of property, of all civil and political rights whatsoever". Together with John Wood, 36, John Francis, 23, both privates in the army, Thomas Broughton, 26, a carpenter, James Sedgwick Wratton, 35, a shoemaker, Arthur Graham, 53, a slater, and John Macnamara, a labourer, Despard was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. Execution With Nelson's assistance, Catherine Despard appealed clemency to both the Prime Minister and the King, but secured only a waiving of the then already archaic rites of disembowelment. Magistrates, however, insisted on the "drawing" – there had never been a conviction for high treason without dragging the sentenced to the gallows in a carriage without wheels. Seated for the purpose of the drawing backwards upon hay bales and bumped across the cobbled courtyard of Horsemonger Lane Gaol, Despard burst out laughing. The sentence was not passed again. Edward Despard and six co-defendants, John Francis, John Wood, James Sedgewick Wrattan, Thomas Broughton, Arthur Graham and John Macnamara, were hanged and decapitated on the roof of the gatehouse at Horsemonger Lane Gaol on 21 February 1803. The authorities had feared a public demonstration. Constables were ordered to watch "all the public houses and other places of resort for the disaffected", and the jail keeper was issued a rocket to launch as a signal to the military in the event of trouble. During the trial crowds had come nightly to surround the jail and there had been difficulty finding workmen willing to construct the scaffold. Despard had declined to take divine service. He offered that while "outward forms of worship were useful for political purposes", he thought "the opinions of Churchmen, Dissenters, Quakers, Methodists, Catholics, Savages, or even Atheists, were equally indifferent". He was permitted a final meeting with his wife during which, according to reports, "the Colonel betrayed nothing like an unbecoming weakness". With the hangman's noose loosely around his neck, Despard stepped to the edge of the platform, and addressed a crowd, estimated at twenty thousand (until the funeral of Lord Nelson following the Battle of Trafalgar the largest gathering London had witnessed), with words Catherine may have helped him prepare:Fellow Citizens, I come here, as you see, after having served my Country faithfully, honourably and usefully, for thirty years and upwards, to suffer death upon a scaffold for a crime which I protest I am not guilty. I solemnly declare that I am no more guilty of