In 2013 Malcolm Chase, the late and much missed historian of Chartism and labour movements in Britain, published his 1820: Disorder and Stability in the United Kingdom. The book challenges the reader to rethink the traditional history of reform and the development of popular radicalism, which has tended to focus on Peterloo and on events in England, rather than attending to the wider United Kingdom. It has also tended emphasize the Queen Caroline affair, which, while important on many levels, has been allowed to eclipse a great deal else. As Chase points out, 1820 was the culmination of a period of deep economic recession, with poor harvests and a bitter winter, long-standing unemployment, and widespread poverty. The year began with the passing of the Six Acts – the major opposition to which came from without, rather than from within Parliament. Chase neatly distinguishes three types of popular response: spontaneous demonstrations; the constitutional movement for parliamentary reform; and revolutionary conspiracy (p. 46). The first were occasional and largely manageable. The second, under the leadership of Henry Hunt, who was still awaiting trial for his presence on the platform at Peterloo, was largely intent on distancing itself from more extreme, insurrectionary elements pressing for recourse to arms, and insisted that a victory for reform could be had on the back of opprobrium aroused by Peterloo. The third group were unconvinced, seeing Peterloo and the Six Acts as an intensification of the government’s struggle against the liberty of the people. Evidence for this view was not heard to find, with Chase identifying some ninety prosecutions for political libel in Britain in 1819-20, mostly brought against small booksellers and publishers, with more than half securing convictions, coupled with the prosecutions being brought against those on the platform at Peterloo, and the firm expression of intent contained in the Six Acts. Although extremism grew in London, and had links in Manchester and other industrial areas of the North, it also took root in the industrial areas of West Scotland around Glasgow and Paisley, where marchers demonstrating against Peterloo in September were challenged for their quasi-military character, with more clandestine activity accelerating at the end of 1819. That activity included the creation of armed associations, paralleled by a renewed participation in loyalist military corps. Walter Scott noted: ‘in Glasgow the Volunteers drill by day and the Radicals by night.’ (p. 49) Moreover, radical agitators, form William Cobbett through to Spencean activists, including Arthur Thistlewood, toured the country in the last years of the decade, canvassing opinion and in a number of cases promoting a break with the constitutional campaign and the taking of more immediate action. In Ireland, in a very different context of long-standing Catholic subordination to a Protestant Ascendancy reinforced by the Union with Britain in 1801, a dramatic rise in economic hardship in the west of the country produced rural rent strikes, cattle maiming and an array of agrarian disturbances associated with ‘Ribbonism’, named for the ribbons of red or green worn by those involved. These were just the latest of a number of secret, tightly-organized, oath-bound organizations that had stalked the rural politics of Ireland in the previous fifty years. And, as on other occasions, their actions tended to be conceived of in dramatically simplified sectarian terms by the authorities, and responded to entirely with repression. Their guerilla activities increased towards the end of February and into March, and there were fears of a more general rising being plotted, with suspicions of substantive connections with radical insurgents in England. British forces responded with mass arrests, speedy trials with swiftly executed sentences, ranging from death, transportation, whipping and imprisonment. With over thirty death sentences and at least fifty killed in clashes, military might largely restored order by the end of March. The Cato Street Conspiracy is dealt with separately here, but Chase makes a strong case for it being able to draw on the support of an extensive network in London, especially among shoemakers, and for there being knowledge of the conspiracy in Scotland, with a willingness to take action locally once prompted, which may have been circulated by the Leeds reformer Joseph Brayshaw, who had been persuaded by Peterloo that the Parliamentary reform route to change was no longer viable. In February, he was delegated by the Leeds Radical