with his quaint and sad apparel." It
fits well with all that we know of Lord George Gordon, to learn that
there was nothing fierce or cruel in his face, whose mildness and whose
melancholy were chiefly varied by a haunting air of "indefinable
uneasiness, which infected those who looked upon him and filled them
with a kind of pity for the man: though why it did so they would have
had some trouble to explain." Such was the strange fanatic whose name
was destined to be blown for a season throughout England, who was fated
to stand for a moment visible in the eyes of all men, the idol of
intolerance, the apostle of violence, of murder, and of fire, and then
to fall most pitiably, most pitifully into the dust.
Lord George Gordon was still a young man when he became leader of the
anti-Catholic agitation. He would seem in our days a very young man,
for, as he was born in 1750, he was only thirty when the agitation
reached its height. But a man of thirty was counted older than he
{193} would not be reckoned, in an epoch when it was possible for a
young man just come of age to lead the House of Commons. Lord George
Gordon had led a somewhat varied life. He had been in the navy, and
had left the service from pique, while the American war was still in
its earliest stages, in consequence of a quarrel with Lord Sandwich
concerning promotion. The restless energy which he could no longer
dedicate to active service he resolved most unhappily to devote to
political life. He entered Parliament as the representative of the
borough of Ludgershall, and soon earned for himself a considerable
notoriety in Westminster. He had very fierce opinions; he attacked
everybody and everything; his vehemence and vituperation were seasoned
with a kind of wit, and he made himself, if not a power, at least an
important factor in the House of Commons. Indeed, it passed into a
kind of proverb at St. Stephen's that there were three parties in the
State--the Ministry, the Opposition, and Lord George Gordon.
Parliament had seen before, and has seen since, many a politician
fighting thus like Hal o' the Wynd for his own hand, but no one so
influential for a season or so pernicious in his influence as Lord
George Gordon.
It seems quite clear to those who review so strange a career at this
distance of time that Lord George Gordon was of deranged intellect. It
does not need the alleged contrast between his professions and his
practice to enforce this conclusion. Many men have affected the
religious habit and the religious bearing while their lives were
privately profligate without deserving to be called insane except in
the sense in which any criminal excess may be regarded pathologically
as a proof of madness. Even if it were true that the long-haired and
black-habited George Gordon were the debauched profligate that Hannah
More and Horace Walpole maintained him to be, he might find
fellow-sinners of unquestioned sanity. But the conduct of his public
life goes to prove that his wits were diseased. His behavior in the
House, when it was not intolerably tedious, was characterized by a
grotesque buffoonery which men looked upon as laughable {194} or
pitiable according to their tempers, but which they had not yet learned
to look upon as dangerous. When he denounced the King as a Papist,
when he declared that the time would come when George Gordon would be
able to dictate to the Crown and Parliament, when he occasionally
interrupted his wild utterances to break into floods of tears, men
sneered or yawned or laughed. They were soon to learn that the man was
something more than divertingly contemptible.
In the excitement that followed on the passing of the relief measure
Lord George Gordon found his opportunity for being actively noxious. A
gloomy fanaticism in Scotland took fire at the fear lest kindred relief
should be extended to the North Briton, and, as we have said, displayed
itself in savage speech and savage deed. In the press and from the
pulpit denunciations of the Catholics streamed. The Synod of Glasgow
solemnly resolved that it would oppose any Bill brought into Parliament
in favor of Scottish Catholics. In Edinburgh and in Glasgow houses
were wrecked and lives menaced. In Glasgow a worthy potter, Mr.
Bagnal, who had brought from Staffordshire its famous art, had his
property wholly destroyed. In Edinburgh the house of a Catholic priest
was wrecked in obedience to a brutal handbill which called upon its
readers to "take it as a warning to meet at Leith Wynd, on Wednesday
next, in the evening, to pull down that pillar of popery lately erected
there." The "pillar of popery" was the dwelling occupied by the
priest, which was duly wrecked in obedience to the bidding of the
nameless "Protestant" who signed the manifesto. It is curious to note
a postscriptum to the handbill, which ran thus: "Please to read this
carefully, keep it clean, and drop it somewhere else. For King and
country.--UNITY." The means which were adopted to spread fanaticism in
Scotland were carefully followed when the time came for carrying the
agitation into England.
