Lord Gordon had led the Scottish opposition to the act, and his success in defeating it in north of the Tweed gave him supreme confidence that he could defeat the act in England as well. He knew that his Protestant Association had backers in London, not only among the tradesmen and working class, but also among the City government itself. The City Corporation was, for both political and economic reasons, largely opposed to the American War, and could be expected to resist the drastic measures undertaken by the government to re-stock the army by relaxing restrictions on Catholics. And so just before noon on June 2, 1780, Gordon and the Protestant Association began to march from St. George’s Field to Parliament, flags flying, banners shimmering in the summer heat, sure that they would succeed in repealing the hated act and save Britain from Catholic traitors and French invaders.
Despite the reasonable fears of many observers, the crowd that gathered that day was hardly a disorderly rabble. It was reported that the initial crowd largely consisted of honest, respectable tradesmen, dressed for the occasion in their Sunday best and topped with blue cockades, a symbol of anti-government solidarity. One of the four columns of marchers was even led by a Scottish Highlander in full tartan, a broadsword clasped in his hand and accompanied on either side by pipers. It all had the feel of a parade, a triumphant march to present the grievances of the people to their elected representatives. When they reached Parliament however, the mood of the assemblage quickly turned angry.38
As the crowd milled in Parliament Square, Members of Parliament began to arrive. Members of the opposition, opponents of the American War, and critics of Catholic Relief were cheered and escorted into the building, while members of the government and supporters of Catholic Relief were jeered and jostled, their coaches attacked, windows smashed, and their wigs torn from their heads. Inside Parliament the situation was no less fraught. As the politicians attempted to conduct business, the crowd broke into the lobby and began shouting at the MPs. Lord Gordon charged onto the debating floor to deposit the massive petition, signed by some 44,000 citizens, before climbing into the gallery to address the protesters. As one observer complained, the crowd was attempting to use intimidation to “exercise the most arbitrary and dictatorial power over both Lords and Commons.” The House of Commons, somehow, held its nerve and voted nearly unanimously to adjourn debate on the Relief Act until the following Tuesday.39
News of the petition’s initial failure was greeted with disbelieving anger by the crowd assembled outside. But anger had not yet been transformed into action, and when troops were called in to clear the squares and streets around Parliament, they were allowed to perform their task with minimal interference and no violence. It seemed that the worst was over, the threat had passed. As night fell, however, some among the petitioners, still stinging from their defeat and incredulous that their representatives were not taking seriously the Catholic threat, began to target prominent Catholic homes and establishments throughout the city. The Catholic chapel of the Sardinian embassy in Lincoln’s Inn Fields was the first to feel the rage of the mob. Rioters forced their way inside, set the building alight and made a bonfire of its contents in the street. The chapel of the Bavarian ambassador was next, its possessions looted and burnt. For the next three days, rioters continued to attack Catholic properties, suspected Catholic sympathizers, and supporters of the Catholic Relief Act. Areas of high Irish settlement around Moorfields were particularly targeted for violence. A Catholic silk merchant whose house was ransacked even saw his prized pet canaries, “Popish birds” in the minds of the mob, added to the flames.
The scale of the riots was unprecedented in English history, and yet the London authorities, sympathetic to many of the rioters’ aims and fearful of becoming targets themselves, refused to act. In desperation, many in London donned blue cockades and chalked “no Popery” on their homes and carriages in the hopes of placating the crowds. “We were in hourly expectations of receiving a Visit from the Rioters as they threatened one to our opposite Neighbour L[ord] Stormount,” Elizabeth Lee wrote to her son:
[B]ut I thank God they were prevented putting their wicked intentions into execution by having a strong Guard close to the House so they did not attempt entering the street however it was impossible not to feel very anxious . . . We passed the Day and night at L[ady] Mar[garet’s] in Cavendish Square . . . I did not spend a very comfortable night as you may imagine, for with so desperate a Mob who had been guilty of such atrocious crimes in destroying so many people’s property by Fire and letting loose so many Fellons from Prison it was impossible at such a time not to feel very unhappy for one’s fellow Creatures and also to dread the worst.40
Horrified at how far things had gone, Lord Gordon and the Protestant Association condemned the violence, but to no effect. For four days, as war raged across the globe, the mob reigned in the capital of the British Empire.
