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71-505: The Despard Plot was a failed 1802 conspiracy by British revolutionaries led by Colonel Edward Marcus Despard , a former army officer and colonial official. Evidence presented in court suggested that Despard planned to assassinate the monarch George III and seize key strong points in London such as the Bank of England and Tower of London as a prelude to a wider uprising by the population of

142-639: A debtors' prison . There he read Thomas Paine 's Rights of Man . A response to Edmund Burke 's Reflections on the Revolution in France , it was a vindication of the "wild and Levelling principle of Universal Equality" he had been accused of administering in the Bay. By the time Despard was released from the King's Bench Prison in 1794, Paine had been forced to take refuge in the new French Republic , with which

213-526: A cannon to fire at the King's carriage as it was going to what was then called Buckingham House . It is unlikely that Despard favoured this plan, as it was viewed as very dangerous and still hoped that men in high places, such as the politician Francis Burdett , would agree to non-regicidal changes in government. Though that may be true, evidence produced at the trial suggests that Despard did indeed consider regicide. Sir Edward O'Brien Pryce approached authorities

284-478: A coup in London. The Oakley Arms, however, did not appear from the testimony to have been the headquarters of the conspiracy, and Despard had only been there on one occasion before his arrest. To implicate Despard, he relied heavily on the many mentions of his name in United Irish correspondence. But at "several stages removed from the colonel's actions" these were often from persons Despard had never met. It

355-649: A dinner party) Despard was arrested. He was seized attending a meeting of 40 working men at the Oakley Arms public house in Lambeth . Taken in chains to be interrogated by the Privy Council the next day, he was charged with High Treason . Government informers named him as the ringleader of a United Britons conspiracy that engaged, alongside day-labourers and journeymen, no fewer than 300 Grenadier Guardsmen in plans to assassinate King George III and seize

426-547: A friend to the poor and to the oppressed. But, Citizens, I hope and trust, notwithstanding my fate, and the fate of those who no doubt will soon follow me, that the principles of freedom, of humanity, and of justice, will finally triumph over falsehood, tyranny and delusion, and every principle inimical to the interests of the human race. [a warning from the Sheriff] I have little more to add, except to wish you all health, happiness and freedom, which I have endeavoured, as far as

497-480: A generic name either for legislation bearing that short title or for all legislation which relates to the unlawful oaths. The Unlawful Oaths Acts 1797 and 1812 The Unlawful Oaths (Ireland) Acts Unlawful Oaths Acts were also passed in 1839, 1848 and 1875. The Unlawful Oaths Act 1797 ( 37 Geo. 3 . c. 123) was an act passed by the British Parliament . The act was passed in the aftermath of

568-569: A government informer reported that a United Irish delegation, travelling to France via London, had applied to Despard for the necessary documents. It is possible that this was Coigly's party. In December 1797 Coigly returned from France with news of French plans for an invasion, but on 28 February 1798, when seeking again to cross the Channel in a party of five he and Arthur O'Connor were arrested. O'Connor, able to call Charles James Fox , Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Henry Grattan in his defence,

639-436: A link between her husband and the other revolutionaries with their colleagues and families outside the prison. She had worked for improvement of prison conditions, including the necessities of life: warmth, fresh air, food, space, writing materials, and access to friends and families. She was, essentially, a courier between the condemned and the outside world, and furthermore an intrepid correspondent. The prison wardens feared she

710-535: A royal commendation and the rank of colonel. While leading reconnoitring missions, Despard again worked intimately with the African-Indian Miskitos Olaudah Equiano , a former slave who had lived among them in the 1770s, recorded that "These Indians live under an almost perfect equality, and there are no rich or poor among them. They do not strive to accumulate, and the great unwearied exertion, found among our civilised societies,

781-421: A scaffold for a crime of which I protest I am not guilty. I solemnly declare that I am no more guilty of it than any of you who may be now hearing me. But though His Majesty’s Ministers know as well as I do that I am not guilty, yet they avail themselves of a legal pretext to destroy a man, because he has been a friend to truth, to liberty, and to justice [a considerable huzzah from the crowd] because he has been

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852-724: Is possible that Despard had been little more than an intended figurehead for a rising, chosen as someone who gained some public notoriety and sympathy for his harsh imprisonment in Cold Bath Fields. Lord Nelson , then famous for his victory in the Battle of the Nile , made a dramatic appearance as a character witness in Despard's defence: "We went on the Spanish Main together; we slept many nights together in our clothes upon