Committee to visit Carlisle and Glasgow to sound out the preparations for positive action. His account of this trip benefitted from hindsight and prudence, but there is some evidence to suggest a network existed which was waiting on the actions of Thistlewood in London before launching its own insurrectionary attacks against local forces and institutions. There were even concerns about influence by radical republicans in France hoping to procure the release of Napoleon from St Helena, and about links to those who assassinated the Duc de Berry on 13 February 1820. In these circumstances it is unsurprising that the General Election called on the death of George III should have been a highly contested and violent affair, not least because they enabled a range of meetings and activities that the Six Acts has blocked. Then in March Hunt was tried in York for ‘unlawful assembly for the purpose of exciting discontent and to bring the government into hatred and contempt.’ (114) By carefully ruling a range of questions out of court, the trial secured its verdict, but it seems also to have fueled further conspiratorial activity. On 31 March(Good Friday) a mobilization of some 2,000 men around Huddersfield threatened an attack on the town that never materialized, and there was a spate of radical activity in Oldham, Bolton, Wigan and Warrington in which arming was common. On Easter Monday, Scottish radicals and unionists organized a general strike, placarding an Address to the Inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland thorough the town. The intention was that the strike would become an insurrection when the English mail coach failed to arrive (indicating the success of a rising in England). Nonetheless, the coach arrived, leading to a impasse, with few working, but still fewer mobilizing for action. Skirmishes took place around Glasgow, between those seeking to enforce the strike and the military, but the wider uprising that had been planned collapsed, and the military and the local militia seized activists and led searches for arms throughout the communities of West Scotland. When a volunteer force was jostled by a crowd on leaving Greenock, after depositing five radical prisoners in the town jail, they panicked and opened fire killing eight and wounding twenty-six. In the subsequent trials twenty-two men were sentenced to death, with nineteen having their sentences commuted to transportation. The 63 year old weaver James Wilson was hanged and decapitated on 30 August in Glasgow; on 8 September in Stirling, John Baird and Andrew Hardie suffered the same fate. The Scottish disturbances were echoed in reports of armed meetings the following week Yorkshire, with the local militia and yeomanry being called out in Huddersfield, and with marches expected from towns across both Lancashire and Yorkshire. There was clearly widespread activity, all of which failed to culminate in the insurrection the Scots had hoped for, and which seems to have fallen victim to poor planning and communication. The exact extent of the unrest and its mobilization remains unclear. What seems undeniable is that the constitutionalist movement for reform could no longer rely on the restraint of many of its past supporters. A willingness to turn to civil disobedience, and to riot and affray, is not the same as commitment to an insurrectionary project, but it seems that in the opening months of 1820, that additional step had come to be attractive to many. Malcolm Chase, 1820: Disorder and Stability in the United Kingdom (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2013). Gordon Pentland, The Spirit of the Union: Popular Politics in Scotland, 1815-1820 (London, Pickering and Chatto, 2011).

The following address was printed - possibly in several versions - and circulated and posted on placards widely in central Western Scotland on 1 April1820, signed by the Committee of Reformation for Forming a Provisional Government. ADDRESS TO THE INHABITANTS OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND; FRIENDS AND COUNTRYMEN: ROUSED from that torpid state in which WE have been sunk for so many years, We are, at length, compelled, from the extremity of our sufferings, and the contempt heaped upon our Petitions for redress, to assert our RIGHTS, at the hazard of our lives and proclaim to the world the real motives, which (if not misrepresented by designing men, would have United all ranks) have reduced us to take up ARMS for the redress of our Common Grievances. The numerous public meetings held throughout the Country, has demonstrated to you, that the interests of