Part 3

"Carriages were brought to convey the wounded to the Manchester Infirmary; and the troop of hussars, which came up with the guns, was marched off to escort to the gaol a number of persons who had been arrested, and among these Mr. Hunt. For some time the town was patrolled by the troops, the streets being nearly empty, and the shops, for the most part, closed. We then returned to the barracks. I should not omit to mention, that, before the men were dismissed, the arms were minutely examined; and that no carbine or pistol was found to have been fired, and only one pistol to have been loaded. About eight o'clock p.m., one squadron of the 15th Hussars (two troops) was ordered on duty to form part of a strong night picket, the other part of which consisted of two companies of the 88th regiment. This picket was stationed at a place called the New Cross, at the end of Oldham Street. As soon as it had taken up its position a mob assembled about it, which increased as the darkness came on: stones were thrown at the soldiers; the hussars many times cleared the ground by driving the mob up the streets leading from the New Cross. But these attempts to get rid of the annoyance were only successful for the moment; for the people got through the houses or narrow passages from one street into another, and the troops were again attacked, and many men and horses struck with stones. This lasted nearly an hour and a half; and the soldiers being more and more pressed upon, a town magistrate, who was with the picket, read the Riot Act, and the officer in command ordered the 88th to fire (which they did by platoon firing) down three of the streets. The firing lasted only a few minutes: perhaps not more than thirty shots were fired; but these had a magical effect: the mob ran away, and dispersed forthwith, leaving three or four persons on the ground with gun-shot wounds.

"At four o'clock in the morning the picket squadron was relieved by another squadron of the regiment. With this latter squadron I was on duty; and after we had patrolled the town for two hours, the officer in command sent me to the magistrates (who had remained assembled during the night), to report to them that the town was perfectly quiet, and to request their sanction to the return of the military to their quarters.

"On the afternoon of the 17th I visited, in company with some military medical officers, the infirmary. I saw there from twelve to twenty cases of sabre wounds; several persons that were severely crushed, and, among these, two women, who appeared not likely to recover. One man was in a dying state from a gun-shot wound in the head; another had had his leg amputated: both these casualties arose from the fire of the 88th the night before. Two or three were reputed dead; one of them, a constable, killed in St. Peter's Field; but I saw none of the bodies.

"As shortly as I could, I have now related what fell under my own observation during these twenty-four hours.... I trust that I have, at least in some degree, complied with your wishes; and I beg you will believe me, my dear Sir, yours most truly,

"WILLM. J. HYLTON JOLLIFFE."

"To Thomas Grimston Bucknall Estcourt, "Esq., M.P."

STATE OF ENGLAND (1819).

=Source.=--Works of P. B. Shelley.

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 feel nor see nor know, But leech-like to their fainting country cling, Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,-- A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,-- An army, which 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.

THE CATO STREET CONSPIRACY (1820).

=Source.=--_Annual Register_, 1820, pp. 30-32.

At last, on Saturday, the 19th of February, it was resolved at one of their meetings, that poverty did not allow them to delay their purposes any longer, and that, therefore, on the next Wednesday, the ministers should be murdered separately, each in his own house. On Sunday they arranged their plans. Forty or fifty men were to be set apart for the work of murder; and whoever failed through any fault of his own, in performing the task assigned to him, was to atone for his failure with his life. Two separate detachments were at the same time to seize two pieces of cannon stationed in Gray's-Inn-lane, and six in the artillery ground. The Mansion-house was to be proclaimed the palace of the provisional government; the Bank was to be attacked forthwith; and London was to be set fire to in different quarters.

Meetings were again held on Monday and Tuesday; and on the latter day, a conspirator, named Edwards, informed Thistlewood, that there was to be a cabinet dinner on the morrow. Thistlewood, doubting the information, sent for a newspaper, and finding it announced that a cabinet dinner was to be given at lord Harrowby's house in Grosvenor-square on Wednesday evening; "As there has not been a dinner so long," said he, "there will no doubt be fourteen or sixteen there, and it will be a rare haul to murder them all together." According to the fresh arrangements now determined on, one of their number was to go with a note addressed to lord Harrowby; when the door was opened to him, a band of the conspirators were to rush in; and while some seized the servants, and prevented any one from escaping from the house, others, forcing their way into the room where the ministers were assembled, were to murder them without mercy. It was particularly specified, that the heads of lords Sidmouth and Castlereagh were to be brought away in a bag. From lord Harrowby's house two of their number were to proceed to throw fire-balls into the straw-shed of the cavalry barracks in King-street, while the rest were to co-operate in the execution of the subsequent parts of the scheme.