[Sidenote: 1778-80--The English "Protestant Association"]
It was indeed not necessary to be a Catholic to call down the fury of
fanatical persecution. To have expressed any sympathy for Catholicism,
to have taken part in any way, {195} no matter how indirect, in the
advocacy of the relief measure, was enough to mark men out for
vengeance. Dr. Robertson, the historian, was threatened because he
advocated tolerance in religious matters. A lawyer named Crosbie was
denounced merely because he had in the way of his regular business
drawn up the Bill intended for Parliament. It was inevitable that the
action of intolerance in Scotland should come before the notice of
Parliament. Wilkes, always ostentatious in the cause of liberty,
called upon Dundas to bring in his relief measure for Scotland. When
Dundas declared that it was better to delay the measure until cooler
judgment might prevail, Wilkes denounced him for allowing Parliament to
truckle to riot, and the denunciation found support in the actions of
Burke and of Fox. Lord George Gordon had found his opportunity. He
assailed Fox; he assailed Burke. He declared that every non-Catholic
in Scotland was ready to rise in arms against Catholic relief, and that
the rebels had chosen him for their leader. He raged and vapored and
threatened on the floor of the House. But he did more than rage and
vapor and threaten. Whether of his own motion, or prompted by others,
he formed a "Protestant Association" in England. Of this, as of the
similar Scottish Association, he was declared the head, and this
accumulation of honors wholly overthrew his intelligence. An amiable
writer has declared that "it would be much beneath the dignity of
history to record the excesses of so coarse a fanatic but for the fatal
consequences with which they were attended." The amiable defender of a
detestable phrase does not understand that it was the excesses of the
fanatic that led to the fatal consequences, and that Lord George
Gordon, as the ostensible head and conspicuous cause of one of the
gravest events of the history of England in the eighteenth century, is
in no sense beneath the "dignity of history." The business of history
is with him and with such as he, as well as with the statelier,
austerer figures who sanely shape the destinies of the State. There
was plenty of fanaticism abroad in England; it was reserved for Lord
George Gordon to bring it together into {196} a single body, to
organize it, and to employ its force with a terrible if temporary
success. He issued an insane proclamation calling upon men to unite
against Catholicism; he held a great meeting of the Protestant
Association at Coachmakers' Hall, at which with a kind of
Bedlamite-brilliancy he raved against Catholicism and lashed the
passions of his hearers to delirium. It was resolved to hold a huge
meeting of the Protestant Association in St. George's Fields on June 2.
At its head Lord George Gordon was to proceed to the House of Commons
and deliver the petition against Catholic relief. All stanch
Protestants were to wear blue cockades in their hats to mark out the
faithful from the unfaithful.
[Sidenote: 1780--The Lord George Gordon riots]
On June 2, 1780, the meeting was held. Lord George Gordon had
announced in his speech at the Coachmakers' Hall that he would not
deliver the petition if the meeting were less than twenty thousand
strong. The number of Lord George's limit was enormously exceeded. It
is said that at least sixty thousand persons were present in St.
George's Fields on the appointed day, and some chroniclers compute the
number at nearer one hundred thousand than sixty thousand. It is
curious to note in passing that a Roman Catholic cathedral stands now
on the very site where this meeting was held. After the meeting had
assembled it started to march six abreast to Westminster. The hand of
the great romancer who has made George Gordon live has renewed that
memorable day, with its noise, its tumult, its tossing banners, its
shouted party cries, its chanted hymns, its military evolutions, its
insane enthusiasms, its dangerous latent passions. Gibbon, who was
then a member of the House of Commons, declared that the assemblage
seemed to him as if forty thousand Puritans of the days of Cromwell had
started from their graves. The forty thousand Puritans were escorted
by and incorporated with a still greater body of all the ruffianism and
scoundrelism that a great city can contribute to any scene of popular
agitation. What fanaticism inspired rowdyism was more than ready to
profit by. The march to Westminster and the arrival at Westminster
form one of {197} the wildest episodes in the history of London. By
three different routes the blue-cockaded petitioners proceeded to
Westminster, and rallied in the large open spaces then existing in
front of the Houses of Parliament. The innate lawlessness of the
assemblage soon manifested itself in a series of attacks upon the
members of both Houses who were endeavoring to make their way through
the press to their respective Chambers. It is one more example of the
eternal irony of history that, while the mob was buffeting members of
the Lower House, and doing its best to murder members of the Upper
House, while a merciless intolerance was rapidly degenerating into a
merciless disorder, the Duke of Richmond was wholly absorbed in a
speech in favor of annual parliaments and universal suffrage. Member
after member of the House of Lords reeled into the Painted Chamber,
dishevelled, bleeding, with pale face and torn garments, to protest
against the violence of the mob and the insult to Parliamentary
authority. Ashburnham, Townshend and Willoughby, Stormont and
Bathurst, Mansfield, Mountfort, and Boston, one after another came in,
dismayed victims of and witnesses to the violence that reigned outside.
