Manchester, Birmingham, Paisley. Political trials went on at every
assize. Bands of men lay in York, Lancaster, and Warwick gaols. At
Stockport Sir Charles Wolseley told a crowd armed with bludgeons that he
had been in Paris at the beginning of the French Revolution, that he was
the first man who made a kick at the Bastille, and that he hoped he
should be present at the demolition of another Bastille.

On the 22nd of August, 1819, Sir Francis Burdett wrote to his electors at
Westminster: "....It seems our fathers were not such fools as some would
make us believe in opposing the establishment of a standing army and
sending King William's Dutch guards out of the country. Yet would to
heaven they had been Dutchmen, or Switzers, or Russians, or Hanoverians,
or anything rather than Englishmen who have done such deeds. What! kill
men unarmed, unresisting; and, gracious God! women too, disfigured,
maimed, cut down, and trampled on by dragoons! Is this England? This a
Christian land--a land of freedom?"

For this, and a great deal more, Sir Francis, after a protracted trial,
was sentenced to pay a fine of two thousand pounds and to be imprisoned
for three months in the Marshalsea of the Court. In the Cato Street
conspiracy the notorious Arthur Thistlewood and his fellow-conspirators
planned to assassinate the whole of the Cabinet Ministers when they were
dining at Lord Harrowby's house, in Grosvenor Square. Forgery and
sheep-stealing were still punishable by death. Truly these were times of
trouble in England.

In London a serious difficulty presented itself when Queen Charlotte grew
old and ailing, and there was no royal lady, not merely to hold a
Drawing-room, but to lend the necessary touch of dignity and decorum to
the gaieties of the season. The exigency lent a new impetus to the famous