er
for the Borough--he _shall_ be member, if anything done or suffered
by me will help make him so."

In the May following she writes: "Meanwhile, Heaven send this
Southwark election safe, for a disappointment would half kill my
husband, and there is no comfort in tiring every friend to death in
such a manner and losing the town at last."

This was an agitating month. In "Thraliana ":

"_20th May_, 1780.--I got back to Bath again and staid there till the
riots[1] drove us all away the first week in June: we made a dawdling
journey, cross country, to Brighthelmstone, where all was likely to
be at peace: the letters we found there, however, shewed us how near
we were to ruin here in the Borough: where nothing but the
astonishing presence of mind shewed by Perkins in amusing the mob
with meat and drink and huzzas, till Sir Philip Jennings Clerke could
get the troops and pack up the counting-house bills, bonds, &c. and
carry them, which he did, to Chelsea College for safety,--could have
saved us from actual undoing. The villains _had_ broke in, and our
brewhouse would have blazed in ten minutes, when a property of
L150,000 would have been utterly lost, and its once flourishing
possessors quite undone.

"Let me stop here to give God thanks for so very undeserved, so
apparent, an interposition of Providence in our favour.

"I left Mr. Thrale at Brighthelmstone and came to town again to see
what was left to be done: we have now got arms and mean to defend
ourselves by force if further violence is intended. Sir Philip comes
every day at some hour or another--good creature, how kind he is! and
how much I ought to love him! God knows I am not in this case wanting
to my duty. I have presented Perkins, with my Master's permission,
with two hundred guineas, and a silver urn for his lady, with his own
cypher on it and this motto--Mollis responsio, Iram avertit."

[Footnote 1: The Lord George Gordon Riots.]

In the spring of 1781, "I found," says Boswell, "on visiting Mr.
Thrale that he was now very ill, and had removed, I suppose by the
solicitation of Mrs. Thrale, to a house in Grosvenor Square." She has
written opposite: "Spiteful again! He went by direction of his
physicians where they could easiest attend to him."

The removal to Grosvenor Square is thus mentioned in "Thraliana":

"_Monday, January 29th_, 1781.--So now we are to spend this winter in
Grosvenor Square; my master has taken a ready-furnished lodging-house