They then went to the House of Lords, where Sir Thomas Pendergrass looking out, they pulled him forth by the nose, and rolled him in the kennel. In the House they found Lord Farnham taking the oaths on the death of his father, instead of which they made him take theirs. There they committed the grossest and most filthy indecencies, placed an old woman on the Throne, and sent for pipes and tobacco for her. They next went to the House of Commons, and ordered the clerk to bring them the journals to burn. He obeyed; but telling them they would destroy the only records of the glorious year 1755, they were contented to restore them. But their greatest fury was intended against Rigby, whom the Duke of Bedford had lately made their Master of the Rolls. The office there is no post of business: still the choice of a man so little grave was not decent. The mob prepared a gallows, and were determined to hang Rigby on it; but, fortunately, that morning he had gone out of town to ride, and received timely notice not to return. The Duke of Bedford sent to the Mayor to quell the tumult, but he excused himself on pretence of there being no Riot Act in Ireland. The Privy Council was then called together, who advised sending for a troop of horse. That was executed: the troopers were ordered not to fire; but riding among the mob with their swords drawn, slashing and cutting, they at length dispersed the rioters, after putting to death fifteen or sixteen.
The Duke of Bedford and Rigby, in their letters to England, carefully concealed the enormity of the outrage. They knew Lord Temple wished to be Lord Lieutenant; and perhaps suspected, that that ambition had been the foundation of Mr. Pitt’s expostulations. Those seeds of jealousy, combining with Rigby’s devotion to Fox, gave rise to the succeeding animosities between the Duke and Pitt. What was more remarkable was, that the letters from the Castle acquitted the Papists of being authors of the sedition; yet, a short time before, the Duke had quarrelled with the Primate for saying he had no apprehensions from that quarter. Whatever was pretended, there was much reason for believing that the insurrection had deeper foundation than in a mere jealousy of an union with England. Seditious papers had been printed: two drummers, in the livery of the College, had commenced the uproar in the Earl of Meath’s Liberties, telling the people, that if they did not rise by one o’clock, an Act would be passed to abolish Parliaments in Ireland. So small, too, was the dislike to the then Government, that one of the rioters skimming away Lord Tavistock’s[81] hat, his comrades gave him 200 lashes, saying, Lord Tavistock had not offended them.
But the strongest presumption of the tumult being excited by the emissaries of France came out afterwards; it appearing that the commotion began the very day after intelligence was received that the French fleet was sailed from Brest. Indeed it is now past doubt, that the Court of France had laid a very extensive plan, meditating an attack on the three kingdoms at one and the same time. England was to be invaded from Dunkirk, Ireland by the Brest Fleet, while Thurot[82] was to fall on the north of Scotland. Nor was Dublin the sole theatre where confusion was to be spread. Riots were raised at Cork on the prohibition of exporting Irish cattle. Mr. Pitt wrote a warm letter to the Duke of Bedford to complain of his supineness after such repeated intelligence of the designs of France.
That storm weathered, the Castle met with little opposition. Perry, the most formidable of the minority, they bought off. One man alone gave them trouble; his name Hutchinson,[83] a lawyer. His views he owned himself. Being asked, on leaving England, whether he should addict himself to the Opposition or to the Castle, he replied, “Not to the Castle, certainly; nothing is to be gotten there”—meaning that Rigby engrossed everything. Hutchinson had good parts, and exerted them briskly, annoying Rigby, Malone, and the Courtiers. He said, Lord George Sackville had parts, but no integrity; Conway, integrity, but no parts; now, they were governed by one who had neither. There was more wit than truth in this description. Conway’s parts, though not brilliant, were solid: for Rigby, though he never shone in the Irish Parliament, no man wanted parts less—and his joviality soon made him not only captivate so bacchanalian a capital, but impress a very durable memory of his festive sociability.
For the Irish Courtiers, it required no masterly pencil to expose their profligacy. That was the case of Sir Richard Cox. Hutchinson moved a resolution that the vote against pensions had had effect. “It is true,” said Sir Richard; “I lost a small pension, and have got a good place—yet I should not have expected such a Motion from that gentleman.” “Oh!” replied Hutchinson, “I should have opposed the Motion in the House, though I have now made it in the Committee; I only had a mind to try if this Committee would not vote for anything—yet I cannot believe that gentleman (Sir Richard Cox) is so very profligate and abandoned as he says himself.”
Finished Oct. 28, 1763.
FOOTNOTES:
[70] George, son of Charles Viscount Townshend, whom he succeeded.
[71] Robert Monckton, second son of the Lord Viscount Galway.