Word: lording
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...without condescension's obverse, the kind of Negro-worship shown by U.S. Beatnik Jack Kerouac. The book's slight plot sags a little, but the gaiety and moroseness of wild, roiled lives are well told, and the reader gets a Spadeful of irony as the dark minstrel Lord Alexander sings...
...They were, and are, all mad." said Horace Walpole of the noble Gordon family. Perhaps the maddest of the lot was Lord George Gordon,* hero of this excellent study of a neglected piece of British history. He attained notoriety in childhood, dressed up as Cupid at a soiree, by shooting visiting King Stanislaus of Poland in the face with a silver arrow. Unfortunately, destiny cast George Gordon for the leading part in a far more horrendous 18th century shooting match...
After a stretch in the navy and in Parliament (he cozened the Scottish voters by dancing Highland reels and, on one occasion, importing 15 beautiful maidens of the Clan Macleod for a party), truculent Lord George Gordon became president of the Protestant Association. Gordon was a furious enemy of the Catholic Relief Act, passed in 1778 to ease the lot of English Catholics. One June day in 1780 the association met in St. George's Fields, 50,000 strong. After a speech by Gordon, they marched eight abreast to Parliament to demand repeal of the Relief...
...Parliament the demonstrators were joined by "ruffians and street boys, pickpockets and prostitutes." As the carriages carrying peers and M.P.s began to arrive, this mixed mob went berserk. The great Edmund Burke received no worse than shrieks of "obscene invective," but the Duke of Northumberland was beaten up, the Lord Chief Justice stripped of his wig. The Bishops of Lincoln and Lichfield were "plastered with mud and excrement"; the Archbishop of York was shoved about until he agreed to cry out "No Popery...
...several days before the government of Prime Minister Lord North ordered soldiers to fire on the mob. The "Gordon Riots'' were a part of the process that destroyed the political system of George III and opened the way to 19th century democracy-although Author Hibbert himself admits that to this day nobody has completely explained the why and wherefore of "the most savage riots in English history...