In the meantime spies were dispatched to watch lord Harrowby's house, and to ascertain that no police officers or soldiers were concealed within it, or close to it. The next day was spent in preparations. Their weapons and ammunition were put into a state of readiness, and proclamations were written, which it was intended to fix to the houses that were to be set on fire. In the course of the day several of the infatuated wretches met, from time to time, at the old place of rendezvous; and, towards six in the evening, they assembled in a stable, situated in an obscure street, called Cato-street, in the neighbourhood of the Edgware-road. Besides the stable in the lower part, the building contained two rooms above, accessible only by a ladder, in the larger of which, a sentinel having been stationed below, the conspirators mustered, to the number of twenty-four or twenty-five, all busy in adjusting their accoutrements by the scanty light of one or two candles, and exulting in the near approach of the bloody catastrophe.

All their machinations, however, were known to the very men, whom they hoped within an hour to see lying butchered at their feet. One of the conspirators, Edwards, had, for some time, been in the pay of government, to whom he communicated every step that was taken. A man, too, of the name of Hidon, who had been solicited to enter into the plot, warned lord Harrowby of it, the day before that which was fixed for carrying it into execution. The ministers took no steps which might deter or alarm the ruffians; for it would have been the height of madness to have stopped them in their career of guilt. Interruption would have saved them from punishment, by rendering it impossible to procure evidence of the atrocious nature of the plot; so that they would have been let loose upon society, ready to enter into some new scheme of murder, which, by being intrusted to a smaller, or more select number, or by being attempted with less delay, might be followed by success. The preparations for the dinner went on at lord Harrowby's house till eight in the evening, though, in fact, no dinner was to be given.

In the meantime, a strong party of Bow-street constables, under the direction of Mr. Birnie, proceeded to Cato-street, where they were to be met and supported by a detachment of the Coldstream Guards. The police officers reached the spot about 8 o'clock. They immediately entered the stable, and, mounting the ladder, found the conspirators in the loft, on the point of proceeding to the execution of their scheme. The principal officer called upon them to surrender. Smithers, one of the constables, pressing forward to seize Thistlewood, was pierced, by him, through the body, and immediately fell. The lights in the loft were now extinguished; some of the conspirators rushed down the ladder, and the officers along with them; others forced their way out by a window in the back part of the premises. At this moment, the detachment of the military arrived, somewhat later than the precise time fixed. Two of the conspirators, who were in the act of escaping, were seized: by the joint exertions of the police and soldiers nine in all were taken that evening, and conveyed to Bow-street. Thistlewood was among those who had escaped, but he was arrested next morning, in bed, in a house near Finsbury-square. Some others of them were seized in the course of the next two days.

On the 27th of March, true bills of indictment for high treason were found against eleven of the prisoners; and, on the 17th of April, Thistlewood was put upon his trial. The principal witness was a conspirator, of the name of Adams, who, having escaped from Cato-street, had been taken on the following Friday, and had remained in custody up to the time when he was produced in court to give evidence. After a trial which lasted three days, the accused was found guilty on those counts of indictment which charged him with having conspired to levy, and with having levied war against the King. Ings, Brunt, Tidd, and Davidson, were afterwards severally tried and convicted. The remaining six, permission to withdraw their former plea having been given, pleaded guilty. One of them, who appeared to have joined the meeting in Cato-street without being aware of its true purpose, received a pardon; the other five had their sentence commuted into transportation for life. Thistlewood, with the four whom we have named, suffered the sentence of the law, rather glorying in what they had attempted, and regretting their failure, than repenting of their atrocious guilt.

THE DEATH OF GEORGE III. (1820).

=Source.=--_The Diary and Correspondence of Charles Abbott, Lord Colchester._ London, 1861. Vol. III. p. 112.

_Letter from Mr. B. Wilbraham._

"Portland Place, February 7th, 1820.

"My dear Lord,

"I am not aware that I can communicate much more information than the newspapers, if so much, but as a letter from London at a moment like the present is supposed to be interesting, I write a few lines.

"The death of the poor King was not expected by the public in general, but those who were about him saw a rapid change taking place, and a loathing of nourishment and other symptoms; and when I was at Windsor three weeks ago, the Duke of York, who had not seen him for five or six days, was much affected at the change.

"He died without any pain, spoke a short time before his death, and had no gleam of returning reason, which Dr. Willis then told me he would not have. Since his death we have been in some danger of losing the present King, who has been very ill of an inflammation of the chest, which was cured by his losing 130 ounces of blood. This loss would have killed you or me, but he is so accustomed to being bled, that the day after the operation was performed his pulse was at 84. He is now recovering, but I expect that his constitution will not be the better for this violent, though necessary discipline.