Bishop after bishop entered to complain of brutal ill-treatment. But
the Duke of Richmond was so wrapped up in his own speech and its
importance that he could only protest against anything which
interrupted its flow. It is agreeable to find that imbecility and
terror did not rule unchallenged over the Upper House that day. One
account, that of Walpole, who is always malicious, represents Lord
Mansfield as sitting upon the woolsack trembling like an aspen.
Another, more creditable and more credible, declares that Lord
Mansfield showed throughout the utmost composure and presence of mind.
About the gallantry of Lord Townshend there can be no doubt. When he
heard that Lord Boston was in the hands of the mob, he turned to the
younger peers about him, reminded them of their youth, and the fact
that they wore swords, and called upon them to draw with him and fight
their way to the rescue of their brother peer. It was at least a
gallant if a hopeless suggestion. What could the {198} rapiers of a
score of gentlemen avail against the thousands who seethed and raved
outside Westminster Hall? The solemn Duke of Richmond interfered. If
the Lords went forth to face the mob he urged that they should go as a
House and carrying the Mace before them. On this a debate sprang up,
while the storm still raged outside. A Middlesex magistrate, called to
the bar in haste, declared that he could only offer six constables to
meet the difficulty. A proposal to call upon the military power was
fiercely opposed by Lord Shelburne. Under such conditions the Peers
did nothing, and in the end retired, leaving Lord Mansfield alone in
his glory.
[Sidenote: 1780--Lord George Gordon at Westminster]
If things went badly in the Upper House, they went still worse in the
Lower House. While members trying to gain entrance suffered almost as
much ill-treatment as the Peers at the hands of the mob, the Commons'
House was much more closely leaguered than the House of Lords. For it
was in the Commons' House that the petition was to be presented. It
was in the Commons' House that Lord George Gordon, pale, lank-haired,
black-habited, with the blue cockade in his hat, was calling upon the
Commons to receive immediately the monstrous petition. Every entrance
to the House was choked with excited humanity. The Lobby itself was
overflowing with riotous fanatics, who thundered at intervals upon the
closed doors of the Chamber with their bludgeons. Shrieks of "No
Popery," and huzzas for Lord George Gordon filled the place with a
hideous clamor strangely contrasting with the decorum that habitually
reigned there.
Lord George Gordon did not cut a very heroic figure on that memorable
day at Westminster. He was perpetually rushing from his place to the
door of the House to repeat to rowdyism in the Lobby what different
members had said in the debates. At one time he denounced the Speaker
of the House; at another, Mr. Rous; at another, Lord North.
Occasionally he praised a speaker, and his praise was more ludicrous
than his condemnation. At one moment, when Lord George was at the door
communicating with the crowd, Sir Michael le Fleming came up to him
{199} and tried to induce him to return to his seat. Lord George
immediately began caressing Sir Michael le Fleming in a childish,
almost in an imbecile way, patting and stroking him upon the shoulders,
and expressing inarticulately a pitiful kind of joy. He introduced Sir
Michael le Fleming to the mob as a man who had just been speaking for
them. A little later Lord George again addressed the crowd, this time
from the little gallery, when he stimulated their passions by appeal to
the example of the Scotch, who had found no redress till they had
pulled down the Mass-houses. Probably no stranger scene has ever been
witnessed at Westminster than this of the pale-faced fanatic and
madman, with the blue cockade in his hat, running backward and forward
from the Chamber to the door of the House, delivering inflammatory
addresses to the mob that raged in the Lobby, and stimulating them by
his wild harangues to persevere in their conduct, and to terrify the
King and the Parliament into obedience to their wishes. The names of
the members who spoke against the petition he communicated to the
shrieking throng; their utterances he falsely reported.
