Blood & Co, Setting Fire to the Tower. . .

This is one of a series of prints that appeared during the course of the highly contentious Westminster by-election of 1788. But unlike some of the others that prominently portrayed the Whig candidate, Lord John Townshend, in compromising situations based on actual election coverage, this print only barely alludes to Lord John, but instead attacks the primary members of the Whig leadership, portraying them as perpetrators of the boldest attack upon the British government since the Gunpower Plot of Guy Fawkes.

In 1671 Colonel Thomas Blood with a small group of fellow conspirators managed to fool the recently appointed Master of the Jewel House and get their hands on Crown Jewels. Blood hid the crown beneath his cloak, Blood's brother-in-law, Hunt, carrried the sceptre (sawed in half) in a bag, and another man, Parrot or Perrot, stuffed the orb in his trousers. At least one other man acted as sentry.

Blood & Co, Setting Fire to the Tower. . .

Blood & Co, Setting Fire to the Tower [1788]
© National Portrait Gallery, London

Five days earlier, Gillray had portrayed Fox as the thief, William Mason, in Mason, the Duke's Confectioner Disposing of the Trinkets. Here he turns Fox into Colonel Blood, and Fox's Whig allies—George Hanger (holding the torch and unmilled coins), Edmund Burke (in Jesuit garb carrying the scepter), and Richard Brinsley Sheridan (with the orb in his left hand)— into Blood's partners in crime.

Booty in hand, the Whig thieves are all emerging from what appears to be the outer wall of the Tower complex (today's group visitor entrance just east of the Traitor's Gate). They have torched the White Tower seen in the background. Sheridan wears a hat with the Whig blue and orange cockade as a Townshend supporter. And the signs above Fox's head indicate these effectively treasonous deeds are done "For the interest of J. Townshend" to help finance "The Westminster Election."

But the specific election candidate is almost incidental to the print. It is the beautifully constructed and vivid image of Fox and his associates as "Blood & Co attacking the some of the oldest and most durable symbols of the monarchy that is all Gillray needs to discredit the Whigs and any candidate they might propose.

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