"He held a Privy Council two days after the King's death, and was forced to exert himself, which I believe was rather against him; but he has not done anything of the sort since, and I hope he will soon recover his strength.

"No political change has taken place under the circumstances of the country, but we look forward to a dissolution of Parliament; and whether it will be early or late, before the ensuing session of Parliament or after it, it is the question about which we are very anxious; though I am not of the number, it being a matter of indifference to me when I visit my Dover[1] friends.

"Brougham, it is said, has sent the Queen a detailed account of her patronage, which, as you know, is considerable, and a blank patent for the office of her Attorney-General; when this returns filled up, he will form a third party in the House of Commons, and probably will be very troublesome to both the others; though the Whigs will contrive to agree with him as often as they can.

"You will be glad to hear that we are as peaceable and quiet as lambs in Lancashire; that seditious printers, drillers at night, and others were found guilty by the juries at the Manchester Sessions, and were sentenced to various punishments without a single murmur being heard in Court. I understand that this implicit obedience to the laws has produced a sensation of considerable surprise on the Continent, where people imagined us on the eve of a revolution. I confess that I imagined we should not have been so quiet in the North as we are. Hunt and Co., you know, are to be tried at the Spring Lancashire Assizes....

"The Bank resumed bullion payments on the 1st February, in ingots (to the amount of £300), commonly called Ricardos; and I understand that in the first three days only three were applied for. One for Lord Thanet, one for a country banker, from curiosity, and the other I know not for whom. The price of gold is from two to three shillings below the Mint price, which accounts for this little demand.

"Yours very truly,

"E. B. WILBRAHAM."

THE KING'S SPEECH (1820).

=Source.=--_Annual Register, 1820._ Appendix to Chronicle, p. 749.

_The King's Speech to the New Parliament_ (_Thursday, April 27_).

"My Lords and Gentlemen;

"I have taken the earliest occasion of assembling you here, after having referred to the sense of my people.

"In meeting you personally, for the first time since the death of my beloved father, I am anxious to assure you, that I shall always continue to imitate his great example, in unceasing attention to the public interests, and in paternal solicitude for the welfare and happiness of all classes of my subjects.

"I have received from foreign powers renewed assurances of their friendly disposition, and of their earnest desire to cultivate with me the relations of peace and amity.

"Gentlemen of the House of Commons;

"The estimates for the present year will be laid before you.

"They have been framed upon principles of strict economy; but it is to me matter of the deepest regret that the state of the country has not allowed me to dispense with those additions to our military force which I announced at the commencement of the last session of parliament.

"The first object to which your attention will be directed is the provision to be made for the support of the civil government, and of the honour and dignity of the crown.

"I leave entirely at your disposal my interest in the hereditary revenues; and I cannot deny myself the gratification of declaring, that so far from desiring any arrangement which might lead to the imposition of new burthens upon my people, or even might diminish, on my account, the amount of the reductions incident to my accession to the throne, I can have no wish, under circumstances like the present, that any addition whatever should be made to the settlement adopted by parliament in the year 1816.

"My Lords and Gentlemen;

"Deeply as I regret that the machinations and designs of the disaffected should have led in some parts of the country to acts of open violence and insurrection, I cannot but express my satisfaction at the promptitude with which those attempts have been suppressed by the vigilance and activity of the magistrates, and by the zealous co-operation of all those of my subjects, whose exertions have been called forth to support the authority of the laws.

"The wisdom and firmness manifested by the late parliament, and the due execution of the laws, have greatly contributed to restore confidence throughout the kingdom, and to discountenance those principles of sedition and irreligion which had been disseminated with such malignant perseverance, and had poisoned the minds of the ignorant and unwary.

"I rely upon the continued support of parliament in my determination to maintain, by all the means intrusted to my hands, the public safety and tranquillity.

"Deploring, as we all must, the distress which still unhappily prevails among many of the labouring classes of the community, and anxiously looking forward to its removal or mitigation, it is in the meantime our common duty effectually to protect the loyal, the peaceable, and the industrious, against those practices of turbulence and intimidation by which the period of relief can only be deferred, and by which the pressure of the distress has been incalculably aggravated.

"I trust, that an awakened sense of the dangers which they have incurred, and of the arts which have been employed to seduce them, will bring back by far the greater part of those who have been unhappily led astray, and will revive in them that spirit of loyalty, that due submission to the laws, and that attachment to the constitution, which subsist unabated in the hearts of the great body of the people, and which, under the blessing of Divine Providence, have secured to the British nation the enjoyment of a larger share of practical freedom, as well as of prosperity and happiness, than have fallen to the lot of any nation in the world."

THE CHARACTER OF "JOHN BULL" (1820).

