criminals by the perusal of the proceedings of those persons, whose
discontent had already brought them within the lash of the law; as well
as by the repetition of the name of Thistlewood, whose acquaintance and
connection with Dr. Watson and the other Radical leaders of the day had
rendered him a person whom the officers of justice deemed it wise to
keep under their _surveillance_. The plot to which he was a party in the
year 1820, and his engagement in which cost him his life, had for its
object neither more nor less than the assassination of the whole of his
majesty's ministers, and the consequent overthrow of the government.
It was not until the 24th February 1820, that the public were made aware
of the existence of the infernal machinations of this band of
desperadoes, and then only did they learn it through the medium of the
public press, which at once announced its existence and its frustration.
Ere the morning had passed, however, a proclamation was plentifully
distributed throughout the leading thoroughfares of the metropolis,
offering a reward of 1000_l._ for the apprehension of the notorious
Arthur Thistlewood, on a charge, of high treason and murder; and
denouncing the heaviest penalties against all who should harbour or
conceal him from justice.
It would appear that it had been long known to the members of the
government, that a plan was in meditation by which they would all be
murdered, and that Thistlewood was one of the originators of and prime
movers in the horrid design; but in accordance with the system which
then existed, of waiting until the crime should be all but matured, in
order to secure a conviction of the offenders, they determined to make
no effort to crush the scheme until a period should have arrived, when
their own safety rendered it necessary. The conspirators meanwhile
having weighed various plans and projects for the accomplishment of
their object, eventually determined to select the evening of Wednesday
the 23rd February as that on which they would carry out their plot, and
it was deemed advisable that this night should be fixed upon, because it
became known to them by an announcement in the newspapers, that a
cabinet dinner would then be held at the house of Lord Harrowby in
Grosvenor-square. Contemptible as the means possessed by the
conspirators were to carry their design fully into execution, it is
certain, from the confession of one of them, that the first part of
their project was planned with so much circumstantial exactness, that
the assassination of all the ministers would have been secured. It would
appear that it was arranged, that one of the party should proceed to
Lord Harrowby's house with a parcel addressed to his lordship, and that
when the door opened, his companions should rush in, bind, or, in case
of resistance, kill the servants, and occupy all the avenues of the
house, while a select band proceeded to the chamber where the ministers
were at dinner, and massacred the whole of them indiscriminately. To
increase the confusion hand-grenades were prepared, which it was
intended should be thrown lighted into the several rooms; and one of the
party engaged to bring away the heads of lords Castlereagh and Sidmouth
in a bag which he had provided for that purpose.
Thus far the conspirators might probably have carried their plans into
effect; but of the scheme for a general revolution, which these men,
whose number never exceeded thirty, appear to have considered themselves
capable of accomplishing, we cannot seriously speak. Among other
arrangements the Mansion House, selected we suppose for its proximity to
the Bank, was fixed upon for the "palace of the provisional government."
The place chosen for the final organization of their proceedings, and
for collecting their force previous to immediate action, was a
half-dilapidated tenement in an obscure street called Cato-street, near
the Edgeware-road. The premises were composed of a stable, with a loft
above, and had been for some time unoccupied. The people in the
neighbourhood were ignorant that the stable was let, till the day fixed
upon for the perpetration of their atrocious purpose, when several
persons, some of whom carried sacks and other packages, were seen to go
in and out, and carefully to lock the door after them.
The information upon which ministers proceeded, in frustrating the
schemes of the conspirators, was derived from a man named Edwards, who
pretended to enter into their views, for the purpose of betraying them.
Thus accurately informed of the intentions of the gang, measures were
taken for their apprehension. A strong body of constables and
police-officers, supported by a detachment of the guards, was ordered to
proceed to Cato-street, under the direction of Mr. (afterwards Sir
Richard) Birnie, the magistrate. On arriving at the spot they found that
the conspirators had taken the precaution to place a sentinel below, and
that the only approach to the loft was by passing up a ladder, and
through a trap-door so narrow as not to admit more than one at a time.
