Note 26 — A SPEECH

Lord George Gordon (1751-1793), the third son of Cosmo George, Duke of Gordon, was charged with high treason for having in 1780 headed terrible riots in London directed against the removal of certain Roman Catholic disabilities. He was acquitted on the ground that he had no treasonable intentions. He afterwards embraced the Jewish faith, and was received into the covenant of Abraham in Birmingham, but without the sanction of the Jewish ecclesiastical authorities in London. A vivid description of the “No Popery” riots of 1780 will be found in Dickens’ “Barnaby Rudge,” which also contains a reference to Lord George’s change of religion.