all sorts of people." Lastly, there is the offence of libelling, "which is punished by the Common Law, as it tends immediately to quarrels and breaches of the peace, and very often to bloodshed and 'murder itself." To paraphrase Fielding, a man wins praise and honour and reputation, seeking no other rewards for noble actions; and then comes a miscreant to strip him of his good name and to expose him to public contempt. Long ago Demosthenes justly stigmatized the libeller as a "viper, which men ought to crush where-ever they find him, without staying 'till he bite them."

It is not easy, as Fielding found, to put into practice the excellent advice of the Greek orator. That sly viper Aretine, who still lay hiding in "Old England," again poured forth his venom without being harmed by any heel. In a parody on the "Charge," he accused the justice himself of all the misdemeanours enumerated in the pamphlet, and instructed the grand jury to present him to one of his brethren on the bench as "a nuisance to civil society, the bane of peace, and the scandal of human kind."* Had not, Aretine inquired, this same Fielding (now turned informer against the liberty of the press) once libelled whomsoever he pleased in his theatrical pieces and in a contemptible newspaper called "The Champion"? To say the truth, there was some incongruity between Fielding the man of letters and Fielding the justice. Moreover, the large programme which he laid out for the officers of the law exposed him to ridicule, for it was impossible of fulfilment. And yet, the endeavour to transform the town into an earthly paradise was a noble ideal. What Fielding mainly hoped to do was to check the current vices by driving them from the streets and public places of amusement, so that they might not contaminate the young. By infusing new August 5, as quoted in "The Gentleman's Magazine," XIX, 366-367 (Aug., 1749).

life into the grand juries and by warning the citizens against crime, he did all that one man could do in a depraved state of society. The vigour with which he administered the Bow Street court simply astonished the gentlemen of the press, who recorded day by day his many commitments.

His charge was delivered on a Thursday, just before he went into the country for the week-end. The place where Fielding sought deliverance from scenes of crime is not quite certain. There is a tradition, found in Lysons's "Environs of London, "* that he took, at this time or earlier, a house at Barnes across the Thames in Surrey, and on the way by boat to Twickenham, where he had passed some time after his second marriage. His "four worthy sisters," all unmarried, then lived at Ealing, Hammersmith. Wherever he went-whether to Barnes or Ealing or elsewhere,dreadful riots, while he was away, broke out in the Strand. On Saturday evening, the first of July, three sailors belonging to the Grafton man-of-war visited a house at the sign of the Crown, where, it was claimed, they were robbed of more than thirty guineas by women who frequented or lived at the place. Being driven out, the men returned with a large number of other sailors; and when thus reinforced they broke all the windows of the house, demolished all the furniture, ripped the clothing from the backs of the inmates, piled up the spoils of war in the street, and set the heap ablaze. An immense crowd gathered to encourage the rioters or to share in the plunder; the parish engines were summoned, though they never arrived, to stay the flames which threatened adjoining buildings whose beams were already hot; beadles and constables bustled about, only to be jeered at; and no magistrate could be found who cared to meddle with the angry mob. Towards midnight * 1792, II, 544. In 1792 the house was the property of "Mr. Parting

ton."

guards were brought from Somerset House and the TiltYard; and after desperate encounters the streets were cleared. Somehow, only a few of the rioters were arrested; of whom two were placed in a temporary night-prison under the house of a beadle named Nathanael Munns. The next night the mob again assembled, wrecked two other houses and burned the goods; wrenched the bars out of the windows of Beadle Munns's cellar and rescued his two prisoners with a yell.

