Note 114 — BOSWELLIANA.
Reading edition
On the 2nd June, 1790, Lord George Gordon, M.P., a younger son of Cosmo George, third Duke of Gordon, led 100,000 persons in procession to the House of Commons, to present a petition against a measure for relieving Roman Catholics from certain disabilities and penalties. The procession was followed by a riot, which continued several days, and was attended with the destruction of Catholic chapels and private dwellings. The prisons of London, too, were thrown open by the rabble, and the mansion of the chief justice thrown down. Lord George Gordon was tried for high treason, but acquitted. Afterwards convicted of libelling Queen Marie Antoinette of France, and presenting a petition reflecting on the laws and administration of criminal justice, he was committed to Newgate, where he died on the 1st November, 1793. Lord George Gordon evidently laboured under mental aberration, and ought to have been placed in a lunatic asylum.