923-584: Is possible that the young Despard was acquainted with David Hume in Paris, where the Scottish enlightenment philosopher and historian attended Hertford as the embassy secretary. In 1766, aged fifteen, Despard followed his older brothers – one of whom, John Despard (1745–1829), was to rise to the rank of full general  – into the British Army . He enrolled as an ensign in

994-684: Is unknown among them". After the Peace of Paris which concluded the war in 1783, Despard was made Superintendent of the British logwood concessions in the Bay of Honduras (present-day Belize ). As directed from London, Despard sought to accommodate British subjects, the "Shoremen", displaced in the evacuation agreed with the Spanish ( Convention of London 1786 ) of the Miskito Coast. To the dismay of

1065-721: The American War of Independence Despard served with distinction in sea-borne descents upon the Spanish Kingdom of Guatemala . He fought alongside Horatio Nelson (and attained the rank of captain) in the San Juan expedition of 1780. Two years later he commanded the British force that in the Battle of the Black River recovered British settlements on the Miskito Coast from the Spanish, for which he received

1136-524: The Combination Acts , and continued protest over food shortages encouraged renewed organisation among former conspirators. A military system and pike manufacture began to spread across the mill districts of Lancashire and Yorkshire, and regular meetings resumed between county and London delegates. On 16 November 1802, not long after again meeting Dowdall (who on his return to Ireland, had spoken openly of an insurrectionary conspiracy in London, at

1207-786: The Combination Laws of 1799 and 1800 rendered union activity among workers criminal. With hostilities with France suspended by the Treaty of Amiens , Despard, who had not been charged, was released in May 1802. There was no indication that he was intending to renew his seditious activity – in prison he had petitioned for voluntary transportation. But he returned to Ireland where he met with William Dowdall, recently released from Fort George in Scotland . With Thomas Russell and other state prisoners, Dowdall had been in contact with

1278-651: The London Corresponding Society and their host Thomas Muir of the Society of the Friends of the People were sentenced to fourteen years transportation . When in May 1794 an attempt to indict the radical English MP John Horne Tooke for treason misfired with a jury, the ministry of William Pitt (Grenville's cousin) renewed what was to have been an eight-month suspension of Habeas Corpus . In

1349-576: The Royal Navy . Furthermore, several of those arrested were Irish labourers who "had been united in Ireland", a phrase which historian Peter Linebaugh used to claim that "the mass terror of killing, torture, and deportation following the Irish Rebellion of 1798 had not extinguished the oath of the United Irish or the brotherhood of affection and communion of rights it expressed". The tavern

1420-575: The Tower of London and Bank of England . Despard was prosecuted by Attorney General Spencer Perceval , before Lord Ellenborough , the Lord Chief Justice in a Special Commission on Monday, 7 February 1803. Perceval had evidence that others in the club room of the Oakley Arms had discussed an insurrectionary plot with connections (he did not see fit to detail in court) to a northern underground: United Englishmen committed to rise on news of

1491-417: The 50th Foot . Posted with his regiment to Jamaica , Despard served as a defence-works engineer and in 1772 was promoted to lieutenant . His work required him to lead "motley crews", including free blacks, Miskitos and others of mixed-ancestry. In "forming and coordinating the gangs of workers whose labour was his triumph", it has been suggested that Despard was " creolized " in his sympathies". During

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1562-521: The Baymen as an "arbitrary aristocracy". He buttressed his argument with the results of the magistracy election in which he had stood shortly before he left, winning a resounding majority on an unprecedented turnout. But "the cause of electoral representation struck no chord with Grenville": he had bought his own seat in Parliament and had served as Chief Secretary for Ireland without being persuaded of

1633-481: The Baymen's entreaty that under "Despard's constitution" the "negroes in servitude, observing the now exalted status of their brethren of yesterday [the free, and now propertied, blacks among the Shoremen] would be induced to revolt, and the settlement must be ruined ", in 1790 Sydney's successor, Lord Grenville , recalled Despard to London. Despard supplied Grenville with a 500-page report in which he characterized

1704-542: The British Crown was now at war, and in both Britain and Ireland some of his more ardent admirers were beginning to consider universal franchise and annual parliaments a cause for physical force. In October 1793, a British Convention in Edinburgh , with delegates from English corresponding societies attending, was broken up by the authorities on charges of sedition . Joseph Gerrald and Maurice Margarot of

