Editing Peterloo Massacre (section)

===Radical mass meetings in Manchester===
In the winter of 1816–17 massed reform petitions were rejected by the House of Commons, the largest of them from Manchester with over 30,000 signatures.<ref>{{cite news |title=Petition of the Manchester Reformers |work=Chester Courant |date=25 March 1817}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Poole |first=Robert |date=2019 |title=Petitioners and Rebels: Petitioning for Parliamentary Reform in Regency England |journal=Social Science History |volume=43 |issue=3 |pages=553–580 |doi=10.1017/ssh.2019.22 |doi-access=free |ref=none}}</ref> On 10 March 1817 a crowd of 5,000 gathered in St Peter's Fields to send some of their number to march to London to petition the [[George IV of the United Kingdom|Prince Regent]] to force parliament into reform; the so-called 'blanket march', after the blankets which the protesters carried with them to sleep in on the way. After the magistrates read the [[Riot Act]], the crowd was dispersed without injury by the [[King's Dragoon Guards]]. The ringleaders were detained for several months without charge under the emergency powers then in force, which suspended ''[[habeas corpus]]'', the right to be either charged or released. In September 1818 three former leading Blanketeers were again arrested for allegedly urging striking weavers in Stockport to demand their political rights, 'sword in hand', and were convicted of sedition and conspiracy at Chester Assizes in April 1819.<ref>{{cite news |title=Chester Spring Assizes – Trial of Johnston, Drummond and Bagguley, for Sedition and Conspiracy |work=Chester Courant |date=20 April 1819}}</ref>

By the beginning of 1819, pressure generated by poor economic conditions was at its peak and had enhanced the appeal of [[Radicalism (historical)|political radicalism]] among the cotton loom weavers of south Lancashire.{{sfnp|Frangopulo|1977|p=30|ps=}} In January 1819, a crowd of about 10,000 gathered at St Peter's Fields to hear the radical orator [[Henry Hunt (politician)|Henry Hunt]] and called on the Prince Regent to choose ministers who would repeal the Corn Laws. The meeting, conducted in the presence of the cavalry, passed off without incident, apart from the collapse of the hustings.<ref>{{cite news |title=Provincial Intelligence |work=The Examiner |date=25 January 1819}}</ref>{{sfnp|Poole|2019|loc=ch. 6 & pp. 175–177}}<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Polyp, Sclunke & Poole |url=https://peterloo.org/ |title=Peterloo: witnesses to a massacre |publisher=New Internationalist |year=2019 |isbn=978-1-78026-475-2 |location=Oxford |pages=17–21 |oclc=1046071859 |access-date=21 March 2020 |archive-date=13 January 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200113182123/https://peterloo.org/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

A series of mass meetings in the Manchester region, Birmingham, and London over the next few months alarmed the government. "Your country [i.e. county] will not be tranquillised until blood shall have been shed, either by the law or the sword", the Home Secretary, [[Henry Addington, 1st Viscount Sidmouth|Lord Sidmouth]] wrote to the Lancashire magistrates in March. Over the next few months the government worked to find a legal justification for the magistrates to send in troops to disperse a meeting when riot was expected but not actually begun. In July 1819, the magistrates wrote to Lord Sidmouth warning they thought a "general rising" was imminent, the "deep distress of the manufacturing classes" was being worked on by the "unbounded liberty of the press" and "the harangues of a few desperate demagogues" at weekly meetings. "Possessing no power to prevent the meetings" the magistrates admitted they were at a loss as to how to stem the doctrines being disseminated.<ref name="JETNotes">{{cite book |last1=Taylor |first1=John Edward |url=https://archive.org/details/notesobservation00tayl |title=Notes and observations, critical and explanatory, on the papers relative to the internal state of the country |date=1820 |publisher=E Wilson |access-date=15 June 2015|author1-link=John Edward Taylor}}</ref>{{rp|1–3}} The Home Office assured them privately that in "an extreme case a magistrate may feel it incumbent upon him to act even without evidence, and to rely on Parliament for an indemnity."{{sfnp|Poole|2019|loc=ch. 10}}