For almost 20 years, Bloomsbury Square has been the home to the History of Parliament. In the latest post for the Georgian Lords, Dr Robin Eagles considers the history of the square in one of its most turbulent periods.
Bloomsbury Square, and its immediate surroundings, have long been associated with prominent political figures. In 1706, several peers had residences in the square, notably the (2nd) duke of Bedford and the earls of Northampton and Chesterfield. Close neighbours residing in Great Russell Street, were the duke of Montagu (whose house later became the British Museum), the earl of Thanet and Lord Haversham, and John Hough, at that point bishop of Lichfield and Coventry. By 1727, things had changed somewhat. Montagu was still living in Great Russell Street, now joined by William Baker, bishop of Bangor, shortly after translated to Norwich. But Northampton’s heir had left Bloomsbury Square for Grosvenor Street, though another house had been taken by the earl of Nottingham. [Jones, ‘London Topography’]
Jump forward half a century, and Bloomsbury Square remained a place closely associated with the aristocracy. It was still home to the (5th) duke of Bedford and he had been joined by one of the foremost legal minds of the time: William Murray, earl of Mansfield, who had moved there from Lincoln’s Inn Fields a few years previously. According to Mansfield’s biographer, the square ‘conveyed a delightful atmosphere of leisure and repose, where often the only sounds came from the twittering and chirping of birds’. [Poser, 167] In June 1780, this ‘delightful’ haven was to be turned on its head and Mansfield’s residence was to become one of the principal targets of the Gordon rioters, who flocked to the square on the night of 6/7 June determined to torch the place.
Much has been written about the Gordon riots, which brought London (and other cities) to a virtual standstill for several days in June 1780. The immediate cause was the Protestant Association’s petition calling for the repeal of the 1778 Catholic Relief Act. Having gathered in St George’s Fields on Friday 2 June, members of the Association, led by their president, Lord George Gordon, processed to Parliament to present the petition. While things had begun calmly enough, in the course of the day more unruly elements flocked to Westminster and MPs and members of the Lords found themselves besieged within their chambers.
Thus, what began as a relatively focused cause was soon taken over by general lawlessness, and as Bob Shoemaker and Tim Hitchcock have argued persuasively, many of those involved in the later stages of the rioting had as their target the criminal justice system itself and were far less driven by concerns about religion. [Hitchcock and Shoemaker, 346, 349-50] Consequently, several prisons were attacked and the inmates released; lawyers in and around the inns of court went in fear of assault (or worse) and prominent judges, like Mansfield, became very obvious targets. The fact that Mansfield had also been vocal in his support of the Catholic Relief Act made him doubly susceptible.
Mansfield had been singled out for special treatment even on that first day. Arriving at Westminster, his carriage had been attacked and he had had to be rescued by the archbishop of York. After the day’s proceedings were adjourned, Mansfield was forced to make his way out of the Lords via a back door and travelled home by river as his coach had since been torn to pieces.
Over the next few days rioting gripped London. By Tuesday 6 June Mansfield’s nephew (and eventual heir) David, 7th Viscount Stormont, felt the need to advise the officer commanding the guards in London that he had received ‘reliable information’ that several houses were in need of additional protection, among them those of the marquess of Rockingham and Mansfield. [TNA, SP37/20/54, ff. 76-6] Despite Stormont’s efforts, Mansfield himself decided that too visible a military presence might only infuriate the crowd, so he requested the guards remain at a distance. It was a fatal mistake. When a band of rioters arrived outside Mansfield’s house on the night of 6/7 June, they found it undefended and set to work pulling down the railings before breaking into the house itself. There, they gave vent to all their destructive power, burning his library and gutting the building. Mansfield and Lady Mansfield only narrowly escaped, by using the back door onto Southampton Row.
Mansfield’s losses were significant. Consigned to the flames were his own legal notebooks, along with his library and pretty much the entire contents of the house. Efforts to save the building were stymied because when firefighters arrived on the scene, they refused to get involved until the soldiers (who had by then made themselves known) withdrew, in case they got caught in the middle of fighting between the crowd and the troops.
According to one paper, Mansfield’s losses amounted to £30,000, the library constituting a third of the total. [Morning Chronicle, 9 June 1780] Another paper attributed the destruction to Mansfield’s own ‘ill-judged lenity’, after he had ‘humanely requested [the troops] not fire upon the deluded wretches’. The same paper detailed some of the irreplaceable items that had been destroyed, including a portrait of Viscount Bolingbroke by the poet, Alexander Pope, ‘which, though not having the merit of a professed artist, was always esteemed a great likeness’. [Whitehall Evening Post, 10-13 June 1780]
The tragedy of the Gordon Riots and its impact on Bloomsbury Square did not end on 7 June. Precisely how many people were killed and injured in the rioting remains unclear, but among the rioters well over 300 were killed. Some troops were also among the dead, one of them a cavalrymen posted in Bloomsbury Square, who came off his horse and was finished off by the crowd. [Whitehall Evening Post, 8-10 June 1780] Retribution for some of those involved came quickly and within days there were numerous arrests. By the end of the month the first trials were underway.
As was so often the case, it was the very recognizable among the most marginalized who ended up being handed in. One such was John Gray, whose case has been written about extensively. A native of Taunton in Somerset, who had made his way to London, Gray was one of many on the fringes of society, eking out a living by feeding horses for hackney carriages. [London Courant, 24 July 1780] Although described as ‘a stout made man’, he appears to have had a clubfoot and to have needed a crutch to walk. He seems also to have had mental health issues. He stood out in the crowd taking part in pulling apart one of Mansfield’s outhouses and a few days later was arrested after being spotted trying to pick someone’s pocket.
Gray was convicted at the Old Bailey (https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/) and, in spite of a petition for mercy subscribed by several prominent Taunton residents, one of them the chaplain to Lord Bathurst, [TNA, [SP37/21/132, f. 250] and other recommendations that his case was one worthy of the king’s consideration, [TNA, SP37/21/91] the appeals for clemency were rejected. On Saturday 22 July, he was conveyed back to Bloomsbury Square with two others and hanged on a gallows positioned so that their last view was the remains of Mansfield’s burnt-out former residence.
RDEE
Further reading:
Clyve Jones, ‘The London Topography of the Parliamentary Elite: addresses for peers and bishops for 1706 and 1727-8’, London Topographical Record, xxix (2006)
Norman S. Poser, Lord Mansfield: Justice in the Age of Reason (2013)
Tim Hitchcock and Bob Shoemaker, London Lives: poverty, crime and the making of a modern city 1690-1800 (2015)