1775-537: The Colonel's character references such as that given by Evan Nepean and Horatio Nelson , who had been his companion in Honduras ; the jury was also unsure about the lack of solid evidence and, consequently, Despard and his colleagues were found guilty of high treason but the jury recommended mercy. The proposed execution raised considerable anxiety, given that it was to be in an area congested by working men (exactly

1846-746: The English Working Class (1963), E. P. Thompson identified the Despard affair as "an incident of real significance in British political history". It appeared to "justify the Government's policy of 'alarm' and of the suspension of popular liberties". At the same time, for Jacobin ultras it initiated "the strategy (or, perhaps, fantasy) of the coup d'etat" that was to issue in the Cato Street Conspiracy of 1820. Edward Despard Edward Marcus Despard (1751 – 21 February 1803), an Irish officer in

1917-560: The Napoleonic Wars. The final trace of him in the family records is an episode recounted by General John Despard, Edward's older brother, who was leaving a London theatre when he heard a carriage driver calling the family name. He made his way towards the carriage he assumed was his, "and there appeared a flashy Creole and a flashy young lady on his arm, and they both stepped into it". Madame Tussauds famous waxworks in London showcased an effigy of Edward Despard, using him as one of

1988-526: The Prime Minister and the King, but secured only a waiving of the then already archaic rites of disembowelment. Magistrates, however, insisted on the "drawing" – there had never been a conviction for high treason without dragging the sentenced to the gallows in a carriage without wheels. Seated for the purpose of the drawing backwards upon hay bales and bumped across the cobbled courtyard of Horsemonger Lane Gaol , Despard burst out laughing. The sentence

2059-511: The United Englishmen's constitution which called for independence for Britain and Ireland, equal rights, and compensation for those who fall in the struggle to achieve these ideals. Although the United Englishmen's constitution was revolutionary, there was little evidence of planned regicide. The 1797 Act Against Administering Unlawful Oaths made these constitutions stronger evidence for rebellion, but not necessarily for regicide. Like

2130-590: The United Irishmen during the Armagh Disturbances , arrived from Manchester. There, as a test for "United Englishmen", he had been administering an oath to "Remove the diadem and take off the crown ... [to] exalt him that is low and abuse him that is high". In London Coigly met with the leading Irish members of the LCS. In addition to Despard, these included Society President Alexander Galloway, and

2201-411: The advantages of property, of all civil and political rights whatsoever". Together with John Wood, 36, John Francis, 23, both guardsmen, Thomas Broughton, 26, a carpenter, James Sedgwick Wratton, 35, a shoemaker, Arthur Graham, 53, a slater, and John Macnamara, a labourer, Despard was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered . With Nelson's assistance, Catherine Despard appealed for clemency to both

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2272-673: The brothers Benjamin and John Binns . Meetings were held at Furnival's Inn, Holborn , where, convening as the "United Britons", delegates from London, Scotland and the regions committed themselves "to overthrow the present Government, and to join the French as soon as they made a landing in England" (in December 1796 only weather had prevented a major French landing in Ireland ). At this point, it appears that Despard held "a pivotal position between British republicans and France". In June 1797,

2343-426: The city. The British Government was aware of the plot five months before the scheduled date of attack, but waited to arrest to gain enough evidence. One week before the scheduled attack, Despard and his co-conspirators were arrested at the Oakley Arms pub in Lambeth on suspicion of plotting an uprising. Despard's execution on 21 February 1803 was attended by a crowd of around 20,000, the largest public gathering until

2414-521: The colour of a skin?" The next generation of Despards denied Edward and Catherine's marriage. Family memoirs referred to Catherine as his "black housekeeper", and "the poor woman who called herself his wife". James was ascribed to a previous lover, both of whom were written out of the family tree. Without a further commission and having been pursued by his enemies in the Bay with lawsuits, in London Despard found himself confined for two years in

2485-459: The day of Despard's arrest to offer evidence against Despard. Pryce claimed that, through notes, Despard had offered him unlimited sums of money in exchange for advice on making underground bombs. Despard, it was alleged, had sent him a diagram of boxes with spring locks containing three powder barrels surrounded by balls and metal spikes. These were to be buried under the road and detonated by connecting wire. Bombs were to be placed in three locations:

2556-536: The end, the jury was satisfied with a prosecution case that connected Despard to only one overt act, the administration of illegal oaths. But perhaps moved by the Vice-Admiral's testimony, they recommended clemency. In denying their motion, Ellenborough emphasised the revolutionary nature of Despard's purpose. This he claimed had been not only to rend the new union between Great Britain and Ireland , but also to affect "the forcible reduction to one common level of all

