I promised her I would inquire, and let her know.

“And pray, ma’am, is Madame Duval with her now?” And several other questions she asked me, with a childish simplicity that was very diverting.  She took the whole for a true story, and was quite eager to know what was become of all the people.  And when I said I would inquire, and tell her when we next met,

“Oh, but, ma’am,” she said, “had not you better write it down, because then there would be more of it, you know?”

Alarm at the No popery riots.

[The disgraceful “No Popery” riots, which filled London with terror, and the whole country with alarm, in June, 1780, were occasioned by the recent relaxation of the severe penal laws against the Catholics.  The rioters were headed by Lord George Gordon, a crazy enthusiast.  Dr. Johnson has given a lively account of the disturbance in his “Letters to Mrs. Thrale,” some excerpts from which will, perhaps, be not unacceptable to the reader.

“9th June, 1780. on Friday (June 2) the good protestants met in Saint George’s Fields, at the summons of Lord George Gordon; and marching to Westminster, insulted the lords and commons, who all bore it with great tameness.  At night the outrages began by the demolition of the mass-house by Lincoln’s Inn.

“An exact journal of a week’s defiance of government I cannot give you.  On Monday Mr. Strahan, who had been insulted, spoke to Lord Mansfield, who had, I think, been insulted too, of the licentiousness of the populace; and his lordship treated it as a very slight irregularity.  On Tuesday night they pulled down Fielding’s(130) house, and burnt his goods in the street.  They had

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gutted on Monday Sir George Savile’s house, but the building was saved.  On Tuesday evening, leaving Fielding’s ruins, they went to Newgate to demand their companions, who had been seized demolishing the chapel.  The keeper could not release them but by the mayor’s permission, which he went to ask; at his return he found all the prisoners released, and Newgate in a blaze.  They then went to Bloomsbury, and fastened upon Lord Mansfield’s house, which they pulled down; and as for his goods, they totally burnt them.  They have since gone to Caen-wood, but a guard was there before them.  They plundered some papists, I think, and burnt a mass-house in Moorfields the same night.

“On Wednesday I walked with Dr. Scot to look at Newgate and found it in ruins, with the fire yet glowing.  As I went by, the Protestants were plundering the sessions-house at the Old Bailey.  There were not, I believe, a hundred; but they did their work at leisure, in full security, without sentinels without trepidation, as men lawfully employed in full day.  Such is the cowardice of a commercial place.  On Wednesday they broke open the Fleet, and the King’s Bench, and the Marshalsea, and Woodstreet Compter, and Clerkenwell Bridewell, and released all the prisoners.  At night they set fire to the Fleet, and to the King’s Bench, and I know not how many other places; and one might see the glare of conflagration fill the sky from many parts.  The sight was dreadful.