On Friday, 2 June 1780 a young aristocrat glanced into his looking-glass and made the final adjustments to his hat, pinning a silk blue cockade to its brim. He then set off for St George’s Fields, where he found a crowd beginning to gather. Its members wore the same blue rosettes, and carried large blue flags with the words ‘No Popery’ emblazoned on them. They cheered when they saw their leader. He was Lord George Gordon, a radical politician and head of the London Protestant Association, and in his hand was a petition for the repeal of the Catholic Relief Act of 1778, which had removed some of the restrictions on Catholics, and which many saw as dangerous. The crowd, by now between 40,000 and 60,000 strong, marched on the Houses of Parliament. As they went, their numbers swelled. They attempted to force their way into the House of Commons, but without success.

There followed an orgy of plunder and arson in London. Ignatius Sancho, one of London’s most famous Africans, had his own shop, selling sugar, tobacco and tea, at 19 Charles Street, Westminster, just a few hundred yards from the Houses of Parliament. He was shutting up at five o’clock on the evening of 6 June when the ‘lunatic’ Gordon and the mob rushed past his shop with a clatter of swords and shrieks of ‘No popery!’ Sancho commented on ‘the worse than Negro barbarity of the populace’.1

The rioters sacked and burned religious buildings. They stormed Newgate Prison and released its inmates. Then they turned to private houses and individuals. High on their list was Lord Mansfield. And they wanted him dead. They took a rope to hang him with.

Mansfield was known for his religious toleration, once stating, ‘My desire to disturb no man for conscience’s sake is pretty well known.’2 He was thought to have been influenced by his surrogate father, the poet Alexander Pope. Pope’s parents were converts to Roman Catholicism, and Pope saw himself as a Catholic humanist. There was a common perception that Mansfield favoured Dissenters and Roman Catholics, and some accused him of being not only a Jacobite but a Papist. At the time of the Catholic Relief Act there had been numerous caricatures associating him with Papist sympathisers. The rioters had made him one of their chief targets, and they intended to show no mercy.

In the early hours of Tuesday, 6 June, a mob marched to Mansfield’s townhouse in Bloomsbury. They smashed the windows, broke down the door and stormed through the house, flinging his elegant furniture into the street, where they made a bonfire and set it alight. While the crowd outside chanted ‘Huzza’, the intruders hurled out manuscripts, notebooks, papers and deeds from Mansfield’s precious law library. They ransacked the library shelves, flinging thousands of volumes into the flames. The fine pictures that hung on his walls were grabbed and torched. As a final act of insult, they hurled his wig and court robes into the fire, again shouting ‘No Popery!’3 They looted Mansfield’s fine wine cellar, distributing the bottles to the populace. Some of the looters made off with Lady Mansfield’s brand-new set of china. Others took silver and tried to sell it to the nearest pawnbrokers.

Lady Mansfield and her adopted daughter Elizabeth escaped through the back door. Newspapers failed to mention Dido’s presence in the house – as so often, she was airbrushed out of history. But there is no reason to doubt her presence, given her role as companion to young Elizabeth. The young women must have been utterly terrified, and have dreaded what might happen to their adoptive father: Mansfield refused to be cowed, and resolved to stay put.

His loyal manservant Dowse knew better. He could see how angry the crowd had become. They were carrying blazing torches, stopping every carriage in the street, smashing their windows and insisting that those within declare their allegiance with an oath of ‘No Popery’. Dowse insisted that his Lordship leave without delay, and begged him to disguise himself in an old greatcoat. In his hurry, Mansfield forgot to change his wig, and was immediately recognised. ‘There goes that old rogue Mansfield,’ the mob cried, and ran to spread the word. Mansfield remained cool, waited for his opportunity and managed to escape ‘without being thrown into the flames’.

Furious that Mansfield had escaped, the rioters set off for Kenwood to torch his house, but the militia was waiting for them, and ‘received them so fiercely that they desisted’. The man who had sent the troops in was none other than Elizabeth Murray’s father, Lord Stormont.4 He had returned from his ambassadorial posting in Paris by this time, and was now a government minister. At the height of the riots he wrote to King George III with a report from the front line, explaining that his uncle’s townhouse had been ransacked and his own London home was threatened. Furthermore, ‘Knowing that Kenwood is threatened with the same Destruction I have wrote to Lord Amherst for a Detachment of Light Horse to be sent there to guard the Avenues.’5 He clearly knew not only that the house that would one day be his, but also his own daughter and her cousin, were in dire danger. Fortunately, though, there was some local loyalty to the Mansfields in Hampstead. The proprietors of the Spaniards Inn, close to Kenwood, kept the mob supplied with ale until the dragoons arrived to protect the house.

It was generally agreed that Lord Chief Justice Mansfield had been one of the prime targets of the rage of the mob, and that in destroying the papers and manuscripts of the great judge, ‘the whole work and labour of his life’,6 they had created an irreparable loss. If there ever was a written speech for Somerset’s case, it would have gone up in flames that night.

The army was called in to quell the riots, by the end of which around five hundred people were estimated to have died. Thirty of the rioters were executed, and Lord George Gordon was clapped into the Tower and tried for high treason. Thanks to a strong defence by his cousin Lord Erskine, he was acquitted on the grounds that he had had no treasonable intent. Remarkably, Lord Mansfield presided over the trial, and steered the jury to consider that the circumstances were favourable to Gordon, instructing them that if there was any doubt he should be set free. Mansfield waived his right to indemnity for his losses – which were reported to have exceeded £30,000. He explained that, ‘Besides what is irreparable, my pecuniary loss is great. I apprehended no danger and therefore took no precaution. But, how great soever that loss may be, I think it does not become me to claim or expect reparation from the state.’7

Once again, Mansfield had shown his ability to separate the personal from the political, the private from the public. In a debate on the King’s Speech at the opening of the next Parliament, he joked, ‘I have not consulted books; indeed I have not books to consult!’8

Despite his apparent unconcern, the loss of his library was a heavy blow. His only consolation was the safety of his beloved wife and adopted daughters.9

Ignatius Sancho, who knew how much his race owed to the Somerset ruling, wrote with relief that Mansfield’s ‘sweet box at Caen Wood escaped almost miraculously’ from the ravages of the mob.10