2627-517: The established "Baymen" (slave-holding loggers), Despard did so without "any distinction of age, sex, character, respectability, property or colour". He distributed land by lottery in which, the Baymen noted in their petition to London, "the meanest mulatto or free negro has an equal chance". Despard also set aside lands for common use (a reversal of the enclosures to which his family had been party in Ireland) and sought to keep food prices down “for

2698-438: The event of trouble. During the trial crowds had come nightly to surround the jail and there had been difficulty finding workmen willing to construct the scaffold. Despard had declined to take divine service. He averred that while "outward forms of worship were useful for political purposes", he thought "the opinions of Churchmen, Dissenters, Quakers, Methodists, Catholics, Savages, or even Atheists, were equally indifferent". He

2769-555: The first British criminals to be featured in her ‘Adjoining Room’, now known as the Chamber of Horrors . Despard appears as a character in the fifth series of the popular British television drama Poldark , played by Vincent Regan . The screenplay is based on the historical novels of Winston Graham . Unlawful Oaths Act The Bill for an Act with this short title may have been known as an Unlawful Oaths Bill during its passage through Parliament. Unlawful Oaths Acts may be

2840-554: The funeral of Lord Nelson two years later following the Battle of Trafalgar . Despard had been arrested by the Bow Street Runners on 16 November 1802 while attending a meeting of 40 working men at the Oakley Arms tavern: eight carpenters, five labourers, two shoemakers, two hatters, a stonemason, a clockmaker, a plasterer (formerly a sailor), and a wood cutter had been among the arrested. Many had been soldiers, including Despard, and several were Irishmen who had served in

2911-547: The government introduced the "Gagging Acts" ( Seditious Meetings Act and the Treason Act ), which outlawed "seditious" gatherings and rendered even the "contemplation" of force a treasonable offence. Despard joined the London Corresponding Society (LCS), and was quickly taken on to its central committee. He also took the United Irish pledge (or " Test ") "to obtain an equal, full and adequate representation of all

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2982-402: The ground; we have measured the height of the enemies wall together. In all that period of time no man could have shewn more zealous attachment to his Sovereign and his Country". But Nelson had to admit to having "lost sight of Despard for the last twenty years." The same was conceded by General Sir Alured Clarke and Sir Evan Nepean who similarly testified to Despard's military service. In

3053-430: The kind of man to whom Despard had appealed) and the chief magistrate, Sir Richard Ford , expressed his concern over the size of the crowds that assembled during the day and evenings near the jail. He had trouble hiring workmen to build the scaffold; the jailer feared to leave the safety of the prison; and he deployed over 100 armed soldiers throughout the neighbourhood on the night before the execution. Handbills calling on

3124-527: The people of Ireland" in a sovereign parliament in Dublin . At a time when the Irish movement was turning increasingly towards the prospects for a French-assisted insurrection, Despard would have found it represented in LCS and other radical circles in London, by the brothers Arthur and Roger O'Connor , and by Jane Greg . In the summer of 1797 James Coigly , a Catholic priest who had risen to prominence among

3195-569: The people to rise had been distributed and the authorities feared the possibility of a riot, if not an outright attempt to free the prisoners. The prisoners remained recalcitrant, especially Despard, refusing to discuss their plans or to reveal the identities of any others who might have been involved in the plot. A further problem for the authorities was Catherine Despard , Despard's wife, who caused considerable dismay. A woman of African descent, she had accompanied her husband from Central America to London in 1790. Active in prisoners' rights, she formed

3266-417: The plot was highly publicised, details of the trial have never been released. In 1794 the British government failed to prove that the London Corresponding Society (of which Despard was a member) was treasonous. Because of this, many of the details focused on the attempted assassination of Despard's plot, as this is what prosecutors focused on. Informers claimed that John Wood offered to post himself sentry with

3337-520: The poorer sort of people”. To the suggestion from the Home Secretary, Lord Sydney , that it was impolitic to put "affluent settlers and persons of a different description, particularly people of colour" on an "equal footing", Despard replied "the laws of England ... know no such distinction". (He had, on the same principle, overruled a local law excluding Jewish merchants from the Bay). Persuaded by

3408-463: The road to Windsor Castle , between Buckingham House and Hyde Park gate, and an exit of Buckingham House, opposite the gate into the lower part of Green Park. Although seemingly conclusive, Pryce's evidence was not used in court; this was because the authorities wondered why he had failed to make contact with them in February when this happened. While the trial (and thus information about the plot)

