In the summer of 1780 London, and several other cities across England, experienced some of the worst rioting they had seen in a generation, following the presentation of a petition to Parliament calling for the repeal of the Catholic Relief Act. In the latest post for the Georgian Lords, Dr Robin Eagles considers the evidence of Lord George Gordon’s trial report and the insights it provides into the workings of Parliament in the 18th century.
The story of the Gordon Riots is well known and has been told many times before. However, one aspect that has not been considered so much is what they tell us about access to the old Palace of Westminster. Key to this is the evidence that was presented at Lord George Gordon’s treason trial in February 1781, when several well-placed MPs and parliamentary officials offered their testimony on how the crowds had pressed their way into the heart of the palace.
While the original delegation bringing the Protestant Association’s petition to Westminster had been orderly enough, by the late afternoon of 2 June 1780 the Palace of Westminster was clogged with protesters. Protesting later turned to rioting, and in London there were days of lawlessness, with houses and chapels pulled down, prisons broken open and widespread looting. Only after several days was order restored by the army and militia.
One of the most useful witnesses summoned to give evidence at Gordon’s trial was Thomas Bowen, officiating as the Commons’ chaplain on the day the petition was presented. Bowen had accompanied the Speaker to the chamber at the beginning of proceedings, but already found the lobby ‘crowded, and the people… clamorous’. After leading those MPs present in prayers, Bowen retreated to a place ‘under the gallery, by the door’. He was, thus, well-placed to observe Gordon interacting with the crowd outside the chamber. He witnessed Gordon going to the door frequently, and repeating what was being said by the Members. Gordon assured the crowd that the Speaker considered them ‘good people’, while (likely) George Rous, who had form on calling for aggressive action to quell troublemakers, was calling for the magistrates to be called. Lord North dismissed them as ‘a mob’.
When the motion to consider the petition was eventually called for, Bowen exited the chamber and made his way to an adjoining room, but noticed that the crowd was refusing to quit the lobby, making a division impossible. He was prevailed on to speak to them to encourage them to retire, but without success. At least one person insisted they would only go if Gordon told them to do so.
Bowen then left the lobby and went to ‘the eating room’, where he was joined by an exhausted Gordon. He told Gordon what he had heard, and Gordon made his way to the gallery overlooking the lobby so that he could speak to his supporters. Bowen followed, and deposed that Gordon spoke to those gathered below, urging them to be peaceable, though Gordon also took Bowen by the gown, introduced him to the crowd and tried to get Bowen to give his opinion on the Catholic Relief Act. According to Bowen, this was the only time in the whole proceedings when he felt unsafe. John Anstruther, who was in the lobby, gave his own account of Gordon addressing the crowd, but made no mention of Bowen. He agreed, though, that there ‘was great confusion in the lobby’.
Following Bowen, MP John Cator offered his evidence of the events of 2 June. He said he had been ‘going from some of the committee-rooms to the gallery over the lobby’ and found the lobby packed with people and the Commons stymied in their efforts to hold a division, as the officers of the House were unable to get the lobby cleared. He heard someone call Gordon by name, and then witnessed him make his way ‘to the rails, and looked over’. Cator followed suit to observe Gordon’s interaction with the crowd. Gordon advised that most of the MPs were opposed to considering the petition at that point, but asked what the crowd wished: ‘they cried out, “Now, now.”’
Two more Commons’ staff were summoned to give their evidence. One was Joseph Pearson, one of the doorkeepers. He had been posted in the lobby, and his testimony confirmed Bowen’s, that Gordon had come to the door on several occasions to pass on what was happening to the crowd outside. He reckoned the ‘mob’ had finally dispersed by nine in the evening, but ‘so great was the confusion I cannot say how [the lobby] was cleared’. Another doorkeeper, Thomas Baker, supported Pearson’s account, noting that the crowds only disappeared after soldiers arrived.
What was clear from several of the witnesses was how easy it was for the crowd to make their way deep into the parliamentary estate. Sampson Rainsforth deposed being in New Palace Yard when about 200 people had made their way over Westminster Bridge and at about 2pm ‘the whole cavalcade came from Charing Cross down to New Palace Yard, with flags and music’. He also observed that ‘they had blue cockades in their hats’: the colour of the Protestant Association. This tallied more or less with at least one newspaper report that related that the delegation arrived at the Houses of Parliament at about half past two. [Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 3 June 1780] Like Anstruther, Rainsforth then made his way into the lobby where he observed Gordon standing at the door leading into the Commons’ chamber, though he did not catch what was said. Clearly, though, it was still possible to access the lobby in spite of the reports of large crowds making the passageways impassable.
Witnesses to what took place in the lobby generally agreed that while potentially unruly, the crowd there was reasonably well behaved, though at least one MP, Philip Jennings Clerke, reckoned that the original petitioners were distinct from those in the lobby, whom he dismissed as ‘a different class of person’. Certainly, all was not peaceful. Constable Charles Jealous, stationed in Palace Yard, witnessed the bishop of Lincoln’s coach being attacked as he arrived to attend the House of Lords. The coach, he said:
was stopped by the mob, and the wheels were taken off. I saw a gentleman taken out of it, who, they said was the Bishop: they pulled off his wig, and struck him in the face… He got into the house in order to escape.
Jealous observed that those involved in roughing up the bishop were not wearing blue cockades, suggesting they were not part of the more organized group who had been involved with presenting the petition. One newspaper also reported six peers being ‘extremely ill-used… their bags pulled off, and their hair left flowing on their shoulders’. Several chose not to hang around and summoned hackney carriages to get them away.
Dispersing the crowds from around Parliament proved just the beginning of the business as protests turned to riot and a general breakdown in law and order. But what the opening moments of those chaotic days in June 1780 showed was how intimate the palace could be. Access was easy right up to the doors of the Commons, with spaces – like the gallery over the lobby – available for Members to address people gathered below. It all goes to show that Parliament was a dynamic space, where Lords, MPs, officials and the general public rubbed shoulders and where so much depended on a sense of what was and was not reasonable behaviour.
RDEE
Further Reading:
The Trial of the Honourable George Gordon, commonly called Lord George Gordon, for High Treason… On Monday, the 5th Day of February, 1781.
The Gordon Riots: Politics, Culture and Insurrection in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain, eds. Ian Haywood and John Seed (Cambridge, 2012)
