once, and then seizing on the
Bank, Mansion House, and Tower of London, and from these strongholds
proclaiming the existence of a provisional government.

Now the whole notion of such a plot as this, and any possible success
coming out of it, may seem, at first sight, too crazy to be accepted by
any set of men, however ignorant or however wicked, who were not
downright lunatics. But it is certain that Thistlewood did find a
small number of men who were not actually lunatics, and who yet were
ready to join with him and to risk their lives in his enterprise. The
first act in the plot was to be the assassination of the King's
ministers. One of the professional spies in the employment of the
authorities, a man named Edwards, was already in communication with
Thistlewood and his friends. The plot had been for a considerable time
in preparation, and it was put off for a while because of the death of
George the Third, and the hopes entertained by the conspirators that
the new King might go back to the political principles of his earlier
years, discard Lord Liverpool, Lord Sidmouth, and his other Tory
advisers, and thus render it unnecessary for patriotic men to put them
to death in order to save the country.

When, however, it became apparent that George the Fourth was to keep
around him the ministers who had served him when he was Prince Regent,
it was determined that the work must go on. Edwards, the spy, was able
to make it known to Thistlewood that there was to be a dinner of the
members of the Cabinet on February 23, 1820, and the opportunity was
thought to be placed by a kindly fate in the hands of the conspirators.
Meanwhile the minister at whose house the dinner was to take place,
Lord {18} Harrowby, was kept fully informed of all that was going on,
and he wisely resolved to take no public notice of the scheme until the
day for the dinner should arrive, when the instruments of the wholesale
murder-plot could be suddenly arrested at the moment of their attempt
to carry out their design. Thistlewood and most of his companions had
their headquarters in the garrets of a house in Cato Street, Edgware
Road, and there it was arranged among them that they should remain
until one or two of their accomplices, who were kept at watch for the
purpose, should come to them and report that the doomed dinner-guests
had assembled. Then the conspirators were to repair to the
neighborhood of Lord Harrowby's house in Grosvenor Squ