e Lord George Gordon riots]

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 th