by Dark Days of Georgian Britain- Rethinking the Regency (retail) (epub)
Arthur Thistlewood is about forty-five years of age, five feet 11 inches high, has a sallow complexion, long visage, dark hair (a little grey) small whiskers, dark hazel eyes, and arched eye-brows, a wide mouth, and a good set of teeth, has a scar under his right jaw, is slender made, walks very upright, and has much the appearance of a military man; was born in Lincolnshire, and apprenticed to an apothecary at Newark, and has been a lieutenant in the army; he usually wore a French-grey coloured coat, buff waistcoat, grey coloured Wellington pantaloons, with Hessian boots under them, and at times a darkbrown greatcoat.
His fine teeth and his financial ability to hide for four months showed his gentry background. His scar and his bearing show the importance of the army to his life. He was never an apothecary’s apprentice – that was his brother. During the hunt, the newspapers, prompted by the authorities, put out the rumour that he had returned to France, where the French were bankrolling the treason. As the Stamford Mercury said, ‘his purse was always open to treat his deluded followers’.
On 20 April, he was apprehended trying to board the Perseus from Gravesend with his wife and 10-year-old child under the name ‘Wilkinson’, which was his wife’s maiden name. The newspapers described Thistlewood’s wife as ‘interesting’ and ‘amiable’ – probably a euphemism for something bad, but from a modern perspective she seems to have been a determined women. The Newgate Chronicles, a relatively dispassionate source, said that ‘she perfectly coincided with the political views of her husband’. The unnamed child was about 10, possibly born in 1807 and therefore neither the child of his first or second wife. His hostile post-mortem biographers did suggest that Thistlewood had an illegitimate child by the seduction of a servant. He was always the Georgian gentlemen, even when trying to overthrow the government.
John Castle was the main trial witness. The Spenceans were tried separately, with James Watson being first. Castle gave some indications of Thistlewood’s activity during his attempt to incriminate Watson. He claimed that Thistlewood had provided him with money to buy pikes, and had treated the Paddington navigators with beer on the promise of 500 men at Spa Fields; he confirmed that Thistlewood went to Tower Hill and failed to convince the soldiers to change sides and had also provided the revolutionary icons. Thistlewood seemed already hanged.
However, the case collapsed when it became clear that Castle himself was a spy and agent provocateur for the Home Department. Watson was found not guilty and no evidence was offered against Thistlewood himself. He left to the sound of cheering. Thomas Preston, one of the other released men, thanked the jury but warned their supporters not to be provoked or trapped by the government.
Thistlewood was not listening to the advice of his comrade. He continued to believe in the value of the mass insurrection even when others rejected it. He seemed to have lost whatever judgement he had at this point. His enemies and friends agreed that he was a fiery, tempestuous man, but with a simple hearted desire to help the poor; it must have occurred to him that his every move was now being watched. The Bow Street authorities successfully re-infiltrated the Spenceans with a spy called Edward Ruthven, who reported that the Spenceans were still active, still meeting in pubs, getting drunk, insulting the Prince Regent and being blasphemous.
John Stafford, who held the innocent sounding title of the Chief Clerk to the Bow Street Runners, was certainly watching him. Some sources put him at the Spa Fields riot in December, being responsible for breaking the revolutionary flags and banners, and preventing the Spenceans from using them to inflame the masses. He ushered the spy Castle up to the witness stand and this was the point that Castle’s evidence and credibility began to unravel, as Stafford’s real job as spymaster was well known.
Thistlewood was a man of few words and the Spenceans produced few radical publications. In July 1817, in a fundraiser organised by Henry Hunt at the Crown and Anchor Public House (the Morning Post sniffily said that there were less than sixty people present), James Watson gave a long, eloquent speech of lies about his involvement at Spa Fields; Thistlewood muttered a few thanks.
