To surround anything, however monstrous or ridiculous, with an
air of mystery, is to invest it with a secret charm, and power of attraction
which to the crowd is irresistible. False priests, false prophets, false
doctors, false patriots, false prodigies of every kind, veiling their
proceedings in mystery, have always addressed themselves at an immense advantage
to the popular credulity, and have been, perhaps, more indebted to that resource
in gaining and keeping for a time the upper hand of Truth and Common Sense, than
to any half-dozen items in the whole catalogue of imposture. Curiosity is, and
has been from the creation of the world, a master-passion. To awaken it, to
gratify it by slight degrees, and yet leave something always in suspense, is to
establish the surest hold that can be had, in wrong, on the unthinking portion
of mankind.
If a man had stood on London Bridge, calling till he was hoarse, upon the
passers-by, to join with Lord George Gordon, although for an object which no man
understood, and which in that very incident had a charm of its own,--the
probability is, that he might have influenced a score of people in a month. If
all zealous Protestants had been publicly urged to join an association for the
avowed purpose of singing a hymn or two occasionally, and hearing some
indifferent speeches made, and ultimately of petitioning Parliament not to pass
an act for abolishing the penal laws against Roman Catholic priests, the penalty
of perpetual imprisonment denounced against those who educated children in that
persuasion, and the disqualification of all members of the Romish church to
inherit real property in the United Kingdom by right of purchase or
descent,--matters so far removed from the business and bosoms of the mass, might
perhaps have called together a hundred people. But when vague rumours got
abroad, that in this Protestant association a secret power was mustering against
the government for undefined and mighty purposes; when the air was filled with
whispers of a confederacy among the Popish powers to degrade and enslave
England, establish an inquisition in London, and turn the pens of Smithfield
market into stakes and cauldrons; when terrors and alarms which no man
understood were perpetually broached, both in and out of Parliament, by one
enthusiast who did not understand himself, and bygone bugbears which had lain
quietly in their graves for centuries, were raised again to haunt the ignorant
and credulous; when all this was done, as it were, in the dark, and secret
invitations to join the Great Protestant Association in defence of religion,
life, and liberty, were dropped in the public ways, thrust under the
house-doors, tossed in at windows, and pressed into the hands of those who trod
the streets by night; when they glared from every wall, and shone on every post
and pillar, so that stocks and stones appeared infected with the common fear,
urging all men to join together blindfold in resistance of they knew not what,
they knew not why;--then the mania spread indeed, and the body, still increasing
every day, grew forty thousand strong.
So said, at least, in this month of March, 1780, Lord George Gordon, the
Association's president. Whether it was the fact or otherwise, few men knew or
cared to ascertain. It had never made any public demonstration; had scarcely
ever been heard of, save through him; had never been seen; and was supposed by
many to be the mere creature of his disordered brain. He was accustomed to talk
largely about numbers of men--stimulated, as it was inferred, by certain
successful disturbances, arising out of the same subject, which had occurred in
Scotland in the previous year; was looked upon as a cracked-brained member of
the lower house, who attacked all parties and sided with none, and was very
little regarded. It was known that there was discontent abroad--there always is;
he had been accustomed to address the people by placard, speech, and pamphlet,
upon other questions; nothing had come, in England, of his past exertions, and
nothing was apprehended from his present. Just as he has come upon the reader,
he had come, from time to time, upon the public, and been forgotten in a day; as
suddenly as he appears in these pages, after a blank of five long years, did he
and his proceedings begin to force themselves, about this period, upon the
notice of thousands of people, who had mingled in active life during the whole
interval, and who, without being deaf or blind to passing events, had scarcely
ever thought of him before.
'My lord,' said Gashford in his ear, as he drew the curtains of his bed
betimes; 'my lord!'
'Yes--who's that? What is it?'
'The clock has struck nine,' returned the secretary, with meekly folded
hands. 'You have slept well? I hope you have slept well? If my prayers are
heard, you are refreshed indeed.'
'To say the truth, I have slept so soundly,' said Lord George, rubbing his
eyes and looking round the room, 'that I don't remember quite--what place is
this?'
