After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - The Only Prime Minister Ever Assassinated

Episode Date: December 1, 2025

Was this moment the closest Britain came to revolution? When Prime Minister Spencer Perceval lay dying on the floor of the Parliament, many feared it was the start of bloody revolt. We discover the assassin, John Bellingham, and what drove him to commit murder.Edited by Tim Arstall. Produced by Freddy Chick.You can now watch After Dark on Youtube! www.youtube.com/@afterdarkhistoryhitSign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We should do an ASMR episode. He's like, shut up. We need to do something real. Yeah, maybe not the assassination of a Prime Minister. Let's go back a few hours from that moment when the pistol was shot. Earlier that afternoon, while the British Prime Minister was pouring over plans to defeat Napoleon, our assassin, John Bellingham, went to an art gallery with a... his landlady and her son. One of the paintings on display showed the defeat of the Spanish armada

some 200 years before. It's a scene of chaos, flames, smoke and glory. Bellingham gazes at it beside his landlady and her boy, an outwardly respectable man, though with a troubled mind, and a coat jacket that bulged from where two pistols were sewn inside. He says goodbye to his landlady and the child, and heads off on the short walk to the Houses of Parliament. All the trouble and chaos, the flames and glory trapped in Bellingham's mind, are about to explode. On the 11th of May, 1812, Prime Minister Spencer Percival was shot in the houses of Parliament at point-blank range. He died in a pool of blood on the floor. The assassin was John Bellingham, a man who held a deep grudge against the government and believed he had the right to exact vengeance.

For some, Bellingham was an instant hero. To the authorities, he was a harbinger of bloody doom. Welcome to After Dark. This is the story of the only time a British Prime Minister has been assassinated. We are back in our happy place. Well, my happy place. It's 1812. And I like it too. I mean, you would survive during this period. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Unless you had to go to war.

not great or just see they're not bringing me in for that though if you were like in a ballroom you'd be thriving 100% but we're not talking about ballrooms we're talking about an assassination with all kinds of history to it I am genuinely very excited for this episode this is something that's interested me

for a long time other episodes we've done in this period do you remember any of these the dark history of the Luddites yes we're done the final days of Georgia 3rd oh yeah I remember that one and our episode that we did on the Royal Murder 1810 Death in St James's Palace Yes. I remember all of those. Well done you. Which was an attempted assassination potentially.

And there are a lot of attempted assassinations in this period. But this is the only successful one, our British Prime Minister. So give me a little bit of context. What is the world that we're in for anyone who is not as familiar with this period? OK, so 1812, in terms of Britain and Europe more generally, this is a fairly tumultuous time. And I want us to bear a question in mind as we go through this episode. There are some historians who think. that this moment of time is the closest that Britain ever came to revolution. Let's revisit that at the end of the episode once we've been through this and see how that stacks up. I have some thoughts.

I have some thoughts too. So let's see if those thoughts align by the end of the episode. But it is, you know, regardless of that, it is, there is a lot happening right now. We have the Duke of Wellington. He is attacking Napoleon's forces in Spain. Napoleon is preparing to invade Russia. That doesn't go so well. He's a busy little man.

He is a busy, not so little. Not little. I can feel people in the comments. He was not short. He was blockading Britain at this time. He's preventing trade with most of Europe. Britain, therefore, not just because of that, but for various reasons, is in recession. And we have poverty growing. And this is causing an awful lot of civil unrest. So it is a tumultuous time in Britain. And of course, you mentioned earlier about the episode we did on Ludditism. This is this time period. So we're seeing. not, if not revolt, we're seeing uprisings, shall we say. We're seeing unrest. We're seeing unrest. And also, George III, the king on the throne at this moment, is nowhere to be seen. He is incredibly mentally and physically unwell. And his son, Prince George, who's the Prince Regent currently, is ruling in his stead.

And he is not a popular man. Chaos, babes. A lot of people are just like, oh my God, you know, the regency. It's so much fun. He's so glamorous. I'm just like, I couldn't be arse. Well, we should do a dark side of the Prince Regent because he deserves to be called out for some stuff. I couldn't be in his circle.

It would be so, you know, and I'm a big fan of champagne, but like it's too much, George. Calm down. I'm on his parents' side when it comes to them kind of hating him. I'm always on George and Charlotte's side. They're my favorites. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not certainly not a monarchist, but of all the monarchs, I can get behind George and Charlotte. Yeah.

Yeah. Not everything under their reign, obviously, but there are many people kind of interesting. Who is the British Prime Minister at this time? So from 1809 it is the man we're here to talk about today, and that is Spencer Percival. Such a great name. Such a great name. And it is not necessarily a name that everybody is very familiar with, like even in terms of 18th centuries, 19th centuries. Well, even the fact that he's assassinated.

