honour of the day. I carried Lady Browne thither; my horses were frightened at the rockets, and we stepped out of the chaise and stood by the river till we were blighted by the east wind, and smothered by the smoke; for our freeborn weather, that on Monday and Friday was as hot as Lord George, is now as cold as the Duke of Devonshire.

I shall go to town to-morrow, and you see, Madam, do not decline my duty, when I have a word to say; but not having a grain of penetration, I did apprehend my summer letters would be very barren. I have been so far wise, that I never would embark in anything that made it expedient to maintain a character, which is a horrid burthen on an Englishman. I may mistake and guess wrong, and change my mind, or talk nonsense, with impunity. I shall not be thought more trifling than usual. And is not it some comfort not to be the worse for wear?

1927. TO THE COUNTESS OF OSSORY.

Wednesday, five o'clock, June 7, 1780.

I AM heartily glad I am come to town, though never was a less delicious place; but there was no bearing to remain philosophically in the country, and hear the thousand rumours of every hour, and not know whether one's friends and relations were not destroyed. Yesterday Newgate was burnt, and other houses, and Lord Sandwich near massacred. At Hyde Park Corner I saw Guards at the Lord President's door,' and in Piccadilly met George [Selwyn] and the Signorina, whom I wondered he ventured there. He came into my chaise in a fury, and told me Lord Mansfield's house is in ashes, and that five thousand men were marched to Caen Wood-it is true, and that one thousand of the Guards are gone after them. A camp of ten thousand is forming in Hyde Park as fast as possible, and the Berkshire militia is just arrived. Wedderburn and Lord Stormont are threatened, and I do not know who. The Duchess of Beaufort sent an hour ago to tell me Lord Ashburnham had just advertised her that he is threatened, and was sending away his poor bedridden Countess and children; and the Duchess begged to know what I proposed to do. I immediately went to her, and quieted her, and assured her we are as safe as we can be anywhere, and as little obnoxious; but if she was alarmed, I advised her to remove to

At Apsley House.-Lord Bathurst was Lord President of the Council.CUNNINGHAM.

VOL. VII.

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Notting Hill, where Lady Mary [Coke] is absent. The Duchess said the mob were now in Saville Row; we sent thither, and so they are, round Colonel Woodford's, who gave the Guards orders to fire at Lord Mansfield's, where six at least of the rioters were killed.

The mob are now armed, having seized the stores in the Artillery Ground.

If anything can surprise your Ladyship, it will be what I am going to tell you. Lord George Gordon went to Buckingham House this morning, and asked an audience of the King. Can you be more surprised still?-He was refused.

I must finish, for I am going about the town to learn, and see, and hear. Caen Wood is saved; a regiment on march met the rioters.

It will probably be a black night: I am decking myself with blue ribbons like a May-day garland. Horsemen are riding by with muskets. I am sorry I did not bring the armour of Francis I. to town, as I am to guard a Duchess Dowager and an heiress. Will it not be romantically generous if I yield the latter to my nephew? From my garrison in Berkeley Square.

P.S. The pious insurgents will soon have a military chest. They took forty-five guineas from Charles Turner yesterday.

1928. TO THE COUNTESS OF OSSORY.

Wednesday night, past two in the morning, June 7, 1780.

As it is impossible to go to bed (for Lady Betty Compton has hoped I would not this very minute, which, next to her asking the contrary, is the thing not to be refused), I cannot be better employed than in proving how much I think of your Ladyship at the most horrible moment I ever saw. You shall judge.

I was at Gloucester House between nine and ten. The servants announced a great fire; the Duchess, her daughters, and I went to the top of the house, and beheld not only one but two vast fires, which we took for the King's Bench and Lambeth; but the latter was the New Prison, and the former at least was burning at midnight. Colonel Heywood came in and acquainted his Royal Highness that nine houses in Great Queen-street had been gutted, and the furniture burnt; and he had seen a great Catholic distiller's at Holborn Bridge broken open and all the casks staved; and since, the house has been set on fire.

At ten I went to Lord Hertford's, and found him and his sons charging muskets. Lord Rockingham has two hundred soldiers in his house, and is determined to defend it. Thence I went to General Conway's, and in a moment a servant came in and said there was a great fire just by. We went to the street-door and thought it was St. Martin's-lane in flames, but it is either the Fleet Prison or the distiller's. I forgot that in the court of Gloucester House I met Colonel Jennings, who told me there had been an engagement at the Royal Exchange to defend the Bank, and that the Guards had shot sixty of the mob; I have since heard seventy, for I forgot to tell your Ladyship that at a great council, held this evening at the Queen's House, at which Lord Rockingham and the Duke of Portland were present, military execution was ordered, for, in truth, the Justices dare not act.

