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The London ‘Insurrection’ of December 1792: Fact, Fiction, or Fantasy?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2014

Clive Emsley
Clive Emsley*
Affiliation:
The Open University
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Extract

As the likelihood of war with revolutionary France grew at the end of 1792 and beginning of 1793, the pro-government press in England reported that a serious plan for an insurrection, scheduled for the first weekend in December 1792, had been nipped in the bud by the authorities. On December 3 The Times stated that, as it had not wished to create alarm, it had not previously mentioned the full facts of the seditious attempts being made in the country. These attempts, the newspaper maintained, had prompted almost daily meetings of the Cabinet climaxing in a meeting at Lord Grenville's house which had lasted until one a.m. on the preceding Saturday morning (December 1). It was from this meeting that the Cabinet had issued the royal proclamation which embodied part of the militia and which deplored the ineffectiveness of the May 1792 proclamation against seditious meetings and writings. Three weeks later, beneath the headline “Revolution Plans,” the World reported that two parties were involved in the projected insurrection: the “moderates” who sought first the destruction of the House of Lords, the Herald's Office, and the Horse Guards, and then the enlarging of the Commons; and those whose plans were “more extensive” and who would have gone on to destroy St. James's Palace, the Bank, the law courts, the prisons, the customs house, and excise office. A month later, under the headline “Project of an Insurrection,” the London Chronicle gave similar details of a plot “to overturn the government and the constitution of this country.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , Spring 1978 , pp. 66 - 86
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1978

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References

1. Times, 3 Dec. 1792.

2. World, 21 Dec. 1792.

3. London Chronicle, 24 Jan. 1793. The two treasury-financed newspapers, the Sun and The True Briton, also carried reports of the ‘insurrection’; see, for example, Sun, 3, 8 and 12 Dec. 1792 and, especially, True Briton, 23 Jan. 1793.

4. Roce, J. Holland, William Pitt and the Great War (London, 1911), p. 77Google Scholar; Veitch, G. S., The Genesis of Parliamentary Reform (London, 1913), p. 235Google Scholar; Cone, C. B., The English Jacobins (New York, 1968), p. 77Google Scholar. There is no mention of the December Proclamation in Brown, P. A., The French Revolution in English History (London, 1918)Google Scholar. Maccoby, S., in his English Radicalism 1786-1832 (London, 1955)Google Scholar, believed that fear of the French and of French principles was largely responsible, but he noted also: “There are indications that an officious and credulous Lord Mayor had been given details of a perhaps imaginary plot” (p. 60).

5. Werkneister, Luylle, A Newspaper History of England 1792-1793 (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1967), pp. 134 ffGoogle Scholar. On p. 142 she wrote: “The Government needed such a ‘plot’, for months it had been encouraging the radicals to devise one, and, having failed in this endeavor, it had simply invented one out of its own ‘fiendish imagination.’” Werkmeister gives no evidence for her statement that “for months” during 1792 the government had been encouraging the radicals to devise a plot. Furthermore, this assertion of hers is not borne out by any of the historians quoted in the preceding note, nor by any others of whom I am aware.

6. Aspinall, A., The Early English Trade Unions (London, 1949), pp. 7–17Google Scholar. Public Record Office, H.O.42.22.236. Charles Sistead (Bailiff of Ipswich) to Dundas, 15 Nov. 1792. McCord, Norman and Brewester, David E., “Some Labour Troubles of the 1790s in North East England,” International Review of Social History, XIII (1968), 366–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7. HMC, Dropmore MSS, II, 358Google Scholar, Lord Auckland (The Hague) to Lord Grenville, 14 Dec. 1792. One such suspicious émigré was identified as an Italian named Rotondo. His revolutionary career was suitably impressive: he was said to have been the leader of the crowd which brought Louis XVI and his family from Versailles. to Paris; he was said to have been a septembriseur, the man who struck the first blow at the unfortunate Princesse de Lamballe. The Home Office appears to have been sufficiently impressed to show an interest in his whereabouts. PRO, H.O.42.22.304. A list of Frenchmen in London, 28 Nov. 1792. H.O.42.23.160-61. Memorandum, and description of Rotondo, 22 Dec. 1792. This information is also to be found in H.O.1.1. which contains the Home Office papers relating to émigrés during 1792-93.

8. See the comparative essay by Williams, G. A., Artisans and Sansculottes (London, 1968)Google Scholar.

9. Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (hereafter, Making) (London, 1968), p. 113Google Scholar.