We don't necessarily know that much about him. Absolutely. And it's a pretty, you know, he has, spoiler, three years where he is prime minister. So it's not the longest tenure in the entire world. Long than some recent British primers. Well, that's true. He did. Was it a letters or cabbage?

Yeah. God. Whenever anyone's doing that podcast in 200 years time, that's going to be an absolute riot for them. That's going to be so much fun. It'd be like, welcome back to our mini-series on COVID and its legacy. Here is everything that went wrong. Or Brexit and its legacy. Oh, my God.

Well, how far back do you go? Okay, so we have Spencer Perciville. You mentioned in the introduction there, a man called John Bellingham, who is our assassin. tell me a little bit about him. Another great name. Bellingham's fantastic setting. Yeah, these are very regency names as well, aren't they? He is, I suppose, on the surface of it,

somebody that you would imagine as an unlikely killer if such a thing exists. Okay. Bringing a lot of assumptions to the table. Sure, yeah. He is a middle class shipbroker from Liverpool, and he's well-travelled. He has seen a lot of the world because of his experience in the naval arena. He has traveled to Russia for trade.

1804. It all goes a bit tits up for him there. He's detained for debt. Now, there's a lot of controversy and conversation around this debt because some say it was a fabricated debt that the Russian authorities just fabricated this debt in order to detain him. Probably more likely in some of the research I've done around this is that it was his business partner's debt and the business partner died and he kind of inherited the business debt. Yeah, although I'm not ruling out the Russians misbehaving because there'd be no surprise. One has a legacy. But he basically claims that this is a lie or at least it's not really his debt anyway. So he believes he has been wronged. He is imprisoned in Russia, in Russia over the next five years, moved around quite a lot.

So he's experiencing some shit. That's already a big life to have lived in this moment, even without then going on to do what he's going to do. And he appeals, and his, you know, his cohort appeals to the British government for help here going, there is a British subject who is detained in Russia, step in, guys, we don't even think this debt claim is real. He needs to be released and you, as the government, need to do something. But the government very much take a step back and say, I can see where the ball is beginning to roll here. And they go, I'm not getting involved here, but he becomes obsessed. He is petitioning them constantly. from Russia, the Foreign Office, the Home Office, the...

As he would if you were in prison in Russia for five years. He's desperate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He needs help, yeah. Okay, so he's in Russia, presumably after the five years he gets out and makes his way back to Britain, what happens there? How does he get out? Right, so he just serves his time. The debts repays, and it just kind of goes from there. He does make his way back to Britain. We're in 1812. Now, it's all fairly quick turnaround in terms of what's about to happen. And when he comes back, he is petitioning. It's never registered

with me. He goes to the lobby of the House of Commons quite a lot. And that is where the term lobbyist comes from. I had not drawn that conclusion before. So they're going to the lobby in order to lobby their cases going. And he's like, guys, I need some recompense here. I was held for five years. See, this is something I find so fascinating about this period, that people, ordinary citizens, could write a petition and wait and try and hand in. And people do this as well with the king in St James's Park. And there is an assassination attempt on Georgia 3rd in a similar situation where someone is waiting with a petition. He gets out the carriage to take the petitions for the day and she comes at him with a knife, albeit but a knife. And this isn't suspicious,

these people waiting around. And this isn't also the first time on this particular day in question which we'll come to. This is not unusual for him to be lobbying in the house. He's a familiar figure in that space. He's a familiar person there. I will say this. It's important to know that for the day in question, the day of the assassination, again, which we will come to, he has prepared himself. He has purchased two pistols, which anybody can do within reason at this time. Another thing that always surprises me about the past, even as a historian who spends a lot of time in this period, the fact that guns are just available.

They are, but at least. With some restrictions, but. Yes. At least we can say that we have. civilized that process somewhat in this part of the world because if you're living in America, that's still the case. You can just hop into a convenience store and buy firearms, which is ridiculous. Like it's inhumane and it's barbaric. But the other thing he does, and I think this is so interesting in terms of we have this, you know, the very masculine prowess of gun ownership and

buying. On the other side, he goes for a sartorial ploy as well because he has a special pocket designed and implemented on the inside of his jacket. A bigger pocket than would usually be there in order to hold these pistols. So this is a man who's prepared. Yeah, he's not going to be able to claim that he hasn't planned this. No. And he doesn't even, again, we'll see this, but he doesn't even try to. So he really owns his actions.

