Chapter 67
When darkness broke away and morning began to dawn, the town wore astrange aspect indeed.
Sleep had hardly been thought of all night. The general alarm was soapparent in the faces of the inhabitants, and its expression was soaggravated by want of rest (few persons, with any property to lose,having dared go to bed since Monday), that a stranger coming into thestreets would have supposed some mortal pest or plague to have beenraging. In place of the usual cheerfulness and animation of morning,everything was dead and silent. The shops remained closed, offices andwarehouses were shut, the coach and chair stands were deserted, no cartsor waggons rumbled through the slowly waking streets, the early crieswere all hushed; a universal gloom prevailed. Great numbers of peoplewere out, even at daybreak, but they flitted to and fro as though theyshrank from the sound of their own footsteps; the public ways werehaunted rather than frequented; and round the smoking ruins people stoodapart from one another and in silence, not venturing to condemn therioters, or to be supposed to do so, even in whispers.
At the Lord President's in Piccadilly, at Lambeth Palace, at the LordChancellor's in Great Ormond Street, in the Royal Exchange, the Bank,the Guildhall, the Inns of Court, the Courts of Law, and every chamberfronting the streets near Westminster Hall and the Houses of Parliament,parties of soldiers were posted before daylight. A body of Horse Guardsparaded Palace Yard; an encampment was formed in the Park, where fifteenhundred men and five battalions of Militia were under arms; the Towerwas fortified, the drawbridges were raised, the cannon loaded andpointed, and two regiments of artillery busied in strengthening thefortress and preparing it for defence. A numerous detachment of soldierswere stationed to keep guard at the New River Head, which the people hadthreatened to attack, and where, it was said, they meant to cut off themain-pipes, so that there might be no water for the extinction of theflames. In the Poultry, and on Cornhill, and at several other leadingpoints, iron chains were drawn across the street; parties of soldierswere distributed in some of the old city churches while it was yetdark; and in several private houses (among them, Lord Rockingham's inGrosvenor Square); which were blockaded as though to sustain a siege,and had guns pointed from the windows. When the sun rose, it shone intohandsome apartments filled with armed men; the furniture hastily heapedaway in corners, and made of little or no account, in the terror of thetime--on arms glittering in city chambers, among desks and stools, anddusty books--into little smoky churchyards in odd lanes and by-ways,with soldiers lying down among the tombs, or lounging under the shade ofthe one old tree, and their pile of muskets sparkling in the light--onsolitary sentries pacing up and down in courtyards, silent now, butyesterday resounding with the din and hum of business--everywhere onguard-rooms, garrisons, and threatening preparations.
As the day crept on, still more unusual sights were witnessed in thestreets. The gates of the King's Bench and Fleet Prisons being opened atthe usual hour, were found to have notices affixed to them, announcingthat the rioters would come that night to burn them down. The wardens,too well knowing the likelihood there was of this promise beingfulfilled, were fain to set their prisoners at liberty, and givethem leave to move their goods; so, all day, such of them as had anyfurniture were occupied in conveying it, some to this place, some tothat, and not a few to the brokers' shops, where they gladly sold it,for any wretched price those gentry chose to give. There were somebroken men among these debtors who had been in jail so long, and wereso miserable and destitute of friends, so dead to the world, and utterlyforgotten and uncared for, that they implored their jailers not toset them free, and to send them, if need were, to some other place ofcustody. But they, refusing to comply, lest they should incur the angerof the mob, turned them into the streets, where they wandered up anddown hardly remembering the ways untrodden by their feet so long, andcrying--such abject things those rotten-hearted jails had made them--asthey slunk off in their rags, and dragged their slipshod feet along thepavement.