10. London Chronicle, 12 Nov. 1792.

11. Wentworth Woodhouse Muniments in the Sheffield City Library, F44/38, Rev. Mr. Wilkinson to Earl Fitzwilliam, 12 Dec. 1792. (I should like to acknowledge thanks to Earl Fitzwilliam, Earl Fitzwilliam's Estates Company, and the Sheffield City Library for permission to read and cite these documents.)

12. Ibid., F44/39. Athorpe to Fitzwilliam, 12 Dec. 1792.

13. In the Making, E. P. Thompson suggested that a revolutionary movement did develop in the British radical movement after the treason trials of 1794. F. K. Donelly and J. L. Baxter havt pointed more precisely to a revolutionary tradition in Sheffield, but they are only able to date it seriously after 1795. See “Sheffield and the English Revolutionary Tradition, 1791-1820,” International Review of Social History, XX (1975), 398–423Google Scholar. However their assertion of a revolutionary tradition in the West Riding has not gone unchallenged; see their debate with Dinwiddy, J. R. in Past and Present, No. 64 (1974), 113–35Google Scholar.

14. Parl. Hist., XXX, cols. 14 and 23.

15. Mitchell, L. G., Charles James Fox and the Disintegration of the Whig Party (London, 1971), pp. 200–03Google Scholar. O'Gorman, F., The Whig Party and the French Revolution (London, 1967), pp. 112–13Google Scholar. Derry, J. W., Charles James Fox (London, 1972), p. 336Google Scholar.

16. O'Gorman, , Whig Party, pp. 111–12Google Scholar and 111 note 4; Smith, E. A., Whig Principles and Party Politics: Earl Fitzwilliam and the Whig Party 1748-1833 (Manchester, 1975), pp. 150–51Google Scholar.

17. Liprade, W. T., in his Englind and the French Revolution 1789-1797, (Baltimore, 1909)Google Scholar, argued that the actions taken by Pitt's government against radicalism throughout 1792, were designed merely to break up the opposition. See Ch. III, passim.

18. Thompson, E. P., “Patrician Society, Plebeian Culture,” Journal of Social History, VII (1974), 383–405Google Scholar.

19. “The Riots in the year 1780 would not have taken place had the present viglance now on foot been shewn.” World, 12 Dec. 1792. For fears of a repetiticn of the Gordon Riots during the 1790s, see PRO, H.O.42.27.78. “A Magistrate” to Dundas (?) 29 July 1792; H.O.42.33. Paul Le Mesurier, Lord Mayor of London to Portland, 22 Aug. 1794. See also Chatham Papers, P.R.O.30.8.104, George III to Pitt, 13 Nov. 1795; Portland Papers, Nottingham University Library, PwF.4104, George III to Portland, same date. Memories of the Gordon Riots, and fears of repetition, were still to be found twenty years later: Devonshire County Record Office, Exeter, Sidmouth MSS, c 1812/OH, George Canning to Sidmouth, 12 Dec. 1812; c 1815/OH, Joseph Gillon to Sidmouth, 9 Mar. 1815.

20. Parl. Hist., XXX, col. 169.

21. Ibid., XXX, col. 542.

22. Rose, Holland, Pitt, p. 65Google Scholar. For Dr. Maxwell, the purchaser of the daggers for the French, see Veitch, , Genesis, pp. 227–28Google Scholar, and for the daggers themselves see H.O.42.21 and H.O.42.42 passim.

23. HMC, Dropmore MSS, II, 328Google Scholar, Pitt to Grenville, 5-12 Nov. 1792.

24. Clements' Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan, Pitt Papers. Pitt to Dundas, 8 Nov. 1792. (I am grateful to Dr. James Walvin for drawing my attention to these documents and to the Department of History of the University of York, which allowed me to read the microfilms in its possession.)

25. Ibid., Pitt to Dundas, 15 Nov. 1792.

26. Ibid., Pitt to Dundas, 25 Nov. 1792.

27. Ibid., Pitt to Dundas, 27 Nov. 1792.

28. PRO, H.O.43.4.132, Nepean to the London Police Offices ‘Secret’, 25 Nov. 1792; H.O.42-22.285, Patrick Colquhoun to Nepean, 26 Nov. 1792; H.O.42.22.287, the Justices of Worship Street to Nepean, 27 Nov. 1792.

