Edmund Burke the Political Quixote: Romance, Chivalry, and the Political Imagination
Frans De Bruyn, University of Ottawa
Volume 16, no. 4, July 2004
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ABSTRACT
For Edmund Burke, the Gordon Riots of 1780 were one of those defining moments that fix a politician’s reputation and personality in the popular imagination. Instigated by Lord George Gordon, head of the anti-Catholic Protestant Association, the riots broke out on 2 June 1780 after a large gathering of Gordon’s supporters marched upon the Houses of Parliament to present a petition urging the repeal of the Catholic Relief Act of 1778, a measure dear to Burke’s heart. Burke’s behaviour on this occasion was courageous, if not foolhardy. Despite indications that his person and property were in danger, he refused to let the mob intimidate him. He reported afterwards in a letter to his long-time friend Richard Shackleton, “My Wife being safely lodged, I spent part of the next day [6 June] in the street amidst this wild assembly into whose hands I delivered myself informing them who I was.” Convinced that his cause was just, he argued and remonstrated with the rioters. In a telling instance, recorded by Lord Polwarth, an apparently innocent man was swept up in the high tide of his indignation.
Other ECF articles on the topic of “Burke” include:
The Vehicle of the Soul: Motion and Emotion in Vehicular It-Narratives
by SARA LANDRETH (ECF 26.1, Fall 2013)
“Black, Patched and Pennyless”: Race and Crime in Burney’s The Wanderer
by TARA CZECHOWSKI (ECF 25.4, Summer 2013)
Promoting Liberty through Universal Benevolence in Elizabeth Hamilton’s Translation of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah
by JULIE STRAIGHT (ECF 25.3, Spring 2013)
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