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cealing themselves in the roof of the building. The concert library of music-books and instruments were thrown out of the windows and torn into pieces. The whole of the market-place, and all the way to the Coal Hill, appeared as if the ground had been covered with snow, for the Corporation papers thrown out of the Exchange, and the music-books from the assembly rooms on the Coal Hill, torn into small pieces, met at the east gates, and in some places were ankle deep.'

A terrible riot took place at Nottingham on June 1790, at the election consequent on the dissolution of Parliament. There were three candidates, Robert Smith (of the firm of Smith, Payne and Smith, bankers, of London and Nottingham), who subsequently became the first Lord Carrington; Daniel Parker Coke, a barrister on the Midland circuit; and Captain Johnston. The first was a Whig, the other two were Tories. On the day of the election, between nine and ten o'clock in the morning, a number of men and boys assembled in the market-place, whence they proceeded deliberately to break the windows of Mr. Smith's residence, and persisted in doing so until the arrival of the constable. At the close of the poll, which lasted a week, Smith was declared elected, and as he was very unpopular with the mob, on account of his haughty demeanour, they proceeded to smash windows, to destroy property, and to insult the townsfolk. As the presence of the civil force could make no impression, the rioters proceeded on their way with impunity. Professor Pryme says that he well recollected on this occasion standing at a window in the market-place and seeing the rioters erect ladders against the Exchange Hall, smash the windows, and seize a large number of constables' staves, which they cut into bludgeons and flung out to their companions who stood below. One of them was aimed at the head of Mr. Smith as he was leaving the hustings in the market-place, and missed it only by the enor mous high-crowned hat, such as was then fashionable, that he wore upon his head. The next day, on the renewal of disturbances, the dragoons were sent for, and, becoming irritated, fired upon the mob, killing one man and wounding several

others.

Gardiner's Music and Friends, i. 208.

Of the re-election of the county members for Nottingham. (Lord Edward Bentinck and C. Medows, Esq.) on April 21, 1784, it is stated that when duly elected they proceeded to the Grand Jury Room, and, having seated themselves in their respective chairs, were preceded by flags and music in a triumphal procession down the High Pavement, through Bridlesmith Gate, round the market-place to the White Lion and Blackmoor's Head inns, attended by an immense concourse of people. The chair in which Lord Bentinck sat was remarkably elegant; it was covered with white silk and ingenious devices of orangecoloured ribbon. Mr. Medows's chair was covered with blue silk, and formed a pleasing contrast. When the members had alighted, the chairs, in accordance with ancient custom, were broken up by the populace, and several persons were severely injured in scrambling for pieces to bear away as trophies.'

Nor were the Middlesex elections less notorious for the outbursts of popular frenzy and political depravity that they invariably evoked at Brentford. In March 1768, when John Wilkes was returned, the mob pelted young Cooke, the son of the City Marshal, at Hyde Park Corner; knocked him off his horse, broke the wheels of one of the carriages, and shattered the glasses to atoms, merely because a flag had been carried before the procession of Wilkes's opponents, inscribed with the words 'No blasphemer.' At night the rabble paraded the city, obliging every householder to illuminate his residence, and broke the windows of all such as failed to comply with their demands, particularly the residences of Lord Bute, Lord Egremont, Sir Sampson Gideon, Sir William Mayne, and many other gentlemen who resided in the neighbourhood of Charing Cross. The windows of the Mansion House were also smashed. At the Brentford election in the following year a terrible riot arose, in which an attorney's clerk received a fatal blow on the head from a bludgeon. Similar disturbances marked the contests for Middlesex in the years 1790 and 1796.

'Sutton's Nottingham, p. 157; Cartwright's Memoirs, i. 312.

CHAPTER XVI.

KING MOB.

Fielding's remarks on the character of the English rabble-Hatred of foreigners-Mob treatment of French visitors to the capital-Review of memorable London riots- Dr. Sacheverel--The Spitalfields weavers"Wilkes and Liberty'-The Gordon riots of 1780-Testimony of various eye-witnesses adduced-Popular demonstration on minor disturbances Acquittal of Admiral Keppel-Aristocratic rioters.