all Classes are the same. That the protection of Life and Property of the Rich Man, is the interest of the Poor Man, and in return, it is in the interest of the Rich to protect the poor from the iron grasp of DESPOTISM; for, when its victims are exhausted in the lower circles there is no assurance but that its ravages will be continued in the upper; For once set in motion, it will continue to move until a succession of Victims Fall. Our principles are few, and founded on the basis of our CONSTITUTION which was purchased with the DEAREST BLOOD of our ANCESTORS, and which we swear to transmit to posterity unsullied, or PERISH in the Attempt. Equality of Rights (not of Property) is the object for which we contend, and which we consider as the only security for our LIBERTIES and LIVES. Let us show to the world that We are not that Lawless Sanguinary Rabble, which Our Oppressors would persuade the higher circles we are but a BRAVE and GENEROUS PEOPLE, determined to be FREE. LIBERTY or DEATH is our Motto, and We have sworn to return home in triumph–or return no more! SOLDIERS: Shall YOU, Countrymen, bound by the sacred obligation of an oath to defend your Country and your King from enemies, whether foreign or domestic, plunge your BAYONETS into the Bosoms of Fathers and Brothers, and at once sacrifice, at the Shrine of Military Despotism, to the unrelenting Orders of a cruel faction, those feelings which you hold in common with the rest of mankind? SOLDIERS, turn your eyes towards SPAIN, and there behold the happy effects resulting from the UNION of Soldiers and Citizens. Look to that quarter, and there behold the yoke of hated Despotism, broke by the Unanimous wish of the People and Soldiery, happily accomplished without Bloodshed. And shall You, who taught those Soldiers the principles of Liberty, refuse to spread them in your own Country? Forbid it Heaven! Come forward then at once, and FREE your Country and your King from the influence of those base maxims that have ruined our Country. FRIENDS AND COUNTRYMEN: The eventful period has now arrived, where the Services of all will be required, for the forwarding of an object so universally wished, as just and equal Laws. Come forward, then, and countenance those who have begun the completion of so arduous a task, and support the laudable efforts which we are making to give to BRITONS those rights consecrated to them by the MAGNA CHARTA and the BILL OF RIGHTS and Sweep from our Shores that Corruption which has degraded us below the dignity of Man. Owing to the misrepresentations which have gone abroad with regard to our intentions, we think it indispensably necessary to DECLARE inviolable all Public and Private Property. And, we hereby call upon all JUSTICES of the PEACE, and all others, to suppress PILLAGE and PLUNDER, of every description; and to endeavour to secure those Guilty of such offences, that they may receive that Punishment which such violation of Justice demand. In the present state of affairs, and during the continuation of so momentous a struggle, we earnestly request all to desist from their Labour from and after this day, the FIRST OF APRIL, and attend wholly to the recovery of their Rights and consider it as the duty of every man not to recommence until he is in possession of those Rights which distinguishes the FREEMEN from the SLAVE, viz. That of giving consent to the laws by which he is governed. We, therefore, recommend to the Proprietors of Public Works, and all others, to Stop the one, and Shut up the other, until order is restored, as we will be accountable for no damages which may be sustained; and which after this Public Intimation, they can have no claim to. And We hereby give notice to all those who shall be found carrying arms against those who intend to regenerate their Country, and restore its INHABITANTS to their NATIVE DIGNITY, We shall consider them as TRAITORS to their Country, and ENEMIES to their king, and treat them as such. By order of the Committee of Reformation for Forming a Provisional Government, Glasgow 1st April, 1820. Britons–God–Justice–The wishes of all good Men are with us. Join together and make it one CAUSE and the Nations of the EARTH shall hail the day when the Principles of LIBERTY shall be those of our Native Soil. Print copy in The National Archive, HO 102/32/296 (transcribed by Chase, 2013 pp. 128-9. A version that differs in a number of respects is in Trials for High Treason in Scotland, Under a Special Commission Held at Stirling, Glasgow, Dumbarton, Paisley and Ayr, in the Year 1820, Vol. 1, Edinburgh: Manners et Miller, 1825, p. 46-48.

