Hiden had betrayed the conspirators. Dwyer,
an Irish bricklayer, who had been employed to
muster his countrymen to carry off the fire-arms
from the Foundling, had informed the Secretary
of State by means of a Major James. An
infamous informer, named Edwards, a modeller and
image-seller at Windsor, had also spoken to a
gentleman of the king's household.

Lord Harrowby was wary, and did nothing
to scare the assassins. The dinner was secretly
put off, but not publicly or in the newspapers.
The Archbishop of York, who lived next door,
having a dinner the same day and hour, the
carriages arriving at that house deceived the
watchers whom Thistlewood had placed for the
whole day and night before in the square, and
no alarm was excited in the minds of the gang.

On the afternoon of the 23rd, Lord
Harrowby, sending word to his brother ministers,
took refuge in Lord Liverpool's house, nor did
he write to his servants to countermand the
dinner till eight o'clock in the evening. At
nine, Thistlewood and his men were to enter
Grosvenor-square.

At the time of the conspiracy, Thistlewood
lived in a two-pair front room in Stanhope-
street, Clare Market, and had long before his
last fatal plot been tried for treasonable
practices and acquitted, but afterwards, on a charge
of abetting Dr. Watson's son in the Spafields
riot, had been imprisoned in Horsham jail.
While there, he had been foolish enough to
send a challenge to Lord Sidmouth. There
can be no doubt that he was a rancorous,
savage-tempered, malignant man, capable of
any crime to effect certain undefined political
changes. Thistlewood had resolved to have
the meetings at his own house; but there
happened to be a Bow-street officer living
opposite, and he was afraid of the committees
being discovered. Brunt, his savage lieutenant,
and secretary, was a boot-closer of the
humblest kind, who rented two miserable rooms
for his wife, child, and apprentice, in Fox-court,
Gray's Inn-lane. The treasonable meetings were
held in a room in the same house in which the
prisoner Ings, the pork-butcher, also resided.
Davidson, a third conspirator, a man of colour,
was a cabinet-maker. Adams (the informer)
and Harrison, one of the selected "swordsmen,"
had both been soldiers in the Life Guards.
These men had frequently met in a back room
in the yard of the White Hart public-house,
Brook's Market, where they had been
observed by Bow-street officers. The depôt for
powder and arms was at the house of a. conspirator
named Tidd, who lived in the Hole-in-the-
Wall-passage, near Brook's Market. Harrison,
while the plot was still ripening, had rented
a stable in Cato-street, Edgeware-road. This
obscure street lies between John-street on the
east, and Queen-street on the west.

The stable belonged to General Watson, then
abroad, and a month or two before had been
used as a cowshed by a milkman named Firth.
It is the first building on the right as you enter
John-street. Nearly opposite Cato-street
was a public-house called the Horse and Groom,
where the conspirators assembled to drink and
discuss preliminaries. The steet in which the
deserted stable stood was accessible from John-
street by an archway, and opened into Queen-
street by a path guarded by posts for foot
passengers only. The stable had three stalls and
a cart-shed. Nearly opposite the door was a
step-ladder leading to a hayloft, and opening
from this loft, which had, we believe, been used
as a carpenter's shop, were two small rooms
over the cart-house. The loft had two windows,
one looking on the street, and this was kept
covered with canvas, to prevent any one seeing
in. The door of the hayloft, looking into the
street, was kept strongly barred. In the floor
of the loft were two long apertures for hay,
which opened on the racks in the stable below.

About three o'clock on the afternoon of the
23rd of February, 1820, a man living at No. 3,
Cato-street, observed Harrison, the soldier, at
work cleaning the stable, and about half-past
four, when he returned from work, the same
man saw Davidson pacing up and down the
archway in John-street, as if waiting for some
one. About six o'clock, a woman living in the
same street was startled by a man of colour,
who had previously alarmed her by his dark
face, suddenly presenting himself, and asking
for a light for his candle; another inhabitant
at No. 2 also watched twenty to thirty poor
men go in and out of the stable carrying bags
and bundles. One of them, as he stooped, had
shown that he was armed.

Several rendezvous had been appointed for
the conspirators. Some were to assemble near
John-street, and to be brought to the stable by
safe men; others were directed to the Horse
and Groom. Tidd gathered his party at Hole-
in-the-Wall-passage, Brunt at Fox's-court, while
Thistlewood was to go straight to Cato-street,
where the blunderbusses, daggers, pistols,
swords, pikes, pitch-balls, and hand-grenades
had by this time been collected.

At two o'clock on the afternoon of that day
eight or ten of the conspirators met at Brunt's
room, to fit flints to pistols and slings to
cutlasses. Many of the men were still ignorant
of what was to be done. They were only to
be told at the stable, when it was too late to
retract. On Thistlewood's arriving, he said:

"Well, my lads, this looks something like
as if you were going to do something."

He then promised to give the men liquor, and
sent out for drink for the informer Adams, who
seemed very much depressed.

At the same time he sent for cartridge-paper,
on which proclamations could be written. He
then sat down and wrote:

"Your tyrants are destroyed—the friends of
liberty are called upon, as the provisional
government is now sitting.

"JAMES INGS, Secretary.

"February 23, 1820."

These bills were to be pasted up near the