most popular member of Parliament that ever sat for Westminster. Ten years again elapsed before the Tower opened its gates to receive prisoners, these being Thistlewood, with his crew of cut-throats, Ings, Harrison, Davidson, Wilson, Tidd Kamment, and Brunt, who were imprisoned in the fortress in 1820, for plotting to assassinate the members of the Cabinet whilst they were dining at Lord Harrowby’s in Grosvenor Square. This was the plot known as the Cato Street Conspiracy, from the meeting-place of this band of desperadoes being in a house in that street, where they were taken after a stubborn resistance. Thistlewood was imprisoned in the Bloody Tower, and was the last prisoner to occupy its gloomy dungeon, for with him and his associates the Tower ceased to be a prison of State, and it is to be hoped will ever remain so. Ings and Davidson were placed in St Thomas’s Tower; the others in the Byward, Middle and Salt Towers. Thistlewood and five others were hanged in front of Newgate; the remainder were sentenced to transportation for life. [Illustration: _The Tower from Tower Hill in the time of George III._] CHAPTER XXI THE LATE REIGNS During the late reigns there is little that calls for record in the history of the Tower: happy is the land that has no history. But for the fire in 1841, which destroyed the ugly old Armoury of William III.’s time, and the dastardly attempt made in 1885 to blow up the White Tower, no events of much interest have happened. The old fortress, however, has undergone much structural alterations and needed restoration, in which, although great mistakes have been made, as must inevitably be the case when such a group of old buildings as those in the Tower are touched, the result, on the whole, has benefited the appearance of the fortress, and above all, aided the preservation for future ages of the noblest and most historical group of buildings that exists in our land. May they endure: may they be venerated by future generations of our race as they deserve to be. The following narratives concern the two events just named. THE FIRE OF 1841