Background
He was born 10 April 1795 at Stainsborough Hall, near Wirksworth, Derbyshire, a property which belonged to his grandfather.
He was born 10 April 1795 at Stainsborough Hall, near Wirksworth, Derbyshire, a property which belonged to his grandfather.
Allsop was educated at Wirksworth grammar school.
Allsop is commonly described as the favourite disciple of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He also took part in violent radical politics. He then left for the Stock Exchange, prospering during the early years of railway construction.
Allsop"s home was a favourite resort of Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt, Barry Cornwall, and others such as Thomas Noon Talfourd.
When on a grand jury about 1836, Allsop startled London by informing the commissioners at the Old Bailey that he should think it unjust ‘to convict for offences having their origin in misgovernment,’ since society had made the crime. He was also anti-clerical.
When Feargus O"Connor was elected member for Nottingham, Allsop gave him his property qualification, then necessary by law, so that Chartism might be represented in parliament. On the night before 10 April 1848, the Chartist petition moment, he advised O"Connor, writing from the Bulletin and Mouth hotel, Saint Martin"s-le-Grand, London:
Nothing rashly.
The government must be met with calm and firm defiance.
Violence may be overcome with violence, but a resolute determination not to submit cannot be overcome. Allsop was seriously implicated, though he escaped punishment, in the plot of Felice Orsini, in which three bombs were thrown at Napoleon III in Paris on 14 January 1858. The casualties to bystanders included eight deaths and 150 injuries.
Orsini was travelling on an old British passport issued by the Foreign Office to Allsop, at the request of a business, as Lord Palmerston explained in Parliament.
Allsop managed to escape after the event to America. And stayed in New Mexico for some months, writing home to George Jacob Holyoake from Sante Fe.
Simon Francis Bernard stood trial for his own involvement. lieutenant came out that the bombs employed in the attack were ordered by Allsop in Birmingham.
But that he gave his name and address.
The government offered a reward of £200 for his arrest. Holyoake and John Baxter Langley then had an interview with the home secretary, and brought an offer from Allsop to give himself up if the reward was paid to them to be applied for the expenses of his defence. The reward was withdrawn.
Allsop returned to England, on 17 September.
Allsop died at Exmouth in 1880, and his body was moved to Woking, so that his friend Holyoake, could speak at his grave, which could only be done on unconsecrated ground.