The Reign of George III. - (Continued.) page 4

The next day, the house of lords met; the commons had adjourned till Tuesday. Lord Bathurst moved and carried an address, praying the king to prosecute the authors and abettors of the riots; and lord Shelburne pointed out the necessity of the institution of a police on the system of that of France, but employed as became a free and constitutional country. That day all seemed quiet; but at evening, the men having got their Saturday's wages and their usual beer, there were some disturbances in Moorfields, and the mob abused some of the catholics there. The next day, Sunday, fresh crowds assembled in the same quarter, and attacked the dwelling-houses and chapels of the catholics. Troops were sent to quell them; but, having orders not to fire, the mob cared nothing for them. They knew, says a writer of the time, that the military did not dare to fire without the command of the civil power; and, so far from fearing them, in many places they pulled the noses of the soldiers and spat in their faces. The soldiers, therefore, thought it best, as they could not effectually act, to be on good terms with the mob to prevent such insults; and therefore a rumour soon grew that the soldiers were fraternizing with the rioters, which greatly increased the alarm. The mob attacked the chapels and the dwelling - houses of the catholics about Moorfields, the soldiers looking on. Kennett, the lord- mayor, was a man of no mind or energy, and therefore took no active means to quell the riots.

The next morning, Monday, a cabinet council was held at St. James's, to consider what steps should be taken; but nothing was done, except to offer a reward of five hundred pounds for the discovery of the persons concerned in destroying the Sardinian and Bavarian chapels. Lord Mansfield, the lord chief-justice, even treated the affair as altogether trivial, and when, in the course of the same day, Strahan, the printer, called on him to express his far greater apprehensions, he continued to treat it in the same light. After the council a grand drawing-room was held by the king, in celebration of his birthday, and the courtiers were all fluttering about in their finery, and the choristers were going through the farce of chanting one of the laureate Whitehead's wretched odes in worship of majesty, while the whole metropolis was left at the mercy of the fanatic mob!

The blue cockades were, in fact, growing every hour more numerous and audacious. A few of them were seized, and committed to Newgate; but the guards, who escorted them thither, were pelted and insulted. Some of the rioters took their way to Wapping and East Smithfield, to destroy the catholic chapels in that neighbourhood; and others burst into and plundered the shops and houses of Messrs. Rains- forth and Maberly, tradesmen, who had been bold enough to give evidence against the rioters taken on Friday. Another detachment took their way to Leicester Fields, to ransack the house of Sir George Saville, the author of the bill for the relaxation of the penal code against the catholics. This they stripped and set fire to and some of the pictures and furniture, as well as some of the effects taken from the catholic chapels and houses in Moorfields, were paraded before the house of lord George Gordon, in Welbeck Street, in triumph. All that night London was in the hands of this destructive and unchecked mob.

On the morning of Tuesday, the 6th, both houses of parliament met, according to adjournment. A detachment of foot-guards was posted in Westminster Hall; but the mob, knowing that their hands were tied, stopped and insulted the members on their way to either house as they had done on Friday. Lord Sandwich was dragged from his carriage, his carriage was demolished, and he was himself most violently treated. Mr. Hyde, a justice of peace, hastened to his rescue with a party of light horse, and succeeded - though one scoundrel declared, that if he could not murder Sandwich there he would murder him yet. Hyde rode amongst the crowd with the light horse to disperse them, but the soldiers, fearful of executing the law, would not even strike the rioters with the flat of their swords. The furious crowd was busy with huge oaken cudgels in their hands, compelling the ministers as they went to the house to cry " No popery!" and chalking those words on their carriages. Lord Stormont had his carriage destroyed, and was slightly wounded himself. A number of them, as Hyde rode amongst them, cried out, " To Hyde's house, a-hoy!" and they marched to his residence in St. Martin's Lane, and in a very short time pulled it down. Burke, who had fled for refuge with his family to the house of general Burgoyne, was stopped by the mob, and dared to remonstrate with them, but, as probably there were legions of Irish in the crowd, he was allowed to proceed.

