As the 18th century limped to its end, leading British Catholics were paying court to King George III, assuring him and whoever else would listen that they were loyal subjects and could be trusted around gunpowder and sparklers. There’d been centuries of official hostility toward Catholics, but surely it was time to move on. And it seemed to be working. In 1778, Parliament passed the Papists Act, “Relieving his Majesty’s Subjects professing the Popish Religion from certain Penalties and Disabilities imposed on them by an Act, made in the eleventh and twelfth Years of the Reign of King William the Third, intituled, An Act for the further preventing the Growth of Popery .” 

It didn’t grant them freedom of religion and it didn’t bother to call their religion by its proper name, but it allowed Catholics to serve in the military if they swore their loyalty, allowed them to buy property, and reversed some bits of anti-Catholic legislation that dated back to 1698. It looked like everyone would come out ahead: the Catholics would have more freedom and the country would have more soldiers, which would be no bad thing, what with a growing empire and a war or three on its hands (France, Spain, the newly formed United States).  

What a deal. 

Irrelevant photo: St. John’s Wort, or rose of sharon

Not everyone was convinced, though. Catholics with political foresight saw trouble brewing. You know what it’s like: when a group of people have been discriminated against for long enough, a certain number of them become delicately tuned to the scent of brewing trouble. They also saw that the old law had pretty well fallen out of use and Catholics from Ireland and the Scottish highlands were already serving in the army. Wouldn’t it be smarter to leave well enough alone? The hatred of Catholics might have died down a bit but the embers were still burning. 

They had a point. Lord Gordon–a Member of Parliament–and the Protestant Association grabbed hold of the new law and used it to fan the aforesaid embers, and at this point I’ll sneak away from that metaphor before I burn down any forests. We’re in a drought here and it wasn’t an original image anyway. 

 Gordon et al claimed that the minute Catholics were in the army they’d plot rebellion. They’d foment treason. They’d join forces with European Catholics to attack Britain. They’d use the blood of Christian children to make their–

Nope, sorry, wrong conspiracy theory. I do struggle to keep them all straight. They’d jump into small boats and–

Nope, not that one either. Never mind. Bad things would happen. Overwhelmingly bad things, and to stop them a petition was circulated, calling for repeal of the new law, and for anyone who’s too young to remember the world before the internet, this was back when petitions were pieces of paper that had to be circulated by hand and signed with– Do you remember pens? They were signed with pens that had to be dipped in ink because they didn’t even carry their own supply.  

It was all difficult enough that a huge petition was a measure not only of public sentiment but of the political will behind it. This one accumulated some 45,000 signatures.

The riots

To deliver it, Gordon led some 50,000 followers to Parliament, and some of them broke into the building, intimidating enough MPs that they agreed to debate the issue at a later date. Which didn’t settle anyone down and a week of rioting followed, targeting Catholic chapels, Catholics’ property, the embassies of a couple of Catholic countries, and Catholics themselves, mostly working class Irish Londoners–people working class English Protestants saw as competition for jobs. 

The rioters also turned against authorities in general, burning down Newgate Prison (it had just been rebuilt) and releasing rioters held inside. They attacked the Bank of England, burned the tollbooth on Blackfriars Bridge, and harassed both onlookers and politicians. Shops, pubs, and other prisons were attacked. Bonfires burned across the city. Respectable observers–or some of them anyway–thought they were watching the beginning of a revolution.

When the Bank of England was attacked, the City authorities woke up, said some era-appropriate version of “Oh, my ears and whiskers how late it’s getting,” and sent armed troops and the City’s volunteer militia. By the time the riots ended, the troops had killed hundreds of people and arrested an additional 450. Afterwards, 26 were hanged.

So what was all that about?

I’m tempted to write that political change had run ahead of public opinion, but I’m not convinced anyone knows whether the riots reflected majority opinion. This was before polling, and we could have an interesting argument about how well polls reflect public opinion anyway.

What’s certain is that Gordon had tapped into a longstanding current of anti-Catholicicism and also that other channels of anger flowed into the riots. Exactly what those channels were, though, is hindsight. One article lists anger at poverty, at inequality, and at the justice and political systems. A good Wikipedia article quotes multiple conflicting interpretations of the riots, some of them overlapping:

• The grievances were nationalist, economic, or political, rather than religious and Britain’s poor economy was a factor. Wages were falling, prices were rising, and people were out of work sporadically. 
• The Catholic community wasn’t targeted so much as the rich. 
• Or possibly the opposite. 
• The article quotes someone as saying, “No matter how much one would like to interpret the Gordon Riots . . . as economically motivated, they remain fundamentally anti-Catholic in character.” 
• And finally, many participants wanted the assorted wars to end. Others were supporters of American independence, and some wanted the right to vote widened.

Maybe we can settle for saying that people had a mix of reasons for rioting and that many of them could’ve been contradictory. What seems fairly certain is that they were angry and Gordon cranked them up and presented them with a handy target, Catholics. And it always helps to have a respectable leader saying that rioting’s good idea. 

The aftermath

After it all died down, Geroge Gordon was arrested and charged with high treason and he sat in jail for eight months, then he was found not guilty. Compared to being hanged, that looks pretty good.

The riots convinced the rest of Europe that constitutional monarchy was an inherently unstable form of government. That was lousy timing for Britain, which needed allies in its fight against the newly formed United States and wanted to undercut the support the US was getting from Spain–which was, awkwardly, Catholic and even more awkwardly now pulled out of some secret negotiations the two countries had been engaged in.

The riots also drew attention to Britain’s lack of a professional police force, which the people who decided these things had considered foreign and absolutist but which now looked less foreign and less absolutist.

Catholic emancipation

In 1791, the Catholic Relief Act pushed Catholic emancipation further, allowing Catholics the freedom to worship, run their own schools, hold junior public offices, and live inside of London. After that, Catholic rights got tangled up in Irish politics, where colonialism met nationalism met religion, resulting in some bitter history, many deaths, and some damn good songs. For fear of losing control of Ireland completely, Parliament passed the 1829 Catholic Emancipation Act, allowing Catholics to vote, to become Members of Parliament, and to hold (most) senior government offices, although they still had to pay tithes to the Anglican Church.

Most of the last restrictions were lifted in 1926. One had been left in place to this day: a Catholic still can’t inherit the throne.