Percy Shelley's best known response to Peterloo is his Masque of Anarchy, which he wrote very quickly after receiving news of the events, but which was not published until much later. The sources on which he drew has recently been discussed by Phil Connell in 'A Voice from over the Sea: Shelley's Masque of Anarchy, Peterloo, and the English Radiical Press' (Review of English Studies 2019, vol. 70, No. 296, 716-731), showing an awareness of some of the more radical sectors of the English press than it has been customary to attribute to Shelley. It also shows that Shelley himself remained more allied to the constitutional movement for Parliamentary reform than to any emerging insurrectionary wing. There is, however, a much shorter poem, probably written between mid October and mid December 1819, in which a rather different, more radical image is conjured in the last few lines. There is no similar optimism about an insurrectionary spark in Shelley's correspondence from this period, although there may have been an element of prudence involved in that. But it is plausible to think that it points to the knife edge on which people's sense of the situation balanced: that the government had far overstepped the bounds in its suppression of liberty, and that while few had the appetite for the measures, many increasingly felt that they would be justified. When Mary Shelley edited Shelley's papers she gave the poem the title: ‘England in 1819’ An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King; Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow Through public scorn,—mud from a muddy spring; Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know, But leechlike to their fainting Country cling Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow. A people starved and stabbed on th’untilled field; An army whom liberticide and prey Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield; Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay; Religion Christless, Godless, a book sealed; A senate, Time's worst statute, unrepealed— Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day. In Shelley's A Philosophical Review of Reform also written in 1820, although not published until many years later, his commitment to gradual reform, rooted in a genuine enlightenment of the people is clear: 'A Republic, however just in its principle and glorious in its object, would through the violence and sudden change which must attend it, would incur a great risk of being as rapid in its decline as in its growth. It is better that they should be instructed in thewhole truth, that they should see the clear grounds of their rights, the objects to which they ought to tend; and be impressed with the just persuasion that patience and reason and endirance are the means of a calm yet irresistible progress.' (p. 68) And 'Any sudden attempt at Universal Suffrage would produce an immature attempt at a Republic. It is better that an object so inexpressible great and sacred should never have been attampted than that it should be attempted and fail' (72) A transciption of A Philosophical Review of Refor is available at: http://oll-resources.s3.amazonaws.com/titles/2510/Shelley_PhilosophicalReform1623_Bk.pdf

Description After Peterloo and the Cato Street Conspiracy, in both of which the outbreak of substantial violence, either by the state or against it, seemed to threaten, political opposition in the country suddenly coalesced around the cause of Queen Caroline, the wife of the Prince Regent, who had been estranged from him more or less from the moment she had given birth to their daughter Princess Charlotte (one of the few popular members of the royal family, who died in childbirth in 1817). Rumors surrounding Caroline's conduct abroad were widespread, fueled by the Regent and his allies. An investigation had been conducted in anticipation of divorce proceedings in 1806, but while the inquiry censured her for 'levity of conduct', the Cabinet agreed not to exclude her from court. A further fishing expedition in Italy was conducted in 1816, producing the widely caricatured and notorious 'Green Bag' of evidence to be used against her. On the death of George III in January 1820, and with the prospect of Caroline attending the coronation, an attempt was made to buy her off (for £50,000) and get her to repudiate her title. This failed, and she declared she would return. As she approached Britain, popular enthusiasm for her cause became widespread. In part, she provided an excuse for organisation and public meetings, otherwise forbidden by the 'Six Acts' but permissible because they ostensibly offered 'sympathetic addresses', which fell outside the Acts; however, the meetings were also often rambunctious and sometimes violent. London provided a major focus. The new king brought a bill of pains and penalties to be heard in the House of Lords that would dissolve the marriage and deprive Caroline of all titles and privileges. The case made its way slowly and increasingly scandalously through the House of Lords, but as it did so support for the King ebbed, and while the bill passed a third reading, it did so barely. The government abandoned it because Lord Liverpool, the Prime Minister, could not see how it would pass the Commons. Hone and other radical satirists made much mock of the King and the government - with Hone's 'toy' - the matrimonial ladder - depicting the rise and fall of the Queen through the shabby behaviour of the King. The 'toy' had an accompanying pamphlet that spelt out in detail the sordid character of the King's behaviour. Caroline was locked out of the Coronation in July 1821 and died the following month. While her popularity had declined after the trial, falling again in March as she accepted a £50,000 pay off, and still more sharply after her behaviour at the coronation, her funeral generated huge crowds, who seized the initiative and the cortege and forced it into a new route through the city. At one point the crowd were fired on by the Life Guards. The whole sequence of events remains puzzling. Some historians see it as a resurgence of eighteenth-century traditional crowd behaviour, although the political and satirical value of the movement for reformers suggests that some part of the response was a function of the closure of other avenues of protest. But it is also true the catalogue of her indiscretions at the trial discredited her cause, and correspondingly increased public sympathies for the King. And the violence associated with the crowd produced, in turn, something of a loyalist backlash after the funeral. Perhaps the best explanation for the furore was the opportunity that the case provided to ridicule and attack a king who had done little or nothing to endear himself to his people, without fear of reprisal. What is clear is that there was much to be made fun of!

