Shortly after the arrival of the cavalcade at the police-office, in Bow-street, Mr. Birnie, the Magistrate, arrived, and having taken his seat at the bench, the prisoners were placed at the bar in the following order:—
James Ings, a butcher,
James Wilson, a tailor,
Richard Bradburn, a carpenter,
James Gilchrist, a shoemaker,
Charles Cooper, a bootmaker,
Richard Tidd, a bootmaker,
John Monument, a shoemaker,
John Shaw, a carpenter, and
William Davidson, a cabinet-maker.
Davidson is a man of colour, and a worthy coadjutor of Messrs. Watson, Thistlewood, and Co., upon many occasions. At the meeting in Finsbury market-place, a few months ago, this fellow was one of the principal speakers, and advised the persons assembled to go armed to all public meetings; and was also the bearer of the black flag, with a death’s head, in the mob which attempted to excite a tumult in Covent-garden, during the election. When Ellis, the officer, was putting the handcuffs on him, he amused himself by vociferating passages from the popular air of “Scots wha ha’e wi’ Wallace bled,” and frequently exclaiming, “B—st and d—n the eyes of all those who would not die for liberty.”
Ings is a fierce ruffian, a short stout man, apparently between 30 and 40, but of most determined aspect. His hands were covered with blood; and as he stood at the bar, manacled to one of his wretched confederates, his large fiery eyes glared round upon the spectators with an expression truly horrible. The rest had nothing extraordinary in their appearance. They were for the most part men of short stature, mean exterior, and unmarked physiognomy.
The office was crowded with soldiers and officers, bringing in arms and ammunition of various kinds, which had been taken on the premises; muskets, carabines, broad-swords, pistols, blunderbusses, belts, and cartouch-boxes, ball cartridges, gunpowder, (found loose in the pockets of the prisoners), haversacks, and a large bundle of singularly-constructed stilettoes. These latter were about 18 inches long, and triangular in form: two of the sides being concave, and the other flat; the lower extremity having been flattened, and then wrung round spirally, so as to make a firm grip, and ending in a screw, as if to fit into the top of a staff. Several staves indeed were produced, fitted at one end with a screwed socket; and no doubt they were intended to receive this formidable weapon.
The depositions of a number of officers, most of them wounded, and several of the soldiers, having been taken, their evidence substantiating the foregoing narrative, the prisoners were asked whether they wished to say any thing? Cooper, and Davidson the black, were the only ones who replied, and they merely appealed to the officers and soldiers to say, whether they had not instantly surrendered themselves. Ellis, the patrol, who received the murdered body of his comrade Smithers in his arms, replied, that Davidson had made the most resistance. At the moment when the lights were extinguished, he had rushed out of the place, armed with a carbine, and wearing white cross-belts. Ellis pursued him a considerable distance along John-street; and, having caught him, they fell together, and in the deadly struggle which ensued, Davidson discharged his carbine, but without effect, and Ellis succeeded in securing him.
Captain Fitzclarence had seized and secured one or two of the prisoners with his own hands, and he was not only much bruised, but his uniform was almost torn to pieces.
We will here shortly digress, for the purpose of stating the immediate circumstances which led to the frustration of the sanguinary plot, and the arrest of its fiend-like authors.
It had been for some time well known to government, that Thistlewood, forgetful of his narrow escape on the former occasion of an indictment for High Treason[1], and, as it were, unconscious of the blessings of that constitution, which in the equal and upright administration of justice to all, gives to the accused party the advantage of the conscientious doubts of the jury, and which beneficent feature in the trial by a British Jury had alone saved him from condign punishment, had never ceased to pursue his disloyal and traitorous designs, but had still continued in darkness and obscurity, to hatch new plots, as preposterous as diabolical, and to entrap new agents, as weak as they were wicked, and as certain of being ultimately involved in the same sacrifice to public justice, as he himself seemed devoted to by a besotted perseverance in his horrid principles.
Conscious, however, as were the ministers that some dreadful scheme was perfecting, and that a tremendous blow was about to be struck, they were ignorant of the time or nature of the intended movement, until the very day destined for its consummation, when a communication was made to the Secretary of State for the Home Department, by Lord Harrowby, who stated that he had that morning been stopped by a man, when riding in St James’s-park, who delivered to him a letter, the contents of which were, that a gang of assassins were to assassinate his Lordship and the rest of the cabinet ministers, when assembled at his house on the evening of that day at a cabinet dinner. His Lordship, although he did not know the man, listened to his representation, in addition to the contents of the letter, and afterwards consulted his brother ministers upon the subject; and they immediately determined to postpone the cabinet dinner.