Even of the three hundred prisoners who had escaped from Newgate, therewere some--a few, but there were some--who sought their jailers out anddelivered themselves up: preferring imprisonment and punishment to thehorrors of such another night as the last. Many of the convicts, drawnback to their old place of captivity by some indescribable attraction,or by a desire to exult over it in its downfall and glut their revengeby seeing it in ashes, actually went back in broad noon, and loiteredabout the cells. Fifty were retaken at one time on this next day, withinthe prison walls; but their fate did not deter others, for there theywent in spite of everything, and there they were taken in twos andthrees, twice or thrice a day, all through the week. Of the fifty justmentioned, some were occupied in endeavouring to rekindle the fire; butin general they seemed to have no object in view but to prowl and loungeabout the old place: being often found asleep in the ruins, or sittingtalking there, or even eating and drinking, as in a choice retreat.
Besides the notices on the gates of the Fleet and the King's Bench,many similar announcements were left, before one o'clock at noon, atthe houses of private individuals; and further, the mob proclaimed theirintention of seizing on the Bank, the Mint, the Arsenal at Woolwich, andthe Royal Palaces. The notices were seldom delivered by more than oneman, who, if it were at a shop, went in, and laid it, with a bloodythreat perhaps, upon the counter; or if it were at a privatehouse, knocked at the door, and thrust it in the servant's hand.Notwithstanding the presence of the military in every quarter of thetown, and the great force in the Park, these messengers did theirerrands with impunity all through the day. So did two boys who wentdown Holborn alone, armed with bars taken from the railings of LordMansfield's house, and demanded money for the rioters. So did a tall manon horseback who made a collection for the same purpose in Fleet Street,and refused to take anything but gold.
A rumour had now got into circulation, too, which diffused a greaterdread all through London, even than these publicly announced intentionsof the rioters, though all men knew that if they were successfullyeffected, there must ensue a national bankruptcy and general ruin. Itwas said that they meant to throw the gates of Bedlam open, and let allthe madmen loose. This suggested such dreadful images to the people'sminds, and was indeed an act so fraught with new and unimaginablehorrors in the contemplation, that it beset them more than any loss orcruelty of which they could foresee the worst, and drove many sane mennearly mad themselves.
So the day passed on: the prisoners moving their goods; people runningto and fro in the streets, carrying away their property; groups standingin silence round the ruins; all business suspended; and the soldiersdisposed as has been already mentioned, remaining quite inactive. So theday passed on, and dreaded night drew near again.
At last, at seven o'clock in the evening, the Privy Council issued asolemn proclamation that it was now necessary to employ the military,and that the officers had most direct and effectual orders, by animmediate exertion of their utmost force, to repress the disturbances;and warning all good subjects of the King to keep themselves, theirservants, and apprentices, within doors that night. There was thendelivered out to every soldier on duty, thirty-six rounds of powder andball; the drums beat; and the whole force was under arms at sunset.
The City authorities, stimulated by these vigorous measures, held aCommon Council; passed a vote thanking the military associations whohad tendered their aid to the civil authorities; accepted it; and placedthem under the direction of the two sheriffs. At the Queen's palace,a double guard, the yeomen on duty, the groom-porters, and all otherattendants, were stationed in the passages and on the staircases atseven o'clock, with strict instructions to be watchful on their postsall night; and all the doors were locked. The gentlemen of the Temple,and the other Inns, mounted guard within their gates, and strengthenedthem with the great stones of the pavement, which they took up for thepurpose. In Lincoln's Inn, they gave up the hall and commons to theNorthumberland Militia, under the command of Lord Algernon Percy; insome few of the city wards, the burgesses turne
d out, and withoutmaking a very fierce show, looked brave enough. Some hundreds of stoutgentlemen threw themselves, armed to the teeth, into the halls of thedifferent companies, double-locked and bolted all the gates, anddared the rioters (among themselves) to come on at their peril. Thesearrangements being all made simultaneously, or nearly so, were completedby the time it got dark; and then the streets were comparatively clear,and were guarded at all the great corners and chief avenues bythe troops: while parties of the officers rode up and down in alldirections, ordering chance stragglers home, and admonishing theresidents to keep within their houses, and, if any firing ensued, notto approach the windows. More chains were drawn across such of thethoroughfares as were of a nature to favour the approach of a greatcrowd, and at each of these points a considerable force was stationed.All these precautions having been taken, and it being now quite dark,those in command awaited the result in some anxiety: and not without ahope that such vigilant demonstrations might of themselves disheartenthe populace, and prevent any new outrages.
