Horace Walpole and His World: Select Passages from His LettersWalpole, Horace
General
Horace Walpole and His World: Select Passages from His Letters
Walpole, Horace
Walpole, Horace, 1717-1797 -- Correspondence
“I shall return to my own castle to-morrow: I had not above
four hours’ sleep last night, and must get some rest. General
Conway is enraged at the adjournment, and will go away too.
Many coaches and chaises did leave London yesterday. My
intelligence will not be so good nor so immediate; but you will
not want correspondents. Disturbances are threatened again for
to-night; and some probably will happen, but there are more
troops, and less alacrity in the outlaws.
“Berkeley Square, June 9, at noon, 1780.
“All has been quiet to-night, as far as we know in this region;
but not without blood being spilt yesterday. The rioters
attacked the Horse Guards about six in Fleet Street, and, not
giving them time to load, were repelled by the bayonet. Twenty
fell, thirty-five were wounded and sent to the hospital, where
two died directly. Three of the Guards were wounded, and a
young officer named Marjoribank. Mr. Conway’s footman told me
he was on a message at Lord Amherst’s when the Guards returned,
and that their bayonets were steeped in blood.
“I heard, too, at my neighbour Duchess’s, whither I went at
one in the morning, that the Protestant Associators, disguised
with blue cockades as friends, had fallen on the rioters in
St. George’s Fields, and killed many. I do not warrant the
truth, but I did hear often in the evening that there had
been slaughter in the Borough, where a great public-house
had been destroyed, and a house at Redriffe, and another at
Islington. Zeal has entirely thrown off the mask, and owned its
name--plunder. Its offspring have extorted money from several
houses with threats of firing them as Catholic. Apprentices and
Irish chairmen, and all kinds of outlaws, have been the most
active. Some hundreds are actually dead about the streets, with
the spirits they plundered at the distiller’s; the low women
knelt and sucked them as they ran from the staved casks.
“It was reported last night that the primate, George Gordon,
is fled to Scotland: for aught I know he may not be so far off
as Grosvenor Place. All is rumour and exaggeration; and yet
it would be difficult to exaggerate the horrors of Wednesday
night; a town taken by storm could alone exceed them.
“I am going to Strawberry this instant, exhausted with fatigue,
for I have certainly been on my feet longer these last
eight-and-forty hours than in forty days before.…
“Adieu! Madam; allow my pen a few holidays, unless the storm
recommences.”
On hearing that Lord George Gordon had been arrested, he writes again:
“Strawberry Hill, Saturday night, late.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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