¹ The quotation in the title of this article is from a letter from Wolverhampton to Granville Leveson Gower, 13 May 1812, The National Archives (TNA): Public Record Office (PRO) 30/29/6/11, fol. 1607.

² Maccoby, Simon, English Radicalism, 1786–1832: From Paine to Cobbett (London, 1955), 286Google Scholar. For similar brief and dismissive assessments, see Emsley, Clive, British Society and the French Wars, 1793–1815 (London, 1979), 148CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Derry, John W., Politics in the Age of Fox, Pitt, and Liverpool: Continuity and Transformation (London, 1990), 148CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Muir, Rory, Britain and the Defeat of Napoleon, 1807–1815 (New Haven, CT, 1996), 196Google Scholar.

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⁸ Declaration of John Bellingham in presence of Mr. Beresford, 27 May 1807, BL: Bellingham Papers, Add. MSS 48216, fol. 12.

⁹ These attempts at redress can be followed in the correspondence between 1809 and 1812 in BL: Bellingham Papers, Add. MSS 48216, fols. 31–45; and in TNA: Rex v. Bellingham, TS 11/224.

¹⁰ Gillen, Assassination, 83–84.

¹¹ See. e.g., Stephens, F. G. and George, M. D., Catalogue of Personal and Political Satires Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, 11 vols. (London, 1870–1954)Google Scholar (hereafter BMC), 11: nos. 11881, 11884.

¹² Henry Burgess to R. B. Sheridan, 11 May 1812, BL: Autograph Letters, Add. MSS 29764, fols. 12–13.

¹³ John Bellingham to John Parton, 15 May 1812, TNA: Rex v. Bellingham, TS11/224.

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¹⁷ “The Prince Regent’s Message Respecting the Family of Mr. Perceval, 12 May 1812,” in Parliamentary Debates, Commons, 1st ser., vol. 23 (1812), cols. 172–77Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Semmel, Napoleon and the British, 126.

¹⁹ Ibid., chap. 4. For the black legend and the role of assassination within it, see Simon Burrows, “Britain and the Black Legend: The Genesis of the Anti-Napoleonic Myth,” in Philp, Resisting Napoleon, 141–58.

²⁰ Broom’s Authentic Account of the Attempt to Assassinate His Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland at his Apartments in St James’s Palace, on Thursday Morning, May 31, 1810, by Joseph Seillis [sic], his Valet (London, 1810)Google Scholar; BMC, vol. 11, no. 11561; Fulford, Roger, Royal Dukes: The Father and Uncles of Queen Victoria (London, 1933), 206–10Google Scholar.

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²⁸ “Political Virtue,” Examiner, 23 July 1809.

²⁹ Gray, Spencer Perceval, 16. The moniker was well enough known that William Cobbett, at the time of Perceval’s murder, could call him “Old Hypocrisy Personified”; “To the Prince Regent on the Case of Mr. Bellingham … Letter II,” Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register, 6 June 1812, col. 717.

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³⁴ Ibid., 14 and 16 May 1812, cols. 212–13, 225–26.

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³⁶ The monument itself and its uniqueness within the pantheon of British patriots that was constructed during the French Wars is discussed in Bouwers, Eveline G., “Whose Heroes? The House of Commons, Its Commemorative Sculptures and the Illusion of British Patriotism, 1795–1814,” European Review of History 15, no. 6 (December 2008): 675–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁴⁰ Joseph Butterworth to Richard Ryder, 18 May 1812, TNA: George III Domestic Correspondence, HO 42/123, fol. 141.

⁴¹ Morning Chronicle, 19 May 1812.

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⁵⁰ Ralph Fletcher to Henry Hobhouse, 15 May 1812, TNA: Home Office Disturbances, HO 40/1, fols. 115–16. There were other complaints about the attempts of local loyalists and the loyalist press to connect Bellingham to Jacobin or Catholic politics in Liverpool Mercury, 15 and 22 May 1812.

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⁵² “Lines on a Late Disgraceful and Melancholy Degradation of the British Character, in the rejoicings on the Assassination of the Late Most Worthy and Honourable Spencer Perceval” by “An Englishwoman,” Morning Post, 19 May 1812.

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⁵⁵ Ibid., 33.

