But the silver-tongued Murray bore all this, and much more, with apparent equanimity, and exhibited even to his political enemies a heroic moderation. To his honour, he assisted in reversing the sentence of outlawry against Wilkes, who had returned from abroad in 1767, and had been chosen to represent Middlesex. On that occasion we find from his speech that he was suffering from a similar persecution to that complained of by the late Lord Chief Justice during a famous trial[211]: ‘Numerous crowds attending in and about the hall;’ ‘audacious addresses, dictating to us from those they call the people the judgments to be given;’ ‘reasons of policy being urged from danger to the kingdom by commotions and general confusion.’ ‘I pass over,’ said his lordship, ‘many anonymous letters I have received.... The threats go farther than the abuse; personal violence is denounced. I do not believe it. It is not the genius of the worst men of this country in the worst times. But I have set my mind at rest. The last end that can happen to any man never comes too soon if he falls in support of the law and liberty of his country ... for liberty is synonymous with law!’ [Illustration: _Lord W. Mansfield._] In the ‘Historical Chronicle’ of the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, under the date of January 1, 1773, it is recorded: ‘This day the Right Hon. Lord Mansfield entertained at his house at Caen Wood, near Hampstead, about four hundred people, and gave each a half-crown and a quartern loaf after dinner.’ Years of scarcity were but too common in the last century, and this might have been one. Under any circumstances such seasonable hospitality was calculated to make the donor popular with the masses, yet seven years later, in the course of the Gordon Riots, when, under pretence of religious zeal, the mob resented his lordship’s supposed favour of Catholicism,[212] we find Horace Walpole writing to the Countess of Ossory, June 7, 1780, that Lord Mansfield’s house in Bloomsbury was in ashes, and that George Selwyn had just told him that 5,000 men were marching on Kane Wood. ‘It is true,’ he adds, ‘and that 1,000 of the Guards are gone after them.’ Then, by way of postscript: ‘Kane Wood is saved! It will probably be a black night. I am decking myself with blue ribbands like a May-day garland.’ But Horace Walpole was not alone in adopting blue ribands on that occasion. Every wayfarer donned the same colour, and every house had a blue flag or favour hung out. The very Jews inscribed on their dwellings, ‘This house true Protestant’; and chalk was in great request, affording as it did an easy washable way of asserting ‘No Popery!’ The father of Grimaldi chalked up, ‘No Religion!’ We already know the result of the raid on Ken Wood, and the enterprise of the quick-witted landlord of the Spaniards.[213]