About two hundred members assembled in the commons, where lord George Gordon appeared, wearing his blue cockade. Colonel Herbert, afterwards created lord Porchester, on seeing this, declared that he would not sit and vote in the house while he saw a noble lord with the ensign of riot in his hat, and that, if his lordship would not take it out, he would step across the house and do it for him. Lord George Gordon submissively took the cockade from his hat, and put it in his pocket. In fact, that strange madman was as strange a compound of audacity and timidity. He had now grown greatly alarmed at the features which the riots had assumed, and would fain have put an end to them. He had issued a handbill in the name of the protestant association, disavowing any concern in the riots; but, like the conjuror's 'prentice, though he had learned the art of raising the devil, he was ignorant of the power of laying him again.

Burke and Sir George Saville, who were both in the house, recommended all parties to forget their differences, and unite, to enable ministers to take strong measures; but the majority were like lord George now - afraid of the mob, and carried a resolution, that the protestant petition, which had been made the immediate cause of these disturbances, should be taken into consideration. Burke stoutly opposed this as mean and truckling; but he afterwards expressed his satisfaction that they had done so, as otherwise the disgraceful outrages which took place would have been attributed to their obstinacy. The resolution, which was moved by general Conway, only pledged the house to consider the petition when the disorders had subsided. There was some talk of committing lord George to the Tower, and expelling him from the house, but in the midst of the discussion fresh and alarming news came from the city, and the house adjourned in a hurry. The lords had only assembled in very small numbers, and had already adjourned to the 19th.

The mob had now acquired a more desperate character. The fanatic members of the protestant association had retired in consternation from the work of destruction, seeing fresh elements introduced into it - elements not of simple religious frenzy, but of plunder and revolutionary fury. They had begun the disturbance, and the thieves, pickpockets, burglars, and all the vilest and most demoniacal tribes of the metropolis had taken it up. Like lord George Gordon, the originators would fain have set limits to the work of darkness, but it was gone out of their hands, and stood in triumphant devilry, ready to sack the city and overturn the very government. Pandemonium seemed to have broken loose, and the metropolis was at its mercy. The government was paralysed by the greatness of the evil, just as they had been from the first by the American war, and sate helpless as infants, while victorious anarchy raged through the city. While the house of commons had been sitting, the mob had attacked lord North's house, in Downing Street, just by; but a party of soldiers had succeeded in interposing themselves between the mansion and its assailants. The house of the minister was saved; but the gigantic mass of rioters then rolled towards the city, vowing that they would sack Newgate, and release their comrades, who had been sent there on Friday. They appeared in vast and infinite numbers before that prison, and demanded of Mr. Akerman, the keeper, the delivery of their associates. Their cry was still " No popery! " though their object was havoc: they were armed with heavy sledge-hammers, crowbars, and pickaxes; and on the keeper refusing to liberate the prisoners, they commenced a desperate attack on his doors and windows, and, collecting combustibles, flung them into the dwelling. It was speedily in flames, and, whilst it burned, the mob thundered on the iron-studded doors of the prison with their tools. But, as they made no impression, they brought heaps of the keeper's furniture, and made a fire against the doors, as the mob at Edinburgh had done in the Porteus case.

The fires spread from the keeper's house to the prison chapel, and thence to some of the doors and passages leading into the wards. The mob raised terrible yells of rage and triumph, which were as wildly echoed by the prisoners within, some of whom were exulting in the expectation of rescue, and others shrieking, afraid of perishing in the conflagration. The crowd, now more furious than ever, from greedily drinking the wine and spirits in the keeper's cellar,, rushed through the gaps made by the flames, and were masters of the prison.

They were led on by ferocious fellows, who were but too familiar with the interior of the place. The different cells were forced open, and the now half-maddened prisoners were either rudely dragged out, or they rushed forth in maniacal delight. Three hundred of these criminals, some of them stained with the foulest offences, and four of them under sentence of execution on the following Thursday, were let out, to add to the horrors of the lawless tumult. Not one was left un- released, not one perished. They came out into the surging, roaring multitude to raise their shouts at the sight of the great prison, which had lately been rebuilt at a cost of one hundred and forty thousand pounds, in one great conflagration. Nothing was left of it the next morning but one great skeleton of blackened and frowning walls.