'My lord!' cried Gashford, with a smile.
'Oh!' returned his superior. 'Yes. You're not a Jew then?'
'A Jew!' exclaimed the pious secretary, recoiling.
'I dreamed that we were Jews, Gashford. You and I--both of us-- Jews with
long beards.'
'Heaven forbid, my lord! We might as well be Papists.'
'I suppose we might,' returned the other, very quickly. 'Eh? You really think
so, Gashford?'
'Surely I do,' the secretary cried, with looks of great surprise.
'Humph!' he muttered. 'Yes, that seems reasonable.'
'I hope my lord--' the secretary began.
'Hope!' he echoed, interrupting him. 'Why do you say, you hope? There's no
harm in thinking of such things.'
'Not in dreams,' returned the Secretary.
'In dreams! No, nor waking either.'
--'"Called, and chosen, and faithful,"' said Gashford, taking up Lord
George's watch which lay upon a chair, and seeming to read the inscription on
the seal, abstractedly.
It was the slightest action possible, not obtruded on his notice, and
apparently the result of a moment's absence of mind, not worth remark. But as
the words were uttered, Lord George, who had been going on impetuously, stopped
short, reddened, and was silent. Apparently quite unconscious of this change in
his demeanour, the wily Secretary stepped a little apart, under pretence of
pulling up the window-blind, and returning when the other had had time to
recover, said:
'The holy cause goes bravely on, my lord. I was not idle, even last night. I
dropped two of the handbills before I went to bed, and both are gone this
morning. Nobody in the house has mentioned the circumstance of finding them,
though I have been downstairs full half-an-hour. One or two recruits will be
their first fruit, I predict; and who shall say how many more, with Heaven's
blessing on your inspired exertions!'
'It was a famous device in the beginning,' replied Lord George; 'an excellent
device, and did good service in Scotland. It was quite worthy of you. You remind
me not to be a sluggard, Gashford, when the vineyard is menaced with
destruction, and may be trodden down by Papist feet. Let the horses be saddled
in half-an-hour. We must be up and doing!'
He said this with a heightened colour, and in a tone of such enthusiasm, that
the secretary deemed all further prompting needless, and withdrew.
--'Dreamed he was a Jew,' he said thoughtfully, as he closed the bedroom
door. 'He may come to that before he dies. It's like enough. Well! After a time,
and provided I lost nothing by it, I don't see why that religion shouldn't suit
me as well as any other. There are rich men among the Jews; shaving is very
troublesome;--yes, it would suit me well enough. For the present, though, we
must be Christian to the core. Our prophetic motto will suit all creeds in their
turn, that's a comfort.' Reflecting on this source of consolation, he reached
the sitting-room, and rang the bell for breakfast.
Lord George was quickly dressed (for his plain toilet was easily made), and
as he was no less frugal in his repasts than in his Puritan attire, his share of
the meal was soon dispatched. The secretary, however, more devoted to the good
things of this world, or more intent on sustaining his strength and spirits for
the sake of the Protestant cause, ate and drank to the last minute, and required
indeed some three or four reminders from John Grueby, before he could resolve to
tear himself away from Mr Willet's plentiful providing.
At length he came downstairs, wiping his greasy mouth, and having paid John
Willet's bill, climbed into his saddle. Lord George, who had been walking up and
down before the house talking to himself with earnest gestures, mounted his
horse; and returning old John Willet's stately bow, as well as the parting
salutation of a dozen idlers whom the rumour of a live lord being about to leave
the Maypole had gathered round the porch, they rode away, with stout John Grueby
in the rear.
If Lord George Gordon had appeared in the eyes of Mr Willet, overnight, a
nobleman of somewhat quaint and odd exterior, the impression was confirmed this
morning, and increased a hundredfold. Sitting bolt upright upon his bony steed,
with his long, straight hair, dangling about his face and fluttering in the
wind; his limbs all angular and rigid, his elbows stuck out on either side
ungracefully, and his whole frame jogged and shaken at every motion of his
horse's feet; a more grotesque or more ungainly figure can hardly be conceived.