3479-551: The service of the British Crown , gained notoriety as a colonial administrator for refusing to recognise racial distinctions in law and, following his recall to London, as a republican conspirator. Despard's associations with the London Corresponding Society , the United Irishmen and United Britons led to his trial and execution in 1803 as the alleged ringleader of a plot to assassinate the King . Edward Despard

3550-407: The similar case of James Hadfield , another possible attempted assassin of King George III, Colonel Despard's sanity was questioned during the trial. Many of Despard's contemporaries, including Cobbett and Lord Cloncurry (who had earlier been suspected of complicity), distanced themselves from Despard's failure. The jury concluded that Despard's words had been freely given in public spaces and thus

3621-493: The summer of 1795 crowds shouting "No war, no Pitt, cheap bread" attacked the prime minister's residence in Downing Street and surrounded the King in procession to Parliament. There was also a riot at Charing Cross at the scene of which Despard was detained and questioned, something which a magistrate suggested Despard might have avoided had he not, in giving his name, used the "improper title" of "citizen". In October,

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3692-469: The urgency of extending votes to Catholics. In the Bay Despard's work was undone. By the 1820s the settlement would have seven legally distinct castes based on skin colour. Before leaving the Bay, in 1790 Despard had married Catherine , the daughter of a free black woman from Kingston , Jamaica . He arrived in London together with her and their young son, James, as his acknowledged family. There

3763-538: The walls of St Paul's Cathedral , a campaign she won despite protests to the government from the Lord Mayor of London . On the day of the funeral (held 1 March to allow their son James, who was serving in the French army, to return from Paris), people lined the street from their last residence in Lambeth, across Blackfriars Bridge , towards St Paul's, at which point they dispersed in silence. After his death, there

3834-477: The young militants Robert Emmet and William Putnam McCabe who were determined to reorganise United Irishmen on a strict military-conspiratorial basis. Members would be chosen personally by its officers, meeting as the executive directory. The immediate aim of the reconstituted society was, in conjunction with simultaneous risings in Ireland and England, to again solicit a French invasion. The roving McCabe (Belfast, Dublin, Glasgow, Manchester, London, Hamburg, Paris)

3905-481: Was a report of Catherine Despard being taken under the "protection" of Lady Nelson. The MP Sir Francis Burdett , who with Horne Tooke had assisted in the defence, helped arrange a pension. She spent some time in Ireland, a guest of Valentine Lawless, 2nd Baron Cloncurry who had been detained with Despard in 1798. Catherine Despard died in Somers Town, London , in 1815. Their son James returned to Britain after

3976-752: Was a well-written letter, and the fair sex would pardon him, if he said it was a little beyond their style in general". At the time of the Despards' arrival in London, the virtue of openly mixed-race marriages was being championed by Olaudah Equiano . Equiano, touring with his autobiography and abolitionist polemic The Interesting Narrative of the Life of ... The African . Himself married to an English woman, Equiano asked: "Why not establish intermarriage at home, and in our colonies, and encourage open, free and generous love, upon Nature’s own wide and extensive plan, subservient only to moral rectitude, without distinction of

4047-628: Was acquitted. Coigly had been caught with a letter to the French Directory from the United Britons and was convicted of treason and hanged in June. While its suggestion of a mass movement primed for insurrection had been scarcely credible, it was sufficient proof of the intent to invite and encourage a French invasion. Despard, who at his trial Coigly had admitted meeting, remained in contact with United Irishman Valentine Lawless , and

4118-679: Was boarded at the Quaker School in Ballitore , County Kildare , which, looking beyond basic literacy, instructed children in mathematics, the classics and, uniquely in Ireland, modern languages. These subjects would not have been neglected when from age eight, Despard began to acquire "the character, the manner, and the habits of a gentleman, and a soldier" as a page in the household of the Lord Hertford , Ambassador to France (1763–65), and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1765–66). It

4189-666: Was born in 1751 in Coolrain , Camross , Queen's County (now Laois), in the Kingdom of Ireland , the youngest of eight surviving children (six sons, two daughters) of William Despard, a protestant landowner of Huguenot descent, and Jane Despard (née Walsh). With neighbouring gentry, his father and grandfather enlarged their estate by enclosing "waste", and parish, land to which their tenants had had traditional access. This contributed, in Despard's childhood years, to local Whiteboy disturbances (well remembered by his niece). Despard

