William Godwin's Diary

Events

In the aftermath of the arrest of radicals in May, the government formed two secret committees, in the Lords and Commons, in order to examine the papers of those arrested. They were to report to parliament on the nature and magnitude of the threat of the alleged plotting. The Times reported: ‘The two Reports of the Secret Committee of the House of Commons, establish most incontestibly the real existence of a PLOT, ripened for execution, to bring about a revolution in this country, with a view to destroy, under the artful pretext of a Reform in Parliament, the Constitution of Great Britain; and to overturn that happy balance of the three different Estates, by which they are mutually supported, and which guards against the encroachments of either’.

See Trials for Treason and Sedition, 1792-1794, ed. by John Barrell and Jon Mee, 8 vols (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2006-07), vol. 1, pp. xxvii-xxviii and The Times, 27 June 1794.