In lieu of whip, he carried in his hand a great gold-headed cane, as large as
any footman carries in these days, and his various modes of holding this
unwieldy weapon--now upright before his face like the sabre of a horse-soldier,
now over his shoulder like a musket, now between his finger and thumb, but
always in some uncouth and awkward fashion--contributed in no small degree to
the absurdity of his appearance. Stiff, lank, and solemn, dressed in an unusual
manner, and ostentatiously exhibiting--whether by design or accident--all his
peculiarities of carriage, gesture, and conduct, all the qualities, natural and
artificial, in which he differed from other men; he might have moved the
sternest looker-on to laughter, and fully provoked the smiles and whispered
jests which greeted his departure from the Maypole inn.
Quite unconscious, however, of the effect he produced, he trotted on beside
his secretary, talking to himself nearly all the way, until they came within a
mile or two of London, when now and then some passenger went by who knew him by
sight, and pointed him out to some one else, and perhaps stood looking after
him, or cried in jest or earnest as it might be, 'Hurrah Geordie! No Popery!' At
which he would gravely pull off his hat, and bow. When they reached the town and
rode along the streets, these notices became more frequent; some laughed, some
hissed, some turned their heads and smiled, some wondered who he was, some ran
along the pavement by his side and cheered. When this happened in a crush of
carts and chairs and coaches, he would make a dead stop, and pulling off his
hat, cry, 'Gentlemen, No Popery!' to which the gentlemen would respond with
lusty voices, and with three times three; and then, on he would go again with a
score or so of the raggedest, following at his horse's heels, and shouting till
their throats were parched.
The old ladies too--there were a great many old ladies in the streets, and
these all knew him. Some of them--not those of the highest rank, but such as
sold fruit from baskets and carried burdens--clapped their shrivelled hands, and
raised a weazen, piping, shrill 'Hurrah, my lord.' Others waved their hands or
handkerchiefs, or shook their fans or parasols, or threw up windows and called
in haste to those within, to come and see. All these marks of popular esteem, he
received with profound gravity and respect; bowing very low, and so frequently
that his hat was more off his head than on; and looking up at the houses as he
passed along, with the air of one who was making a public entry, and yet was not
puffed up or proud.
So they rode (to the deep and unspeakable disgust of John Grueby) the whole
length of Whitechapel, Leadenhall Street, and Cheapside, and into St Paul's
Churchyard. Arriving close to the cathedral, he halted; spoke to Gashford; and
looking upward at its lofty dome, shook his head, as though he said, 'The Church
in Danger!' Then to be sure, the bystanders stretched their throats indeed; and
he went on again with mighty acclamations from the mob, and lower bows than
ever.
So along the Strand, up Swallow Street, into the Oxford Road, and thence to
his house in Welbeck Street, near Cavendish Square, whither he was attended by a
few dozen idlers; of whom he took leave on the steps with this brief parting,
'Gentlemen, No Popery. Good day. God bless you.' This being rather a shorter
address than they expected, was received with some displeasure, and cries of 'A
speech! a speech!' which might have been complied with, but that John Grueby,
making a mad charge upon them with all three horses, on his way to the stables,
caused them to disperse into the adjoining fields, where they presently fell to
pitch and toss, chuck-farthing, odd or even, dog-fighting, and other Protestant
recreations.
In the afternoon Lord George came forth again, dressed in a black velvet
coat, and trousers and waistcoat of the Gordon plaid, all of the same Quaker
cut; and in this costume, which made him look a dozen times more strange and
singular than before, went down on foot to Westminster. Gashford, meanwhile,
bestirred himself in business matters; with which he was still engaged when,
shortly after dusk, John Grueby entered and announced a visitor.
'Let him come in,' said Gashford.
'Here! come in!' growled John to somebody without; 'You're a Protestant, an't
you?'
'I should think so,' replied a deep, gruff voice.
'You've the looks of it,' said John Grueby. 'I'd have known you for one,
anywhere.' With which remark he gave the visitor admission, retired, and shut
the door.