So we have John Bellingham. You've mentioned Spencer Perciville, but just give us a little bit more background on him, his three years of being the prime minister up to this point. What is his background? Well, the first thing I would say, and I will give you some back. background, but the first thing I would say is that he's a very striking man. There is something, no, not in that kind of way. Although maybe he might be somebody's taste. I thought you're going to say he's one of the historical people that you fancy. What of our other, one of our other

history hotties. Yeah. No, he is, he's intriguing looking. He looks quite skeletal or ghostly. There's something very interesting about that man's face. It's, it's otherworldly. I find it very ghostly. It's really interesting. So Google him. Someone who is going to be assassinated. Well, yeah. But he is from an aristocratic Anglo-Irish background. He has a very, you know, privileged, relatively privileged upbringing in London. The reason I say relative is because he's the seventh son. So he's not, you know, the heir to this. He needs to make a living for himself. Your parents have utterly forgotten you at this point. Oh, yeah, yeah. They don't know his name. No, nobody can. Percival was just something they saw on the side of a packet of something at one point. It was like, that'll do him. I don't know. Yeah, it's rocket on that. We know that these men who are. born further down the line have to have some kind of a living carved out for themselves and

he goes into politics. But one of the things to bear in mind for him as well is that he is deeply, deeply evangelical. He is always wearing black. And this kind of commits to this idea of the ghostliness about him or something quite dramatic. I'm talking the skeletalness, they're always wearing black. I'm like, potentially interested. The heavy evangelicalism. No, that's a pass from me. He also. is characterising this transition from what we understand, and is not fully correct, but what we understand as this Georgian frivolity or this regency frivolity, into far more serious victoriana dourness. He really encapsulates that. He doesn't quite get there.

Although, to be fair, like that already exists. I'm thinking of like John Wesley and people like that, that kind of, yeah, again, very evangelical puritanism. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's very much there. Yeah. And it's not necessarily at the height of society. It's interesting to see a prime minister like that. Yeah. And it's bleeding in, isn't it now? It's becoming far more of a thing. And it will bleed only more so into the Victorian age. But it's certainly there, as you say, there's a really strong foundations for this movement, even at this time. So as I said, he enters politics as his career. He starts via the law. So that's not unusual. You know, just training. If you're an 18th century privileged man, you can be like, I'm going to do the law. No, I'm going to do the army. No,

the Navy. Wait, medicine. But maybe. Yeah, at this time, medicine was okay. Yeah. And for a seventh son, it would have been fine. But yeah, so he is, he becomes prime minister, though, in a very unusual way, I suppose. The man who's supposed to become prime minister is George Canning. He gets into a duel with another politician that's also in the running to be prime minister. This classic politician behaviour in this period, it really is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they have a jewel on, if you wonder, yeah, as I'll say, if you wonder around like Hyde Park or something in the 18th century, Green Park. There's MPs shooting each other, left, right and centre. Yeah, yeah. And if they're not shooting each other, they have swords in the previous

century, so, you know, they're there. Now, everyone survives this jewel, but they become, as you can imagine, ridiculed publicly for this idea of the duel. So they start to lose some credibility. And then almost by not default, because there is a little bit more strategy than that going on here. But he then

emerges as the person who's going to take that position. I would never have a jewel because I'm not frivolous and ridiculous. Look at me in my plain clothes. I'm taking the office seriously. And good for him. Yeah. He is devoted to that. He's quite a hardworking man. There's lots to admire about him in some ways. He's, you know, he's very much a Tory permanent spazaz. Not a lot. If you're looking for

drama, this isn't the one. He's a little bit Kirstarmory, although he's a Tory. I see it. I see what you're saying. I'm getting the job done. I'm serious. There's no pizzazz. Boris, on the other hand, would be off. Yeah. Yeah. I'm reading a book about Churchill at the moment, as you know. Churchill is just the Boris playbook. Like when you know more about Churchill, And I know this is so obvious, but anyway, look, that's other prime minister talk. I know what you're saying. Yeah. There is the dedication to politics there.

largely through the happenstance of other people's mistakes, dueling, et cetera. One thing that he's done up to this point is the campaign against slavery, which is an interesting legacy. And he's an interesting mover and shaker in this moment, is he? Yeah, and not seen as very Tory coded because his policies are anything but radical. But actually this is one area in which he ticks that kind of liberal box where he very much falls in line with what Wilberforce has been suggesting. in 1807 and what, of course, and we overlooked this all too easily, what the enslaved people's

uprisings across the empire have been trying to achieve for the last 10 plus years at this point. So it is, he does really see the benefits of stopping the slave trade, just to say it is stopped in 1807 legally, but that doesn't mean in practice it has stopped. And it also doesn't mean at this point that having enslaved people is illegal. people still have. Yeah, it's not like one day everyone wakes up and everyone's free. This is not the case. He's very much on the side of abolishing the slave trade. And he sets up courts in Sierra Leone and places where the Royal Navy are situated and wants to see that this abolition act is being enforced. So he is trying to regulate that trade after the 1807 Act in order to make change happen.

