6 years of Hope - 1792-1797
The London Corresponding
Society
A hotbed of reformism at
the time of the French Revolution and Pitt the Younger. Much of the following
infomation comes from Romantic
Chronology by Laura Mandell and Alan Lui
- 25 January 1792 - Shoemaker
Thomas Hardy starts the London Corresponding Society (LCS). The group debates
for five nights on: "Have we who are Tradesman, Shopkeepers and mechanics
any right to seek to obtain a parliamentary reform?"
- 27 September 1792 - LCS's
"Joint Address to the French National Convention"
- 14 April 1794 - LCS's
mass meeting in London protesting sentences of transportation passed on Muir
and Palmer
- 12 May 1794 - Arrest
of secretaries of the LCS; Hardy and Adams. Later Thelwall (LCS) as well as
Holcroft and Horne Tooke (Society for Constitutional Information) were also
arrested.
- 28 October 1794 - Treason
trials open; Thomas Erskine defends the reformers
- 5 November 1794 - After
deliberating for 3 hours, the jury returns a verdict of "Not Guilty"
for Thomas Hardy; three weeks later, Horne Tooke and Thelwall are acquitted,
and Holcroft is discharged without trial. Jeremiah Joyce was one of the English
Jacobins, arrested and imprisoned in the tower of London for high treason
for speaking and publishing activity in behalf of the LCS and for alleged
sympathy with the French Revolution. When Thomas Hardy, John Horne Tooke,
and John Thelwall were freed by the juries in consecutive trials, the government
dropped the charges against Joyce and the others.
- 26 June 1795 - Mass meeting
of LCS
- 26 October 1795 - Second
mass meeting of LCS
- 12 November 1795 - LCS
holds a large rally, defying the Royal proclamation of 4 November. This was
in a field near Copenhagen House, north of King's
Cross (then Battle Bridge) and west of Islington. It could speculated that
the field was christened 'Jacobin Field' after this
great event.
- 23 November 1795 - Fox
moves for a week's delay in voting on the Two Bills (see 6-10 Nov.) on the
grounds that they repeal the Bill of Rights of 1689; Fox predicts the people
will revolt; LCS defends itself to Parliament and the People in 'An Explicit
Declaration of the Principles and Views of the London Corresponding Society'
(while it had always advocated social equality, the Society says, it had never
advocated equalization of property)
- 7 December 1795 - LCS
holds huge meeting at Regent's Park: M.C. Brown calls it "the last free
meeting of the people under the existing constitutution"
- 23 December 1795 - Society
for Constitutional Information publishes a lengthy analysis of the Two Bills
on how to evade them; the LCS reorganizes into small divisions so that no
more than 50 people will meet together at a time
- 6 Feb 1796 - John Binns
and John Gale Jones, missionary delegates from the LCS, sent to rural reform
societies to explain to them how to evade and not challenge the Two Bills
- 11 March 1796 - Binns
and Jones are arrested and imprisoned in Birmingham; Francis Place is sent
to defend them; they will be tied for violating the Two Bills (for the Government
and the radicals, a test case). Binns is acquitted in Aug 1800, but Jones
is convicted of sedition in April 1799, although never sentenced. The cost
of defending them, bail, and the missions themselves contribute to the downfall
of the LCS
- 1 July 1796 - LCS's 'Moral
and Political Magazine' is published monthly until May 1797
- March 1797 - Francis
Place and John Ashley (moderates) have dissociated themselves from the more
extreme LCS
- 31 July 1797 - LCS holds
an illegal mass meeting at St.Pancras (presumably on the open land to the
north, subsequently to become the Agar Town slum in the mid 19th Century,
before demolition and the building of the railway terminal). 4000 constables
and soldiers (with an extra 6000+ held in reserve) force the crowd to disperse;
six speakers (Ben Binns, Fergussonk Galloway, Barrow, Stuckey, Hodgson) are
arrested, but the Grand Jury dismisses charges against them.
- 1797/8 - [LCS said to
have disbanded as members disagree over expulsion of anarchists and aethiests]