But in this reckoning they were cruelly mistaken, for in half an hour,or less, as though the setting in of night had been their preconcertedsignal, the rioters having previously, in small parties, prevented thelighting of the street lamps, rose like a great sea; and that in so manyplaces at once, and with such inconceivable fury, that those who had thedirection of the troops knew not, at first, where to turn or what to do.One after another, new fires blazed up in every quarter of the town,as though it were the intention of the insurgents to wrap the city in acircle of flames, which, contracting by degrees, should burn the wholeto ashes; the crowd swarmed and roared in every street; and none butrioters and soldiers being out of doors, it seemed to the latter as ifall London were arrayed against them, and they stood alone against thetown.
In two hours, six-and-thirty fires were raging--six-and-thirty greatconflagrations: among them the Borough Clink in Tooley Street, theKing's Bench, the Fleet, and the New Bridewell. In almost every street,there was a battle; and in every quarter the muskets of the troops wereheard above the shouts and tumult of the mob. The firing began in thePoultry, where the chain was drawn across the road, where nearly a scoreof people were killed on the first discharge. Their bodies having beenhastily carried into St Mildred's Church by the soldiers, the latterfired again, and following fast upon the crowd, who began to give waywhen they saw the execution that was done, formed across Cheapside, andcharged them at the point of the bayonet.
The streets were now a dreadful spectacle. The shouts of the rabble,the shrieks of women, the cries of the wounded, and the constant firing,formed a deafening and an awful accompaniment to the sights which everycorner presented. Wherever the road was obstructed by the chains, therethe fighting and the loss of life were greatest; but there was hot workand bloodshed in almost every leading thoroughfare.
At Holborn Bridge, and on Holborn Hill, the confusion was greater thanin any other part; for the crowd that poured out of the city in twogreat streams, one by Ludgate Hill, and one by Newgate Street, united atthat spot, and formed a mass so dense, that at every volley the peopleseemed to fall in heaps. At this place a large detachment of soldierywere posted, who fired, now up Fleet Market, now up Holborn, now up SnowHill--constantly raking the streets in each direction. At this placetoo, several large fires were burning, so that all the terrors of thatterrible night seemed to be concentrated in one spot.
Full twenty times, the rioters, headed by one man who wielded an axein his right hand, and bestrode a brewer's horse of great size andstrength, caparisoned with fetters taken out of Newgate, which clankedand jingled as he went, made an attempt to force a passage at thispoint, and fire the vintner's house. Full twenty times they wererepulsed with loss of life, and still came back again; and thoughthe fellow at their head was marked and singled out by all, and was aconspicuous object as the only rioter on horseback, not a man couldhit him. So surely as the smoke cleared away, so surely there was he;calling hoarsely to his companions, brandishing his axe above his head,and dashing on as though he bore a charmed life, and was proof againstball and powder.
This man was Hugh; and in every part of the riot, he was seen. He headedtwo attacks upon the Bank, helped to break open the Toll-houses onBlackfriars Bridge, and cast the money into the street: fired two of theprisons with his own hand: was here, and there, and everywhere--alwaysforemost--always active--striking at the soldiers, cheering on thecrowd, making his horse's iron music heard through all the yell anduproar: but never hurt or stopped. Turn him at one place, and he madea new struggle in another; force him to retreat at this point, and headvanced on that, directly. Driven from Holborn for the twentiethtime, he rode at the head of a great crowd straight upon Saint Paul's,attacked a guard of soldiers who kept watch over a body of prisonerswithin the iron railings, forced them to retreat, rescued the men theyhad in custody, and with this accession to his party, came back again,mad with liquor and excitement, and hallooing them on like a demon.
