Bath, June 9, 1780,
My dearest sir,
How are you? where are you? and what is to come next? The accounts from town are so frightful, that I am uneasy, not only for the city at large, but for every individual I know in it. Does this martial law confine you quite to the house? Folks here say that it must, and that no business of any kind can be transacted. Oh, what dreadful times! Yet I rejoice extremely that the opposition members have fared little better than the ministerial. Had such a mob been confirmed friends of either or of any party, I think the nation must have been at their disposal; for, if headed by popular or skilful leaders, who and what could have resisted them?—I mean, if they are as formidable as we are here told.
Dr. Johnson has written to Mrs. Thrale, without even mentioning the existence of this mob; perhaps at this very moment he thinks it “a humbug upon the nation,” as George Bodens called the parliament,
A private letter to Bull, the bookseller, brought word this morning that much slaughter has been made by the military among the mob. Never, I am sure, can any set of wretches less deserve quarter or pity; yet it is impossible not to shudder at hearing of their destruction. Nothing less, however, would do; they were too outrageous and powerful for civil power.
But what is it they want? who is going to turn papist? who, indeed, is thinking in an alarming way of religion?—this pious mob, and George Gordon excepted?
All the stage-coaches that come into Bath from London are chalked over with “No Popery,” and Dr. Harrington called here just now, and says the same was chalked this morning upon his door, and is scrawled in several places about the town. Wagers have been laid that the popish chapel here will be pulled or burnt down in a few days; but I believe not a word of the matter, nor do I find that anybody is at all alarmed. Bath, indeed, ought to be held sacred as a sanctuary for invalids; and I doubt not but the news of the firing in town will prevent all tumults out of it.
Now, if, after all the intolerable provocation given by the mob, after all the leniency and forbearance of the ministry, and after the shrinking Of the minority, we shall by and by hear that this firing was a massacre—will it not be villanous and horrible? And yet as soon as safety is secured—though by this means alone all now agree it can be secured—nothing would less surprise me than to hear the seekers of popularity make this assertion.
Friday night.—The above I writ this morning, before I recollected this was not post-day, and all is altered here since. The threats I despised were but too well grounded, for, to our utter amazement and consternation, the new Roman Catholic chapel in this town was set on fire at about nine o'clock. It is now burning with a fury that is dreadful, and the house of the priest belonging to it is in flames also. The poor persecuted man himself has I believe escaped with life, though pelted, followed, and very ill used. Mrs. Thrale and I have been walking about with the footmen several times. The whole town is still and orderly. The rioters do their work with great composure, and though there are knots of people in every corner, all execrating the authors of such outrages, nobody dares oppose them. An attempt indeed was made, but it was ill-conducted, faintly followed, and soon put an end to by a secret fear of exciting vengeance.
Alas! to what have we all lived!—the poor invalids here will probably lose all chance of life, from terror. Mr. Hay, our apothecary, has been attending the removal of two, who were confined to their beds in the street where the chapel is burning. The Catholics throughout the place are all threatened with destruction, and we met several porters, between ten and eleven at night, privately removing goods, walking on tiptoe, and scarcely breathing.