In 1816-17 a series of events, linked to the Spa Fields Meetings in London, and in Nottingham, Lancashire and Yorkshire (respectively the Pentridge rising, the Manchester 'plot' to free the arrested 'blanketeers', and the aborted rising in Huddersfield), were all in part prompted by, encouraged, or infiltrated by government spies.  Most notoriously, Castles in London, Oliver (W. J. Richards) in the North, and Reynolds in Ireland.The case against the London 'conspirators', Dr Watson, Arthur Thistlewood, Thomas Preston, and John Hooper - for high treason relating to the Spa Fields demonstration on December 2 1816- collapsed after the evidence given by Castle was undermined by revelations about his past nefarious activities. The Manchester Blanketeers scheme - to march to London to protest against the exclusion of their petitions (only 13 of the 600 submitted had been deemed to meet accepted standards) - was forestalled by the arrest of the first marchers and their imprisonment without trial for the next eight or nine months. That further encouraged talk of a more general rising. On 9 June 1817, there was a gathering of several hundred workers near Huddersfield, which dispersed before military intervention. In Derbyshire, near Nottingham, a contingent marched on Notingham only to be overpowered by the military. Fourteen men were sentenced to transportation and Jeremiah Brandreth, Isaac Ludlam, and William Turner were hanged and beheaded - the defence having failed to call Castle to the stand. George Cruikshank's caircature, published on 1 July 1817, satirises the entrapment of poor and needy working men.Three Ministers sit at a council table along with three rough-looking agents or spies. On the extreme left sits Sidmouth and opposite is Thomas Reynolds, who was active in Ireland, indicated by a paper beside him: 'Reynolds Ireland'. The bag beside him is labelled 'Blood Money'. At the right sits Castlereagh, with a paper 'To Mr Reynolds'. To his right is George Canning, who says, "Don't you think my Lord that our friends, Castle & Oliver should be sent to Lisbon or somewhere as Consul Generals, or Envoys?" Castlereagh replies: "Can't you negotiate for some boroughs—" The two men have papers addressed respectively to 'Oliver Leeds' and 'Castle Spafields'; in the latter's hat is a bundle of 'Forged notes' . Papers in the green bag are labeled: 'An Oath to be Proposed to the distressed'; 'Plan for the Attack on the Regents Carraige' [see No. 12864]; 'Treasonable papers to be sliped into the pockets of some duped artisans'; 'Plans for a General Row'. On the table: 'Toast to be given in the Company of moderate men & then Swear they drank them' [Castle's evidence]; 'Every means to be taken to implicate Sr F. Burdett Ld Cochrane & —'. Beside Sidmouth lie: 'Instructions for Entrapg the poor & needy', and 'under santion [sic] of Government'. Beside Castlereagh areflags and favours labelled 'Tricolord Flags &c &c for Spa Fields', and a stocking labelled: 'A Waggon Load of Ammunition!!! Vide Mr Cannings Speech in ye House of Coms'. At a window on theright, behind Castlereagh, John Bull, exclaims: "Oh! Oh I have found out the Conspirators at last, poor Starving John is to be enslaved into Criminal acts & then the Projectors & perpetrators are brought forward as principal evidences! This is another Vaughan, Brock & Pelham business, and I suppose they are to be made Consuls too, the high road to Ld Castlereigh's particular favor—Canning travelled it." The print exemplifies the deep mistrust that existed between those agitating for reform and the government, who were suspected of fabricating evidence of conspiracy and sedition in the increasingly febrile atmosphere of British popular politics following the hardships faced by the British people at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Suspicion of conspiracy is turned on its head and directed against a government that was seen as increasingly insouciant to the problems of the public. There was, nonetheless, some evidence of more insurrectionary attitudes in the winter of 1816-17, especially around the Spa Fields Meetings (qv).