The same evening the new prison of Clerkenwell was broken open, and all the prisoners there let loose. These joined the drinking, rabid mass, and, in their turn, attacked and gutted the houses of two of the most active magistrates - Sir John Fielding and Mr. Cox - as they had previously done that of Mr. Hyde. As they went along, they compelled the inhabitants to illuminate their houses, under menace of burning them down. Everywhere they seized on gin, brandy, and beer, and thus, in the highest paroxysm of drunken fury, at midnight they appeared before lord Mansfield's house, in Bloomsbury Square. His lordship must have bitterly rued his blindness then, in having slighted the warnings of the privy council and of Mr. Strahan, the printer. He was quickly obliged to escape with lady Mansfield by the back door, and to take refuge in the house of a friend in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The mob broke in, and, having demolished the doors and windows, proceeded to destroy and fling out into the square the furniture, pictures, and books, of which their fellows outside made several bonfires. Then perished one of the finest libraries in England, not only of works of law but of literature, which his lordship, through a long course of years, had been collecting. Besides the books, wearing apparel, furniture, and paintings, a great mass of private deeds and other papers, particularly of letters of eminent men, which it had been the great object of lord Mansfield to preserve, as it was said, for the purpose of writing the memoirs of his own times, were piled on the fires. The crowd, declaring that they were not doing this for plunder, but to execute justice on the friends of popery and the enemies of their country, would allow none of these things, if possible, to be carried off. So the destruction became complete. The same patriotic principle did not prevail in the cellars of Mansfield House. There the mob drank themselves mad or stupid on the finest wines, and consummated their work by setting fire to the house itself, and burning it to the ground.

The most extraordinary part of the transaction was, that almost at the commencement of the outrage a party of foot- guards arrived upon the spot, and stood quietly surveying the annihilation of the property. The gentleman who had conveyed away lord and lady Mansfield, on his return to the spot, beheld a scene which has been vividly depicted by a writer of the time: - " The violence and ferocity of the ruffians, armed with sledge-hammers and other instruments of destruction; the savage shouts of the surrounding multitude; the wholesale desolation; the row of bonfires blazing in the street, heaped with the contents of the sacked mansion, with splendid furniture, books, pictures, and manuscripts, the loss of which was irreparable; the drunken wretches staggering against each other, or rolling on the ground; the fires lighted in every room, and the flames soon rushing upwards from windows and roof in one magnificent conflagration." Attracted by the flare of the burning, the inhabitants streamed from all quarters of London, where they were not detained by similar sights, to witness it, for, during the whole of this eventful night, similar fires of anarchy were raging, all London was awake, and the streets lighted up by the fierce and general illumination.

The gentleman referred to did not stand an idle spectator. He demanded of the commanding officer why he permitted this, and he replied that the magistrates had all run away, and that without the sanction of one of them it was impossible to act. When a magistrate at length was found, the mischief was done, and they could then only fire on a throng of wretched people, utterly stupefied with drink, and kill several of them.

The next morning, Wednesday, the 7th of June, the consternation was universal. The shops continued closed, and people barricaded their houses as well as they could, many of them chalking " No popery!" on their doors, or hanging blue silk, the protestant association colour, from their windows. In the midst of these horrors there were, as usual, some features of the ludicrous. The Jews in Houndsditch and Duke's Place chalked on their doors and shutters, " This house is a protestant!" An Italian, the clown of one of the theatres, chalked on his door, "No religion." Dr. Johnson, in a walk from Fleet Street to see the ruins of the Old Bailey, describes the coolness and composure with which " the protestants," men and boys, were employed in plundering and stripping houses, unmolested by soldiers, constables, or any one. Great numbers of the mob were going about, armed with iron bars torn from the railings in front of lord Mansfield's, to levy contributions on the householders. Some went singly; three mere boys were observed thus engaged in company; and one man, mounted on horseback, refused to receive anything less than gold.