The man who now confronted Gashford, was a squat, thickset personage, with a
low, retreating forehead, a coarse shock head of hair, and eyes so small and
near together, that his broken nose alone seemed to prevent their meeting and
fusing into one of the usual size. A dingy handkerchief twisted like a cord
about his neck, left its great veins exposed to view, and they were swollen and
starting, as though with gulping down strong passions, malice, and ill-will. His
dress was of threadbare velveteen--a faded, rusty, whitened black, like the
ashes of a pipe or a coal fire after a day's extinction; discoloured with the
soils of many a stale debauch, and reeking yet with pot-house odours. In lieu of
buckles at his knees, he wore unequal loops of packthread; and in his grimy
hands he held a knotted stick, the knob of which was carved into a rough
likeness of his own vile face. Such was the visitor who doffed his
three-cornered hat in Gashford's presence, and waited, leering, for his notice.
'Ah! Dennis!' cried the secretary. 'Sit down.'
'I see my lord down yonder--' cried the man, with a jerk of his thumb towards
the quarter that he spoke of, 'and he says to me, says my lord, "If you've
nothing to do, Dennis, go up to my house and talk with Muster Gashford." Of
course I'd nothing to do, you know. These an't my working hours. Ha ha! I was
a-taking the air when I see my lord, that's what I was doing. I takes the air by
night, as the howls does, Muster Gashford.'
And sometimes in the day-time, eh?' said the secretary--'when you go out in
state, you know.'
'Ha ha!' roared the fellow, smiting his leg; 'for a gentleman as 'ull say a
pleasant thing in a pleasant way, give me Muster Gashford agin' all London and
Westminster! My lord an't a bad 'un at that, but he's a fool to you. Ah to be
sure,--when I go out in state.'
'And have your carriage,' said the secretary; 'and your chaplain, eh? and all
the rest of it?'
'You'll be the death of me,' cried Dennis, with another roar, 'you will. But
what's in the wind now, Muster Gashford,' he asked hoarsely, 'Eh? Are we to be
under orders to pull down one of them Popish chapels--or what?'
'Hush!' said the secretary, suffering the faintest smile to play upon his
face. 'Hush! God bless me, Dennis! We associate, you know, for strictly
peaceable and lawful purposes.'
'I know, bless you,' returned the man, thrusting his tongue into his cheek;
'I entered a' purpose, didn't I!'
'No doubt,' said Gashford, smiling as before. And when he said so, Dennis
roared again, and smote his leg still harder, and falling into fits of laughter,
wiped his eyes with the corner of his neckerchief, and cried, 'Muster Gashford
agin' all England hollow!'
'Lord George and I were talking of you last night,' said Gashford, after a
pause. 'He says you are a very earnest fellow.'
'So I am,' returned the hangman.
'And that you truly hate the Papists.'
'So I do,' and he confirmed it with a good round oath. 'Lookye here, Muster
Gashford,' said the fellow, laying his hat and stick upon the floor, and slowly
beating the palm of one hand with the fingers of the other; 'Ob-serve. I'm a
constitutional officer that works for my living, and does my work creditable. Do
I, or do I not?'
'Unquestionably.'
'Very good. Stop a minute. My work, is sound, Protestant, constitutional,
English work. Is it, or is it not?'
'No man alive can doubt it.'
'Nor dead neither. Parliament says this here--says Parliament, "If any man,
woman, or child, does anything which goes again a certain number of our
acts"--how many hanging laws may there be at this present time, Muster Gashford?
Fifty?'
'I don't exactly know how many,' replied Gashford, leaning back in his chair
and yawning; 'a great number though.'
'Well, say fifty. Parliament says, "If any man, woman, or child, does
anything again any one of them fifty acts, that man, woman, or child, shall be
worked off by Dennis." George the Third steps in when they number very strong at
the end of a sessions, and says, "These are too many for Dennis. I'll have half
for myself and Dennis shall have half for himself;" and sometimes he throws me
in one over that I don't expect, as he did three year ago, when I got Mary
Jones, a young woman of nineteen who come up to Tyburn with a infant at her
breast, and was worked off for taking a piece of cloth off the counter of a shop
in Ludgate Hill, and putting it down again when the shopman see her; and who had
never done any harm before, and only tried to do that, in consequence of her
husband having been pressed three weeks previous, and she being left to beg,
with two young children--as was proved upon the trial. Ha ha!--Well! That being
the law and the practice of England, is the glory of England, an't it, Muster
Gashford?'