4260-525: Was held for three years. During this time the authorities saw the hand not only of English radicals but also, with a large Irish contingent among the sailors, of United Irishmen in the Spithead and Nore mutinies of April and May 1797. They seized upon the leading role of Valentine Joyce at Spithead, described by Edmund Burke as "seditious Belfast clubist". Further repressive measures followed. The Corresponding Societies were comprehensively suppressed and

4331-549: Was immediately down the road from the Albion Mills , the first London steam-powered mill which had been burned in 1791, part of the direct, anonymous resistance to the Industrial Revolution ; the neighbourhood was a hotbed of continued resistance to exploitation both parliamentary and economic. An area where the government stood was referred to as "Man Eaters," and Parliament as the "Den of Thieves." Although

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4402-552: Was in my power, to procure for you, and for mankind in general. After Despard was hanged and his body decapitated, the executioner held the head by the hair to the view of the populace and exclaimed "This is the head of a traitor, Edward Marcus Despard". Catherine Despard's final service to her husband was to insist on his hereditary right to be buried in St Faith's in the City of London , an old graveyard that had been subsumed within

4473-412: Was judged as sane. Although judged sane, public society deemed Despard and his plan mad. William Cobbett commented on this distinction, "If you abhor treason, you are told Despard was a madman; if you are discontented with public affairs, you are told he was a hero." Under the Treason Act 1795 , there was little legal distinction between plotting treason and committing treason. The jury was impressed by

4544-411: Was mostly focused on the attempted assassination of the King, Despard and his co-conspirators also contemplated the seizure of the Bank of England and a military rising of the Third Grenadiers stationed at the Tower of London . They hoped that these attacks would set off uprisings all over the country. There was little physical evidence produced during this trial. The only pieces were printed copies of

4615-407: Was not passed again. Edward Despard and his six co-defendants were hanged and decapitated on the roof of the gatehouse at Horsemonger Lane Gaol on 21 February 1803. The authorities had feared a public demonstration. Constables were ordered to watch "all the public houses and other places of resort for the disaffected", and the jail keeper was issued a rocket to launch as a signal to the military in

4686-425: Was of the "fair sex". On the floor of the Commons John Courtenay MP (an Irishman), read a letter from Catherine in which she described her husband as being held "in a dark cell, not seven feet square, without fire, or candle, chair, table, knife, fork, a glazed window, or even a book". In reply, the attorney general Sir John Scott suggested that Catherine was being used as a mouthpiece by political subversives: "it

4757-618: Was permitted a final meeting with his wife during which, according to reports, "the Colonel betrayed nothing like an unbecoming weakness". With the hangman's noose loosely around his neck, Despard stepped to the edge of the platform, and addressed a crowd, estimated at twenty thousand (until the funeral of Lord Nelson following the Battle of Trafalgar the largest gathering London had witnessed), with words Catherine may have helped him prepare: Fellow Citizens, I come here, as you see, after having served my Country faithfully, honourably and usefully, for thirty years and upwards, to suffer death upon

4828-479: Was reported as frequenting seditious conclaves in various London ale houses. The government swooped on the London Corresponding Society. On 10 March, Despard was detained at lodgings in Soho, where The Times reported he had been found in bed with "a black woman" (his wife, Catherine). Along with around thirty others, he was held without charge in Coldbath Fields , a recently rebuilt high-security prison in Clerkenwell . Despard, despite Catherine's lobbying efforts,

4899-450: Was scarcely precedent in England for what was considered a "mixed-race" marriage. Yet in what may be "a marker of the more fluid and tolerant character of racial attitudes in the Age of Reform ", their marriage does not appear to have been publicly challenged. When following Despard's arrest in 1798, the government sought to discredit Catherine's articulate intercessions on her husband's behalf, they thought it sufficient to observe that she

4970-481: Was smuggling goods in and out of the prison, but feared to search her. It was she who had approached Lord Nelson to speak at the trial, and he made further applications to the government on behalf of Despard and his compatriots. Those executed were Despard, John Francis, John Wood, James Sedgewick, Thomas Broughton, Arthur Graham, and John Macnamara. They were executed in Old Horsemonger Lane Gaol in Southwark on Monday 21 February 1803. In his seminal The Making of

5041-400: Was to take up the role that had been Coigly's . Despard may also have been swayed by what he observed in his home county of Queens. Government informers were reporting that while the Rebellion that had flared in 1798 had been "put down" it was "by no means suppressed. The blaze is only smothered". Meanwhile, in England, the influx of refugees from Ireland, the angry response of workers to

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