In early February 1817, Thistlewood wrote to Lord Sidmouth, the Home Secretary who had instigated the treason trial, asking the noble lord for a satisfaction through a duel: ‘I leave the choice of pistol or sword to your Lordship…as for time, I will admit of no delay.’6 This does not seem very logical; Thistlewood was asking for the return of the £180 he had spent trying to avoid the law. A reasonable person would have known that he would be committed to prison for this action. What it does sound like is the behaviour of an angry Georgian gentleman; clearly none of the other revolutionaries would have the social background to even consider a duel. Perhaps they would also have had more sense.
He was apprehended on 11 February at his home in Stanhope Street, Clare Market (having helpfully given Lord Sidmouth his address on his letter). He pleaded guilty on the first occasion, but asked permission to change his plea in court two days later. He told the judge, Lord Ellenborough, that he did not know that pleading guilty would lead immediately to sentencing and that he wished to have a say, so he was given permission to change his plea. This does not sound like a man with a firm grip on reality, or even a person who had been through the courts for high treason a year earlier.
He seemed to be in a poor state when he came to trial in May. Looking ill, and mumbling an incoherent set of criticisms about his treatment, he also claimed that he had been forbidden to call witnesses who would have proved his innocence, despite the only evidence being a letter that he had clearly written himself. Therefore, he offered no defence and asked for a retrial. In the true spirit of revolutionaries, he claimed the whole process was illegal. He was denied a retrial; it was put to him that he missed the deadline for calling witnesses because he had deliberately made his application on a day when the court was closed – once again it looks like Thistlewood was not in charge of proceedings at all. He was sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment in Horsham Gaol.
By July 1819, Thistlewood, along with James Watson, was back on the ‘monster meeting’ trail, with Henry Hunt leading the speeches. Thistlewood was seen by the authorities carrying banners with ‘Peace and Goodwill’ and ‘Universal Suffrage’ – slightly less revolutionary than at Spa Fields. This was one of the same series of meetings that led to the tragedy of Peterloo in August. Thistlewood and Watson continued leading mass meetings and organising petitions. Thistlewood was becoming a major figure in the reform movement, rivalling Hunt himself.
By November 1819 they had fallen out; Hunt, ironically as it turned out, warned about spies in the reform movement. By December they were trading insults in public through the newspapers, who gleefully documented their disagreements. Thistlewood wrote to Lord Sidmouth again – ‘would the noble Lord please send him the £180 he was owed when he tried to leave the country?’ The newspapers were both indignant and amazed. The Public Ledger caught the mood of the establishment: ‘Is it Bedlam or Newgate that this man is so anxiously seeking a berth?’
Always conscious of the value of the disgruntled Irish to the revolutionary movement, Thistlewood was in Ireland in January of the year of his execution. The newspapers reported that he was being watched everywhere; Spencean meetings were now reported in the newspapers.
It was at this point that Thistlewood tried to organise a violent coup against the state. His motives and reasoning are hard to fathom. He knew he was being followed and spied on. Although he had fallen out with Hunt after Hunt had called him ‘the dupe of spies’, he didn’t need Hunt to tell him about spies after Spa Fields. It was a new member of the group, by the name of Edwards, who told Thistlewood that the cabinet would meet for dinner on 23 February. Despite barely knowing Edwards, Thistlewood still decided to assassinate the Cabinet. Edwards was another spy.
Thistlewood had tired of Hunt’s egotistical speechifying and had lost confidence in mass meetings as a catalyst for change. The unpopular Prince Regent had become king in January and was already planning a co
ronation costing a quarter of a million pounds. The political mood was ugly and the establishment were worried. Since Peterloo there had been more people drilling and collecting arms in Scotland, Yorkshire and Lancashire. Thistlewood felt encouraged.
The reckless gambler was returning. He seemed to be ignoring facts, however. Never before had a Cabinet dinner been advertised in advance, and the only supporting evidence was a newspaper, the New Times, a well known stooge of the government. The spy Edwards had shown Thistlewood the details of the meeting just a day before it happened and Thistlewood scrambled to get a group together to assassinate the whole Cabinet. They checked that Lord Harrowby was actually hosting the dinner by visiting his house, and when a servant told the visitor that the noble Lord was out of town, Thistlewood saw this as part of the conspiracy and refused to believe it. Twenty-seven people agreed to take part, most new and desperate revolutionary friends who had replaced Watson and the others who had taken part in Spa Fields.