It is deeply interesting to note a fact which has escaped the notice of
not merely the most conspicuous historians of the time, but also the
keen eye of the great novelist who studied the event. It is recorded
in the "Annual Register" for the year 1780 that among the members whose
names Lord George Gordon denounced to the raving crowd in the Lobby the
name of Mr. Burke had especial prominence. It is curious to picture
the imbecile fanatic standing upon the steps leading to the Strangers'
Gallery and invoking the fury of the fanatic and the lawless against
the greatest public man of his age.
For a while Lord George Gordon was suffered to rant unimpeded. At last
Colonel Holroyd, seizing hold of him, threatened to move for his
immediate committal to Newgate, while Colonel Gordon, with a blunter
and yet more efficacious eloquence, declared that if any of the rioters
attempted to force his way past the door of the House, he, Colonel
Gordon, would run his sword through {200} the body, not of the invader,
but of Lord George Gordon. As Colonel Gordon was a kinsman of Lord
George's, it may be that Lord George knew sufficient of his temper to
believe his word and was sufficiently sane to accept his warning. At
least there came a pause in his inflammatory phrases, and shortly
afterward the news of the arrival of a party of Horse and Foot Guards
did what no persuasions or entreaties could effect. It cleared the
Lobby and the approaches to the House. Under conditions of what might
be called comparative quiet the division on Lord George Gordon's
proposal for the immediate reception of the petition was taken, and
only found six supporters against a majority of one hundred and
ninety-two.
[Sidenote: 1780--Spread of the Gordon Riots]
But mischief was afoot and began to work. The mob that had been
dispersed from Westminster broke up into different parties and
proceeded to expend its fury in the destruction of buildings. The
hustling of peers, the bonneting of bishops, the insulting of members
of Parliament, all made rare sport; but the demolition of Catholic
places of worship promised a better, and suggested exquisite
possibilities of further depredation. The Catholic chapels in Duke
Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, and in Warwick Street, Golden Square--the
one belonging to the Sardinian, the other to the Bavarian
Minister--were attacked, plundered, set fire to, and almost entirely
destroyed. The military were sent for; they arrived too late to
prevent the arson, but thirteen of the malefactors were seized and
committed to Newgate, and for the night the mob was dispersed. It was
not a bad day's work for the rioters. Parliament had been insulted,
the Government and the very Throne menaced. In two parts of the town
Catholic buildings, under the protection of foreign and friendly
Powers, stood stripped and blackened piles. Riot had faced the
bayonets of authority--had for a moment seemed ready to defy them. Yet
at first nobody seems to have taken the matter seriously or gauged its
grave significance. Neither the Catholics, against whom the agitation
was levelled, nor the peers and prelates and members of Parliament who
had been so harshly treated seemed to understand the {201} sternness of
the situation. There was a sense of confidence in law and order, a
feeling of security in good administration, which lulled men into a
false confidence.
This false confidence was increased by the quiet which reigned over
Saturday, June 3. Parliament met undisturbed. An address of Lord
Bathurst's, calling for a prosecution of "the authors, abettors, and
instruments of yesterday's outrages," was carried after a rambling and
purposeless debate, and the House of Lords adjourned till the 6th,
apparently convinced that there was no further cause for alarm. This
public composure was rudely shaken on the following day, Sunday, June
4. The rioters reassembled at Moorfields. Once again the buildings
belonging to Catholics were ransacked and demolished; once again
incendiary fires blazed, and processions of savage figures decked in
the spoils of Catholic ceremonial carried terror before them. The Lord
Mayor, Kennett, proved to be a weak man wholly unequal to the peril he
was suddenly called upon to face. There were soldiers at hand, but
they were not made use of. One act of resolution might have stayed the
disorder at the first, but no man was found resolute enough to perform
the act; and rapine, raging unchecked, became more audacious and more
dangerous.
