The Cato Street conspiracy: 'The first duty of a patriot is to massacre the government and overturn the existing institutions'

The expectation at the end of the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) was that a triumphant Britain would embark on a period of unparalleled tranquility and prosperity. However, economic crisis and the continuing appeal of the ideas of Thomas Paine and the French revolution (1789) saw the country in ferment, with increasingly vociferous radical movements and an obtuse governing class fearful of change. The defining event, perhaps, in this tumultuous period, was the Peterloo Massacre (1819), which hardened feelings on all sides. Radicals saw it as evidence of the implacable nature of the elite and the futility of peaceful politics, while the elite believed it demonstrated the need to come down hard on political discontent in case it should take on revolutionary proportions.

The Cato Street conspiracy (1820) – a Guy Fawksian plot to kill the cabinet, overthrow the government and establish a revolutionary government – took place in this climate. The plot was absurdly ambitious, made even more ludicrous by the fact that it was largely guided by government agents, who infiltrated and encouraged the plotters – a band of desperate, destitute outcasts – in order to provide an excuse for the state to scare and rally the population and crack down on dissidence.

With all the talk of tyranny, foreign domination, political polarisation, class war, traitors and patriots – whose narrative truly represents the national interest and what is it to love your country – the parallels between 1820 and now are obvious. However, the Cato Street conspiracy also reveals the human folly and frailty reflected not only in the lives and hopes of the plotters – which climaxed on the gallows – but also in their prime target – the hate figure of the age’s political radicals, Byron’s ‘placid miscreant’, Shelley’s ‘Swellfoot the tyrant’ – Lord Castlereagh, a Shakespearean figure, whose life ended in madness and suicide. 

The Cato Street conspiracy, then, is the tragicomic story of the men who would bring down the British Empire – Arthur Thistlewood, a professional radical from Lincolnshire (‘the first duty of a patriot is to massacre the government and overturn the existing institutions’); Thomas Brunt, a shoemaker from Clerkenwell; Richard Tidd, a shoemaker from Lincolnshire; James Ings, a butcher from Portsmouth; William Davidson, a cabinet-maker from Jamaica; and of the torment and demise of the main object of their revulsion, Lord Castlereagh, who went from national hero for defeating Napoleon to a man derided for his brutal repression of dissent at home, increasingly wracked by doubt and mental turmoil, leading, ultimately, to his suicide.