So it's an interesting legacy, but this enrages an awful lot of people who would otherwise look to him as a Tory. So we have a lot of discontent with Liverpool merchants, for instance, because their trade is relying on the enforced labor of transatlantic. Well, yeah, and not just in Liverpool, you know, across the country, people are paid compensation for the end of slavery and the loss of their quote unquote property, people who have never been out to. the plantations in North America, but who have ownership, claimed ownership of enslaved people, whether it's one person or a whole plantation. And they're sat back in Britain. That's how they're making their money. That's their income. And it's, you know, it's, this is so embedded across all areas of society. This isn't just aristocratic landowners. This is, you know, a widow down the street who technically owns one enslaved person and that's her pension. Yeah. And all of a sudden

in Britain, people have lost their incomes through this. And the government has to pay out a huge amount of money that I think, I believe, was only that debt for that compensation was only paid off in something like 2050. Very recently. I can't remember the exact date. So, you know, for people who say, this isn't important history anymore, or we've moved on from this, the legacy is still writ across our economy, our society, all of that. So, you know, this is really important. So I can see how Percival could be unpopular in some quarters. But how are we getting to an assassination? So this is interesting because, yeah, think about that potential unpopularity amongst merchants or sea merchants, whatever. Plus the unrest across Britain in, as we say,

the Luddites, the financial pressure that people are feeling in very much daily terms. So keep all of these things bubbling away. And we will come to the assassination day now. And let's see if we think that this is what's contributing to this, because there's some debate amongst historians as to exactly what's happening here. So we're talking about the 11th of May 1812. This is the assassination day itself. We are in the lobby of the House of Commons. Now, that is not the building that we see today on the same site, but not the same building. That burned down in 1834. Tell me that and I'll believe it, sure. This is the space that lobbyists, as have you said, would hang out and they would try to petition their, try to see MPs on the way to the Commons Chamber, which was then

in St. Stephen's Chapel. Can you imagine the chaos now if you're allowed to do that? If you could just go into the lobby and be like, here's my petition. I think it would be too dangerous now. Yeah, sadly I do. Well, it was clearly too dangerous then. Yeah. But, you know, and this, we see the danger in those public hall meetings that MPs have. That can be a very dangerous space for public servant. So, you know, it was quite a gloomy space at this time, lots of classical columns, benches along the walls for people to sit and wait. You see it depicted in period dramas sometimes. I'm thinking... People always use Greenwich. Naval College, don't I, for political stuff. What's the one that we love, Peterloo? Yes. I think there's a version of it depicted there.

Is there? I think so. I have it in my mind, doesn't it could be wrong. A slow film. Visually stunning. Stunning. It's absolutely gorgeous. So this is where John Bellingham is waiting. And he knows Spencer Percival is going to be coming through. With his pistols in his giant pockets, specially made giant pockets. It is 5.15pm. Yep. Nobody is questioning, as I say, why he is there. He's been there many days before.

People are allowed to be there to bring their petitions. And do we know in the days when he'd been there before, if he had come with the pistols with the intention of murder? We don't know, but we do know that he had purchased the pistols before the day of the assassination. So not on the day. He didn't purchase them on the day itself. So he could well have been walking around with these for a long time. A couple of days. I think it's still in May.

Maybe it's April he buys them. But certainly within a month, they are purchased. So there could have been other days that he's there with the guns. And this is just the day that he finally... And that's incredible to think how close he might have come on those other occasions. Yeah, yeah. I mean, obviously we know he's there with the guns on this day because this is the day that he fires them. Yeah, exactly what's the old adage of like if there's a loaded gun in a film, it's going to go off at some point.

Or if somebody has a cough, they ain't making it to the end of that episode. That's so true. I know it's not quite the same thing. I'd be dead in everything. I, like, constantly have a cold. Like Shane and I are constantly on the couch watching period drama going, she's going to die. Yeah, yeah, she's not getting to the end. Nobody just has a cough.

Like, you're dying. Well, these guns are going off. Yeah, he is dying. He's going to die. Spencer Percival has rushed in on his way to the Commons for a debate. Bellingham is behind a door that Percival enters through. He shoots him very suddenly in the check. It's all very quick.

So no warning, there's no scuffle. So hold on. So Perseville is going through the lobby on his way to the Commons Chamber for a debate. He goes through a door into the lobby, presumably, and Bellingham just raises the gun, fires. Straight into his chest. Wow. Close range. I mean, there must have been a moment of panic and confusion where people did not know what just happened.

There was. And you know, when that confusion happens, people start to remember things very specific. because it's such an unusual situation to find oneself in. And have you ever been in that kind of situation, not an assassination, but where time slows down, have you ever had that? And things start to move very, very slowly. And you have a very sort of precise experience of everything and details really stand out to you. Yes, exactly that.

It's like you can pick up things that you would. This is a case of three seconds potentially, but actually you almost remember every second as its own beat because you're in crisis mode. And so you're having to zone in. We have a quote from Mayfair Solicitor who witnesses this. He says, I heard a hoarse cry of murder, murder, and then Percival himself exclaimed, oh, and fell on his face. So talk about those three beats there. We have a horse cry of murder, murder, potentially not from, we don't know if that came from Percival himself, probably not.