On May 1st 1820, four men, Arthur Thistlewood, John Thomas Brunt, William Davidson, James Ings and Richard Tidd, were hanged and then decapitated by the public executioner in punishment for a conspiracy to attack the Cabinet at dinner on 23 February, earlier that year. Five others had their sentences commuted, and a further man was given a free pardon and released. Several other men went into and remained in hiding and escaped arrest. Six others turned king’s evidence, and still others, such as the radicals Robert Wedderburn and Thomas Preston were suspected of involvement and arrested but not tried. The leader of the conspiracy, Thistlewood, was a tenant farmer’s son, who had been active in the Spa Fields Riots in 1816, and although arrested then his trial collapsed alongside others because of the evidence that the spies providing the evidence had also incited the actions. He subsequently served a year in prison for challenging the Home Secretary, Lord Sidmouth, to a duel in 1818. A great deal of the forestalling of the attack and the capture and conviction of the conspirators was the result of infiltration of their organization by Home Office spies. The experience of the trials following the Spa Fields Riots had to some extent been learned, but there were still concerns about the contribution of the spies to the events. For example, the dinner was a lure, advertised in the press, but intended only ever as bait for the government’s quarry. It does, nonetheless, seem clear that there was a concerted conspiracy, involving a number of seemingly ordinary working people, living in the warrens of London, and renting a meeting space above a stable in Cato Street, at which they planned the elimination of the Cabinet and the subsequent seizure of the Bank of England, the Royal Exchange and the Tower of London, and then the calling to arms of the radical movements in the North. This is, as Vic Gatrell’s forthcoming book The Cato Street Conspiracy 1820 argues, the first insurrection uprising planned since Guy Fawlkes, and it was not repeated until the activities of the IRA in the 1970s. It is not difficult to see how reformers might have turned desperate. Peterloo in August 1816 was followed in October by Richard Carlile’s near six-year imprisonment for blasphemous libel for publishing the works of Tom Paine, in November by the launch of the Six Acts strengthening the government’s hands against reformers, and the preparations of the trials of the victims of Peterloo were underway. This was a moment in which government seemed most determined to silence extra-parliamentary opposition, and in which the customary forms of petitioning, meetings, and organization were both ignored and, increasingly, persecuted. The tactics of opposition in the late 1810s were, for the most part, essentially traditional. Nonetheless, the number and size of meetings called to deliberate and advocate for reform, the emergence of a strong strand of industrial radicalism, the mobilization against poverty and hardship by the victims themselves, as in ‘Blanketeers march’ to London in March 1817 (disrupted by arrests almost before it had started), and the on-going Spencean undercurrents of millenarian and radical reform, were all developments of aspects that had been in evidence in the 1790s. There was increasing anger and frustration as post-war hardship intensified and as the government took no action, save against those who challenged it. In his Reminiscences Samuel Bamford emphasizes how he always sought to air his views in public – that he feared secrecy for the opportunities it provided for infiltration by spies whose accounts of proceedings were potentially fatal, and it is difficult to believe that was not a shared fear. Perhaps only the size and press of London, with its labyrinths of alleys and lodgings, and the possibilities it offered of anonymity, could have fostered such a plot, but it also needed a tradition, which the Spencean societies provided. The mood in 1819, even before Peterloo, had become more belligerent, there was disaffection with Hunt’s leadership for its failure to countenance more active measures after Peterloo, and strands of radicalism in London, with the Spenceanism led by Dr Watson and with Wedderburn offering a new radicalism in his Hopkins Street debating chapel, fueled both the participation of lower ranks of society and their willingness to consider other measures. The measures contemplated were largely for armed resistance – not for assassination and insurrectionary plotting – although resistance moved from self-defence at meetings to reacting actively to the proposed ‘Six Acts’. The key issues for those involved were to avoid detection, and to feel confident that they would be much more widely supported throughout the country, rendering their action of lasting effect. But as plotting became thicker, and as concerns about spying were constant, the opportunities for assuring themselves of wider support were very much diminished. The revolutionary cell both accelerated people’s commitments, and cut them off from the rest of those they hope to lead. The Cato Street Conspiracy has been under-researched – a neglect to be rectified by Gatrell’s forthcoming work – although the world from which it grew is a central element in Iain McCallman’s Radical