For some weeks before the Cato-street discovery, Ings was in the utmost distress, quite penniless; and the means of subsistence were actually supplied to him by Edwards. At his instigation, also, he hired a room, in which he lodged, which was sufficiently capacious to contain a very considerable portion of the arms and ammunition of the gang.
This unfortunate man left a wife and four children to deplore his ignominious death.
William Davidson was born in the year 1786, at Kingston, in Jamaica, and was the second son of Mr. Attorney-General Davidson, a man of considerable legal knowledge and talent. He mother was a native of the West Indies, and a woman of colour. He was sent to England when very young, for the purpose of receiving an education suitable to the rank of his father, and his own prospects: and having obtained the first rudiments of knowledge, he was sent to an academy, where he studied mathematics. After some time he was apprenticed to a respectable attorney at Liverpool, at whose office he remained near three years, when he became tired of confinement, and ran away from his master. He now entered on board a merchantman, and on the first voyage was impressed. He arrived in England about six months afterwards, and wrote to his father’s friend a supplicatory letter, and then, at his own particular desire, he was apprenticed to a cabinet-maker in Liverpool.
Davidson, though a man of colour, had a prepossessing person, and was upon the point of marriage with the daughter of a respectable tradesman at Liverpool, when, however, the match was broken off by his friends. He then took a passage on board a West-India merchantman, intending to return to his father; but he was again impressed on the voyage. On his return to port, he took the first opportunity of running away, and having obtained some money from his friends, he got work as a journeyman, at Litchfield. He subsequently paid his addresses to a Miss Salt, who was possessed of about 7,000l. of her own money, but her friends disapproving of the match, he became unsettled in his mind, and indisposed for business; and although his mother supplied him with 1200l. to commence trade on his own account, at Birmingham, in the course of twelve months he spent the whole of that sum, and repaired to London. Here he again obtained work, and was eventually married to a Mrs. Lane, a widow, with four children, who lived at Walworth, with whose assistance he began trade on his own account. Success, however, did not attend him, and he was compelled to remove to London, and to take a lodging at Mary-le-bone. While here, he appears to have joined the conspirators, into whose plans he entered with great willingness. He left two children of his own, by his wife, both of whom were under four years of age.
John Thomas Brunt was born in Union-street, Oxford-street; where his father carried on business as a tailor. He was for some time employed in the shop of a shoemaker, and he subsequently became an excellent workman in that business, and up to the age of twenty-three was the chief supporter of his mother, his father having died while he was yet young. At that age he married a respectable young woman, named Welch. On the 1st of May 1806, she brought him a boy, who was fourteen years of age on the day his unfortunate father suffered the sentence of the law. Brunt was thirty-eight years of age.
The following particulars with regard to Edwards, whose name so frequently occurs during the preceding narrative, will enable the reader to form, a just estimate of his character.
It appears that he had been originally a modeller, and kept a little shop in Fleet-street, where he sold plaster-of-Paris images. His poverty had been always apparent until a few months previous to the Cato-street plot, when there is no doubt he accepted the wages of government, and became a spy. For this office he appears to have been admirably adapted, as he was shrewd, artful, and unprincipled. His former acquaintance with the Spenceans procured him the confidence of some of its deluded members; and through them he got acquainted with Thistlewood and the others.
There is little doubt that the Cato-street plot was “got up” by him, although he found the unfortunate men who were hanged willing instruments in his hands. He furnished the means of providing the destructive weapons which were found in their possession, and he actually made the grenades himself; and when Thistlewood had escaped from Cato-street, he conducted him to the lodgings where he was next day apprehended.
Immediately after the execution of the traitors, several persons made depositions before Alderman Wood, stating the numerous attempts of Edwards to seduce them from their allegiance, and the worthy alderman applied to the secretary of state to have the villain apprehended, but he refused to interfere. A motion was made in the House of Commons a few nights afterwards by the same alderman; but, although some debate took place upon the subject, no effect was produced other than the exposition of the system which had been resorted to. An indictment was next preferred before the grand jury of the county of Middlesex, upon which a true bill was found; but although a reward of 100l. was offered for the apprehension of Edwards, he was nowhere to be found; and it was eventually discovered that he had gone to New Brunswick, to avoid the unpleasant consequences to which his conduct might have subjected him.