“I shall return to my own castle to-morrow: I had not above four hours’ sleep last night, and must get some rest. General Conway is enraged at the adjournment, and will go away too. Many coaches and chaises did leave London yesterday. My intelligence will not be so good nor so immediate; but you will not want correspondents. Disturbances are threatened again for to-night; and some probably will happen, but there are more troops, and less alacrity in the outlaws.
“Berkeley Square, June 9, at noon, 1780.
“All has been quiet to-night, as far as we know in this region; but not without blood being spilt yesterday. The rioters attacked the Horse Guards about six in Fleet Street, and, not giving them time to load, were repelled by the bayonet. Twenty fell, thirty-five were wounded and sent to the hospital, where two died directly. Three of the Guards were wounded, and a young officer named Marjoribank. Mr. Conway’s footman told me he was on a message at Lord Amherst’s when the Guards returned, and that their bayonets were steeped in blood.
“I heard, too, at my neighbour Duchess’s, whither I went at one in the morning, that the Protestant Associators, disguised with blue cockades as friends, had fallen on the rioters in St. George’s Fields, and killed many. I do not warrant the truth, but I did hear often in the evening that there had been slaughter in the Borough, where a great public-house had been destroyed, and a house at Redriffe, and another at Islington. Zeal has entirely thrown off the mask, and owned its name—plunder. Its offspring have extorted money from several houses with threats of firing them as Catholic. Apprentices and Irish chairmen, and all kinds of outlaws, have been the most active. Some hundreds are actually dead about the streets, with the spirits they plundered at the distiller’s; the low women knelt and sucked them as they ran from the staved casks.
“It was reported last night that the primate, George Gordon, is fled to Scotland: for aught I know he may not be so far off as Grosvenor Place. All is rumour and exaggeration; and yet it would be difficult to exaggerate the horrors of Wednesday night; a town taken by storm could alone exceed them.
“I am going to Strawberry this instant, exhausted with fatigue, for I have certainly been on my feet longer these last eight-and-forty hours than in forty days before.…
“Adieu! Madam; allow my pen a few holidays, unless the storm recommences.”
On hearing that Lord George Gordon had been arrested, he writes again:
“Strawberry Hill, Saturday night, late.
“Was not I cruelly out of luck, Madam, to have been fishing in troubled waters for two days for your Ladyship’s entertainment, and to have come away very few hours before the great pike was hooked? Well, to drop metaphor, here are Garth’s lines reversed,