It would have been no easy task for the most careful rider to sit ahorse in the midst of such a throng and tumult; but though this madmanrolled upon his back (he had no saddle) like a boat upon the sea, henever for an instant lost his seat, or failed to guide him where hewould. Through the very thickest of the press, over dead bodies andburning fragments, now on the pavement, now in the road, now riding upa flight of steps to make himself the more conspicuous to his party,and now forcing a passage through a mass of human beings, so closelysqueezed together that it seemed as if the edge of a knife wouldscarcely part them,--on he went, as though he could surmount allobstacles by the mere exercise of his will. And perhaps his not beingshot was in some degree attributable to this very circumstance; for hisextreme audacity, and the conviction that he must be one of those towhom the proclamation referred, inspired the soldiers with a desire totake him alive, and diverted many an aim which otherwise might have beenmore near the mark.
The vintner and Mr Haredale, unable to sit quietly listening to thenoise without seeing what went on, had climbed to the roof of the house,and hiding behind a stack of chimneys, were looking cautiously down intothe street, almost hoping that after so many repulses the rioters wouldbe foiled, when a great shout proclaimed that a parry were coming roundthe other way; and the dismal jingling of those accursed fetters warnedthem next moment that they too were led by Hugh. The soldiers hadadvanced into Fleet Market and were dispersing the people there; so thatthey came on with hardly any check, and were soon before the house.
'All's over now,' said the vintner. 'Fifty thousand pounds will bescattered in a minute. We must save ourselves. We can do no more, andshall have reason to be thankful if we do as much.'
Their first impulse was, to clamber along the roofs of the houses, and,knocking at some garret window for admission, pass down that way intothe street, and so escape. But another fierce cry from below, and ageneral upturning of the faces of the crowd, apprised them that theywere discovered, and even that Mr Haredale was recognised; for Hugh,seeing him plainly in the bright glare of the fire, which in that partmade it as light as day, called to him by his name, and swore to havehis life.
'Leave me here,' said Mr Haredale, 'and in Heaven's name, my goodfriend, save yourself! Come on!' he muttered, as he turned towards Hughand faced him without any further effort at concealment: 'This roof ishigh, and if we close, we will die together!'
'Madness,' said the honest vintner, pulling him back, 'sheer madness.Hear reason, sir. My good sir, hear reason. I could never make myselfheard by knocking at a window now; and even if I could, no one would bebold enough to connive at my escape. Through the cellars, there's a kindof passage into the back street by which we roll casks in and out. Weshall have time to get down there before they can force an entry. Donot delay an instant, but come with me--for both our sakes--for mine--mydear good sir!'
As he spoke, and drew Mr Haredale back, they had both a glimpse of thestreet. It was but a glimpse, but it showed them the crowd, gatheringand clustering round the house
: some of the armed men pressing to thefront to break down the doors and windows, some bringing brands fromthe nearest fire, some with lifted faces following their course upon theroof and pointing them out to their companions: all raging and roaringlike the flames they lighted up. They saw some men thirsting for thetreasures of strong liquor which they knew were stored within; they sawothers, who had been wounded, sinking down into the opposite doorwaysand dying, solitary wretches, in the midst of all the vast assemblage;here a frightened woman trying to escape; and there a lost child; andthere a drunken ruffian, unconscious of the death-wound on his head,raving and fighting to the last. All these things, and even such trivialincidents as a man with his hat off, or turning round, or stooping down,or shaking hands with another, they marked distinctly; yet in a glanceso brief, that, in the act of stepping back, they lost the whole, andsaw but the pale faces of each other, and the red sky above them.
Mr Haredale yielded to the entreaties of his companion--more because hewas resolved to defend him, than for any thought he had of his own life,or any care he entertained for his own safety--and quickly re-enteringthe house, they descended the stairs together. Loud blows werethundering on the shutters, crowbars were already thrust beneath thedoor, the glass fell from the sashes, a deep light shone through everycrevice, and they heard the voices of the foremost in the crowd so closeto every chink and keyhole, that they seemed to be hoarsely whisperingtheir threats into their very ears. They had but a moment reached thebottom of the cellar-steps and shut the door behind them, when the mobbroke in.