'Certainly,' said the secretary.
'And in times to come,' pursued the hangman, 'if our grandsons should think
of their grandfathers' times, and find these things altered, they'll say, "Those
were days indeed, and we've been going down hill ever since." Won't they, Muster
Gashford?'
'I have no doubt they will,' said the secretary.
'Well then, look here,' said the hangman. 'If these Papists gets into power,
and begins to boil and roast instead of hang, what becomes of my work! If they
touch my work that's a part of so many laws, what becomes of the laws in
general, what becomes of the religion, what becomes of the country!--Did you
ever go to church, Muster Gashford?'
'Ever!' repeated the secretary with some indignation; 'of course.'
'Well,' said the ruffian, 'I've been once--twice, counting the time I was
christened--and when I heard the Parliament prayed for, and thought how many new
hanging laws they made every sessions, I considered that I was prayed for. Now
mind, Muster Gashford,' said the fellow, taking up his stick and shaking it with
a ferocious air, 'I mustn't have my Protestant work touched, nor this here
Protestant state of things altered in no degree, if I can help it; I mustn't
have no Papists interfering with me, unless they come to be worked off in course
of law; I mustn't have no biling, no roasting, no frying--nothing but hanging.
My lord may well call me an earnest fellow. In support of the great Protestant
principle of having plenty of that, I'll,' and here he beat his club upon the
ground, 'burn, fight, kill--do anything you bid me, so that it's bold and
devilish--though the end of it was, that I got hung myself.--There, Muster
Gashford!'
He appropriately followed up this frequent prostitution of a noble word to
the vilest purposes, by pouring out in a kind of ecstasy at least a score of
most tremendous oaths; then wiped his heated face upon his neckerchief, and
cried, 'No Popery! I'm a religious man, by G--!'
Gashford had leant back in his chair, regarding him with eyes so sunken, and
so shadowed by his heavy brows, that for aught the hangman saw of them, he might
have been stone blind. He remained smiling in silence for a short time longer,
and then said, slowly and distinctly:
'You are indeed an earnest fellow, Dennis--a most valuable fellow-- the
staunchest man I know of in our ranks. But you must calm yourself; you must be
peaceful, lawful, mild as any lamb. I am sure you will be though.'
'Ay, ay, we shall see, Muster Gashford, we shall see. You won't have to
complain of me,' returned the other, shaking his head.
'I am sure I shall not,' said the secretary in the same mild tone, and with
the same emphasis. 'We shall have, we think, about next month, or May, when this
Papist relief bill comes before the house, to convene our whole body for the
first time. My lord has thoughts of our walking in procession through the
streets--just as an innocent display of strength--and accompanying our petition
down to the door of the House of Commons.'
'The sooner the better,' said Dennis, with another oath.
'We shall have to draw up in divisions, our numbers being so large; and, I
believe I may venture to say,' resumed Gashford, affecting not to hear the
interruption, 'though I have no direct instructions to that effect--that Lord
George has thought of you as an excellent leader for one of these parties. I
have no doubt you would be an admirable one.'
'Try me,' said the fellow, with an ugly wink.
'You would be cool, I know,' pursued the secretary, still smiling, and still
managing his eyes so that he could watch him closely, and really not be seen in
turn, 'obedient to orders, and perfectly temperate. You would lead your party
into no danger, I am certain.'
'I'd lead them, Muster Gashford,'--the hangman was beginning in a reckless
way, when Gashford started forward, laid his finger on his lips, and feigned to
write, just as the door was opened by John Grueby.
'Oh!' said John, looking in; 'here's another Protestant.'
'Some other room, John,' cried Gashford in his blandest voice. 'I
am engaged just now.'
But John had brought this new visitor to the door, and he walked in unbidden,
as the words were uttered; giving to view the form and features, rough attire,
and reckless air, of Hugh.
|