=Source.=--Washington Irving's _Sketch Book_. Pp. 237-239. Bohn's Libraries. G. Bell & Sons, London.

What is worst of all, is the effect which these pecuniary embarrassments and domestic feuds have had on the poor man himself. Instead of that jolly round corporation, and snug rosy face, which he used to present, he has of late become as shrivelled and shrunk as a frost-bitten apple. His scarlet gold-laced waistcoat, which bellied out so bravely in those prosperous days when he sailed before the wind, now hangs loosely about him like a mainsail in a calm. His leather breeches are all in folds and wrinkles, and apparently have much ado to hold up the boots that yawn on both sides of his once sturdy legs.

Instead of strutting about as formerly, with his three-cornered hat on one side; flourishing his cudgel, and bringing it down every moment with a hearty thump upon the ground; looking every one sturdily in the face, and trolling out a stave of a catch or a drinking song; he now goes about whistling thoughtfully to himself, with his head drooping down, his cudgel tucked under his arm, and his hands thrust to the bottom of his breeches pockets, which are evidently empty.

Such is the plight of honest John Bull at present; yet for all this, the old fellow's spirit is as tall and as gallant as ever. If you drop the least expression of sympathy or concern, he takes fire in an instant; swears that he is the richest and stoutest fellow in the country; talks of laying out large sums to adorn his house or buy another estate; and with a valiant swagger and grasping of his cudgel, longs exceedingly to have another bout at quarter-staff.

Though there may be something rather whimsical in all this, yet I confess I cannot look upon John's situation without strong feelings of interest. With all his odd humours and obstinate prejudices, he is a sterling-hearted old blade. He may not be so wonderfully fine a fellow as he thinks himself, but he is at least twice as good as his neighbours represent him. His virtues are all his own; all plain, home bred and unaffected. His very faults smack of the raciness of his good qualities. His extravagance savours of his generosity; his quarrelsomeness, of his courage; his credulity, of his open faith; his vanity, of his pride; and his bluntness, of his sincerity. They are all the redundancies of a rich and liberal character. He is like his old oak, rough without, but sound and solid within, whose bark abounds with excrescences in proportion to the growth and grandeur of the timber; and whose branches make a fearful groaning and murmuring in the least storm, from their very magnitude and luxuriance. There is something, too, in the appearance of his old family mansion that is extremely poetical and picturesque; and, as long as it can be rendered comfortably habitable, I should almost tremble to see it meddled with, during the present conflict of tastes and opinions. Some of his advisers are no doubt good architects, that might be of service; but many, I fear, are mere levellers, who, when they had once got to work with their mattocks on this venerable edifice, would never stop until they had brought it to the ground, and perhaps buried themselves among the ruins. All that I wish is that John's present troubles may teach him more prudence in the future. That he may cease to distress his mind about other people's affairs; that he may give up the fruitless attempt to promote the good of his neighbours, and the peace and happiness of the world, by dint of the cudgel; that he may remain quietly at home; gradually get his house into repair; cultivate his rich estate according to his fancy; husband his income--if he thinks proper; bring his unruly children into order--if he can; renew the jovial scenes of ancient prosperity; and long enjoy, on his paternal lands, a green, an honourable and a merry old age.

THE DEATH OF NAPOLEON (1821).

=Source.=--_The Gentleman's Magazine, 1821._ Vol. 91, p. 86.

May 5. At St. Helena, of a lingering illness, which had confined him to his bed for upwards of forty days, Napoleon Buonaparte. He desired that after his death his body should be opened, as he suspected he was dying of the same disease which had killed his father--a cancer in the stomach.

He lay in state three days, at the particular wish of the French people, who behaved to all visitors with much affability, amounting to condescension. The body was opened; the stomach was the entire seat of the disease--a cancer, or a schirrous state of that organ. The disease must have caused great pain, and appeared to have been of considerable standing. It was remarked before his death, that for more than nine days he had refused all nourishment, which was supposed to proceed from resignation or obstinacy; but the diseased state of the stomach fully accounts for it.

The body was laid out on a bed in a room of the middling size, hung with black, and well lighted up. He was dressed in full Field-Marshal's uniform; that said to have been worn by him at the battle of Marengo. His person seemed small, and rather diminutive (exact height five feet seven inches); but the fineness of the countenance much exceeded expectation. The face appeared to be large, compared with the body; the features pleasing and extremely regular, still retaining a half-formed smile; and must have been truly imposing, when enlivened by a penetrating pair of eyes. His skin was perfectly sallow, which seemed to be its natural colour.

The garden was laid out in the most fanciful manner; an astonishing variety being contained in a very small space.