“Per various casus, per tot discrimina rerum, Tendimus in Latium; sedes ubi fata quietas Ostendunt. Illic fas regna resurgere Trojae. Durate, et vosmet rebus servate secundis.” Virgil “By diuers casis...

The 20th April 1814, an almost cloudless, perfectly sunny day, saw all London astir. On that day Lewis the Eighteenth was to come from Hartwell in triumph, summoned by France to the throne of his ance...

On the Friday evening the Major called for Zachariah. He had not yet returned, but his wife was at home. The tea-things were ready, the kettle was on the hob, and she sat knitting at the window. Her v...

Major Maitland was very fond of the theatre, and as he had grown fond of Zachariah, and frequently called at his house, sometimes on business and sometimes for pleasure, he often asked his friend to a...

The Friends of the People continued their meetings, and Zachariah attended regularly, although, after about three months’ experience, he began to doubt whether any advance was being made. The immediat...

Jean Caillaud, shoemaker, whom we have met before, commonly called John Kaylow, friend of the Major and member of the Society of the Friends of the People, was by birth a Frenchman. He had originally ...

Sunday afternoon came. It was the strangest party. Pauline, on being introduced to Mrs. Coleman, made a profound curtsey, which Mrs. Coleman returned by an inclination of her head, as if she consented...

The Reverend Thomas Bradshaw, of Pike Street Meetinghouse, was not a descendant from Bradshaw the regicide, but claimed that he belonged to the same family. He was in 1814 about fifty years old, and m...

In December, 1814, a steamboat was set in motion on the Limehouse Canal, the Lord Mayor and other distinguished persons being on board. In the same month Joanna Southcott died. She had announced that ...

Bow Street was completely at fault, and never discovered the secret of that assassination. It was clear that neither the Major nor Coleman were the murderers, as they had been noticed at some distance...

We must now advance a little more rapidly. It was in the beginning of 1815 that Zachariah found himself settled in Manchester. That eventful year passed without any external change, so far as he was c...

Soon after this visit debates arose in Zachariah’s club which afterwards ended in the famous march of the Blanketeers, as they were called. Matters were becoming very serious, and the Government was t...

Next week Zachariah found it necessary to consult with Caillaud again. The Major was to be there. The intended meeting was announced to Mrs. Coleman by her husband at breakfast on the day before, and ...

Neither Mrs. Coleman nor her husband thought it anything worse than a feverish cold, and he went to his work. It was a club night, the night on which the final arrangements for the march were to be ma...

When Zachariah came to himself he was in a large, long, whitewashed room, with twenty beds or more in it. A woman in a greyish check dress was standing near him. “Where am I?” he said. “Where are yer?...

The trial took place at Lancaster. Zachariah was sorely tempted to go; but, in the first place, he had no money, and, in the second place, he feared arrest. Not that he would have cared two pins if he...

Cowfold, half village, half town, lies about three miles to the west of the great North Road from London to York. As you go from London, about fifty miles from the Post-Office in St. Martin’s le Grand...

The Reverend John Broad was minister of Tanner’s Lane Chapel, or, more properly, Meetinghouse, a three gabled building, with the date 1688 upon it, which stood in a short street leading out of North S...

Occasionally, in the summer months, Tanner’s Lane indulged in a picnic; that is to say, the principal members of the congregation, with their wives and children, had an early dinner, and went in gigs ...

Mr. Isaac Allen, Fanny’s father, was an ardent Whig in politics⁠—what in later years would have been called a Radical. He had been apprenticed in London, and had attended Mr. Bradshaw’s ministrations ...

Such was the Coleman household when Mr. Thomas Broad called one fine Monday afternoon about three months after he had been at college. He had preached his first sermon on the Sunday before, in a villa...

George Allen meanwhile, at Cowfold, languished in love with Priscilla Broad, who was now a comely girl of eighteen. Mrs. Broad had, of course, discovered what was in the wind, and her pride suffered a...

It is no part of my business to tell the story of the lovemaking between George and Priscilla. Such stories have been told too often. Every weakness in her was translated by George into some particula...

Six months afterwards Priscilla was about to give birth to her firstborn. At Mrs. Allen’s earnest request old nurse Barton had been engaged, who nursed Mrs. Allen when George came into the world, and ...

Mr. Allen, having business in London, determined to go on Saturday, and spend the next day with Zachariah. Although he always called on his old friend whenever he could do so, he was not often away fr...

The county polling day meanwhile drew near, and with its approach party spirit rose and the mutual exasperation of both sides increased. George and his father were out every evening at the Institute o...

Three months passed, during which the Allens’ pew was vacant at Tanner’s Lane. George remained at home with his only child, or was at his mother’s, or, shocking to relate, was in the fields, but not a...

The eventful evening at last arrived. It had been announced from the pulpit on the Sunday before that a special meeting of the church would be held on the following Wednesday to consider certain quest...

“O ze (ye) my feris (companions) and deir freyndis, quod he, Of bywent perillis not ignorant ben we, Ze have sustenit gretir dangeris unkend, Like as hereof God sall make sone ane end: The rage of Sil...