Underworld: Prophets, Revolutionaries and Pornographers in London, 1795-1840 (Cambridge, 1988). These works demand attention because they demonstrate a depth of anger and frustration emerging among members of the working classes in the late 1810s which the more traditional histories of the period tend to underplay. In Britain, as in Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece, the late 1810s and early 20s opened a new era of protest and dissention. And, in all of these cases, one relatively new factor is the conspiratorial society and the mustering of arms. This is a threatening letter addressed to Thomas Monument who gave evidence at the trial for Treason of Arthur Thistlewood and James Ings, two of the Cato Street Conspirators in their trial in April 1820. The Judge strictly limited reporting but the London Observer broke ranks on Sunday 23 April releasing details to a wider public. The Monument brothers gave evidence in the Thistlewood trial on 19 April, Ings on the 23, and Brunt on the 24. The date of this letter, according to reports in the Morning Chronicle and Morning Post, Thomas Monument actually gave very little evidence, largely corroborating that given by his brother James as to the collecting of arms by Thistlewood. Nonetheless, this letter is addressed to him and was postmarked 24 April 1820. It expresses itself in no uncertain terms: 'you Dand vilion yu have Been Swearing against those Poor men things that you know nothing of and you Shall have your Reward as you Duly Deserves and as for your hellfire brother England shall never hold him there is no place of Safety for him for we are deteremed to finish his work and Shortly If he is in England we are Deteremed to Drag him to Some please [place] and Burne, Burne him or flea [flay] him alive for there was not one amongst them that thried to Do more than he and we will finish you Both If we are hanged on the Cross of St Pauls you Damd vilions.' Description In the winter of 1819-1820, following Peterloo and the clear resolution of the Government to resist all reform, a strand of insurrectionist radicalism emerged that operated largely underground, although some of the leaders were those who had been in the break-away sections of the 2 December 1816 Spa Fields meeting that went to attack the Bank of England but were quickly dealt with. A range of plans were discussed, with the guards at the Bank being watched to judge the most favourable time for an assault; but the settled plan became to use a dinner of the Cabinet as the occasion for a bombing and an attack. As part of the preparations for the attack, it was agreed to prepare a statement for release when the group overthrew the government. Two versions of this remain. The first draft ran: 'Englishmen Justice is triumphant, and your Tyrants are destroyed, a glorious destiny awaits your patriotic endeavours a Provisional Government is appointed to succeed the Oligarchy which have for more than 100 years enslaved and borne you down. Obedience to the Decrees of the Prov. Government will insure to each Individual the full enjoyment of his property and Protection – and as a Guarantee for the Amelioration of the conditions of our Country it is decreed that every act passed by the Borough Mongering Usurpation shall from and after this date cease to be obeyed as such – but to afford an [239r] opportunity for the people to adopt a Government congenial to their feelings and the interest of their posterity it desired that measures will be adopted to form in one month from this date a convention of the presentative delegacy the right of voting in all males having attained the age of 21 years. Such of the Army who join the Ranks of their Country receive an addition or part advancement according to merit. Those who wish to return to their Families are called on to deposit their Arms for [240/] which they shall immediately be paid in the most liberal manner.' This draft then seems to have been further edited by Dr James Watson, who removed the last section respecting the military and made other changes. Thistlewood also solicited responses among the main participants, asking them to submit them in code on slips of paper, although he subsequently complained that he could not read what they had sent. A second draft read: 'Justice is at last triumphant, your Tyrants are destroyed A glorious destiny awaits your patriotic Energies - a Provisional Government is appointed to guard you from the Evils and Wrongs of a vile + wicked Oligarchy that has for more than Century enslaved + borne you down by the most partial [/244v] and oppressive manner. Obedience to the Decrees of the Prov. Government will ensure to each Individual protection of persons and property United Britains and Irishmen Civil and religious liberty is decreed. The acts of the Borough Mongering Usurpations shall from hence forward cease to have any effect. The People are called on to form that System of Government most congenial to their feelings and the best interest of Posterity.' The aim was to ensure that this was printed before the attack - but there are no printed versions in the papers of either the Home Office or the Treasury Solicitor. These declarations, if they were not in fact the product of the agent provocateur George Edwards, leave little doubt as to the group's intentions.