On the Monday, though the trouble grew graver, nothing was done to meet
it beyond the issuing of a proclamation offering a reward of five
hundred pounds for the discovery of the persons concerned in the
destruction of the chapels of the Bavarian and Sardinian Ambassadors.
The mob gathered again, bolder for the impunity with which it had so
far acted. Large bodies of men marched to Lord George Gordon's house
in Welbeck Street and paraded there, displaying the trophies stripped
from the destroyed chapels in Moorfields. Others began work of fresh
destruction in Wapping and in Smithfield. Sir George Savile's house in
Leicester Fields, and the houses of Mr. Rainsforth of Clare Market, and
Mr. Maberly of Little Queen Street, respectable tradesmen who had been
active in arresting rioters on the Friday night, were sacked and their
furniture burned in huge bonfires in the streets. The {202} Guards who
had the task of escorting the prisoners taken on Friday to Newgate were
pelted.
On the Tuesday authority seemed to have wakened up to a vague sense
that the situation was somewhat serious. Parliament reassembled to
find itself again surrounded and menaced by a mob, which wounded Lord
Sandwich and destroyed his carriage. Lord George Gordon attended the
House, but even his madness appeared to have taken alarm, for he had
caused a proclamation to be issued in the name of the Protestant
Association disavowing the riots. As he sat in his place, with the
blue cockade in his hat, Colonel Herbert, who was afterwards Lord
Carnarvon, called to him from across the House, telling him to take off
the badge or he would cross the floor and do it himself, Lord George's
vehemence did not stand him in good stead where he himself was menaced.
He had no following in the House. Colonel Herbert was a man of the
sword and a man of his word. Lord George Gordon took the cockade from
his hat and put it in his pocket. If authority had acted with the
firmness of Colonel Gordon on the Friday and of Colonel Herbert on the
Tuesday, the tumult might have been as easily cowed as its leader. But
still nothing was done. The House of Commons made a half-hearted
promise that when the tumult subsided the Protestant petition would be
taken into consideration, and a suggestion that Lord George ought to be
expelled was unfavorably received.
From that moment, and for two long and terrible days, riot ruled in
London. In all directions the evening sky was red with flames of
burning buildings; in all directions organized bands of men, maddened
with drink, carried terror and destruction. The Tuesday evening was
signalized by the most extraordinary and most daring deed that the
insurgents had yet done. Some of the men arrested on the Friday had
been committed to Newgate Prison. To Newgate Prison a vast body of men
marched, and called upon Mr. Akerman, the keeper, to give up his keys
and surrender his prisoners. His firm refusal converted the mob into a
besieging army.
{203}
[Sidenote: 1780--The burning of Newgate Prison]
Two men of genius have contributed to our knowledge of the siege of
Newgate. Crabbe, the poet, was at Westminster on the Tuesday, and
after seeing all the disturbance there he made his way with the current
of destruction towards Newgate, and witnessed the astonishing capture
of a massive prison by a body of men, unarmed save with such rude
weapons of attack as could be hurriedly caught up. The prison was so
strong that, had a dozen men resisted, it would have been almost
impossible to take it without artillery. But there was nobody to
resist. Mr. Akerman, the keeper, acted with great courage, and did his
duty loyally, but he could not hold the place alone. Crowbars,
pickaxes, and fire forced an entrance into the prison. "Not Orpheus
himself," wrote Crabbe, "had more courage or better luck" than the
desperate assailants of the prison. They broke into the blazing
prison, they rescued their comrades, they set all the other prisoners
free. Into the street, where the summer evening was as bright as
noonday with the blazing building, the prisoners were borne in triumph.
Some of them had been condemned to death, and never were men more
bewildered than by this strange reprieve. The next day Dr. Johnson
walked, in company with Dr. Scott, to look at the place, and found the
prison in ruins, with the fire yet glowing. The stout-hearted Doctor
was loud in his scorn of "the cowardice of a commercial place," where
such deeds could be done without hinderance.
