drink, and destroy. During the night many
houses were plundered or destroyed; the madness of the mob increasing at
every new success, by the liquors which they procured from the cellars.
A magistrate was at length found who would act, but it was then too
late, as drink had rendered the mob insensible to danger. A recent
writer remarks:--"During the time that was lost in seeking for a
magistrate who would act, the fury of the mob was increased to such
a pitch by the liquor they had drank, that, when the soldiers at last
fired, even the sight of their companions falling dead beside them
produced little or no effect.... It was when they were in this
state--careless of what befel them, and almost unconscious of what they
were doing, that the authorities, hitherto so patient, for the first
time determined to use force against them.... The scene here altogether
appears to have been terrific in the extreme. The violence and ferocity
of the ruffians, armed with sledge-hammers and other instruments
of destruction, who burst into the houses--the savage shouts of the
surrounding multitude--the wholesale desolation--the row of bonfires
blazing in the street, heaped with the contents of the sacked mansion,
with splendid furniture, books, pictures, and manuscripts which were
irreparable--the drunken wretches staggering or reeling against each
other, or rolling on the ground--the peeling of the musketry, followed
the next instant by the screams of the wounded and the dying, and the
roar of vengeance from ten thousand throats--soon after this, the fires
lighted in every room, and finally, the flames rushing upwards from
windows and roof in one magnificent conflagration:--all these may
well be conceived to have formed a picture, or rather a succession of
pictures, which thus exhibited under the dark sky of midnight, would
seem hardly of this world." This has reference to a scene which occurred
at the house of Lord Mansfield, where some of the mob were still
collected, when a magistrate was found willing to act. But no force was
yet sufficient to quell the riot. On the following day the scenes which
took place were still more dreadful. The mob were completely triumphant,
and all householders who did not hang bits of blue silk out by way
of flags, and omitted to chalk the words "No Popery" on the doors and
shutters of their houses, were exposed to their vengeance. Some even
who were not Papists were this day plundered and ill-treated; all