We have Percival exclaiming, oh, or some kind of exclamation that he says, like shit. And then the third one is falling to his face. That is happening. Again, I said three seconds, but let's say that's happening. Five seconds, and yet they're picking up on those little beats. I think it's really interesting. Oh, and there's so much pathos in that tiny O expressed by Percival. He's dead within, people rush to him, obviously, but he is pronounced dead within two minutes.

So it's probably a very quick death. And during all of this chaos, by the way, it would have been very easy and almost predictable for John Bellingham to run for it and just be like, he could slip away. He does it. He goes back to his bench and he sits there and he waits for what's coming to him. And if he had done that. He wouldn't have been caught because it happened so quickly. And we might not even know who did it.

We might not even know who did it. Okay, so talk to me about his decision to sit down. In fact, before you talked to me about that, we do have an image. And I'm going to describe it. It's a George Cruikshank image. Crookshank, of course, a very famous and prolific satirist in this moment. I suppose you would class this as a satirical image. It's certainly, you know, sort of slightly maybe comic depiction of what's going on.

It sort of gives the impression of actors on a stage. It does. The floorboards of the lobby are kind of arranged in this way, so it looks like a stage. But we have Bellingham in a brown, quite plain coat that's obviously been specially tailored for his pistols, leaping out behind a door, and he's raised the pistol, and there's this great sort of shoot of red-orange flame coming out of the pistol to indicate that it's been fired. And Percival is in his characteristic black plain outfit. it. His hands are raised, his eyebrows are kind of scrunched up in terror and confusion. And there's this hole in his chest and a whole cloud of smoke from the pistol that's

surrounding him. And in the background, there's people kind of running away, maybe running for help. There's a sort of sense of confusion. It really captures the instantaneous moment that does happen. It does. It makes it very immediate, doesn't it, for some reason? It just, it does feel like a moment in time. It's just like, there, that's it. That's what happened. Yeah, and let's not forget that works by artists like Cruikshank would be placed in the windows of print shops. And this was the way that people consumed their news a lot of the time, not just in print newspapers, but in terms of these images, especially people who maybe weren't as literate as the rest of the population, these images of whether it's the royals or celebrities or whatever, were the way that people find out what was going on.

So this image, I imagine, within a day, would have been everywhere. Yeah, it's part of the news cycle, isn't it? that, you know, the 24-hour, because there was a 24-hour news cycle of them too. It just looked and felt differently. Well, I mean, papers used to come out two, three times a day. Exactly. So there's constantly news updates. And then not to mention about ballads and taverns that are telling these stories and stories. So, you know, there's an awful lot of ways people are consuming their news and this is certainly one of them. Just let's talk for a second about what happens in the immediate aftermath of this shooting. So as I said, Belling goes and sits back down

on his bench. But I think there's something about that. I'm not sure what the something is, but it's an interesting move. Yeah, and I'm interested to hear what you say next because either, to me, that says either this is a deeply political, purposeful act that he wants recognition for, and he is taking the consequences, he has done this as a protest, or he does not know what's going on. I can exclusively reveal, and by exclusively, I mean,

people have known this for 220 years, that it's a, he very much knows what he's doing, he's very much in control of this, and he's very much like, no, I'll let you do what you're doing, Well, I'll wait here and then you can come to me. Wow. Okay. And they do come to him.

And they're like, we need to get this guy to Newgate ASAP. So they just bundle him up, take him to the door. But in the confusion, there's too much going on. People are attracted. The Prime Minister has just been shot. Yeah. And we're in the House of Commons. There is a lot of people around and they're flocking to this scene.

So they go, hold on. They might grab him. They might try and enact justice themselves. We need to control this a little bit better. And also, there might be a fear of the Prime Minister's been killed. Who's going to be next? Are there other assassins? This is something that happens, you know, a lot in the previous century and in the 100 years leading up to this where there are other assassination attempts on high profile royal and political figures, where if one thing happens somewhere in the city, there is huge panic that it's going to happen somewhere else and that this is a conspiracy theory of a bigger scale. Well, that's interesting you say that because this will follow him through the city. So they take him back in and they go, no, we need to control this a little bit more. So they wait for. for a carriage to come that they can put him into the carriage and then take him to Newgate that

way. Right. But quite a lot of people follow him in the carriage to Newgate. And we have a quote from the time saying that the crowd actually has awed and cheered him, execrating the soldiery as murderers and hissed and hooted the carriages of the members and other gentlemen. Well, that gives you a sense of the public opinion of politicians in this moment and this feeling of the imbalance of power, the frustration people were feeling and that almost instantaneously Bellingham's become a kind of folk hero. Yeah, almost instantaneously

