Gordon, Lord George

(d. 1793)

   Polemicist.

   Gordon was born of an aristocratic Scottish family. He was a determined opponent of Roman Catholicism and in 1779 he became President of the Protestant Association. In 1778 the British Parliament had passed a Relief Act which extended some civil liberties to Roman Catholics. Gordon was outraged. In 1780 he led a huge procession to Parliament with a petition demanding the Act’s repeal.

   The occasion became the excuse for a serious disturbance, later known as the Gordon Riots. Roman Catholic chapels were destroyed, Newgate Prison was burnt down and the Bank of England was attacked. Eventually King George III stepped in and personally ordered the army to dispel the riots. In the ensuing mêlée, nearly three hundred people died. The riots are vividly described by the novelist Charles Dickens in his Barnaby Rudge. Gordon himself was arrested, but was acquitted of high treason and he subsequently converted to Judaism. He died insane in prison.

   P. Colson, The Strange History of Lord George Gordon (1937);

   C. Hibbert, King Mob: The Story of Lord George Gordon and the Riots of 1780 (1958).