29. H.O.42.22.316 (and copy in 314), John Hills (Chelmsford) to the Lord Mayor of London, 30 Nov. 1792. H.O.42.23, Nepean to Rev. Philip Salter, 1 Dec. 1792. H.O.42.23.18, William Stanes, Chief Constable of Chelmsford, to Nepean, 3 Dec. 1792. See also the deposition of John Stockdale (H.O.42.23.2) dated 1 Dec. 1792, concerning twenty-five Marseillais armed with daggers “for the purpose of assassinating and cutting off any obnoxious characters;” Alderman Angier's letters to Sir G. Jackson (H.O.42.23.49) dated 6 Dec. 1792 concerning armed Frenchmen in Colchester; and Nepean's letter to John Scott of Dartford (H.O.43.4.137) dated 7 Dec. 1792, advising Scott that he did not have to arrest every foreigner passing through Dartford, but only those suspected of being armed — all daggers or other concealed weapons were to be confiscated.

30. H.O.42.25.42, “Information,” 26 Nov. 1792.

31. H.O.42.23.13, Informations sworn on 3 Dec. 1792.

32. H.O.42.22.306a, Deposition of John Barratt, 29 Nov. 1792.

33. H.O.42.22.245, Massey to Francis Freeling (General Post Office), 22 Nov. 1792.

34. H.O.42.22.275, Sproule to Dundas (?), 24 Nov. 1792.

35. H.O.42.23, Nepean to Sproule, 1 Dec. 1792.

36. H.O.42.23, “Associations and Clubs for the relief of pretended Grievances,” n.d.

37. The originals of Longchamp's “intelligence” are in H.O.1.1. They are unsigned, but a comparison of the hand-writing in these reports with others written by Longchamp, together with a covering note by Lally Tollendal which is attached to them make it clear that Longchamp was the author. The translated fair-copies of the ‘intelligence’ are in H.O.42.22.319, “Intelligence,” 30 Nov. 1792; and H.O. 42.23.4, “Intelligence,” 1 Dec. 1792.

38. H.O.1.1, 30 Nov. 1792 (a different report to the one translated and fair-copied). H.O.1.1, Declaration formelle de M. Longchamp, 12 Dec. 1792.

39. H.O.42.25, “Smith” to Nepean, 17 June 1793; H.O.42.25.155 a - d, Four reports dated 16 - 19 June 1793.

40. H.O.42.29, information from Paris, 18 Mar. 1794.

41. Ibid., James Walsh to Nepean, 26 Apr. 1794 (two letters).

42. H.O.42.23.82, John Reeves to Sir Sampson Wright, 8 Dec. 1792.

43. H.O.42.30, “A Lover of my Country” to Dundas, 14 May 1794. The “Secretary Hardy” mentioned in the letter must be Thomas Hardy, the Secretary of the London Corresponding Society.

44. Annual Register 1798, “Chronicle,” p. 69Google Scholar. See also London Chronicle, 8 Aug. 1798Google Scholar, which gives 7 Aug. as the date of Dennis Carco's arrest. I have been unable to find any record of his arrest or interrogation in the Home Office or Privy Council papers which I have consulted. According to a list of prisoners in the Privy Council papers Carco was still in prison, held for an unspecified offence under the Alien Act, in December 1798 (P.C.1.43.A150).

45. There was a substantial Irish population in London during the eighteenth century and Irishmen were prominent among the extremists in the popular societies during the 1790s, especially when societies of United Englishmen were established with links to the rebellious United Irishmen. Also Irishmen comprised a high percentage of the espionage agents sent to the British Isles by the French during the Revolutionary War. But the United Irishmen would not have been involved with any revolutionary plot in London in 1792, and there were no French-backed Irish agents in London in December 1792. I am indebted to Dr. Marianne Elliot for her advice on this point.

46. The Letters of Edivard Gibbon, ed. Prothero, R. E., 2 vols. (London, 1896), II, 352Google Scholar. Sheffield to Gibbon, 20 Dec. 1792.

47. H.O.1.1. Longchamp's information of 30 Nov. and 1 Dec., and O'Hagerty's information of 30 Nov. are tied together with a covering note from Lally.