It so happened, however, that just as this second riot was reaching its height, Saunders Welch of Holborn, who had been visiting a friend in the city, met the mob about midnight on his way homeward, and with the aid of a military force was able to drive the rioters from the streets before morning. Several of the ringleaders were apprehended and conducted under a strong guard to the New Prison. Still again, lawless crowds assembled on Monday morning and pressed into Bow Street to rescue anyone that might be brought there for examination. Such was the posture of affairs on Fielding's return from the country towards noon on Monday. The fearless magistrate immediately sent for a party of the guards to bring the ringleaders from the New Prison to his house, where they arrived amid uproar and shouts of "To the rescue!" In vain Constable Welch went among the mob and entreated them to disperse; in vain Fielding himself "from his window informed them of their danger and exhorted them to depart to their own habitations." Thereupon the justice dispatched a messenger to the Secretary of War for a reinforcement of soldiers to protect the court. That afternoon the rioters who had been arrested on the previous night were duly examined and nine of them were committed to Newgate, where they were conveyed in closed vehicles attended by the guards. All Monday night people dwelling along the Strand were in consternation, mobs were threatening to

gather at points as far east as the Tower, all the streets in the danger zone were patrolled by soldiers as well as by peace officers, and Fielding himself sat up with Saunders Welch and a military officer until daybreak, ready to issue orders on a moment's notice. This vigorous action, which any justice of the peace might have taken on either of the preceding days, put an end to the riot and restored peace

once more.

Among the prisoners whom Fielding committed to Newgate was a young man named Bosavern Penlez, who had been overtaken by the watch in Carey Street. At the time of his arrest he had in his possession a bundle of woman's apparel, which, it was alleged, belonged to the wife of Peter Wood a victualler, whose house was pillaged by the mob on Sunday night. Penlez tried to account for having laced caps and laced aprons on his person, but his story was rambling and inconsistent. The evidence was quite clear that he had taken part in wrecking Wood's house and had made off with all the goods he could carry. It was then very difficult to obtain a conviction under the Riot Act; indeed, since its passage in the first year of George the First, Fielding said that he could remember only two or three instances of its enforcement. Accordingly the public was surprised when, during the August session at the Old Bailey, a jury brought in a verdict against Penlez and a young associate named John Wilson, both of whom were identified by Wood, his wife, and a servant as among the men who tried to pull their house down. Long before the day of execution arrived, feeling ran high in favour of the condemned men who, it was claimed, were not the instigators of the riot, but only outsiders drawn into a crime by a laudable ambition to destroy a notorious brothel. The jury who had convicted them were induced to address the King in their behalf; and a similar petition to the Duke of Newcastle, the head of the Ministry,

was signed by nine hundred inhabitants of the parish of St. Clement Danes, within which the riot had occurred. Wilson was reprieved and eventually pardoned; but Penlez was hanged at Tyburn on the eighteenth of October. His body was buried in the church of St. Clement Danes at the expense of his admirers, one of whom proposed "a monumental inscription" to the memory of a young man who sacrificed his life to "an honest detestation of public stews."'*

The burial of Penlez by no means stayed the agitation over his fate. That inscription extolling his virtues was spread broadcast through the magazines and newspapers; and there followed, apparently by the same hand, a pamphlet called "The Case of the Unfortunate Bosavern Penlez," written by "a Gentleman not concerned" and having as its motto summum jus, summa injuria. Penlez, we are there told, was the son of "a reverend clergyman of the Church of England" and had just completed his term as apprentice to a peruke-maker, who could vouch for his "fair and honest" character. A trifle overheated with drink on the night of the riot as he was returning from a birthday party, he had fallen into the humour of a crowd bent upon the annihilation of a house whose existence was a scandal to all decent citizens. It was but a youthful freak; nothing more. Aside from this special pleading, the point was well made that Penlez had been illegally convicted at the Old Bailey because the Riot Act had not been read, as required by the law, at the time of the disturbance.

The case, thereupon getting into the Westminster election for members of Parliament, threatened to defeat Lord Trentham, the government candidate for re-election, because he had refused to sign the petition to the Duke of Newcastle for clemency to Wilson and Penlez. During the * "The St. James's Evening Post," Nov. 2-4, 1749.