Despard Plot

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 the city. The British Government was aware of the plot five months before the scheduled date of attack, however waited to arrest to gain enough evidence. One week before the scheduled attack, Despard and his co-conspirators were arrested at a 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 the funeral of Lord Nelson two years later following the Battle of Trafalgar.

Despard had been arrested 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 on the King's ships. Furthermore, several of those arrested had been Irish labourers "united in Ireland", a contemporary code-phrase which implied that the mass killings and terror inflicted by the British following the Irish Rebellion of 1798 had not extinguished the Irish enthusiasm for independence. The tavern 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 was referred to as "Man Eaters, and Parliament the "Den of Thieves.

Although 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 a canon 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.

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