Ruthven led the way, followed by Ellis, Smithers, and others of the
Bow-street patrole, and on the door being opened they discovered the
whole gang, in number between twenty and thirty, hastily arming
themselves. There was a carpenter's bench in the room, on which lay a
number of cutlasses, bayonets, pistols, sword-belts, and a considerable
quantity of ammunition. Ruthven, upon bursting into the loft, announced
himself as a peace-officer, and called upon them to lay down their arms.
Thistlewood stood near the door with a drawn sword, and Smithers
advanced upon him, when the former made a lunge, and the unfortunate
officer received the blade in his breast, and almost immediately
expired.
About this time the guards, who had been delayed in consequence of their
having entered the street at the wrong end, arrived under the command of
Captain (Lord Adolphus) Fitzclarence, and mounted the ladder; but as the
conspirators had extinguished the lights, fourteen or fifteen of them
succeeded in making their escape, and Thistlewood, the chief of the
gang, was among the number. A desperate conflict now took place, and at
length nine persons were made prisoners; namely Ings, Wilson, Bradburn,
Gilchrist, Cooper, Tidd, Monument, Shaw, and Davidson. The whole of them
were immediately conveyed to Bow-street, together with a large quantity
of arms, consisting of pistols, guns, swords and pikes, and a large sack
full of hand-grenades, besides other ammunition, which had been found in
the loft. The same means, by which the conspiracy had been discovered,
were now adopted in order to procure the discovery of the hiding-place
of Thistlewood, and it was found that instead of his returning to his
own lodgings in Stanhope-street, Clare Market, on the apprehension of
his fellows, he had gone to an obscure house, No. 8 White-street,
Moorfields. On the morning of the 24th February, at nine o'clock,
Lavender and others of the Bow-street patrol were despatched to secure
his apprehension; and after planting a guard round the house, so as to
prevent the possibility of his escaping, they entered a room on the
ground-floor, where they found the object of their inquiry in bed, with
his stockings and breeches on. In his pockets were found some
ball-cartridges and flints, a black girdle or belt, which he was seen to
wear at Cato-street, and a military sash.
He was first conveyed to Bow-street, and there shortly examined by Sir
R. Birnie, by whom he was subsequently conducted to Whitehall, where he
was introduced to the presence of the Privy Council. He was still
handcuffed, but he mounted the stairs leading to the council-chamber
with great alacrity. On his being informed of the nature of the charges
made against him, by the lord chancellor, he declined saying anything
and was remanded to prison. In the course of the week several other
persons were apprehended as being accessories to the plot; and on the
3rd March, Thistlewood, Monument, Brunt, Ings, Wilson, Harrison, Tidd,
and Davidson, were committed to the Tower as state prisoners, the rest
of the persons charged being again sent to Coldbath-fields prison, where
they had been previously confined.
The case of the parties to this most diabolical conspiracy immediately
received the attention of the law officers of the crown; and on the 15th
April 1820, a special commission having issued, the prisoners were
arraigned at the bar of the Old Bailey on the charge of high treason,
and also of murder, in having caused the death of the unfortunate
Smithers. There were eleven prisoners, Arthur Thistlewood, William
Davidson (a man of colour), James Ings, John Thomas Brunt, Richard Tidd,
James Wilson, John Harrison, Richard Bradburn, John Shaw Strange, James
Gilchrist, and Charles Cooper, and they all pleaded Not guilty to the
charges preferred against them.
Counsel having been assigned to the prisoners, and the necessary forms
having been gone through, Thistlewood received an intimation that his
case would be taken on Monday morning the 17th of the same month, and
the prisoners were remanded to that day.
