al of the rioters were shot
and wounded. It is curious to find that the reports of the intended
purposes of the wreckers drew persons of quality and curiosity to
Bloomsbury Square in their coaches as to a popular performance, and
that the destruction of Lord Mansfield's house proved more attractive
than the production of a new play.

[Sidenote: 1780--Public alarm in London]

The Wednesday was no less terrible than the Tuesday. The rioters
seemed to think that, like so many Mortimers, they were now Lords of
London. They sent messages to the keepers of the public prisons of the
King's Bench, the Fleet, and to prominent Catholic houses, informing
them of the precise time when they would be attacked and destroyed. By
this time peaceable London was in a state of panic. All shops were
shut. From most windows blue banners were thrust out to show the
sympathy of the occupants with the agitation, and the words "No Popery"
were scrawled in chalk across the doors and windows of every
householder who wished to protect himself against the fanaticism of the
mob. At least one enterprising individual got from Lord George Gordon
his signature to a paper bidding all true friends to Protestants to do
no injury to the property of any true Protestant, "as I am well assured
the proprietor of this house is a stanch and worthy friend to the
cause." But there were plenty of houses where neither fear nor
fanaticism displayed blue banner or chalked scrawl, houses whose owners
boasted no safeguard signed by Lord George Gordon, and with these the
mob busied themselves. The description in the "Annual Register" is so
striking that it deserves to be cited; it is probably from the pen of
Edmund Burke: "As soon {205} as the day was drawing towards a close one
of the most dreadful spectacles this country ever beheld was exhibited.
Let those who were not spectators of it judge what the inhabitants felt
when they beheld at the same time the flames ascending and rolling in
clouds from the King's Bench and Fleet Prisons, from New Bridewell,
from the toll-gates on Blackfriars Bridge, from houses in every quarter
of the town, and particularly from the bottom and middle of Holborn,
where the conflagration was horrible beyond description. . . .
Six-and-thirty fires, all blazing at one time, and in different
quarters of the city, were to be seen from one spot. During the whole
night, men, women, and children were running up and down with such
goods an