a perfect Tartar. The mother, who I hoped had forgotten me, recollected our having passed an evening together at Northumberland House, as she told Lady Clermont; but as she did not claim me, I shall not leave my name at her lodgings in blood-bowl alley.

Your Ireland, I find, has spoken out, though professing much decorum. The Chancellor is for firmness; as if frowns would pass more current in Ireland than in America. The heir-apparent of the Seals, out of contradiction both to the Chancellor and to his own treatment of Dr. Franklin, takes the side of acquiescence; and probably will prevail, for Lord Thurlow is in so bad a way that if he lives he is not likely to be able to execute his office.

Yesterday's papers say the Church of England is to assemble tomorrow in St. George's Fields, and to follow their metropolitan, Lord George Gordon, to the House of Commons, to demand that the defender of the faith should be forced to part with his whore of Babylon; so his triple crown is in as much peril as his other diadems but your Ladyship can read the papers as well as I, and when I recur to them you must yourself be weary of aMercurius Rusticus.

1923. TO THE COUNTESS OF OSSORY.

Berkeley Square, June 3, 1780.

I KNOW that a governor or a gazetteer ought not to desert their posts, if a town is besieged, or a town is full of news; and therefore, Madam, I resume my office. I smile to-day-but I trembled last night; for an hour or more I never felt more anxiety. I knew the bravest of my friends were barricaded into the House of Commons, and every avenue to it impossible. Till I heard the Horse and Foot Guards were gone to their rescue, I expected nothing but some dire misfortune; and the first thing I heard this morning was that part of the town had had a fortunate escape from being burnt after ten last night. You must not expect order, Madam; I must recollect circumstances as they occur; and the best idea I can give your Ladyship of the tumult will be to relate it as I heard it.

I had come to town in the morning on a private occasion, and found it so much as I left it, that though I saw a few blue cockades here and there, I only took them for new recruits. Nobody came. in; between seven and eight I saw a hack and another coach arrive at Lord Shelburne's, and thence concluded that Lord George

Gordon's trumpet had brayed to no purpose. At eight I went to Gloucester House; the Duchess told me, there had been a riot, and that Lord Mansfield's glasses had been broken, and a bishop's, but, that most of the populace were dispersed. About nine his Royal Highness and Colonel Heywood arrived; and then we heard a much more alarming account. The concourse had been incredible, and had by no means obeyed the injunctions of their apostle, or rather had interpreted the spirit instead of the letter. The Duke had reached the House with the utmost difficulty, and found it sunk from the temple of dignity to an asylum of lamentable objects. There were the Lords Hillsborough, Stormont, Townshend, without their bags, and with their hair dishevelled about their ears, and Lord Willoughby without his periwig, and Lord Mansfield, whose glasses had been broken, quivering on the woolsack like an aspen. Lord Ashburnham had been torn out of his chariot, the Bishop of Lincoln ill-treated, the Duke of Northumberland had lost his watch. in the holy hurly-burly, and Mr. Mackenzie his snuff-box and spectacles. Alarm came that the mob had thrown down Lord Boston, and were trampling him to death; which they almost did. They had diswigged Lord Bathurst on his answering them stoutly, and told him he was the pope, and an old woman; thus splitting Pope Joan into two. Lord Hillsborough, on being taxed with negligence, affirmed that the Cabinet had the day before empowered Lord North to take precautions; but two Justices that were called denied having received any orders. Colonel Heywood, a very stout man, and luckily a very cool one, told me he had thrice been collared as he went by the Duke's order to inquire what was doing in the other House; but though he was not suffered to pass he reasoned the mob into releasing him,--yet, he said, he never saw so serious an appearance and such determined countenances.

About eight the Lords adjourned, and were suffered to go home; though the rioters declared that if the other House did not repeal the Bill, there would at night be terrible mischief. Mr. Burke's name had been given out as the object of resentment. General Conway I knew would be intrepid and not give way; nor did he, but inspired the other House with his own resolution. Lord George Gordon was running backwards and forwards, from the windows of the Speaker's Chamber denouncing all that spoke against him to the mob in the lobby. Mr. Conway tasked him severely both in the House and aside, and Colonel Murray told him he was a disgrace to his family. Still the members were besieged and locked up for four hours, nor could

divide, as the lobby was crammed. Mr. Conway and Lord Frederick Cavendish, with whom I supped afterwards, told me there was a moment when they thought they must have opened the doors and fought their way out sword in hand. Lord North was very firm, and at last they got the Guards and cleared the pass.

Blue banners had been waved from tops of houses at Whitehall as signals to the people, while the coaches passed, whom they should applaud or abuse. Sir George Savile's and Charles Turner's coaches were demolished. Ellis, whom they took for a Popish gentleman, they carried prisoner to the Guildhall in Westminster, and he escaped by a ladder out of a window. Lord Mahon harangued the people from the balcony of a coffee-house and begged them to retire; but at past ten a new scene opened. The mob forced the Sardinian Minister's Chapel in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and gutted it. He saved nothing but two chalices; lost the silver lamps, &c., and the benches being tossed into the street, were food for a bonfire, with the blazing brands of which they set fire to the inside of the chapel, nor, till the Guards arrived, would suffer the engines to play. My cousin, T. Walpole, fetched poor Madam Cordon, who was ill, and guarded her in his house till three in the morning, when all was quiet.