At the appointed time, accordingly, Arthur Thistlewood was placed at the
bar. He looked pale, but evinced his usual firmness. The jury having
been sworn, and the indictment read, the attorney-general stated the
case at great length, and twenty-five witnesses were examined in support
of the prosecution, among whom were several accomplices, whose testimony
was satisfactorily corroborated. Some of those who appeared to give
evidence had been apprehended on the fatal night in Cato-street, but
were now admitted witnesses for the crown. After a trial which occupied
the court four days, Thistlewood was found Guilty of high treason. He
heard the verdict with his wonted composure, seeming to have anticipated
it; for when it was pronounced he appeared quite indifferent to what so
fatally concerned him.
The evidence against Tidd, Ings, Davidson, and Brunt, whose trials came
on next in succession, differed little from that upon which Thistlewood
was convicted, and they were also found Guilty. Their trials being
separate, occupied the court six days. On the evening of the tenth day
the six remaining prisoners, at the suggestion of their counsel, pleaded
Guilty, having been permitted to withdraw their former plea, by which
they eventually escaped capital punishment.
On Friday, April the 28th, the eleven prisoners were brought up to
receive sentence. When the usual question was put to Thistlewood by the
clerk of arraigns, why he should not receive sentence to die, he pulled
a paper from his pocket, and read as follows:--
"I am asked, my lord, what I have to say that judgment of death should
not be passed upon me according to law. This to me is mockery--for were
the reasons I could offer incontrovertible, and were they enforced even
by the eloquence of a Cicero, still would the vengeance of my Lords
Castlereagh and Sidmouth be satiated only in the purple stream which
circulates through a heart more enthusiastically vibrating to every
impulse of patriotism and honour, than that of any of those privileged
traitors to their country, who lord it over the lives and property of
the sovereign people with barefaced impunity. The reasons which I have,
however, I will now state--not that I entertain the slightest hope from
your sense of justice or from your pity.--The former is swallowed up in
your ambition, or rather by the servility you descend to, to obtain the
object of that ambition--the latter I despise; justice I demand; if I am
denied it, your pity is no equivalent. In the first place, I protest
against the proceedings upon my trial, which I conceive to be grossly
partial, and contrary to the very spirit of justice; but, alas! the
judges, who have heretofore been considered the counsel of the accused,
are now, without exception, in all cases between the crown and the
people, the most implacable enemies of the latter.--In every instance,
the judges charge the jury to find the subject guilty; nay, in one
instance, the jury received a reprimand, and that not in the genteelest
terms, for not strictly obeying the imperious mandate from the bench.
"The court decided upon my trial to commit murder rather than depart in
the slightest degree from its usual forms; nay, it is with me a
question if the form is usual, which precluded me from examining
witnesses to prove the infamy of Adams, of Hieden, and of Dwyer. Ere the
solicitor-general replied to the address of my counsel, I applied to the
court to hear my witnesses: the court inhumanly refused, and I am in
consequence to be consigned to the scaffold. Numerous have been the
instances in which this rule of court has been infringed; but to have
infringed it in my case would have been to incur the displeasure of the
crown, and to forfeit every aspiring hope of promotion. A few hours
hence I shall be no more, but the nightly breeze which shall whistle
over the silent grave that shall protect me from its keenness, will bear
to your restless pillow the memory of one, who lived but for his
country, and died when liberty and justice had been driven from its
confines, by a set of villains, whose thirst for blood is only to be
equalled by their activity in plunder. For life, as it respects myself,
I care not--but while yet I may, I would rescue my memory from the
calumny, which I doubt not will be industriously heaped upon it, when it
will be no longer in my power to protect it. I would explain the motives
which induced me to conspire against the ministers of his majesty, and I
would contrast them with those which those very ministers have acted
upon in leading me to my ruin. To do this, it will be necessary to take
a short review of my life for a few months prior to my arrest for the
offence for which I am to be executed, without a trial, or at least
without an impartial one, by a jury of my peers. 'Tis true the form, the
etiquette of a trial, has been gone through; but I challenge any of the
judges on the bench to tell me, to tell my country, that justice was not
denied me in the very place where justice only should be administered. I
challenge them to say that I was fairly tried; I challenge them to say
if I am not murdered, according to the etiquette of a court, falsely
called of justice? I had witnesses in court to prove that Dwyer was a
villain beyond all example of atrocity. I had witnesses in court to
prove that Adams was a notorious swindler, and that Hieden was no
better; these were the three witnesses--indeed almost the only ones
against me--but the form and rules of court must not be infringed upon
to save an unfortunate individual from the scaffold. I called those
witnesses at the close of Mr. Adolphus' address to the jury, and before
the solicitor-general commenced his reply, but the court decided that
they could not be heard. Some good men have thought, and I have thought
so too, that before the jury retired all evidence was in time for either
the prosecutor or the accused, and more particularly for the latter;
nay, even before the verdict was given, that evidence could not be
considered too late. Alas! such people drew their conclusion from
principles of justice only; they never canvassed the rules of court,
which have finally sealed my unhappy doom.