is right. I loved what you were saying about like then fear starts to bubble up in other places and so within the government within minutes and hours because this news will travel relatively quickly around central London there becomes a fear of revolution

and going, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. If that's happening to the Prime Minister, we're all now in danger. So we need to control this narrative. And bear in mind, you know, again, we'll talk about this at the end, but there has been an assassination on the mill owner William Horsfall, which I think we've spoken about that, right? Yeah, we covered that in the Loddite episode. So that's in the north. So that's happened like two weeks, 10 days or so before this. Yeah. So, you know, you can see what people are getting shot left, right and center here. Establishment of people are getting shot left, right and center. So that's the, that's kind of what's going on as this unfolds. Yeah. And there's that confusion of like, what is this? What is this? What's. going next. Okay, so you've talked a little bit about public reaction instantaneously out on the street as they try and take Bellingham to Newgate in the safest, calmest way that they can. But more broadly, in the days after this, what is the reaction of the nation to the execution of their Prime Minister? I suppose it's really hard, and I've become more aware of this in our own times, to use public, demonstrations and reactions

as a gauge of the nation and I know I've been guilty of it in the past too where I go well I mean there's thousands of people on the streets in Manchester doing this so it means that everyone must mean exactly whereas we know now a very first hand experience that that's not the case literally thousands of people can take to the streets

and they're still a minority and then still be a minority so I don't know it's difficult to say nationally what everyone was thinking and feelings certainly there would have been divided opinion on this some people thinking you cannot disrupt order and, you know, aristocratic birthright by doing this, some other people going, well, hold on, who's in control now?

Like, this doesn't feel. And then other people, as we shall see, having widespread celebration across the country because of this assassination. In Wolverhampton, for instance, we have another quote here saying, they were firing guns till near midnight. And the greater part of this day, boys in the streets are taught to exclaim, now the great man in the parliament house is dead. We shall have a big loaf.

So big loathe mean, they can have more bread, i.e. the prices will come down. They can afford more. It's not very catchy. It's really not very catchy. Like if they've been taught to say that, then you to edit that down. Bellingham, therefore, very quickly becomes this symbol of popular revolt. Yeah, a folk hero. Like I say, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so interesting. And what about in the press? Because we're talking about the fear, the unrest in Britain itself at this moment. But we are also at war with Napoleon. We, I was not there. Personally, I'm at one of them. But, you know, there's the blockade going on still.

There's not a lot of travel happening on the continent because of that. There's fear of for French invasions still. There's threat by the French and their allies to British interests across the British Empire. So what does this do in terms of sort of press response? How are people reading this within this wider context of global politics? So the press obviously are being, I don't want to say control, but influenced by the government in this response. Yeah. Well, you can imagine that's a pretty strict conversation that's being heard. Yes. And they're happy to be to go together on this. You know, they're happy to stay on the same side.

And just again, if you think about some of the things that have been said by the current government, this is really interesting in terms of this context. It is said that to react in this way, the way Bellingham did and the way people are celebrating it, is on English. How interesting. Yeah. And that this is not, given the context of what's going on in the broader political climate, i.e. Napoleon, etc., that this is not how British people, English people, because they say English people specifically, should be behaving. And that's interesting.

That's still part of our kind of political discourse, isn't it? Because I suppose in this moment, we've had the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789 and throughout the early 1790s. There's obviously the terror. People are being guillotined, left, right and center. And there's that violence that. from Britain's point of view is seen as specifically French and very dodgy and look at them, they're so emotional and they can't control themselves and we would never in this country,

we would never do that even though in the previous century there were lots of warring and the execution of a monarch, but we seem to have forgotten that by the 18th century and we don't do stuff like that. And I think that's interesting, this way of defining Englishness, Britishness as being calm and rational and measured, politically speaking and emotionally speaking. And unraveling that even further, and Percival himself had said this before he was assassinated, that assassinations were unmanly. Ah. Yeah.

So national identity and masculinity tied up together. What could we be alluding to, Maddie? But Bellingham has this folk here a thing, but of course the arms of state are about to. Yes. Okay, so he's going to go to trial, presumably. I assume he gets a fair trial. What happens? Yeah, I mean, in the context of the day, I suppose, it's a very quick trial.

Also, it's a pretty clear-cut case. Yeah, I mean, he did chew, you know, like. not saying he didn't. Now, he has tried at the old Bailey on the 15th of May. This is very quick. Troops are positioned around the old Bailey because they know the public interest in this is going to be quite high. Has the old Bailey still got its open element? No, not at this point. Okay, because we've spoken in previous episodes about how the courtrooms there had a wall missing essentially so that people could watch. But that's gone. Very quickly, that changes after when we've, so that's definitely by 1726, that's still there. But I think very very, very much.

