An Authentic History of the Cato-Street Conspiracy / With the trials at large of the conspirators, for high treason and murder, a description of their weapons and combustible machines, and every particular connected with the rise, progress, discovery, and termination of the horrid plot

by George Theodore Wilkinson

“May it please your Lordship, and gentlemen of the jury; you are now assembled to discharge one of the most important duties that can devolve to the province of a jury, to decide upon the guilt or innocence of a party charged with the highest offence known to the law; and, upon such an occasion, I am satisfied it is unnecessary for me to bespeak your patient attention to the case before you, still less even to hint to you the necessity of coming to the investigation with unbiassed and unprejudiced minds. You, I am sure, will discharge from your recollection every thing you may have heard or read relative to the charge which is about to be preferred against the prisoner at the bar, confining your attention solely and exclusively to the evidence which will be adduced in support of the charge, and forming your conclusion on that evidence only. Gentlemen, the charge as I have stated to you, is one of the highest nature known to the law. Other offences, generally speaking, however heinous and however enormous, may in their consequences, except so far as example is concerned, end with the fate of the perpetrators, or with the individuals who have been injured; but, with respect to high treason, not only in its inception, but still more so if it is unfortunately completed, it draws after it consequences of the most important kind, affecting, not merely individuals, but the whole community against whom it is directed.

“Gentlemen, I shall not trouble you in the observations I have to make to you, painful as the duty now imposed upon me is, with any lengthened detail with regard to the law as it affects the charge imputed to the prisoner; because, if I mistake not, that law is so clear, and if I err not greatly, the facts that will be proved to you will establish the case against the prisoner in so clear and satisfactory a manner, that it would be an idle affectation in me to cite any authorities before you in support of the charge; because if the overt acts, as they are called, or any of them, are proved to your satisfaction (and I have no doubt but a considerable number of them will be proved,) no man who hears me can entertain the slightest doubt that the offence charged in the indictment will be established in point of law.

“Gentlemen, the charges in this indictment, though four in number, will be all proved to you by the same evidence; and if the evidence I shall lay before you be sufficient to establish one of them, it will, I believe, completely establish the whole. Three of the offences charged, consist in compassing and imagining the deposition of the King from his throne; the death of the King; and a conspiracy to levy war, in order to compel him to change his measures for the government of the kingdom.

“It is hardly necessary for me to state to you, that in proof of these charges, it is not essential that the plans of the parties accused should aim directly and immediately either at the life or the deposition of his Majesty; because, if they are aimed at that form of government which now exists—if intended to bring about a change in the system of rule now established, by means of war, which would naturally tend to effect that which must ultimately result either in the removal of the King from his kingly dignity, or in compelling him to change his measures in Council, that would be high treason; and therefore in these cases it is quite sufficient to shew that the plans framed were of a description and nature aiming against the government, (which will undoubtedly be proved in this case) although not directly and in the first instance aimed against the personal safety or the personal authority of the Crown. If, therefore, the consequences of the acts of the accused in this case, if those acts had been perfected, must inevitably have led to these results, they establish in point of law the treason charged; and therefore, Gentlemen, not to bewilder you in the inquiry which you are about to enter upon, I think it quite sufficient in the outset to state to you, that, in which I believe I shall be confirmed by the highest authority in the law when this case comes to be summed up to you, viz., that if the overt acts and facts charged in the indictment as evidencing the intention existing in the minds of the conspirators be proved to your satisfaction, they do prove the charges laid in this indictment; and, therefore, it is unnecessary to trouble you with any further observations on the law of the case.

“Gentlemen, important as the duty is which you are called upon to discharge, and anxious as that duty certainly must be to you, mine, I say, is no less anxious; for although in the address I purpose making to you, I do assure you I mean only to inform your minds of the nature of the charge brought before you, and of the evidence by which that charge will be substantiated, yet my duty is most painful; and I make this address with no view of leading your minds to any conclusion which the evidence itself does not warrant—with no intention of making any addition of my own, for, God knows, the facts want no addition to accelerate the inevitable conclusion to which you must come. It is my duty to state to you, as counsel for the prosecution, the case against the unfortunate man at the bar, as detailed to me in my instructions. My anxiety, therefore, is, I do assure you most conscientiously, not by any thing I shall state to you to attempt to lead or direct your minds to the conclusion which you ought only to draw from the evidence, but to state to you calmly and fairly the facts which I believe will be proved, without any attempt at exaggeration on the one hand, or any thing but a fair and candid narrative on the other, without any colouring whatever, because no colouring can alter the real facts of the case, however high. If I should err in this, and if in any thing I state to you, you shall, when you come to make up your minds, think the statement not proved in evidence, or the observations or inferences which I may have drawn shall not be fairly borne out by the facts proved, you will dismiss them from your minds, and confine your attention to that alone which is proved. But if you believe the statement I shall make, if you believe the observations made in that statement are fair and natural on the facts, then you will give them the weight they deserve, and you will suffer them to operate so far, and no further, as you, in your judgment, think they ought.