"Many people, who are acquainted with the barefaced manner in which I
was plundered by my Lord Sidmouth, will, perhaps, imagine that personal
motives instigated me to the deed, but I disclaim them. My every
principle was for the prosperity of my country; my every feeling, the
height of my ambition, was the securing the welfare of my starving
brother Englishmen. I keenly felt for their miseries; but when their
miseries were laughed at, and when because they dared to express those
miseries, they were cut down by hundreds, inhumanly massacred and
trampled upon, when infant babes were sabred in their mothers' arms,
nay, when the breast from whence they drew the tide of life was severed
from the body which supplied that life, my feelings became too intense,
too excessive for endurance, and I resolved on vengeance--I resolved
that the lives of the instigators should be the requiem to the souls of
the murdered innocents.
"In this mood I met with George Edwards, and if any doubt should remain
upon the minds of the public whether the deed I meditated was virtuous
or contrary, the tale I will now relate will convince them, that in
attempting to exercise a power which the law had ceased to have, I was
only wreaking national vengeance on a set of wretches unworthy of the
name or character of men.
"This Edwards, poor and penniless, lived near Pickett-street in the
Strand, some time ago, without a bed to lie upon, or a chair to sit in.
Straw was his resting place; his only covering a blanket. Owing to his
bad character, and his swindling conduct, he was driven from thence by
his landlord. It is not my intention to trace him through his
immorality: suffice it to say, that he was in every sense of the word a
villain of the deepest atrocity. His landlord refused to give him a
character. Some short time after this, he called upon his landlord
again; but mark the change in his appearance; dressed like a lord, in
all the folly of the reigning fashion. He now described himself as the
right heir to a German baron, who had been some time dead, that Lords
Castlereagh and Sidmouth had acknowledged his claims to the title and
property; had interfered in his behalf with the German government, and
supplied him with money to support his rank in society. From this period
I date his career as a government spy.
"He got himself an introduction to the Spenceans, by what means I am not
aware of; and thus he became acquainted with the reformers in general.
When I met with Edwards, after the massacre at Manchester, he described
himself as very poor; and after several interviews, he proposed a plan
for blowing up the House of Commons. This was not my view. I wished to
punish the guilty only, and therefore I declined it. He next proposed
that we should attack the ministers at the fête given by the Spanish
ambassador. This I resolutely opposed: because the innocent would perish
with the guilty: besides, there were ladies invited to the
entertainment, and I, who am shortly to ascend the scaffold, shuddered
with horror at the idea of that, a sample of which had previously been
given by the agents of government at Manchester, and which the ministers
of his majesty applauded. Edwards was ever ready at invention; and at
length he proposed attacking them at a cabinet dinner. I asked where
were the means to carry his project into effect? He replied, if I would
accede, we should not want for means. He was as good as his word: from
him, notwithstanding his apparent penury, the money was provided for
purchasing the stores which your lordships have seen produced in court
upon my trial. He who was never possessed of money to pay for a pint of
beer, had always plenty to purchase arms or ammunition. Amongst the
conspirators, he was ever the most active; ever inducing people to join
him, up to the last hour ere the undertaking was discovered.