Very quickly after that, even in the 18th century, that goes. But bear in mind, I'm using that word specifically troops. So troops will kill if the unrest. These are armed soldiers. Yes, they're not bodyguards. And, you know, this is talking about, and we're going to speak about this in a little bit, but, you know, talking about this idea of Britain coming close to revolution in this moment, in 1780, which is only a generation earlier, really, not even that.

Troops fire on British citizens during the Gordon riots in London. and they kill, I think it's something around 600 citizens. Is it that many? Yeah, outside the Bank of England in a battle between the protesters and the troops. So there is precedent. These aren't just here for ceremonial purposes. They will fire on people. And they are afraid that they're going to try and rescue him or retrieve Bellingham.

So that's what they think is potentially going to happen. So their job there is not really to protect Bellingham is to keep him as a prisoner. Yeah, yeah. Bellingham refutes the idea that he is insane. He says he knew exactly what he was doing and he purposely did it. The judge also, well, this is anecdotal, did it happen, did not, who knows. But the judge was also like, this man's definitely not crazy. And then apparently Bellingham goes, thank you very much, I'm not.

No, this is, I'm absolutely, you know, lucid when I did this. But he did believe he had a defence. He said, yes, I did it, but this is my defence. He had been denied his birthright and the privilege of every Englishman when he was in Russia. By not being saved by the government. by not being safe, and therefore had carte blanche to seek redress. So it comes to this idea of honour, of manly honour. And it's interesting because it's, on the one hand, he's talking about national identity

and what it is to be an Englishman, especially an Englishman abroad in the world and what you are owed by your own government and the governments of other nations. But also it's incredibly personal. You know, he's not saying, I killed the prime minister because people are starving in the north of England in the factories, working in harsh conditions and they're not getting any of the food that they are entitled to. He's not saying, I'm killing you because I agree with the politics on the continent that were bubbled up during the French Revolution. I think we should get rid of the monarchy and change the constitution. He's not saying any of this stuff. He's not

even saying, you know, the abolition of slavery hasn't gone far enough, or indeed the opposite that I'm angry about the abolition of slavery and I've lost money. none of these things necessarily apply but he is a product of his time as well so it's strange to see quite a personal motivation but within this wider context I think he is still part of that context he is a product of it

yeah absolutely but I think his actions are personally motivated and yes you can then as most assassins are actually yeah it's very rarely a wider cause yeah and if it is it's still molded in a personal perspective. And brought about by a personal event or, you know, oh, well, this happened to me and now I need to do this. So it's, you know, there is vengeance kind of involved there.

It doesn't work anyway. So he's convicted and sentenced to death. I think I heard somewhere, read somewhere when I was looking this up that it was a 15 minute deliberation. I know people are really shocked by this, but how many times we said this on after dark? You're getting 15 to 30 minutes of a deliberation here. I doubt it was even 15 minutes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's quick. Yeah. I mean, he's saying he's of sound mind. He proves that he is in court.

The judge says he is. He says that he did it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And there are witnesses. Yeah, loads. Yeah. So he's convicted. And he is sentenced to death, as I say. And he is executed on the 18th of May, which is one week following the murder. So like, we're moving. We're moving. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Tell me this, though. What's the legacy of this act? Because to kill a British Prime Minister is. To kill a mockingbird. To kill a mockingbird. This is now a literary podcast. To kill a Kill a British Prime Minister is a huge deal. And he's the only one. He's the only one who does it in history. There are others who have attempted. There's a great book called Killing Thatcher.

It's on my shelf. You've recommended something. I tell you every time. I need to read it, but it's on a job. Yeah, it's absolutely fantastic. And it's about the attempted IRA assassination on Thatcher. And they come very close to killing her, of course. But, you know, Bellingham is the only one who manages to kill the prime minister.

Is it an act that. is so personal that actually it has no political ramifications in the long term. Should we see it as part of a wider movement of unrest in this period and a changing relationship between the British public and politicians? What does this mean? Because I think often by historians kind of downplayed this as, you know, he's just an outlier who therefore decides because of some stuff that's happened to him personally that this should happen. How should we read this? Because to me, this seems like a massive moment in British history. It's difficult because I agree with you. Obviously it is the assassination of a prime minister or of any public figure or anybody at all.

Can I just say for listeners who are not watching this on YouTube, this is so serious, Anthony's put his laptop down. I'm like, I have opinions on this that I don't need my notes for. We're always very hesitant to draw parallels between our own time. But let's do it for a minute as a kind of a thought experiment. I mean, we've been doing it the whole way through this episode. We do it in every bloody episode. So I don't see why we shouldn't now. There is. significant and dangerous unrest across Britain and much of Europe right now. And we experience that in real time. We see it on the news.

There are demonstrations. There is violence. There is different political factions clashing. There is a lot going on. But one of the things... And that's it for the news at 10. Thank you. There's a lot going on.