Old Haslang's Chapel' has undergone the same fate, all except the ordeal. They found stores of mass-books and run tea.

This is a slight and hasty sketch, Madam. On Tuesday the House of Commons is to consider the Popish laws. I forgot to tell you that the Bishops not daring to appear, the Winchester Bill, which had passed the Commons, was thrown out.

No saint was ever more diabolic than Lord George Gordon. Eleven wretches are in prison for the outrage at Cordon's, and will be hanged instead of their arch-incendiary. One person seized is a Russian officer, who had the impudence to claim acquaintance with the Sardinian Minister, and desired to be released. Cordon replied, "Oui, Monsieur, je vous connoissois, mais je ne vous connois plus." I do not know whether he is an associate of Thalestris, who seems to have snuffed a revolution in the wind.

I hear there are hopes of some temperament in Ireland. Somebody, I forget who, has observed that the English Government pretends not to quarter soldiers in Ireland, and therefore must be glad of a bill. It is time some of our wounds should close; or, I believe, I shall soon have too much employment, instead of wanting materials for letters.

In Golden Square. See note at p. 381.-CUNNINGHAM.

1924. TO THE REV. WILLIAM MASON.

Strawberry Hill, Sunday night, June 4, 1780.

I WENT to town on Friday for a private supper, to which I was engaged. There I found your letter, finished mine and put it into the post, and went out; and it was past eight at night before I heard a syllable of the prodigious tumult at Westminster. All yesterday I had not a minute's time to write you a line, so you will have seen all the particulars in the common papers. Miraculously no lives were lost, nor was part of the town burnt, as it was near being, for the mob not only set on fire the Sardinian Minister's Chapel, but, till the Guards arrived, would not suffer the engines to play on it.

Nothing ever surpassed the abominable behaviour of the ruffian apostle that preached up this storm. I always, you know well, disliked and condemned the repeal of the Popish statutes, and am stedfast in that opinion; but I abhor such Protestantism as breathes the soul of Popery, and commences a reformation by attempting a massacre. The frantic incendiary ran backwards and forwards, naming names for slaughter to the mob: fortunately his disciples were not expert at assassination, and nobody was murdered for the Gospel's sake. So blind was his zeal, and so ill tutored his outlaws, that though the petition was addressed and carried to the House of Commons, the chief fury fell on the Peers, and on some of the most inoffensive, as Lord Willoughby and Lord Boston, the latter of whom was thrown down and trampled on, and had a most narrow escape.

The demolition of two Chapels of Foreign Ministers, which they enjoy by the law of nations, and did enjoy before the repeal, is another savage outrage, and I suppose will throw the King of Sardinia into the general league against us. One may hope, I trust, that the universal detestation which the Gordon has drawn on himself, will disarm his further power of mischief, though a statute of lunacy ought to be his doom. Colonel Murray, uncle of the Duke of Athol, said to him in the House of Commons, "I see many lives will be lost, but, by God, yours shall be one of them!" Some of the coolest of the members have told me that there was one moment in which they thought they should be forced to open the doors of the House and fight their way out, sword in hand, as their only chance of safety.

The wretch had marked the Duke of Richmond to the populace for sacrifice, and they called for him, but the greater part, not knowing on what view, echoed the sound, and called for the noble Duke of Richmond. Lord Mahon counteracted the incendiary, and chiefly contributed by his harangues to conjure down the tempest.

What steps are to be taken I do not know-what preventive measures were taken are to be summed up thus: the Cabinet Council, on Thursday, authorised Lord North to prepare the civil officers to keep the peace, and he forgot it till two o'clock at noon, some hours after the procession had begun to march.

Well, here is a Religious War added to all our Civil and Foreign Wars, enough surely to gorge Bellona herself, and to throw open the most promising field to France. If these evils could be enhanced, they would be by the confusion of jarring interests and opinions, that cross one another in every possible direction. The Duke of Richmond, who you and I lament is for toleration of Popery, will please you by having yesterday offered a Bill for annual Parliaments, and is gone out of town to-day, disgusted at its being rejected. Yet, though I differ with him on both points, I worship his thousand virtues beyond any man's: he is intrepid and tender, inflexible and humane beyond example. I do not know which is most amiable, his heart or his conscience. He ought too to be the great model to all our factions. No difference in sentiments between him and his friends makes the slightest impression on his attachment to them; but, like many models, he will not be imitated.

I recommend his example a little to you yourself, my good Sir; because the only little good I can hope to do while I remain here, is to conciliate my friends, whose great outlines are the same, though the folds of their garments may flow in different styles. You seem too much estranged from Lord John. I have often disagreed with him, but always honoured his integrity: surely that is the fountain of principles; whatever has grown on his margin, the source has remained limpid and undefiled.

You despise my weariness and palsied chill of age, but I take nothing ill of a friend. I stand on the threshold of both worlds, and look back and forwards for this poor country with fond eyes, and think that nothing can redeem it, even in part, but sober and well-poised virtue. Violence, unsupported by general national union, will, like Lord Gordon's frenzy, but precipitate destruction, and in its progress be embued with every act of injustice. That lunatic, whom I should less severely condemn, if I saw nothing in