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REMARKABLE EVENTS.

Cato Street Conspiracy.

This Conspiracy was one of the most atrocious, though extravagant plots recorded in history. Its ultimate end was to effect a revolution; its immediate object, the assassination of the Ministers. The framer of this plot was Arthur Thistlewood. Born about the year 1770, he started in life originally with some fortune, and with a fair proportion of the advantages of education. He was a subaltern officer, first, in the militia, and afterwards in a regiment of the line, stationed in the West Indies. After having resigned his commission, and spent some time in America, he passed into France, where he arrived shortly after the fall of Robespierre. There he imbibed all the opinions of which that unhappy country was the propagator and the victim, and adopted the belief, that the destruction of the Institutions of his country was the only object worthy of the labours of a man. He had been deeply engaged in the absurd scheme of Dr. Watson. Having, like the Doctor been acquitted, he thought proper soon afterwards, to send a challenge to Lord Sidmouth, for which Thistlewood was tried, found guilty, and punished by fine and imprisonment.

After his liberation in Aug. 1819, actuated by a spirit of revenge, he employed himself in forming connections with the most degraded of the lowest and poorest class. Ings, a Butcher, Tidd and Brunt, Shoemakers, and a man of colour named Davison, were his principal confidants. These men held meetings in a hired room in the neighbourhood of Gray's Inn Lane, where the necessity of murdering the Ministers and subverting the Government was frequently discussed. At length, at a Meeting held on Saturday the 19th of Feb. 1820, it was resolved that poverty did not allow them to delay their purposes any longer, and that, therefore, the Ministers should be murdered separately, each in his own house, on the following Wednesday. Meetings were held on the Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, and the whole plan was arranged. On the latter day, however, Thistlewood was informed by a conspirator named Edwards, who was

a spy in the pay of Government, that a Cabinet dinner was to take place at Lord Harrowby's house in Grosvenor Square on the morrow. Thistlewood immediately procured a Newspaper, and, on reading the announcement, exclaimed," It will be a rare haul to murder them all together!" Fresh arrangements were determined on, and it was agreed that one of their number was to go to the door with a note, and when it was opened, the others were to rush in; and while a part secured the servants, the remainder were to force themselves into the apartment where the Ministers were assembled, and murder them without mercy; it was particularly specified that the heads of Lords Sidmouth and Castlereagh were to be brought away in a bag. The other parts of the plan were so absurd and extravagant, that it is not necessary here to specify them.

The Wednesday was spent in preparing weapons and ammunition, and in writing proclamations; and towards six in the evening, the conspirators assembled in a stable situated in Cato Street, Edgware Road. The building contained two rooms over the stable, 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 preparing for the bloody catastrophe.

The Ministers, however, had been made acquainted by Edwards, with every step that had hitherto been taken; and a man named Hidon, who had been solicited to join in the plot, had warned Lord Harrowby of it, on Tuesday. The preparations for the dinner were continued, lest the conspirators should take alarm, though no dinner was in fact to be given.

In the mean time, a strong party of Bow Street Officers, headed by Mr. Birnie, proceeded to Cato Street, where they were to be met and supported by a detachment of the Coldstream Guards, under the command of Captain Fitzclarence. The officers arrived about 8 o'clock, and entering the stable, mounted the ladder, and found the conspirators in the loft, on the point of proceeding to the execution of their scheme. Smithers, one of the officers, attempting to seize Thistlewood, was pierced by him through the body, and immediately fell. The lights

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were then extinguished, and some of the conspirators escaped through a window at the back of the premises. The military detachment now arrived, and by the joint exertions of the soldiers and officers, nine 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 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 on his trial. The principal witness was a conspirator of the name of Adams, who had escaped from Cato Street, but had been taken on the following Friday, and had remained in custody up to the time he was produced in Court to give evidence. After a trial which lasted three days, the accused was found guilty of High Treason, by having conspired to levy war against the King. Ings, Brunt, Field and Davison were afterwards severally tried and convicted. The remaining six, permission being given to withdraw their former plea, 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; and the other five had their sentence commuted to transportation for life. Thistlewood with the four above-named prisoners, was executed on the 1st of May; all of them, excepting Davison, who was very repentant, glorying in what they had attempted, and regretting its failure, rather than repenting of their atrocious guilt.