The conspirators gathered in a hayloft in Cato Street on the evening of the proposed coup. They had weapons, and bags in which to put the heads of Castlereagh and Sidmouth. They planned to parade them among the labouring poor in the hope of starting a chain reaction across the country. They were intercepted while still preparing their attack by the Bow Street Runners and in the fracas Thistlewood killed a police officer, Richard Smithers.
At the trial for treason, the government showed that it had learned its lessons from the Spa Field’s trial. Neither of the two spies – Ruthven and Edwards – were called, and lesser members of the conspiracy were encouraged to turn King’s evidence. On 28 April 1820, Thistlewood, alongside William Davidson, James Ings, Richard Tidd, and John Brunt, were found guilty of high treason and sentenced to death.
Thistlewood’s speech after judgement helps to explain his anger at the state of Britain. It was long, well argued, and well presented; but it was also angry, personal and emotional. Thistlewood seemed to have no coherent plan for life after a successful insurrection, merely hatred of the present system. They were striking a blow against Castlereagh and Sidmouth who were ‘privileged traitors who lord it over the life and property of a sovereign people with a barefaced impunity’. He had been convicted by a handpicked jury that was already prejudiced against him, without the right to call witnesses that would prove the existence of spies. Edwards was a government spy, stated Thistlewood, who never had money to buy a pint of beer in the pub but was always able to procure weapons. When Edwards had tried to provoke them into blowing up the House of Commons, Thistlewood had refused because it would kill the innocent and make him no better than the barbarians at Peterloo who had applauded the massacre, and the Prince Regent who was ‘still reeking with the gore of the hapless victims’.
Thistlewood confessed himself disappointed with the reaction to Peterloo. ‘If one spark of independence still glimmered in the breasts of Englishmen, they would have risen like a man.’ He decided to take vengeance on despotism himself. ‘I resolved that the lives of the instigators should be the requiem to the souls of the murdered innocents.’
The Governor of Newgate visited the four men the following day to deliver the death warrant and ask if they wanted a visit from a clergyman. They all refused. When a cleric was foisted on them the next morning, they declared themselves deists and disbelievers in the divinity of Christ. James Ings was the only exception, but he also rejected the established Anglican Church by asking for a Methodist minister. They were in such good spirits that their solidarity was deliberately broken by putting them into separate cells. According to the hostile sources Ings was reconverted to conventional Christianity by an unplanned nocturnal visit by the Reverend Horace Cotton, chaplain of Newgate.7 It was implied that the Methodist minister, a Mr Rennet (a mere journeyman tailor), was rejected by Ings as being too unlearned to guide him to eternity. The paper also reported that Thistlewood had an affecting goodbye with his wife and children, although some sources say he only had one son.
Home Secretary Sidmouth was concerned about the reaction of the crowd at the execution. He decided to dispense with the part of the process that involved dragging the condemned men through the streets on a wooden hurdle, claiming that it would inconvenience traffic. The scaffold was also enlarged and a fence built around it to stop the pressure of the crowd prejudicing the process. The crowd started to build up the day before the execution as the contractors put up triple lines of poles between the scaffold and the people.
On the morning of the day of execution, crowds began to gather at 4 am, with the best seats costing three guineas. At 6 am the Horse Guards formed a line protecting the Old Bailey from possible rioters. A large banner had been produced saying ‘The Riot Act has been read – disperse!’ The authorities were clearly worried that they might lose control of the mob.
The four were executed at Newgate Prison on May Day, 1820. The men were led to the scaffold sucking oranges, looking brave and unapologetic. Thistlewood refused a blindfold and bowed when somebody shouted ‘God bless you’. His last full sentence before an efficient hanging was: ‘I hope that you will report to the world that I died a sincere friend of liberty.’ They died well, with the grudging respect of the many thousands who still opposed their actions.
