Title

Cato Street Conspiracy 1820

Description

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.

Contributor

Mark Philp

Spatial Coverage

London

Temporal Coverage

February-May 1820

Creator

Pub. Samuel Flores, London 1820

Rights

perm

Rights Holder

Bnf, Richelieu Paris

Subject

groups

people