“Gentlemen, having said thus much, I will, without farther preface, call your attention as perspicuously and as shortly as I can to the facts which will be proved in evidence to support the charges. The prisoner at the bar, Arthur Thistlewood, must be already known to you by name; but, as I before stated to you, let nothing that you have known or heard of him before you came into this court to discharge the solemn duty you are bound to perform, have the least effect upon that verdict you are to pronounce. The prisoner at the bar, however, I state to you, as it will be proved in evidence, had for some time conceived the wicked and nefarious plan of overturning the government so long established in this country; and it will appear to you that several, nay, all of the persons mentioned in the indictment, were participators in the same design; some of them, probably, coming into that purpose and design at a later period than others, but all of them concurring in the last criminal event which led to their detection. I shall prove to you by the most satisfactory evidence, that all of them were combining in that act, which was to be the commencement of that revolution in the country, which was meditated. I would, however, call your attention to two persons, whose names you will frequently hear in the course of this inquiry, I mean a person of the name of James Ings, and a person of the name of John Thomas Brunt.

“The prisoner at the bar resided, during the time of the transaction which I am about to relate to you, in Stanhope-street, Clare Market. The person named Brunt, I believe, was a shoe-maker or boot-closer, residing at a place which will be frequently mentioned in the course of the evidence, Fox-court, Gray’s Inn-lane; he inhabited two rooms in a house in that court, I believe the second floor, and in one of which his trade was carried on, and in the other his family, consisting of himself, his wife, an apprentice of the name of Hales, and his son, lived.

“I shall not carry your attention very far back in the narrative of this transaction; it will be sufficient for me particularly in the outset, to call your attention to circumstances that took place between the close of the month of January and the 23d of the following month of February. Undoubtedly it will appear to you, that long prior to that period the prisoner at the bar, the two persons I have mentioned, and several of the others, whose names are included in this indictment, had consulted and devised plans for the purpose of overturning the Government. They had frequent meetings at a public-house, called the White Hart, in Brooks’ Market, in a room which they had obtained for the purpose of these meetings, behind that public-house.

“About the latter end of January, or at the commencement of the month of February, they thought it prudent to remove their meetings from this place, and that it would be better that they should be carried on, if possible, in a room in the house where Brunt lived in Fox-court; and to avoid suspicion, they therefore had recourse to this contrivance, that another room in that house, and upon the same floor on which Brunt resided, should be taken by the prisoner Ings, who is, I believe, by trade a butcher. Brunt and Ings on that occasion hired that room, for the avowed purpose of a lodging for Ings, but for the secret and real object of having their meetings there, where they might devise their plans, and prepare the means for carrying the object of their conspiracy into execution; that being a place of more security and privacy than the one at which they had previously held their assemblies.

“At the close of the month of January, or the beginning of the month of February, you will learn, that having previously prepared means for effecting their plans, their meetings at Brunt’s room became more frequent and regular. They had determined—and, Gentlemen, I here regret, that in an English Court of Justice I have to state to you the horrible purpose which then entered into their minds, and the way in which they intended to consummate the nefarious operations they had in view.—It was thought by Englishmen, that the assassination of several, if not all, of his Majesty’s ministers would be a proper step towards carrying into effect the revolution they intended; and you will find that they meditated and consulted on the means by which that horrible purpose was to be completed. They entertained hopes that they might be enabled, at some meeting of his Majesty’s ministers, to effect all at once the double purpose they had conceived. Having done that, they intended at the same moment, or about the same time, to set fire to various parts of this metropolis—to endeavour to obtain possession of the cannon which were at the Artillery Ground, and at the Light Horse Volunteers’ Stables in Gray’s Inn-lane—to create as much confusion and dismay as they could by these various operations, and then to establish, what, in their vain expectations, they had imagined themselves capable of effecting—a provisional government, the seat of which was to be at the Mansion-house. They had frequent deliberations on this plan.