In the midst of these difficulties the lives of the ministers were threatened by a plot somewhat like those of the seventeenth century. Later writers have represented it as contemptible in its conception, and as directly provoked by the "Manchester massacre". So it may be said that Guy Fawkes was an insignificant person, and that his employers were exasperated by the severe treatment of popish recusants. The facts are that Arthur Thistlewood, the author of the Cato Street conspiracy, was a well-known confederate of the Watsons and other members of the extreme reform party, and that his plan for murdering the assembled cabinet in a private house would probably have been effectual, had it not been detected by the aid of an informer. This informer, Edwards, had warned the authorities in November, 1819, of the impending stroke, and may or may not have instigated Thistlewood's gang to execute it at a moment and place well-calculated to secure their arrest. At all events twenty-four conspirators armed themselves in Cato Street, near the Edgware Road, London, for the purpose of assassinating the ministers at a cabinet dinner in Harrowby's house in Grosvenor Square, and some of their associates were posted near the door of that house to summon them when the guests should have assembled. Harrowby's dinner was of course put off, but the watchers were deceived by the arrival of carriages for a dinner party next door, and failed to apprise the gang in Cato Street. The police rushed in upon the gang, but a body of soldiers ordered to support them reached the spot too late, a policeman was stabbed, and Thistlewood, with twelve or fourteen others, contrived to escape. He was captured the next morning, and executed with four of his accomplices, five more were transported for life, and the atrocity of the enterprise was naturally treated in the king's speech as a justification for the repressive measures in operation. In the following April a petty outbreak in Scotland was easily put down by a few troops at a place called Bonnymuir. It was, however, preceded by a treasonable proclamation, which spread terror among the citizens of Glasgow for several hours, and was sufficiently like an attempt at armed rebellion to confirm the alarm excited by the Cato Street conspiracy. In the face of such warnings, the energy of the government in stamping out disorder could hardly be censured.