On Tuesday June 6 there was hope on all sides that the violence and chaos were at an end. But when Parliament met as scheduled to debate the petition for the repeal of the Catholic Relief Act, they refused to be moved by the baying of the mob, once more refusing to debate the issue. London exploded. Crowds “with lighted firebrands in their hands, like so many furies” renewed their attacks on Catholic properties. A Catholic-owned distillery was consumed in flames, causing a scene seemingly straight from hell. Rivers of fire, gallons of burning gin ran down the streets, and thirsty men scorched to death consuming the fiery spirits. The conflagration raged so furiously bright that it lit up the night sky. The eighteenth century was a darker world than our own, with nights as yet unspoiled by the perma-glow of modern electric lights. A city on fire in such shadow-shrouded times must have seemed to have set the night aflame, bathing the world for miles around in a primordial, malevolent light. William Lee, studying at Harrow while his parents remained besieged in the city, could see the eerie glow of the fires 12 miles away.41
By Wednesday, June 7—“Black Wednesday” as it was later called—the riots had reached their apex as the target of the mob’s rage began to widen. From Catholic establishments, the crowd now began to target symbols of justice and authority. London’s hated prisons were smashed and burnt, forced collections made for the support of freed inmates, and the homes of London’s justices ransacked. “In the midst of the most cruel and ridiculous confusion, I am now set down to give you a very imperfect sketch of the maddest people, that the maddest times were ever plagued with,” Ignatius Sancho wrote a friend:
There is at this present moment at least a hundred thousand poor, miserable, ragged rabbled . . . all parading the streets, the bridge, the park, ready for any and every mischief. Gracious God! What’s the matter now? I was obliged to leave off, shouts of the mob, the horrid clashing of swords, and the clutter of a multitude in swiftest motion drew me to the door . . . This, this is liberty! genuine British liberty! This instant about two thousand liberty boys are swearing and swaggering by with large sticks, thus armed in hopes of meeting with the Irish chairmen and labourers . . . Thank heaven, it rains; may it increase so as to send these deluded wretches safe to their homes, their families, and wives!42
Symbols of the abuses of the war effort came under attack as well. Crimping Houses, the jails designed to hold sailors captured and impressed into service on Britain’s naval fleet, were smashed open. The property of an army clothier was attacked. Among the prisoners sprung from Newgate were a Pennsylvania apprentice who had fled “the trouble in America,” a deserter from the army, and a woman convicted of murdering a constable who had tried to press her husband. Given that many of the most active rioters were sailors themselves, these targets are hardly surprising, but the war had affected many of the poor in London, making anger at the war and its social and economic consequences an important part of the mob’s mentality.43
The Bank of England was next in the rioters’ sights, but these attacks on judicial and royal authority had now gone too far in the eyes of the state. If London’s governors would not act, the crown
would. On the night of June 7, the king ordered thousands of troops into his capital, effectively placing the city under martial law. In contravention of both tradition and legal precedent, the troops were ordered to fire on the rioters on sight, without first reading the Riot Act. At the Bank of England, two prominent supporters of radical London turned their backs on the crowds and joined the cause of repression. Lord Gordon attempted to quiet the mob, appealing for peace. When he was instead shouted down, he threw his support behind the forces of law and order. John Wilkes, a hero of the London mob and central figure among London radicals, had had enough as well, and in his role as a London magistrate joined the defense of the Bank of England. As such vital institutions came under attack, men like Wilkes were forced to pick a side. Wilkes’ influence was as much based on the financial muscle and mercantile wealth of the City of London as it was on his popular appeal. As long as mob and merchant were united in their opposition to the American War and the ministry responsible for it, Wilkes and other radicals could please both sides. When the interests of the City and those of the mob diverged, however, choices had to be made. The Gordon Riots, and especially the attack on the Bank of England, both source and symbol of Britain’s commercial fortunes, thus represented a watershed for British radicals. Political opposition was quickly becoming associated with chaos, and violence. Henceforth reformers and radicals would have to choose between opposition to the war and opposition to the dangerous disorder it created.44
