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The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria cover

The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria

Chapter 756: RIOTS AT MANCHESTER, ETC.
By Edward Farr
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About This Book

The volume traces British political, parliamentary, and military developments from the accession of George III through the early nineteenth century, chronicling changes of ministry and cabinet, debates over colonial taxation and the American conflict, parliamentary controversies involving figures such as Wilkes and Warren Hastings, questions of Catholic relief and slave-trade abolition, and responses to the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, including major naval and continental campaigns, the union with Ireland, and domestic legislation on finance, civil liberties, and parliamentary reform.

RIOTS AT MANCHESTER, ETC.

In the last report of the secret committee of the house of commons, mention was made of disturbances which had been experienced at Manchester. These disturbances appear to have been of an extraordinary description. A large body of men, calling themselves friends of parliamentary reform, and urged by the resolution of despair, determined to proceed to London to explain their distress to the regent in person. Each individual provided himself with a blanket and a small stock of provisions. On the day of their departure they met near St. Peter’s church; and such crowds assembled around them that the magistrates thought it expedient to call out the military. The principal instigators of the mob were arrested; but, nevertheless, a considerable number set out on their mission to London. More than five hundred proceeded as far as Macclesfield, where a troop of yeomanry was stationed to provide against contingencies. All, however, remained quiet; and this “Blanketeering Expedition” penetrated into Staffordshire, where it ended; the poor creatures who composed it being obliged to give it up from exhaustion and the want of sustenance. But these riots had at least one effect, it filled the prisons throughout the country with objects of suspicion or of crime. Many of these were as arbitrarily released by the authorities as they had been committed; but the more prominent leaders were either detained in custody, or sent, for greater security, to the metropolis. The trial of the prisoners in the Tower was commenced in the month of June; but Watson, the first tried, being acquitted by the jury, the other cases were abandoned. The prisoners captured in the riots which took place in the northern and midland counties were tried at Derby by a special commission, and twenty-three received sentence of death; three of them only, however, suffered the extreme penalty of the law. The last prosecution was that of a man named Hone, for some political parodies on the Litany and other parts of our church-service. He was tried for a blasphemous libel; but he was acquitted, chiefly on the ground that his parodies were political, and hence not blasphemous; and the public sympathized with the demagogue by raising a subscription, in order to reimburse him for his expenses, and to reward him for the trouble and fatigue which he had undergone in the prosecution. Hone seems to have profited by the lesson he had received; for he withdrew from the disgraceful career which he had commenced, and engaged in literary pursuits more worthy of a rational and thinking being, and of a good citizen of the world.