FORE:But in the days of Victorio and his predecessors and successors, Aravaypa Ca?on was a fastness. Men went in to hunt for gold, and sometimes they came out alive, and sometimes they did not. Occasionally Apaches met their end there as well.The next day all seemed quiet; but at evening, the men having got their Saturday's wages and their usual beer, there were some disturbances in Moorfields, and the mob abused some of the Catholics there. The next day, Sunday, the 4th, fresh crowds assembled in the same quarter, and attacked the houses and chapels of the Catholics, and this continued for the next three days. Troops were sent to quell them; but, having orders not to fire, the mob cared nothing for them. Some of the rioters took their way to Wapping and East Smithfield to destroy the Catholic chapels in that neighbourhood; and others burst into and plundered the shops and houses of Messrs. Rainsforth and Maberly, tradesmen, who had been bold enough to give evidence against the rioters taken on Friday. Another detachment took their way to Leicester Fields to ransack the house of Sir George Savile, the author of the Bill for the relaxation of the penal code against the Catholics. This they stripped and set fire to, and some of the pictures and furniture, as well as some of the effects taken from the Catholic chapels and houses in Moor fields, were paraded before the house of Lord George Gordon, in Welbeck Street, in triumph. The mob had now acquired a more desperate character. The fanatic members of the Protestant Association had retired in consternation from the work of destruction, seeing fresh elements introduced into itelements not of simple religious frenzy, but of plunder and revolutionary fury. They had begun the disturbance, and the thieves, pickpockets, burglars, and all the vilest and most demoniacal tribes of the metropolis had most heartily taken it up.
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FORE:We have already noted the excitement in Scotland at the Act which was passed in 1778 for the repeal of some of the severest disabilities of the Catholics; and this had been greatly increased by the proposal to extend its operation by a second Act to Scotland. The fanatics of Scotland were promptly on the alert, and there were dangerous riots in Edinburgh and Glasgow. But the same unchristian spirit had now spread to England, and Protestant Associations, as they were called, linked together by corresponding committees, were established in various towns, and had elected as their president and Parliamentary head Lord George Gordon, a brother of the Duke of Gordon. During the spring of 1780 he presented several petitions from the people of Kent, and he then conceived his grand idea of a petition long enough to reach from the Speaker's chair to the centre window at Whitehall, out of which Charles walked to the scaffold. At a meeting of the Protestant Association, held towards the end of May in Coachmakers' Hall, in London, he announced that he would present this petition on the 2nd of June. Resolutions were passed that the Association and all their friends must go in procession on that day to present the petition. They were to assemble in St. George's Fields; every one must have a blue cockade in his hat, to distinguish him from the enemies of the cause; and Lord George, to stimulate them, told them that unless the gathering amounted to twenty thousand he would not present the petition. On the 26th of May he stated in the House of Commons that he should appear there with the petition at the head of all those who had signed it. Accordingly, on 2nd of June vast crowds assembled on the appointed spot, amounting to sixty thousand, or, as many asserted, one hundred thousand men. This formidable throng was arranged in four battalions, one consisting entirely of Scotsmen, who received Lord George with enthusiastic acclamations, and, after a vapouring speech from him, marched by different ways to Westminster.