Half an hour later Thistlewood was decapitated, his face clearly bright purple and his body kept in a position that would prevent blood spurting from his body. His head was held up with the traditional cry – ‘This is the head of a traitor!’ The petitions of the families were ignored; the bodies had already been covered in quick lime and buried in the Newgate grounds. The bodies of traitors were never handed over in any case.
It is easy to see the Cato Street conspiracy as a hair-brained scheme. Cobbett thought it was, but admired their courage even if he did not condone their actions. Cobbett did notice that the ruling classes were never quite so insolent and arrogant again. Lord Castlereagh never recovered from the fact that people were meant to rejoice at seeing his severed head on a pole. The establishment clearly believed that there was enough discontent for Thistlewood, or somebody like him, to provoke the miserable lower orders into revolution. By 1820 economic conditions improved and the government started to modify its unsympathetic attitudes towards the poor. Perhaps the deluded Arthur had not been a complete failure.
Chapter 12
1817 – The New Peasants’ Revolt
The ruling classes knew what to expect when rural rioters demanded a reduction in the price of bread, or urban artisans challenged employers about working practices. Grievances were specific and local and concessions could be made through discussions with people who knew each other and had to live together in the same place afterwards. The protesters usually wanted a return to the old ways rather than innovation or reform, and things would get back to normal if concessions were made. The protestors, despite their violence, were challenging the system but not trying to overthrow it.
In 1816 and 1817 these ‘bread or blood’ riots were replaced by protests that worried the authorities more. They feared that the lower classes were conspiring, organising nationally, or creating military and political organisations. Instead of complaining about parts of the system, some of the lower orders wanted the end of the whole system – or were being duped by evil conspirators to think in that way.
The Luddite machine-breaking in 1811-12 bore some dangerous characteristics. The plan to destroy machines was in many ways a call to return to the past, but there was a degree of local and regional organisation in the attack on property that was only defeated by overwhelming military force. It was in the best interest of the government to exaggerate the threat of armed insurrection, but the way they moved the militia suggested some worries about the loyalty of the ordinary soldier. During the Luddite crisis in Nottinghamshire, local militias were sent to Ireland, and the West Essex militia were moved from Chelmsford to the East Midlands, along with military from Somerset, Edinburgh and Surrey.
The fear was of armed insurrection by mob
s of people, organised by a political leadership who used economic misery to achieve political aims. The government probably feared more that revolution would be attempted under the guise of a traditional protest, and in 1817 their worries seemed to be realistic.
John Bagguley was a remarkably young Mancunian; an unlikely changemaker amongst the writers, politicians and intellectuals who normally dominated the reform movement. He was a weaver, an apprentice or servant (depending on the source used) who had managed to get the attention of both the starving families of Manchester and the hardened political reformers. He was 17 at the time, and before he turned 20 he would have endured two years in prison and five months in solitary confinement for his principles. By 1817 he was addressing political meetings all over Manchester and the surrounding towns.
He was very critical of Watson and the Spenceans, who, to his mind, had done nothing but organise a drunken riot at Spa Fields and had ruined the potential of mass petitioning to achieve change. The Spenceans had gone too quickly from using the frustration of a rejected petition to an attempted coup, and Bagguley wanted to introduce more subtlety. He may not really have believed in petitions, but he was prepared to use them as a lever to get change.
In March 1817 it seemed clear that the government were about to suspend habeas corpus to allow mass arrests of suspects. This was as response to Spa Fields and the ‘assassination attempt’ on the Prince Regent, and Bagguley and his associates, Samuel Drummond and John Johnson, organised a meeting to draw up a petition to ask for help for distressed weavers and for the protection of habeas corpus. When protesters entwined economic distress with political demands, this rang alarm bells for the local magistrates.
Five thousand met at St Peter’s Field on 11 March and about 400 were persuaded to march to London. The Manchester Mercury, being a local paper, was the first to describe the events. They noted with alarm that a group of Manchester weavers were planning to march and petition the Prince Regent. There had been, they reported, a series of seditious meetings in Manchester and now they would:
