Enemies of the State by M. J. Trow Read Free Book Online Page A

could withstand the shot and shell of any government-ordered artillery attack. Beyond the outer wall was the hell-hole of Tower Hill, a rookery where would-be insurgents could easily be found to join the rising.
    The second article referred to the seizure of the Bank of England in Threadneedle Street. It contained gold bullion as well as Pitt’s hated paper money and would provide funds for the revolution. Woolwich was the next target. It was nine miles from London Bridge but the Royal Arsenal there, founded in the seventeenth century, was three and a half miles long and one mile wide. If the rebels could take that, there was nothing that could stand against them. The fourth article, which was rejected, was that parliament should be seized while both houses were sitting. Although attendance was not usually compulsory, at a stroke the political leadership of the country would be in Jacobin hands. The fifth article talked of the pay back for the soldiers who had mounted this revolution. Each man would receive one guinea (£1 1s) per week and to be allowed to retire from the army with 10 acres of land and cash to cultivate it. The final article discussed the idea of winning the many over to the cause. Over London and any other towns that carried out their own coups, flags of liberty were to be flown. ‘Conductors’ (agitators) were to organize such campaigns in the outlying areas, drill ‘soldiers’ and obtain weapons for the purpose.
    This was a military plan, broadly accepted or perhaps even proposed by Despard. And in essence it was the right thing to do. Had the army and navy gone over to the revolutionaries, there was every chance of success. This had already been proved by the French experience and would be again in Russiain 1917. Where Despard’s followers seriously miscalculated was the actual mood of the people of 1802. The Tower garrison would not crack and run up a white flag as de Launay’s Bastille men had done. The down-and-outs of Tower Hill could not be relied upon to join the movement and how much use would underfed civilians be against an efficient, well-equipped army?
    None of this, of course, was ever put to the test. On 16 November 1802, a large body of Runners from Bow Street descended on the Oakley Arms in Lambeth and arrested nearly forty men, most of them Irish, after a tip-off. The next day they all appeared before a magistrate. Despard, who refused to say a word, was sent to Newgate. This grimmest of London gaols had been totally destroyed by the mob in the Gordon Riots and rebuilt. Only twenty years old when Despard arrived, it was already a slum, with gaol fever claiming large numbers of its shackled inhabitants. Twelve of his followers, six of them soldiers, were sent to the Bridewell at Tothill Fields. Unlike Newgate, this place was well managed by its governor, George Smith, even though it was forced to accommodate extra prisoners after the closure of the Gatehouse Gaol in Westminster in 1777. Twenty others were sent to the New Prison in Clerkenwell, one of the smallest in London after its rebuilding following the Gordon Riots. It was a house of detention with separate male and female wards and specialized in holding people awaiting trial. The remaining ten who had been bundled up in the police raid were found in an adjoining room, had no links with Despard and were released.
    The trial opened on Monday 7 February and the Attorney-General went through the motions of his case. In the dock were Edward Marcus Despard, ‘a colonel in the army’ aged 56; John Francis, a soldier, aged 23; John Wood, another soldier, aged 36; Thomas Broughton, a carpenter, aged 26; James Sedgwick Wratton, a shoemaker, aged 35; John McNamara, another carpenter, aged 50; and Arthur Graham, a slater, aged 53. All of them were married men, many with children. In the course of the trial, other members of the gang were acquitted or pardoned, but these seven were held to be at the heart of