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⁵⁸ There is a useful summary of these events in Hanrahan, The Assassination, chaps. 3–8. For a good account of Cobbett’s own confrontations with Perceval, see Spater, George, William Cobbett: The Poor Man’s Friend, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1982), 1:207–54Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ “To the Prince Regent, on the Case of Mr. Bellingham. Letter I,” Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register, 30 May 1812, col. 682.

⁶⁰ Leeds Mercury, 16 May 1812; Ipswich Journal, 16 May 1812; Liverpool Mercury, 22 May 1812. See also Navickas, Loyalism and Radicalism, 243–44.

⁶¹ “False Reasoning Condemned,” Satirist: Or Monthly Meteor 10 (1812): 52Google Scholar.

⁶² Anonymous to Prince Regent, 17 May 1812, TNA: George III Domestic Correspondence, HO 42/123, fol. 174.

⁶³ “One of the Fifty—Brutus” to Granville Leveson-Gower, 24 May 1812, TNA: PRO 30/29/6/11, fol. 1615; “Letter from Lord G. L. Gower to Lord Castlereagh, Respecting Bellingham the Assassin, 20 May 1812,” Parliamentary Debates, vol. 23 (1812), cols. 239–43. For Bellingham’s statement that “it would have been fortunate for me, and it would have been more fortunate for Mr. Perceval, had Lord Gower received the ball which terminated the life of the latter gentleman,” see Trial and Execution, 19.

⁶⁴ Blacow, Richard, A Statement of the Circumstances which led to the Prosecution of the King v. Blacow (Liverpool, 1812)Google Scholar, appendix. The letter is also reproduced in Binfield, Kevin, ed., Writings of the Luddites (Baltimore, 2004), 189–90Google Scholar.

⁶⁵ Binfield, Writings of the Luddites, 230.

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⁷⁰ Chalmers, George, An appeal to the Generosity of the British Nation, in a Statement of Facts on behalf of the Afflicted Widow and Unoffending Offspring of the Unfortunate Mr. Bellingham (London, 1812), 7–9Google Scholar. Chalmers also identified the Morning Post, the Courier, and the émigré journalist Jean-Gabriel Peltier as advocates of assassination. See also references to the Anti-Gallican Monitor in “Assassination of Mr. Perceval,” Liverpool Mercury, 15 May 1812.

⁷¹ Examination of Thomas Clare, 15 May 1812, TNA: George III Domestic Correspondence, HO 42/123, fol. 42.

⁷² Binfield, Writings of the Luddites, 139–42.

⁷³ John Drinkwater to Viscount Canning, 28 May and 3 June 1812, TNA: PRO 30/29/6/11, fols. 1631–34; “Miscellaneous Extracts: No. XXXV,” Liverpool Mercury, 29 May 1812.

⁷⁴ The following is a copy of a letter, addressed by Mrs Bellingham to the Editors of sundry London and Dublin Papers (printed), 6 June 1812, and Mary Bellingham to George Leveson-Gower, 10 June 1812, TNA: PRO 30/29/6/11, fols. 1637–38.

⁷⁵ Oswald Smith to Richard Ryder, 16 May 1812, TNA: George III Domestic Correspondence, HO 42/123, fol. 428.

⁷⁶ Bellingham: A Poem (London, 1812), 8 (printed), TNA: PRO 30/29/6/11, fols. 1619–20.

⁷⁷ Ibid., 16–17.

⁷⁸ “Court of Common Pleas: Cove v. Wright,” Examiner, 5 July 1812.

⁷⁹ Cove, Augustus, The Tocsin Sounded, or A Libel Extraordinary! Dedicated to the Good Sense of the People of England! 2nd ed. (London, 1812), 64Google Scholar.

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⁸⁷ “Mr. Brougham’s Motion Relating to the Orders in Council and Right of Petitioning the Prince Regent, 3 and 4 March 1812,” Parliamentary Debates, Commons, 1st ser., vol. 21 (1812), cols. 1159–61, 1165–66.

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⁹³ Ibid., col. 679. Cobbett made his contribution to this wider debate on the nature of constitutional rights clear in his second letter, by quoting Ponsonby’s speech about British freedoms above the leading article: “To the Prince Regent … Letter II,” Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register, 6 June 1812, cols. 705–6.

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⁹⁶ For a description of this print, see BMC, vol. 11, no. 13192.

⁹⁷ For the Dighton print, see BMC, vol. 11, no. 11882.