After supper I returned to Lady Hertford, finding Charing Cross, and the Haymarket, and Piccadilly, illuminated from fear, though all this end of the town is hitherto perfectly quiet, lines being drawn cross the Strand and Holborn, to prevent the mob coming westward. Henry and William Conway arrived, and had seen the populace break open the toll-houses on Blackfriars-bridge, and carry off bushels of halfpence, which fell about the streets, and then they set fire to the toll-houses. General Conway's porter has seen five distinct conflagrations.

Lady Hertford's cook came in, white as this paper. He is a German Protestant. He said his house had been attacked, his furniture burnt; that he had saved one child, and left another with his wife, whom he could not get out; and that not above ten or twelve persons had assaulted his house. I could not credit this, at least was sure it was an episode that had no connection with the general insurrection, and was at most some pique of his neighbours. I sent my own footman to the spot in Woodstock-street; he brought me word there had been eight or ten apprentices who made the riot, that two Life Guardsmen had arrived and secured four of the enemies. It seems the cook had refused to illuminate like the rest of the street. To-morrow I suppose his Majesty King George Gordon will order their release; they will be inflated with having been confessors, and turn heroes.

On coming home I visited the Duchess Dowager and my fair ward; and am heartily tired with so many expeditions, for which I little imagined I had youth enough left.

We expect three or four more regiments to-morrow, besides some

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 Grosvenorplace. 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. I forgot to tell your Ladyship that as I came to town I saw in chalk on a hack at Hammersmith, "God blast the Pope,"-now the soldiers tear away blue cockadesand, when I return next, I expect to read on the walls, "De par le Roi, Regiment de Picardie."

Adieu! Madam; allow my pen a few holidays, unless the storm

recommences.

1930. TO THE REV. WILLIAM MASON.

Strawberry Hill, June 9, at night, 1780.

I HAVE not had a moment's time, or one calm enough, to write you a single line, and now am not only fatigued, but know not where to begin, or how to arrange the thousand things I have in my mind. If I am incoherent, you must excuse it, and accept whatever presents

itself.

I could not bear to sit here in shameful selfish philosophy, and hear the million of reports, and know almost all I loved in danger, without sharing it. I went to town on Wednesday, and though the night was the most horrible I ever beheld, I would not take millions not to have been present; and should I have seen the conflagration as I must from these windows, I should have been distracted for my friends.

At nine at night, on notice of fire, I went with the Duchess and her daughters to the top of Gloucester House, and thence beheld

the King's Bench, which was a little town, and at a distance the New Prison in flames. At past ten I went to General Conway's: in a moment we were alarmed by the servants, and rushing to the street-door saw through Little Warwick-street such an universal blaze, that I had no doubt the Mews, at least St. Martin's-lane, was on fire. Mr. Conway ran, and I limped after him, to Charing Cross, but, though seemingly close, it was no nearer than the Fleet Market.

At past twelve I went up to Lord Hertford's: two of his sons came in from the Bridge at Blackfriars, where they had seen the toll-houses plundered and burnt. Instantly arrived their cook, a German Protestant, with a child in his arms, and all we could gather was that the mob was in possession of his house, had burnt his furniture, and had obliged him to abandon his wife and another child. I sent my own footman, for it was only in Woodstock-street, and he soon returned and said it had been only some apprentices who supposed him a Papist on his not illuminating his house, and that three of them and an Irish Catholic Chairman had been secured, but the poor man has lost his all! I drove from one place to another till two, but did not go to bed till between three and four, and ere asleep heard a troop of horse gallop by. My printer, whom I had sent out for intelligence, came not home till past nine the next morning: I feared he was killed, but then I heard of such a scene. He had beheld three sides of the Fleet Market in flames, Barnard's Inn at one end, the prison on one side and the distiller's on the other, besides Fetter and Shoe Lanes, with such horrors of distraction, distress, &c., as are not to be described; besides accounts of slaughter near the Bank. The engines were cut to pieces, and a dozen or fourteen different parts were burning. It is incredible that so few houses and buildings in comparison are in ashes. The papers

must tell you other details, and of what preceded the total demolition of Lord Mansfield's, &c.

Yesterday was some slaughter in Fleet-street by the Horse-Guards, and more in St. George's Fields by the Protestant Association, who fell on the rioters, who appear to have been chiefly apprentices, convicts, and all kinds of desperadoes; for Popery is already out of the question, and plunder all the object. They have exacted sums from many houses to avoid being burnt as Popish. The ringleader Lord George is fled. The Bank, the destruction of all prisons and of the Inns of Court, were the principal aims.

The Magistrates, intimidated by demolition of Fielding's and Justice Hyde's houses, did not dare to act. A general Council was