dispersed, and advertisements inserted in the newspapers, inviting those who wished well to the cause to unite under that title; and Lord George Gordon, who had been active at the head of the malcontents in Scotland, was chosen their President. The ferment was suffered to increase during a course of several years. His lordship was a member of the senate, and his extraordinary conduct in the house, and frequent interruption he gave to the business of parliament, as well as the unaccountable manner in which he continually brought in and treated matters relative to religion and the danger of popery, and the caprice with which he divided the house upon questions wherein he stood nearly or entirely alone, were passed over, along with other singularities in his dress and manners, rather as subjects of pleasantry than of serious notice or reprehension. On Monday, the 29th of May, 1780, a meeting was held at Coachmaker’s Hall, pursuant to a public advertisement, in order to consider of the mode of presenting a petition to the House of Commons. Lord George Gordon took the chair; and, after a long inflammatory harangue, in which he endeavoured to persuade his hearers of the rapid and alarming progress that popery was making in the kingdom, he proceeded to observe, that the only way to stop it, was going in a firm, manly, and resolute manner to the house and showing their representatives that they were determined to preserve their religious freedom with their lives; that, for his part, he would run all hazards with the people; and if the people were too lukewarm to run all hazards with him, when their conscience and their country called them forth, they might get another president, for that he would tell them candidly, he was not a lukewarm man himself; and that, if they meant to spend their time in mock debate, and idle opposition, they might get another leader. This speech was received with the loudest applause, and his lordship then moved the following resolution: “That the whole body of the Protestant Association do attend in St. George’s Fields, on Friday next, at ten o’clock in the morning, to accompany their president to the House of Commons at the delivery of the Protestant petition;” which was carried unanimously. His Lordship then informed them, that if less than twenty thousand of his fellow citizens attended him on that day, he would not present their petition. Accordingly, on Friday, the 2d day of June, 1780, at ten in the forenoon, several thousands assembled at the place appointed, marshalling themselves in ranks, and waiting for their leader, who arrived about an hour afterward, and they all proceeded to the houses of parliament. Here they began to exercise the most arbitrary power over both lords and commons, by obliging almost all the members to put blue cockades on their hats, and call out “no popery!” Some they compelled to take oaths to vote for the repeal of this obnoxious act; others they