During the rising of the Young Pretender in ’45, Chief Justice Willes raised a regiment ‘for the defence of the King’s person.’ The occasion for arms passed away quickly, and it was not till 1780 that the barristers and students found themselves compelled once more to meet force by force. For the Gordon Rioters, after sacking Lord Mansfield’s house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, set fire to a distillery belonging to a papist, near Barnard’s Inn, and the gutters of Holborn ran with blazing spirit, of which the rioters drank until they died. It was to escape the fury of the mob that John Scott, afterwards Lord Eldon, escorted his lovely young wife from his house in Carey Street to the Middle Temple, of which he was a member. Her dress was torn, her hat lost, and her hair dishevelled by the violence of the rioters. ‘The scoundrels have got your hat, Bessie,’ cried the gallant husband, who had made a runaway match with her, ‘but never mind, they have left you your hair!’ So long as the riots continued, the Lawyers kept armed watch in the Halls of their respective Societies. At the Inner Temple the mob forced the gate, ‘and would no doubt have plundered and burnt the place as Wat Tyler’s followers did four centuries before, had not a sergeant of the Guards, who acted as military instructor to the law-gentlemen, called out to the armed Templars: “Take care no gentleman fires from behind!” The rioters, fearing that some ambush had been prepared for them, took to their heels and never again molested this sanctuary of the law. In and around Gray’s Inn, a similar armed watch kept the ‘No Popery’ people at bay, and many years later Sir Samuel Romilly used to point out the gate where, musket in hand, he had stood sentry during some of the worst nights of the riots. The Lincoln’s Inn students, it seems--or, as another account says, those of the Temple--would have joined the military in repressing the riots, but were told by one of the officers in command that he did not wish ‘to see his own men shot!’[58] After the French Revolution, at the first rumour of invasion by the armies of the Republic, companies of Volunteers were recruited from Lincoln’s Inn and the Temple. Two corps appear to have been formed--one known as the Bloomsbury and Inns of Court Association, and the other the Legal Association. The Lincoln’s Inn Corps was commanded by Sir William Grant, then Master of the Rolls, who had seen service in Canada, at the Siege of Quebec. The Temple Companies were commanded by Lord Erskine, who had served in the Royal Navy before he took to the Law. Embodied in 1803, the Gentlemen of the Inns of Court took part in the grand Review of Volunteers in Hyde Park before the King. When the Temple Companies defiled before King George III., His Majesty asked Lord Erskine, who commanded them, who they were. ‘They are all lawyers, sir,’ said Erskine. ‘What! what!’ exclaimed the King. ‘All lawyers? Then call them the Devil’s Own!’