Kenwood House

For a week spent in the heart of the world’s busiest city, Kenwood House by Hampstead Heath was a refreshing, Arcadian retreat. Set in beautiful grounds with the gigantic heath beyond, here was a place of calm repose. Yet in 1780, it was on the target list of a huge London mob during the Gordan Riots. Although its owner, Lord Mansfield, was a Scottish Protestant, and the Gordon Riots were anti-Catholic, Mansfield was Lord Chief Justice, and a well known face of the government which was seeking to relieve the discrimination suffered by papists. Ingeniously, free ale was given to the rioters at The Spaniards Inn as well as gallons of wine from Kenwood, which successfully delayed them until the light cavalry were summoned to defend the Lord Chief Justice’s home.

Mansfield did much to reform English law and even interpreted common law to obstruct the practice of slave-holding in the United Kingdom. It is ironic that the home of one our great jurists came within a hair’s breadth of destruction by a lawless mob. The liquor supplied at Hampstead Heath managed to save this beautiful home while the forces of the law were still donning their boots and polishing their helms.

Most contemporary British laws are fair and equitable, and their applications generally reasonable, even if the odd judge or constable needs his brain looking at. Mobs and crowds only destroy and injure; the rule of law allows the creation of beauty and art. When Adam and Eve broke God’s law, they were not just choosing a new lunch menu, but were inadvertently destroying beauty, health and life. Our deserts, prisons and cemeteries are the consequences of their forsaking God’s just rule. Although Christ has fulfilled the moral law’s obligation, and bore its painful sentence for our breaking it, the redeemed, regenerated Christian now delights to live a lawful, honourable life. He now lives in a harmonious state of alignment with God’s will, instead of the discordant and jarring life of rebellion and destruction he hitherto pursued.

Blessed are the undefiled in the way,
Who walk in the law of the Lord!
Blessed are those who keep His testimonies,
Who seek Him with the whole heart!
They also do no iniquity;
They walk in His ways.
You have commanded us
To keep Your precepts diligently.
Oh, that my ways were directed
To keep Your statutes!
Then I would not be ashamed,
When I look into all Your commandments.
I will praise You with uprightness of heart,
When I learn Your righteous judgments.
I will keep Your statutes;
Oh, do not forsake me utterly!

Ps 119:1-8, NKJV