GORDON, GEORGE (1751-93). An English agitator whose name is connected with the `No Popery' riots in London in 1780. He was the third son of Cosmo George, third Duke of Gordon. He was born in 1751, and at an early age entered the navy, and rose to the rank of lieutenant, but quitted the service dur ing the American War, because Lord Sand wich refused him a ship. Elected in 1774 member of Parliament for Ludgershall. a pocket borough. he soon made himself conspicuous by his opposition to ministers and by the freedom with which he attacked all parties; hut, though eccen tric, he displayed considerable talent in debate and no little wit. When, in 1778, a bill passed the Parliament for the relief of Roman Catholics from certain penalties and disabilities, the Prot estant Association of London, among other so cieties, was formed for the purpose of procuring its repeal, and in November, 1779, Gordon was elected president. In June, 1780, he headed a mob of about 100,000 persons in a proces sion to the House of Commons to present a petition against the measure. Riots ensued in the city, lasting for several days, in the course of which many Catholic chapels and private dwelling-houses, Newgate and other prisons, and the mansion of the Chief Justice, Lord Mansfield, were destroyed. A vivid description of the riots
will be found in Dickens's Barnaby Rudge. Gor don was tried for high treason, but acquitted. Thereafter he seemed insane. The fanatic Prot estant became a zealous convert to Judaism. In 1787 he was convicted on two official informations —for a pamphlet reflecting on the laws and crim inal justice of the country, and for publishing a libel on Marie Antoinette, then Queen of France. While in prison at he died of a fever on November 1, 1793. in addition to the his tories of England, consult: O'Beirne, Considera tions on the Late Disturbances, by a Consistent Whig (London, 1780) ; Vincent, A Plain and Suc cinct Narrative of the Riots in the Cities of Lon don and Westminster and Borough of Southwark, (3d ed., London, 1780) ; Watson, Life of Lord George Gordon (London, 1795) ; Cobbett, State Trials, xxi.; Annual Register for 1780, 1784, 1787.