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.