While one desperate gang was busy with the destruction of Newgate,
other gangs, no less desperate, were busy with destructive work
elsewhere. The new prison in Clerkenwell was broken open by one crowd,
and its prisoners set free. Another assailed Sir John Fielding's
house, and burned its furniture in the streets. A third attacked the
house of Lord Mansfield in Bloomsbury Square. This last enterprise was
one of the most remarkable and infamous of the bad business. Lord
Mansfield and his wife had barely time to escape from the house by a
back way before the mob were upon it. The now familiar scenes of
savage violence followed. The doors were broken open, the {204} throng
poured in, and in a comparatively short time the stately mansion was a
ruin. Lord Mansfield's law library, one of the finest in the kingdom,
and all the judicial manuscripts made by him during his long career,
were destroyed. A small detachment of soldiers came upon the scene too
late to prevent the destruction of the house or to intimidate the mob;
although, according to one account, the Riot Act was read and a couple
of volleys fired, with the result that several of the rioters were shot
and wounded. It is curious to find that the reports of the intended
purposes of the wreckers drew persons of quality and curiosity to
Bloomsbury Square in their coaches as to a popular performance, and
that the destruction of Lord Mansfield's house proved more attractive
than the production of a new play.
[Sidenote: 1780--Public alarm in London]
The Wednesday was no less terrible than the Tuesday. The rioters
seemed to think that, like so many Mortimers, they were now Lords of
London. They sent messages to the keepers of the public prisons of the
King's Bench, the Fleet, and to prominent Catholic houses, informing
them of the precise time when they would be attacked and destroyed. By
this time peaceable London was in a state of panic. All shops were
shut. From most windows blue banners were thrust out to show the
sympathy of the occupants with the agitation, and the words "No Popery"
were scrawled in chalk across the doors and windows of every
householder who wished to protect himself against the fanaticism of the
mob. At least one enterprising individual got from Lord George Gordon
his signature to a paper bidding all true friends to Protestants to do
no injury to the property of any true Protestant, "as I am well assured
the proprietor of this house is a stanch and worthy friend to the
cause." But there were plenty of houses where neither fear nor
fanaticism displayed blue banner or chalked scrawl, houses whose owners
boasted no safeguard signed by Lord George Gordon, and with these the
mob busied themselves. The description in the "Annual Register" is so
striking that it deserves to be cited; it is probably from the pen of
Edmund Burke: "As soon {205} as the day was drawing towards a close one
of the most dreadful spectacles this country ever beheld was exhibited.
Let those who were not spectators of it judge what the inhabitants felt
when they beheld at the same time the flames ascending and rolling in
clouds from the King's Bench and Fleet Prisons, from New Bridewell,
from the toll-gates on Blackfriars Bridge, from houses in every quarter
of the town, and particularly from the bottom and middle of Holborn,
where the conflagration was horrible beyond description. . . .
Six-and-thirty fires, all blazing at one time, and in different
quarters of the city, were to be seen from one spot. During the whole
night, men, women, and children were running up and down with such
goods and effects as they wished to preserve. The tremendous roar of
the authors of these terrible scenes was heard at one instant, and at
the next the dreadful report of soldiers' musquets, firing in platoons
and from different quarters; in short, everything served to impress the
mind with ideas of universal anarchy and approaching desolation."
From the closing words of this account it is plain that at last
authority had begun to do its duty and to meet force with force.
Terrorized London shook with every wild rumor. Now men said that the
mob had got arms, and was more than a match for the military; now that
the lions in the Tower were to be let loose; now that the lunatics from
Bedlam were to be set free. Every alarming rumor that fear could
inspire and terror credit was buzzed abroad upon that dreadful day,
when the servants of the Secretary of State wore blue cockades in their
hats and private gentlemen barricaded their houses, armed their people,
and prepared to stand a siege. Horace Walpole found his relative, Lord
Hertford, engaged with his sons in loading muskets to be in readiness
for the insurgents. Everybody now shared in the general alarm, but the
alarm affected different temperaments differently. Some men fled from
town; others loaded guns and sharpened swords; others put their hands
in their pockets and lounged, curious spectators, on the heels of riot,
eager to observe {206} and willing to record events so singular and so
unprecedented.
