(Fanny Burney to Dr. Burney.)
Salisbury, June 11, 1780

Here we are, dearest sir, and here we mean to pass this night.

We did not leave Bath till eight o’clock yesterday evening, at which time it was filled with dragoons, militia, and armed constables, not armed with muskets, but bludgeons:  these latter were all chairmen, who were sworn by the mayor in the morning for petty constables.  A popish private chapel, and the houses of all the catholics, were guarded between seven and eight, and the inhabitants ordered to keep house.

We set out in the coach-and-four, with two men on horseback, and got to Warminster, a small town in Somersetshire, a little before twelve.

This morning two more servants came after us from Bath, and brought us word that the precautions taken by the magistrates last night had good success, for no attempt of any sort had been renewed towards a riot.  But the happiest tidings to me were contained in a letter which they brought, which had arrived after our departure, by the diligence, from Mr. Perkins,(132) with an account that all was quiet in London, and that Lord G. Gordon was sent to the Tower.  I am now again tolerably easy, but I shall not be really comfortable, or free from some fears, till I hear from St. Martin’s-street.

The Borough house has been quite preserved.  I know not how long we may be on the road, but nowhere long",enough for receiving a letter till we come to Brighthelmstone.

We stopped in our way at Wilton, and spent half the day at that beautiful place.

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just before we arrived there, Lord Arundel had sent to the officers in the place, to entreat a party of guards immediately, for the safety of his house, as he had intelligence that a mob was on the road from London to attack it:—­he is a catholic.  His request was immediately complied with.

We intended to have gone to a private town, but find all quiet here, and therefore prefer it as much more commodious.  There is no Romish chapel in the town; mass has always been performed for the catholics of the place at a Mrs. Arundel’s in the Close—­a relation of his lordship’s, whose house is fifteen miles off.  I have inquired about the Harris’s;(133) I find they are here and all well.

TheGordon riots.

( Charlotte Burney(134) to Fanny Burney.)

I am very sorry, my dear Fanny, to hear how much you have suffered from your apprehension about us.  Susan will tell you why none of us wrote before Friday; and she says, she has told you what dreadful havoc and devastation- the mob have made here in all parts of the town.  However, We are pretty quiet and tranquil again now.  Papa goes on with his business pretty much as usual, and so far from the military keeping people within doors (as you say in your letter to my father, you suppose to be the case), the streets were never more crowded—­everybody is wandering about in order to see the ruins of the places that the mob have destroyed.