The vaults were profoundly dark, and having no torch or candle--forthey had been afraid to carry one, lest it should betray their place ofrefuge--they were obliged to grope with their hands. But they were notlong without light, for they had not gone far when they heard the crowdforcing the door; and, looking back among the low-arched passages,could see them in the distance, hurrying to and fro with flashing links,broaching the casks, staving the great vats, turning off upon the righthand and the left, into the different cellars, and lying down to drinkat the channels of strong spirits which were already flowing on theground.
They hurried on, not the less quickly for this; and had reached the onlyvault which lay between them and the passage out, when suddenly, fromthe direction in which they were going, a strong light gleamed upontheir faces; and before they could slip aside, or turn back, or hidethemselves, two men (one bearing a torch) came upon them, and cried inan astonished whisper, 'Here they are!'
At the same instant they pulled off what they wore upon their heads. MrHaredale saw before him Edward Chester, and then saw, when the vintnergasped his name, Joe Willet.
Ay, the same Joe, though with an arm the less, who used to make thequarterly journey on the grey mare to pay the bill to the purple-facedvintner; and that very same purple-faced vintner, formerly of ThamesStreet, now looked him in the face, and challenged him by name.
'Give me your hand,' said Joe softly, taking it whether the astonishedvintner would or no. 'Don't fear to shake it; it's a friendly one anda hearty one, though it has no fellow. Why, how well you look and howbluff you are! And you--God bless you, sir. Take heart, take heart.We'll find them. Be of good cheer; we have not been idle.'
There was something so honest and frank in Joe's speech, that MrHaredale put his hand in his involuntarily, though their meetingwas suspicious enough. But his glance at Edward Chester, and thatgentleman's keeping aloof, were not lost upon Joe, who said bluntly,glancing at Edward while he spoke:
'Times are changed, Mr Haredale, and times have come when we ought toknow friends from enemies, and make no confusion of names. Let me tellyou that but for this gentleman, you would most likely have been dead bythis time, or badly wounded at the best.'
'What do you say?' cried Mr Haredale.
'I say,' said Joe, 'first, that it was a bold thing to be in the crowdat all disguised as one of them; though I won't say much about that, onsecond thoughts, for that's my case too. Secondly, that it was a braveand glorious action--that's what I call it--to strike that fellow offhis horse before their eyes!'
'What fellow! Whose eyes!'
'What fellow, sir!' cried Joe: 'a fellow who has no goodwill to you, andwho has the daring and devilry in him of twenty fellows. I know him ofold. Once in the house, HE would have found you, here or anywhere. Therest owe you no particular grudge, and, unless they see you, will onlythink of drinking themselves dead. But we lose time. Are you ready?'
'Quite,' said Edward. 'Put out the torch, Joe, and go on. And be silent,there's a good fellow.'
'Silent or not silent,' murmured Joe, as he dropped the flaring linkupon the ground, crushed it with his foot, and gave his hand to MrHaredale, 'it was a brave and glorious action;--no man can alter that.'
Both Mr Haredale and the worthy vintner were too amazed and too muchhurried to ask any further questions, so followed their conductorsin silence. It seemed, from a short whispering which presently ensuedbetween them and the vintner relative to the best way of escape, thatthey had entered by the back-door, with the connivance of John Grueby,who watched outside with the key in his pocket, and whom they had takeninto their confidence. A party of the crowd coming up that way, just asthey entered, John had double-locked the door again, and made off forthe soldiers, so that means of retreat was cut off from under them.
However, as the front-door had been forced, and this minor crowd, beinganxious to get at the liquor, had no fancy for losing time in breakingdown another, but had gone round and got in from Holborn with the rest,the narrow lane in the rear was quite free of people. So, when they hadcrawled through the passage indicated by the vintner (which was a mereshelving-trap for the admission of casks), and had managed with somedifficulty to unchain and raise the door at the upper end, they emergedinto the street without being observed or interrupted. Joe still holdingMr Haredale tight, and Edward taking the same care of the vintner, theyhurried through the streets at a rapid pace; occasionally standing asideto let some fugitives go by, or to keep out of the way of the soldierswho followed them, and whose questions, when they halted to put any,were speedily stopped by one whispered word from Joe.
Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty Page 67