Two of the light entertaining essays which Fielding contributed to the 'Covent Garden Journal' contain an amusing disquisition on the rise and progress of the power wielded by that very large and powerful body' the English mob, which he humorously dignified with the title of the Fourth Estate. And indeed the application of such an epithet at the time the novelist flourished was by no means so whimsical as at first sight it might appear; for such an important factor was the rabble in the State during the eighteenth century, that it could lay far greater claim to the designation of 'Fourth Estate' than its modern congener the newspaper press. It was like an Æolian harp upon which the breath of public opinion made its discordant music. The principal counts in the novelist's indictment are easily specified. First, their assumption of an exclusive right to the river Thames ; secondly, their claim to the exclusive right to the privilege of those parts of the streets that are set apart for the foot-passengers ;' thirdly, their like pretensions to the possession of the highways; and, fourthly, their 'right of excluding all women of fashion out of St. James's on a Sunday evening.' In regard to their aquatic assumptions, he observes :

It is true the other estates do sometimes venture themselves upon the river; but this is only upon sufferance; for which they

pay whatever that branch of the Fourth Estate called watermen are pleased to exact of them. Nor are the mob contented with all these exactions. They grumble whenever they meet any persons in a boat. Sometimes they carry their resentment so far as to endeavour to run against the boat and overset it; but if they are too goodnatured to attempt this, they never fail to attack the passengers with all kind of scurrilous, abusive, and indecent terms, which, indeed, they claim as their own, and call mob-language.

Fielding concludes his essay by observing that, had it not been for the existence of justices of the peace and the soldiery, two orders of men, of whom it stood in awe, and consesequently held in the utmost abhorrence, the Fourth Estate would have succeeded in annihilating all the other estates of the realm.'

Contemporary travellers largely corroborate the novelist's statements. One special object of the mob's hatred was the foreigner, especially the Frenchman. The rabble are as insolent as can be met with in countries without law or police.' So wrote M. Grosley, who visited England in 1765 :

My

Inquire of them your way to a street; if it be upon the right they direct you to the left, or they send you from one of their vulgar comrades to another. The most shocking abuse and ill-language make a part of their pleasantry upon these occasions. To be. assailed in such manner it is not absolutely necessary to be engaged in conversation with them; it is sufficient to pass by them. French air, notwithstanding the simplicity of my dress, drew upon me at the corner of every street a volley of abusive litanies, in the midst of which I slipped on, returning thanks to God that I did not understand English. The constant burthen of these litanies was, 'French dog -;' to make any answer to them was accepting a challenge to fight; and my curiosity did not carry me so far.

The same traveller relates that he was subjected on one occasion at Chelsea to a torrent of abuse from a mob on account of Marshal Saxe; and his friend M. de la Condamine, in like manner, some years before, merely because he carried a kind of ear-trumpet and an unfolded map of the metropolis whenever he stirred out during his stay.

The day after my arrival (says M. Grosley), my servant discovered by sad experience what liberties the mob are accustomed

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to take with the French, and all who have the appearance of being such. He had followed the crowd to Tyburn, where three rogues were hanged, two of whom were father and son. The execution being over, as he was returning home through Oxford Road with the remains of the numerous multitude which had been present at the execution, he was attacked by two or three blackguards; and the crowd having soon surrounded him, he made a fight for the rabble. Jack Ketch, the executioner, joined in the sport, and entering the circle struck the poor sufferer upon the shoulder. They began to drag him about by the skirts of his coat, and by his shoulder-knot, when, luckily for him, he was perceived by three grenadiers belonging to the French Guards, who, having deserted and crossed the seas, were drinking at an alehouse hard by the scene of action. Armed with such weapons as chance presented them, they suddenly attacked the mob, laid on soundly upon such as came within their reach, and brought their countryman off safe to the alehouse, and from thence to my lodging. . . . He shut himself up in the house a fortnight, where he vented his indignation in continual imprecations against England and the English.

Let us briefly review the chief metropolitan riots of the century comprising the reigns of Anne, George I., George II., and a portion of that of George III.

During the reign of Queen Anne the High Church riots occurred. These were occasioned by the trial of a Tory, Dr. Henry Sacheverel, chaplain of St. Saviour's, Southwark, for preaching treasonable sermons. During the three weeks over which the trial extended, the doctor was escorted to his residence each day by a bodyguard of butchers, who protected his sedan chair from the violence of his Whig adversaries. This trial elevated the doctor to the pedestal of a popular idol. The members of the various Tory clubs, fully impressed with the idea that their enemies were bent upon the doctor's overthrow, lost no opportunity of stirring the passions of the mob to their lowest depth. Before long they raised the old cry of "The Church in Danger,' and at once every ragamuffin in London hastened to the rescue, in which the Dissenting conventicles were the first to fall. On February 28, 1710, several meetinghouses were forcibly entered by the rabble and razed to the ground, huge bonfires being kindled in all directions, and fed with plentiful supplies of pews, pulpits, benches, cushions, and hymn-books. Long Acre, Shoe Lane, Leather Lane, Lincoln's Inn Fields, Blackfriars and Clerkenwell, Hatton Garden, and

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