There's stuff happening. What it is not is a unified approach. There is not one goal that people... are unified and there are so many different things that people are bringing to the table that that's why it sometimes feels quite relentless. It's like now this, now this, now this, and it's firefighting all the time. Some causes are far more justified than others. And obviously that will depend on what political side and mindset that you were of. But even, you know, if you look at recent assassinations or assassination attempts, if you look at the person who

tried to kill Trump when his ear was shot and also the guy who killed Charlie Kirk recently, that the motivations for those assassins who commit those acts of violence are often, like you say, personalised. They happen within this storm of political discourse and everything that's happening in the world and all these kind of knock on events. But when we get to the bottom of who these people are, often it's a little bit surprising. It's not, they don't quite fit into the neat box of a political spectrum that we would expect necessarily.

And to then draw that line back to 1812, I, I think. think what you are getting is a lot of disparate parts of the country. People are very poor. People can't afford bread. The Luddite movement is happening because of technological advances. Obviously, there's a connection there between financial falling away and technological advance. Bellingham has a personal vendetta. He's quite open about the fact that it's personal, but obviously that personal vendetta seeps into those other things. The reason I don't think, we mentioned this at the beginning, that this is the closest Britain comes to revolution. is because those causes are not unified in an organized way.

Obviously, they're all linked, don't get me wrong, but there's not an organisational unification amongst all of this disparate unrest. And therefore, that's why I really don't see. Even though the government at the time thought it was possible, that this is a revolutionary moment in 1812. I don't see it. I can see why in that moment people would think that and feel that. For me, I think the closest Britain comes to revolution in this, this,

broad period at least is 1780 with the Gordon riots when you have over the course of seven days London turned into chaos and 600 people are shot on the street and the prisons are emptied the Bank of England is attacked it's a serious it doesn't start as that but

it's a serious and actually quite organised attempt to bring down the pillars of power institutional constitutional all of that I don't see this moment as that and obviously Bellingham is acting alone but I can see why when you put him into that wider context of what's happening globally, what's happening nationally, this could be

seen as a tinderbox moment that doesn't quite ignite in the way that maybe Bellingham thought that it would. But I also kind of go, this isn't the closest that Britain comes to revolution, or England comes to revolution, because there is a revolution in 1688 to 1689. Well, let's, I like to push that boundary from 1688 to kind of 1692, 93. The revolution She's controversial The revolution is happening

It has happened I mean It's a coup It's a war It's a massacre And let's not forget all the stuff that happened before that In the 17th century

Yeah So like this isn't the closest That it comes Yes they're significant unrest And also what happens In the early 20th century In Ireland as well Like let's not

In terms of revolution Within British colonies Yeah Yeah yeah And also one thing to point out A good friend of mine Danielle Shout out to Danielle

Who probably doesn't listen to this podcast Because she's a very busy person but she busy people can listen to this podcast what I'm saying she's an anthropologist and she is working on

in cell movements contemporary insol movements and I think it's really depressing but important no but she says it's really difficult to look at but she recently said to me is the mistake we're making

about these in cell men and I wonder if it applies this is a question I don't know I wonder if it applies to Bellingham is that they are not acting alone that is the misconception that there is this idea that there is a lone gun

men. But actually, when we look at the context of the dark web in contemporary times, they aren't on their own. So actually they're acting en masse more than we perceive them to be. And that's where the danger comes. She said it's far more dangerous that there is this group of them. Because if they decide to arm and if they decide to take to the streets, that's when you're in real danger. So that's, I just think, you know, we see Bellingham as acting alone, which he is and he says. That's what he claims. Yes, absolutely. But I just wonder, will there be other. individuals who are maybe not connected in the same way that the dark web might be able to connect people today, but with similar causes and therefore that does start to look a bit more

or has the potential to look a bit more revolutionary, but it doesn't come to fruition, so therefore it's not. As someone secretly working on assassination attempts in the 18th century as a future book project, I can tell you that watch the space, because there's a lot of this. It's not necessarily the lone people that you would think all the time. There you go. Those people exist. Those people do things, but it's more complicated than that. I need to. I said this very quiet as though, not the million listeners we have will hear this. Oh, well, it's fine. You've heard it now. So there you go. That's Spencer Percival and his assassination. Well, I think it's an important moment in British history and more

people should know more about it. That was fascinating. Thank you very much. Now go Google him because he's an individual-looking man. I'm going to Google if he's a haughty on producer Stu's laptop. Laptop. Change your internet history. so there you go now you can take us out i'm not going to say bye leave us a five-star review wherever you get a podcast if you're not already watching us on youtube yeah come over please do i'm eating my own hair that's the kind of content yeah that's what you can see that's what you can see that's what you can see please come and watch us on youtube it's nice it's nice lovely i'm on a couch today very comfy yeah it's good uh goodbye

uh goodbye the end the end