48. W.O.3.11.14, Fawcett to H.R.H. Prince Edward, 6 Dec. 1792.

49. Le Moniteur, 23 Oct. 1792.

50. Parl. Hist., XXIX, cols. 1570-73.

51. F.O.27.41. Michael Somers to Grenville, 13 Feb. 1793.

52. H.O.42.21, W. A. Miles to Aust, 8-9 Sept. 1792. Correspondence of W. A. Miles on the French Revolution, ed. the Rev. Miles, C. P., 2 vols. (London, 1890), I, 333Google Scholar, Miles to Long, 24 Sept. 1792. On 14 Dec. 1792, Auckland informed Grenville that there were in London “200 to 300 emissaries from the Propagande, with allowances to live in taverns, coffee houses, ale-houses to promote disorder.” (HMC, Dropmore, MSS, II, 358Google Scholar). But while individuals in France sent ‘inflamatory’ pamphlets printed in English to contacts in England (H.O.48.2.365-405, 410 and 418, and H.O.42.208 Hume (Customs House) to Nepean, 26 Oct. and 7 Nov.), it was not the policy of the French government to foment disorder in England. For the activities of the French secret agents in England at this time, see Murley, J. T., “The Origin and Outbreak of the Anglo-French War of 1793” (D.Phil, thesis, Oxford, 1959), pp. 63–88Google Scholar. (I am grateful to Dr. Murley for permission to make reference to his thesis.)

53. Journal and Correspondence of William Lord Auckland, ed. the Bishop of Bath and Wells, 4 vols. (London 1861–1862), II, 472–74Google Scholar, Auckland to Sir Morton Eden, 7 Dec. 1792. Murley, J. T., “Origin and Outbreak,” pp. 159–60Google Scholar, identified two pamphlets giving such details in the Croker Collection of Revolutionary Tracts in the British Library.

54. Chatham MSS, PRO 30.8.163, Thomas Northy (Paris) to Pitt, 11 Dec. 1792.

55. Parl. Hist., XXX, cols. 157-58.

56. HMC, Dropmore MSS, II, 362Google Scholar, Grenville to Auckland, 1 Jan. 1793.

57. The Later Correspondence of George III, ed. Aspinall, A., 5 vols. (London, 1962–1970), I, No. 811, 633, Grenville to George III, 1 Dec. 1792Google Scholar.

58. Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George III, ed. the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, 4 vols. (London, 1853–1855), II, 231Google Scholar, Grenville to Buckingham, 1 Dec. 1792. See also Grenville to Buckingham, 29 Nov. 1792, ibid., II, 230.

59. Buckingham had informed Grenville on 18 Nov. 1792 that he had heard that the Westminster militia, among others, were politically suspect (HMC, Dropmore, MSS, II, 336–37Google Scholar). In his letter to the King of 1 Dec., Grenville stated that he and his colleagues thought it “desirable to omit for the present” calling out both the Westminister and the Middlesex militias. For the government's fears of disaffection in the British Army and the limited extent of this disaffection, see Emsley, C. “Political Disaffection and the British Army in 1792,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, XLVIII, No. 118, (1975), 230–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60. The Private Correspondence of Lord Granville Levenson Gower, First Earl Granville, ed. Castalia, , CountessGranville, , 2 vols. (London, 1916), I, 61Google Scholar. Pitt to Stafford, 1 Dec. 1792.

61. Quoted in Stanhope, Earl, Life of the Rt. Hon. William Pitt, 4 vols. (London, 1861), II, 177Google Scholar.

62. H.O.42.23.96, ? to James Bland Burges, 10 Dec. 1792.

63. H.O.42.23.97, contains a copy of one of these slips of paper thrown under a coffee-house door on 6 Dec. 1792. H.O.42.23.98-99 are, apparently, original version of scraps of paper about six inches by four.

64. For the Association for Preserving Liberty and Property against Republicans and Levellers and its provincial cousins, see Black, E. C., The Association: British Extraparliamentary Political Organisation 1769-1793 (Cambridge, Mass., 1963)Google Scholar, ch. VII, passim; Mitchell, A., “The Association Movement of 1792-93,” Historical Journal IV, 1, (1961), 56–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar; D. E. Ginter, “The Loyalist Association Movement of 1792-93 …,” ibid., IX, 2 (1966), 179-90.

65. HMC, Dropmore, MSS, II, 359Google Scholar, Grenville to Auckland, 18 Dec. 1793.

66. Parl. Hist., XXX, cols. 4-5.

67. Ibid., XXIX, cols. 1565-70, and XXX, cols. 14-23.

68. Ibid., XXX, cols. 523-56.

69. Ibid., XXX, cols. 43-48.

70. Ibid., XXX, cols. 230-38.

71. Thompson, E. P., Making, p. 750Google Scholar and note; but see also the criticisms of Walmsley, R., Peterloo: the Case Reopened (Manchester, 1969), pp. 277 ff.Google Scholar, and Thomis, M. I., The Town Labourer and the Industrial Revolution (London, 1974), p. 24Google Scholar.

72. HMC, Dropmore, MSS, II, 362Google Scholar, Grenville to Auckland, 1 Jan. 1793.