It is pleasant to be able to chronicle that the King showed an especial
courage and composure during that wild week's work. George the Third
never lost head nor heart. To do his House justice, personal courage
was one of their traditions, but the family quality never showed to
better advantage than in this crisis. If indeed George the Second were
prepared, as has been hinted, to fly from London on the approach of the
young Pretender, George the Third displayed no such weakness in the
face of a more immediate peril. The peril was more immediate, it was
also more menacing. No man could safely say where bad work so begun
might ultimately pause. What had been an agitation in favor of a
petition might end in revolution against the Crown. Outrages that had
at first been perpetrated with the purpose of striking terror only were
changing their character. Schemes of plunder formed no part of the
early plans of the rioters; now it began to be known that the rioters
had their eyes turned towards the Bank of England and were planning to
cut the pipes which provided London with water. With a little more
laxity on the part of authority, and a few more successes on the part
of the mob, it is possible that Lord George Gordon might have found
himself a puppet Caesar on the shields of Protestant Praetorians.
[Sidenote: 1780--Stern action by the authorities]
That nothing even approaching to this did happen was largely due to the
courage and the determination of the Sovereign. The Administration
vacillated. The Privy Council, facing an agitation of whose extent and
popularity it was unaware, feared to commit itself. George felt no
such fear. Where authority fell back paralyzed in the presence of a
new, unknown, and daily increasing peril, he came forward and asserted
himself after a fashion worthy of a king. If the Privy Council would
not act with him, then he would act without them. He would lead out
his Guards himself and charge the rioters at their head. The courage
which had shown itself at Dettingen, the courage which had been
displayed by generations of rough German {207} electors and Italian
princes, showed itself gallantly now and saved the city. The King
lamented the weakness of the magistrates, but at least there was one,
he said, who would do his duty, and he touched his breast with his
hand. George the Third is not a heroic figure in history, but just at
that moment he bore himself with a royal honor which ranked him with
Leonidas or Horatius. If there are to be kings at all, that is how
kings ought to behave. George was fortunate in finding a man to stand
by him and to lend to his soldierly courage the support of the law.
Wedderburn, the Attorney-General, declared, with all the authority of
his high position, that in cases where the civil power was unable to
restrain arson and outrage, it was the duty of all persons, civil as
well as military, to use all means in their power to deal with the
danger. The reading of the Riot Act was nugatory in such exceptional
conditions, and it became the duty of the military to attack the
rioters. Thus supported, the King ordered Wedderburn to write at once
to Lord Amherst, the Commander-in-Chief, authorizing him to employ the
military without waiting for authority from the civil powers.
Wedderburn, who in a few days was to become Chief Justice and Lord
Loughborough, wrote the order, kneeling upon one knee at the council
table, and from that moment the enemy was grappled with in grim earnest.
It was high time. No less than two unsuccessful attacks had been made
during that day upon the Bank of England, but precautions had been
taken, and the successes of Newgate were not repeated in Threadneedle
Street. The assailants were repulsed on each occasion by the military,
who occupied every avenue leading to the Bank. Had the attack upon the
Bank succeeded it is impossible to form any estimate of what the result
might have been. But it failed, and with that failure the whole
hideous agitation failed as well. But the crowning horror of the whole
episode was reserved for that final day of danger. In Holborn, where
riot raged fiercest, stood the distilleries of Mr. Langdale, a wealthy
Roman Catholic. The distilleries were attacked and fired. Rivers of
spirit ran in all the {208} conduits and blazed as they ran. Men,
drunk with liquor and maddened with excitement, kneeled to drink, and,
drinking, fell and died where they lay. By this time the soldiers were
acting vigorously, driving the rabble before them, shooting all who
resisted, as some did resist desperately. The fire that had grown
during the week was quenched at last in blood. On the Thursday morning
London was safe, comparatively quiet, almost itself again. The shops
indeed were still closed, but mutiny had lived its life. There was a
short, sharp struggle during the day in Fleet Street, between some of
the fanatics and the Guards, which was stamped out by repeated bayonet
charges which killed and wounded many. Everywhere were blackened
spaces, smouldering ruins, stains of blood, and broken weapons,
everywhere the signs of outrage and of conflict. But the incendiary
fires were quenched and with them the fire of insurrection. The riots
were at an end. The one wish of every one was to obliterate their
memory as speedily as might be. The stains of blood were quickly
removed from the walls of the Bank of England, from the roadway of
Blackfriars Bridge. The marks of musket shots were swiftly effaced
from the scarred buildings.