"I had witnesses in court, who could prove they went to Cato-street by
appointment with Edwards, with no other knowledge or motive than that of
passing an evening amongst his friends. I could also have proved, that
subsequent to the fatal transaction, when we met in Holborn, he
endeavoured to induce two or three of my companions to set fire to
houses and buildings in various parts of the metropolis. I could prove
that, subsequent to that again, he endeavoured to induce men to throw
hand-grenades into the carriages of the ministers, as they passed
through the streets; and yet this man, the contriver, the instigator,
the entrapper, is secured from justice, and from exposure, by those very
men, who seek vengeance against the victims of his and their villany. To
the attorney and solicitor generals I cannot impute the clearest
motives: their object seems to me to have been rather to secure a
verdict against me, than to obtain a full and fair exposition of the
whole affair, since its commencement. If their object was justice alone,
why not bring Edwards as a witness, if not as an accomplice? but no,
they knew that by keeping him in the back-ground, my proofs, ay my
incontrovertible proofs, of his being a hired spy, the suggester and
promoter, must, according to the rules of court, also be excluded.
Edwards and his accomplices arranged matters in such a manner, as that
his services might be dispensed with on the trial, and thus were the
jury cut off from every chance of ascertaining the real truth. Adams,
Hieden, and Dwyer, were the agents of Edwards, and truly he made a most
admirable choice, for their invention seems to be inexhaustible.
"With respect to the immorality of our project, I will just observe,
that the assassination of a tyrant has always been deemed a meritorious
action. Brutus and Cassius were lauded to the very skies for slaying
Cæsar; indeed, when any man, or any set of men, place themselves above
the laws of their country, there is no other means of bringing them to
justice, than through the arm of a private individual. If the laws are
not strong enough to prevent them from murdering the community, it
becomes the duty of every member of that community to rid the country of
its oppressors. High treason was committed against the people at
Manchester, but justice was closed against the mutilated, the maimed,
and the friends of those, who were upon that occasion indiscriminately
massacred. The Prince, by the advice of his ministers, thanked the
murderers, still reeking in the gore of their hapless victims. If one
spark of honour, if one spark of independence still glimmered in the
breasts of Englishmen, they would have risen to a man. Insurrection then
became a public duty; and the blood of the victims should have been the
watchword to vengeance on their murderers. The banner of independence
should have floated in the gale, that brought their wrongs and their
sufferings to the metropolis. Such, however, was not the case; Albion is
still in the chains of slavery. I quit it without regret,--I shall soon
be consigned to the grave,--my body will be immured beneath the soil
whereon I first drew breath,--my only sorrow is, that that soil should
be a theatre for slaves, for cowards, for despots. My motives, I doubt
not, will hereafter be justly appreciated. I will now conclude,
therefore, by stating that I shall consider myself as murdered, if I am
to be executed on the verdict obtained against me, by the refusal of the
court to hear my evidence.
"I could have proved Dwyer to be a villain of the blackest dye, for
since my trial, an accomplice of his, named Arnold, has been capitally
convicted at this very bar, for obtaining money under circumstances of
an infamous nature. I seek not pity; I demand but justice. I have not
had a fair trial, and upon that ground I protest that judgment ought not
to be passed against me."
The Lord Chief Justice, during the reading of this address, more than
once interposed, to prevent the prisoner from either seeking to justify
assassination, or slandering the characters of witnesses who had
appeared to give evidence in that court. The prisoner, however,
proceeded to read till he had finished what had been written on the
paper in his hand. His manner was rapid and confused; and the mode in
which he pronounced several words, gave abundant evidence that this
paper was not his own composition.
Mr. Shelton then put the same question to Davidson, who spoke with great
vehemence, and much gesticulation, nearly as follows:--