yed or damaged and the prisoners set at liberty. Some magistrates'
houses were plundered and burnt. Mansfield's house in Bloomsbury square
was sacked and his splendid library, pictures, plate, and furniture
destroyed. By Wednesday night thirty-six fires were blazing in different
parts; volumes of flame were rising from the King's bench and Fleet
prisons, the new Bridewell, and the toll gates on Blackfriars bridge,
and the lower end of Holborn was burning fiercely. A great distillery in
Holborn was wrecked; men and women killed themselves by drinking the
unrectified spirits which were brought into the streets, and others who
were drunk perished in the flames or were buried in the ruins. Attacks
were made on the Bank of England and the Pay Office. Both were guarded
by soldiers, and the rioters were repulsed with heavy loss.

[Sidenote: _THE KING'S PERSONAL INTERVENTION._]

By that time the general paralysis of authority was ended by the king's
personal intervention. As his ministers seemed afraid of incurring
responsibility, George summoned a meeting of the council by special
command on Wednesday morning. Finding that the council hesitated to
recommend the employment of troops, he said that if they would not give
him advice he would act without it, and that he could answer for one
magistrate who would do his duty. He bade Wedderburn, the
attorney-general, declare the law on the subject. Wedderburn replied
that the king in council could order soldiers to suppress a riot without
the authority of a magistrate. George at once ordered the military to
act, and by Thursday morning the riots were quelled. Seventy-two houses
and four gaols had been destroyed. Of the rioters, 285 were reported as
killed and 173 wounded, but many more lost their lives during the riots.
The trials of the rioters were conducted with moderation; of the 139 who
were tried, fifty-nine were capitally convicted, and of these only
twenty-one were executed. The Surrey prisoners were tried before
Wedderburn, who was made chief-justice of the common pleas and created
Lord Loughborough. Lord George Gordon was acquitted; he was imprisoned
for a libel in 1787, and died in Newgate after having become a jew. When
the lords, who adjourned on the 6th, again assembled, the great jurist
Mansfield, who in his seventy-sixth year retained his mastery of
constitutional law and his facility of expression, authoritatively
declared that soldiers equally with civil persons mig