From the night of June 7 until the evening of June 8 London witnessed a new form of indiscriminate violence as soldiers suppressed the riots and crushed and dispersed the mob. “Fired 6 or 7 times on the rioters at the end of the Bank,” an entry in John Wilkes’ diary reads, “Killed two rioters directly opposite to the great gate of the Bank; several others in Pig street and Cheap-side.” As many as 700 men and women were killed over the course of the day: official estimates of 300 dead were much lower, but eyewitnesses like Nathaniel Wraxall testified that many of the deceased were cast into the Thames or burnt in the fires, artificially, and intentionally, depressing the casualty figures. These days of rage had been without equal in English history, and by June 8 the reign of King Mob was at an end, drowned in an effusion of blood.45
By June 9 Ignatius Sancho’s melancholy tone began to give way to a faint glimmer of hope. “Happily for us, the tumult begins to subside,” he wrote. “There is about fifty prisoners taken, and not a blue cockade to be seen: the streets once more wear the face of peace.” With the riots suppressed, the mopping up had begun. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of arrests were made, creating a new issue given the lack of prisons to house them. Among the captured was Lord Gordon, arrested on the morning of June 9 and driven through the city in an old hackney coach to the Tower of London, escorted along the way by a regiment of militia and a troop of light horse. Wagers were made that he would be hanged within eight days.46
Though the riots appeared to be at an end, the authorities were not taking any chances. The violence had been on an unimaginable scale, and there was the sense that order still very much hung in the balance. That such “dreadful and shocking enormities” could have been committed “in the very heart of the metropolis” was an alarming, destabilizing proposition, and caused Britons to seek out explanations for what could have caused such frightful “scenes of desolation.” There were rumors, some spread by figures connected with the administration itself, that a foreign hand, perhaps French or American agents it was whispered, had been behind the riots, part of a plot to destabilize, distract, and destroy the British war effort. Other tales spread that the opposition party had done the plotting and inciting. Lord Gordon, the driving force precipitating the riots, had himself long been a violent critic of the government and an ardent supporter of the American rebels. In 1776 Gordon had been one of the vocal minority who condemned “the folly and injustice of the Government in endeavouring to dragoon the Americans into unconditional surrender.” That same year he urged a friend to rename a ship he owned in honor of the American Patriots, arguing, “I think in compliment to the worthy patriots of our injured colonies . . . you ought to call your cutter the Congress.” Lord Gordon’s status as a well-known radical and opponent of the war ensured that many interpreted the riots through a political lens of loyalty and disloyalty, with opposition increasingly viewed with suspicion. As far away as Russia, the British ambassador James Harris heard that “American treachery and English treason . . . are at the bottom of it.”47
Others, already unnerved by the rising tide of crime in the capital, held London’s criminals, and the indulgent justice system that had thus far failed to keep them in check, responsible. The coachman who showed William Hickey the charred ruins of the riots’ aftermath claimed, like many, that initially the crowds had mostly consisted of women and children, hardly a threat, until the weak response of the over-lenient authorities encouraged London’s criminal class—“pickpockets, house-breakers, and thieves of every description”—to join the fray. That common criminals might make common cause with foreign spies and domestic radicals was enough to shock most Britons into acceptance of a draconian reaction.48
