The Cato Street Conspiracy was a plot to murder British ministers in 1820. Arthur Thistlewood, who had already been mixed up with revolutionary projects, conceived a plan for assassinating Lord Castlereagh and his ministerial colleagues at a dinner in Grosvenor Square, London on February 23rd. Arms were collected in a hired rendezvous in the neighbouring Cato Street. The plot was discovered, and Thistlewood and his colleagues (Brunt, Davidson, Harrison, Ings, Monument, Tidd and Wilson) were arrested (Arthur Thistlewood escaped at the time, but was arrested the next day). All eight were sent to the Tower of London and Thistlewood and four others were hanged for high treason on May the 1st 1820. Research Cato Street Conspiracy
Crown Jewels are jewelled emblems of royalty. The British Crown Jewels are kept on public display at the Tower of London and comprise crowns, orbs, sceptres, swords and an anointingspoon. Research Crown Jewels
Dynamite Saturday is January the 24th, so named after January the 24th 1885 when terrorist attacks upon the Houses of Parliament and Tower of London using dynamite caused great damage to the buildings. Attacks upon the Law-Courts and some other public buildings were prevented by them being well guarded. Research Dynamite Saturday
Evil May Day was the 1st of May, 1517 when apprentices rioted in London, directing their aggression against foreigners, particularly the French. At one point the Constable of the Tower of London discharged his cannon on the mob. The rioters were headed by Lincoln, who, with fifteen others was hanged. 400 more rioters were bound with ropes and halters around their necks and carried to Westminster, where they cried 'mercy mercy' and were all pardoned by the king, Henry VIII. Research Evil May Day
The Ragman Roll is the name of the collection of those instruments by which the nobility and gentry of Scotland were constrained to subscribe allegiance to Edward I of England in 1296, and which were more particularly recorded in four large rolls of parchment consisting of thirty-five pieces sewed together. It is kept in the Tower of London. Research Ragman Roll
The scavenger's daughter was an apparatus of torture used in the Tower of London for eliciting confession. It was strongly made of iron hoops, consisting of two parts hinged together. The prisoner was forced into a kneeling posture on the floor, and told to draw his body and limbs together so as to compress himself into the smallest possible space. The executioner, having passed one of the iron hoops under the prisoner's legs, knelt upon his shoulders, forcing his body downwards until it was possible to fasten the two hoops together over the small of the back. The time allotted for confinement in the scavenger's daughter was an hour and a half, however, confessions were generally obtained well before that, with victims bleeding profusely from the nose, mouth, and anus. Research Scavenger's Daughter
The Siege Of Sidney Street was an incident that occurred in 1911 when two members of a gang of Latvian immigrant burglars (the Gardstein Gang) who were fleeing police after breaking into a jewellers' premises in Houndsditch and shooting dead three policemen and wounding two others who had tried to arrest them, sheltered in a second-floor flat at 100 Sidney Street, London. The Metropolitan Police cordoned off the area and evacuated the residents but found their weapons ineffective at flushing out the robbers who were armed with Mauser pistols capable of rapid and accurate fire. The police then requested and were granted assistance from the army, volunteers of the Scots Guards arriving from the Tower of London who with sniper fire forced the robbers to the lower floor. A fire broke out in the building, which the Home Secretary, Winston Churchill refused to allow the fire brigade to extinguish. After half-an-hour of no more shots being fired from the robbers the fire brigade tackled the blaze to prevent damage to other buildings, only for a wall to collapse and bury five people, one of which later died in hospital. The two robbers were found in the gutted building, one had been shot and the other overcome by smoke. The incident noted the ineffectiveness of the police marksmen and their equipment and resulted in better training and weapons to be issued. Research Siege Of Sidney Street
Lady Arabella Stuart was an English princess. She was born in 1575 and died in 1615. She was the daughter of Charles Stuart, earl of Lennox, who was himself the grandson of Margaret, sister of Henry VIII. When Elizabeth I died, Arabella Stuart was next in line to the throne after James. Kept a prisoner at Hardwick, she was made the figurehead of a conspiracy in 1603. In 1610 she secretly married William Seymour, afterwards the duke of Somerset, and together with her husband was arrested by James I. Both she and her husband escaped, but Arabella Stuart was recaptured near Calais and in 1611 was imprisoned in the Tower of London where she died insane in 1615. Research Arabella Stuart
Edmund Beaufort (2nd duke of Somerset) was an English statesman and soldier. A son of John Beaufort, earl of Somerset, and the younger brother of the duke of Somerset, Edmund Beaufort won military successes in France and succeeded his brother as earl of Somerset in 1444, and as a Beaufort and a favourite of the king was made lieutenant of France in 1447, with the disastrous result that Henry VI lost the whole of Normandy in 1450. Edmund Beaufort returned to England and was appointed high constable in 1452. Popular discontent spread against the king and his supporters and when the Duke of York became protector during the king's temporary incapacity, Edmund Beaufort was sent to the Tower of London. After his release in 1455 the duke of York raised an army against Edmund Beaufort and fought the first battle of the Wars of the Roses at St Albans on May the 23rd 1455, at which Edmund Beaufort was killed. Research Edmund Beaufort
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Cato Street Conspiracy