[Sidenote: 1780--Suppression of the Gordon Riots]
It was never fully known how far the rioters themselves suffered in the
suppression of the disorder. The official returns give lists of 285
direct deaths, and of 173 cases of serious wounds in the hospitals.
But this can only represent a small proportion of the actual
casualties. Many dead, many wounded, must have been carried away by
friends and hidden in hurried graves, or nursed in secret to recovery.
Many, too, perished at Blackfriars Bridge, or were hideously consumed
in the flames that rose from the burning of Langdale's distilleries.
But if the number of those who suffered remains an unknown quantity, it
is not difficult to approximate to the destructive power of the
disturbances. The cost of the whole bad business has been estimated at
at least 180,000 pounds. To that amount an imbecile insanity had
despoiled London. But the imbecile insanity had incurred a deeper
debt. In the wild trials that followed upon the panic and the violence
forty-nine {209} men were condemned to death for their share in the
riot, and twenty-nine of these actually suffered the last penalty of
the law. It was not, in the eyes of some, a heavy sacrifice to pay.
It did not seem a heavy sacrifice in the eyes of John Wilkes, who
declared that if he were intrusted with sovereign power not a single
rioter should be left alive to boast of, or to plead for forgiveness
for, his offence. But Lord George Gordon was not worth the life of one
man, not to speak of nine-and-twenty.
The folly of the Administration did not end with their victory. On the
9th they did what they ought to have done long before, and arrested
Lord George Gordon. But even this necessary belated act of justice
they performed in the most foolish fashion. Everything that the pomp
and ceremonial of arrest and arraignment could do was done to exalt
Lord George in the eyes of the mob and swell his importance. He was
conveyed to the Tower of London. Though the rising was thoroughly
stamped out, and there was practically no chance of any attempt being
made to rescue the prisoner, Lord George was escorted to the Tower by a
numerous military force in broad daylight, with an amount of display
that gave him the dignity of a hero and a martyr. To add to the
absurdity of the whole business, the poor crazy gentleman was solemnly
tried for high treason. Many months later, in the early February of
the next year, 1781, when the riots were a thing of the past, and their
terrible memory had been largely effaced, George Gordon was brought to
the Bar of the Court of King's Bench for his trial. His wits had not
mended during his confinement. He had been very angry because he
thought that he was prevented from seeing his friends. His anger
deepened when he learned that no friends had desired to see him. The
fanatic had served his turn, and was forgotten. He was not of that
temper which makes men devoted to a leader. He was but the foolish
figurehead of a fanatical outburst, and when he was set aside he was
forgotten. But when he was brought up for trial a measure of popular
enthusiasm in the man reasserted itself. He behaved very strangely at
his trial, urging his right to read {210} long passages of Scripture in
his defence. Happily for him, his defence was managed by abler hands
than his own. The genius of Erskine, the gifts of Kenyon, were
expended in his behalf. The unwisdom of the Government in prosecuting
him for high treason was soon apparent. He was acquitted, to the
general satisfaction of his supporters, and of many who were not his
supporters. If public thanksgiving were returned in several churches
for his acquittal, one grave manly voice was uplifted to swell the
approval. Dr. Johnson declared that he was far better pleased that
Lord George Gordon should escape punishment than that a precedent
should be established for hanging a man for constructive treason.
Thus the great Gordon riots flickered ignominiously out. Lord George
made occasional desperate efforts to reassert himself, trying to force
himself upon the notice of the King at St. James's. In 1787 he was
found guilty of libels upon the Queen of France and the French
Ambassador. He fled to Holland, where he was arrested by the Dutch
authorities, and shipped back to England. He was committed to Newgate,
by curious chance, on the anniversary of the day on which it had been
burned by his followers. In Newgate he lived for some years, adjuring
Christianity, and declaring himself to be a follower of the Jewish
faith. In Newgate the fanatic, renegade, madman, died of jail
distemper on November 1, 1793. He was only forty-two years old. In
his short, unhappy life he had done a great deal of harm, and, as far
as it is possible to judge, no good whatever. Perhaps the example of
the Gordon riots served as a precedent in another land. If the news of
the fall of the Bastille and the September massacres reached Lord
George Gordon in his prison, he may have recalled to his crazed fancy
the fall of Newgate and the bloody Wednesday of the June of 1780.
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