London was transformed into an occupied city, with armed camps springing up in any spot of open ground, in Hyde Park, St. James’s Park, St. George’s Field, in the garden of the British Museum, and in the West End. William Hickey described the ominous new cast of a “city and suburbs . . . filled with the military,” with “regular guards continuing to be mounted daily at the Bank, St. Paul’s, the Old Bailey, and several other public buildings.” On June 13, news spread that the specter of the mob had now arisen at York, where rioters released 3,000 French prisoners of war to rampage through the heart of England. The reports proved false, but the whole of England was mired in the “suspicious turbulence of the times.” On June 16, the government began an effort to disarm the populace as the fear of foreign invasion transformed into terror of internal insurrection. For many, England was beginning “to exhibit the features of French Government,” with martial law and the order to give up arms. But for others the nature of the riots proved that such authoritarian measures were a necessary evil. The combination of foreign war, internal unrest, and rampant criminality ensured that the swirl of rumors and conspiracy theories that followed in the tumult’s wake pointed the blame at a potent mixture of foreign enemies, radical traitors, and wanton criminals, creating a new association between the three and coloring how political dissent and criminal justice were viewed. In such times, with such enemies, a strong hand was required. The summer “had brought with it sick times,” Sancho lamented, sickness now “triumphed through every part of the constitution: the state is sick, the church (God preserve it!) is sick, the law, navy, army all sick, the people at large are sick with taxes, the Ministry with Opposition, and the Opposition with disappointment.”49
For an unlucky few, the cure for the sickness was worse than the disease. In July, twenty-five men and women were executed at gallows across London for their role in the riots. Most were poor and many had connections to the conflict with America. Henry Maskall, a prominent radical and opponent of the government’s American policy, was charged with inciting the attack on Lord Mansfield’s house in Bloomsbury, though he was lucky enough, or connected enough, to escape the rope. William Brown, one of the many sailors who took an active part in the riots, had been on the Serapis when it clashed with John Paul Jones’s Bonhomme Richard off Flamborough Head in Yorkshire in September 1779. It was a bloody affair with high casualties on both sides, but Brown’s ship had been defeated, and he himself among the 500 prisoners Jones transported to France. He managed to make his way back to London, poor and still suffering from wounds received in the battle, just in time to take part in the riots that cost him his life. Three of the other victims of the hangman’s noose were members of London’s growing African community, former slaves who had escaped to London only to find that with their freedom came poverty. John Glover, a “quiet, sober, honest” servant i
n Westminster and Benjamin Bowsey, a well-dressed servant with a commanding presence, were condemned for taking leading roles in the attack on Newgate Prison and the keeper’s house. Charlotte Gardiner was hanged for being the instigator of an assault on the home of an Irish publican near Tower Hill—she was heard to call for more for the fire and to cheer on the mob with shouts of, “Huzza, well done my boys—knock it down, down with it.” The riots, in their causes, targets, leaders, and victims were shot through with American affairs.50
While the men and women he helped rile up swung from the gallows, Lord Gordon languished in the Tower charged with treason. In his defense, he pointed to the fact that he had tried to calm the mob when it turned violent and had joined the forces of law and order after the assault on the Bank of England. He claimed he would have turned against the mob sooner but had hoped that by remaining at its head he might prevent the rise of “some Wat Tyler [the infamous leader of the great Peasants’ Revolt in 1381] who would not have the patience to commune with the Government, and might very possibly chuse to embroil the whole nation in civil war.” Many, like the ever-perceptive Horace Walpole, thought Gordon a madman, but whether because they believed his excuses, feared his martyrdom, or valued his important family ties, Lord Gordon was acquitted in 1781.51
Ignatius Sancho did not live to see Lord Gordon tried or peace return. When he died in December 1780, London was still reeling from the Gordon Riots. As he lay on his deathbed, it must have seemed as if the whole world was crumbling around him, as if the collective madness of the age had doomed Britain’s once promising future. He departed a world in the midst of crisis, his adopted home seemingly on the brink of ruin, and yet, despite a world turned upside down, Ignatius Sancho left his mark. Born in the middle of the Atlantic on a slave ship bearing him into a life of bondage, he died respected, beloved, and much mourned. He was one of the first public figures of African descent, one of the first former slaves whose name was widely known and whose life was widely celebrated. In a fitting tribute to his trailblazing influence, his obituary would mark the first time the British press had bestowed such an honor on a person of African descent.
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