spread from mouth to mouth with astonishing rapidity;
and whenever they were drawn up idly in the streets or squares there was
sure to be a crowd about them, cheering, and shaking hands, and treating
them with a great show of confidence and affection.

By this time the crowd was everywhere; all concealment and disguise were
laid aside, and they pervaded the whole town. If any man among them
wanted money, he had but to knock at the door of a dwelling-house, or
walk into a shop, and demand it in the rioters' name, and his demand was
instantly complied with. The peaceable citizens being afraid to lay
hands upon them singly and alone, it may be easily supposed that when
gathered together in bodies they were perfectly secure from
interruption. They assembled in the streets, traversed them at their
will and pleasure, and publicly concerted their plans. Business was
quite suspended; the greater part of the shops were closed; most of the
houses displayed a blue flag in token of their adherence to the popular
side; and even the Jews in Houndsditch, Whitechapel, and those quarters,
wrote upon their doors or window-shutters, "This House is a True
Protestant." The crowd was the law, and never was the law held in
greater dread or more implicitly obeyed.

It was about six o'clock in the evening when a vast mob poured into
Lincoln's Inn Fields by every avenue, and divided--evidently in
pursuance of a previous design--into several parties. It must not be
understood that this arrangement was known to the whole crowd, but that
it was the work of a few leaders who, mingling with the men as they came
upon the ground, and calling to them to fall into this or that party,
effected it as rapidly as if it had been determined on by a council of
the whole number, and every man had known his place.

It was perfectly notorious to the assemblage that the largest body,
which comprehended about two-thirds of the whole, was designed for the
attack on Newgate. It comprehended all the rioters who had been
conspicuous in any of their former proceedings; all those whom they
recommended as daring hands and fit for the work; all those whose
companions had been taken in the riots; and a great number of people who
were relatives or friends of felons in the jail. This last class
included not only the most desperate and utterly abandoned villains in
London, but some who were comparatively innocent. There was more than
one woman there, disguised in man's attir