The discovery of this plot created a great sensation throughout the kingdom, and some were found to complain of the use which government had made of spies on this occasion. But as the guilt of the prisoners was established by evidence altogether independent of Edwards, the case was free from the circumstance, which renders the use of spies most objectionable, viz. the hazard of confiding in the testimony or information of men, who are professedly pursuing a system of deceit and treachery. The plot was clearly proved to be the result of most infuriated depravity; and it is also fully

established, by the declaration of Thistlewood, made immediately before his execution, that Edwards was neither its instigator or framer; it was therefore absurd to talk of the seduction of men, who, in a court of justice, defended assassination as a virtue, and even on the scaffold, exulted in the remembrance of their scheme of murder, as a picture, with the contemplation of which their fancy could never be satiated.

Sir Charles Warwick Bampfylde, Bart. was shot in the street, in the open day, shortly after he had come out of his house in Montagu Square, on the 7th of April, 1823. J. Morland, the assassin, had formerly been in his service, and his wife was in Sir Charles's service at the time. Upon seeing that his aim had taken effect, Morland discharged a second pistol into his own mouth, which killed him on the spot. This horrible deed was committed while under the influence of jealousy, which has since been proved to have been entirely groundless. Sir Charles lingered till the 19th, when he expired in great agony. The jury which sat on the body of the murderer, having returned a verdict of felo de se, his body was buried in the cross road, opposite St. John's Wood Chapel. Sir Charles was descended from one of the most distinguished families in Devonshire, and was in his 71st year.

On the 21st of June, 1825, the square of houses formed by Great Titchfield Street, Wells Street, Mortimer Street, and Margaret Street, was nearly all destroyed by a dreadful fire, which commenced in the workshops of Mr. Crozet, carver and gilder, in Great Titchfield Street; caused by a kettle containing a compound called French polish, boiling over, which set fire to some shavings of wood. The flames spread rapidly to the premises of Mr. Woolley, a stable-keeper; Mr. Stoddart, a pianoforte-maker; Mr. Stout, who had a mahogany and timber-yard; Mr. Messer, a coachmaker; Messrs. Bolton and Sparrow, Upholsterers; the Chapel of Ease in Margaret Street; Mr. Pears, perfumer; Mr.

Arnold, grocer; Miss Storer and Mrs. Vennes. In Mortimer Street, the houses of Mr. Wales, cabinetmaker; Mr. Hunt, card-maker; Mr. Reid, sofa and chairmaker; Mr. Kensett, cabinet-maker; and Messrs. Holt and Scheffer, were in a short time reduced to ruins. A party of the guards soon arrived at the spot, and assisted the police officers in aiding the firemen, and preventing plunder. But all the exertions of the firemen, with a plentiful supply of water, appeared to have no effect in extinguishing the flames. In the whole, not less than 30 houses and shops were destroyed; more than 100 families were thus deprived of a home; and many who were lodgers, lost all they possessed, excepting the property they carried about their persons. Among the property burnt were some of the valuable carvings belonging to the Duke of Rutland, which were deposited in one of the warehouses, and on which an insurance to a large amount had been effected in the Westminster Fire Office. His late Royal Highness the Duke of York, and several of the Nobility, visited the ruins and set on foot a liberal subscription for the sufferers.

Joanna Southcott. This notorious impostor was a native of Exeter, and, in conjunction with others, had long practised on the ignorance and credulity of the lower classes, by a series of the most gross and impious absurdities. It is also lamentable to record that very many persons of respectable condition in life, from whom better things might have been expected, suffered themselves to be deluded by her irrational and abominable pretensions. She died at her house in Manchester Street, Manchester Square, Dec.. 27, 1814. The silencing of her preacher Tozer, and shutting up of the chapel, which he had opened, had by no means diminished the number of her believers, nor had the non-completion of her prophecies decreased, apparently, their faith. Her corpse,

after having been examined by the surgeons, was removed, on the 31st to an undertaker's in Oxford Street, where it remained till the interment. On the 3d of January, it was carried in a hearse, so remarkably plain