The Whigs, as having favoured the relaxation of the laws against popery, were especially obnoxious to the mob.

The Government sent a guard of soldiers to protect Burke's house in Charles Street, St.James's; but after he had removed the more important of his papers, he insisted on the guard being despatched for the protection of more important places, and he took shelter under the roof of General Burgoyne.

His excellent wife, according to a letter of his brother, had "the firmness and sweetness of an angel; but why do I say of an angel ?--of a woman." Burke himself courageously walked to and fro amid the raging crowds with firm composure, though the experiment was full of peril.

He describes the mob as being made up, as London mobs generally are, rather of the unruly and dissolute than of fanatical malignants, and he vehemently opposed any concessions by Parliament to the spirit of intolerance which had first kindled the blaze.

All the letters of the time show that the outrages and alarms of those days and nights, in which the capital seemed to be at the mercy of a furious rabble, made a deeper impression on the minds of contemporaries than they ought to have done.