The matured plan of the rising was arranged on the 1st of November at a meeting at a place called Blackwood, where there was a Lodge or Society of Chartists. At this meeting deputies attended, and orders were formulated, that the men should assemble armed on the evening of the 3rd, the following Sunday. There were to be three principal divisions, one under the command of Frost (then living at Blackwood), the other two to be respectively formed of men from the up-country, and men more from the east and north. These divisions were to meet at Risca at a convenient distance from Newport, their destination, which they purposed to reach about two in the morning. They hoped to find the inhabitants asleep, and to carry out their plans at their own convenience; attack the “intended-to-be-surprised” troops at Newport, break down the bridge over the Usk, and stop the mail. The Newport mails in those days were forwarded over the Old Passage of the Severn to Bristol, from which place at a given time they were sent North. The non-arrival of the mails at Birmingham was to have been a sign of success of the Monmouthshire outbreak, and of a general rising in Lancashire, and other parts of the kingdom. Affairs, however, turned out very differently to what they expected. The night between the Sunday and Monday was the darkest and most tempestuous that had been known for years, and consequently though Frost arrived near Risca early in the night, the other divisions were long behind time. Meanwhile Mr. Phillips, the Mayor of Newport, afterwards Sir Thomas Phillips, a firm and intelligent man, well informed of what was going on, had been quietly making preparations, in view of the intelligence received during Sunday. He had given orders to the Superintendent of Police to have a number of Special Constables ready on that evening. A detachment was stationed at the Westgate Hotel, where the Mayor and another magistrate also located themselves about 9 p.m., and remained watching throughout the night. When day dawned on Monday, November 4th, intelligence was received that the insurgents were approaching, and the Mayor sent a request to the barracks for military assistance. There was only one company of soldiers (of Her Majesty’s 45th Regiment of foot) stationed at Newport at the time. Of these thirty men, under command of Lieut. Basil Gray, were sent to the assistance of the Mayor. They arrived at the Westgate Hotel about 8 a.m. The soldiers were placed in a room on the ground floor of the hotel with three windows (a bow window with three divisions) coming down within a few inches of the ground, and it should be observed that they did not load their muskets until, after being fired upon, they were ordered to do so. Shortly after the rioters were seen advancing, the numbers being technically stated in the indictment for High Treason as “a great multitude ... to the number of two thousand and more,” probably more accurately computed at 5,000, armed with guns, pistols, pikes, swords, daggers, clubs, bludgeons, and other weapons. Amongst the miscellaneous “weapons of offence” were scythes fixed on poles, and an instrument (of which a specimen was produced in court) called a “mandrel,” used for working out coal in the mines, and somewhat resembling a pick-axe in shape. A portion of the rioters formed in front of the hotel, and at once began the attack by firing a volley of small arms at the windows of the room where the soldiers were placed, of which the lower shutters were closed. They gained entrance to a passage, or corridor, communicating with it by a door. The word was immediately given to load with ball cartridge, but whilst the lower window shutters remained closed, the men could not reply. Therefore, with the certainty that they would be fired on, the Mayor and Lieutenant Gray threw back the shutters, and stood unmasked facing the insurgents, who immediately discharged a volley of small arms, whereby the Mayor was wounded in the groin, and seriously in one arm near the shoulder, and Sergeant Daily was badly hit in the head. The order to fire was at once given, and several of the insurgents were wounded, and fell. For the short time that the conflict lasted the rioters in the house continued to try to force the position by rushing up to the doorway; but when they encountered their own dead and received the return fire of the soldiers they faltered, and in less than ten minutes the affray was over. The passage was cleared of all excepting the dead and wounded, and the vast mob of rioters was dispersing with all speed. In the words of one witness, they “ran to all quarters.” Another deposed that he met numbers of them near Newport “running back in all directions,” and though here and there some men remained, they were without arms, and from the quantity of weapons of offence collected afterwards, it was demonstrable that in many cases the men must have flung them away as they fled. But though short, the affair had been bloody. The rioters lost seven men killed besides a number of wounded, and the casualties to their opponents were in some cases serious, although not fatal. Hundreds hurried from the scene of their repulse with such speed that by ten o’clock a.m. they were passing the Lodge Gate of Tredegar Park, about two miles from Newport. Amongst this crowd was John Frost, ex-draper of Newport and would-be conductor of the outbreak, a man who had proved himself as deficient in courage as he had been inefficient in leadership. He was endeavouring to conceal his identity by holding a handkerchief to his face as if he were crying. But on being spoken to and recognised, he left the road and going through an archway leading to a coppice wood, was lost sight of. A warrant was granted in the afternoon of the same day, and in the evening, on the door being forced open of the house of a man named Partridge (about a quarter of a mile from the Westgate Hotel in Newport), Frost was found and was immediately taken into custody. On being searched, three pistols all loaded, a powder flask, and some balls were found in his pocket.

PLATE XVI.
Chepstow Castle, Monmouthshire.
(p. [16].)

CHAPTER VIII
BEGINNING THE STUDY OF ENTOMOLOGY, COLLECTIONS OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGICAL SPECIMENS, AND FAMILY DISPERSAL.

So far as a date can be given to what has been the absorbing interest of the work of my life, the 12th of March, 1852, would be about the beginning of my real study of Entomology. I fancy I attended to it more than I knew myself, for little things come back to memory connected with specimens being brought to me to name or look at, one in particular regarding a rare locust. The date was some time before coaches were discontinued, and the usual gathering of people in those days had collected at the door of the George Hotel in Chepstow to see the coach change horses, when, to the astonishment of all, a fine rose-underwinged locust appeared amongst them. Chepstow is on a steep hill, and the “George” about half a mile from the bridge (plate [XVII].). Down the hill set off the locust, pursued by a party from the George, until it was captured at the bridge, and our family doctor conveyed it alive and uninjured to me. On my father sending it up to Oxford to Professor Daubeney as a probable curiosity, he identified it as being the first of the kind which had been taken so far west. If he gave us the name, I have forgotten it. In March I began my studies by buying my first entomological book, and I chose beetles for the subject, and Stephens’s “Manual of British Beetles”[[25]] for my teacher. Those who know the book will understand my difficulties. It has no illustrations, glossary, nor convenient abstracts to help beginners, and, if such things existed in those days, they were not accessible to me. But I made up my mind that I was going to learn, and as palpi, maxillæ, and names of all the smaller parts of the insects were wholly unknown to me, I struck out a plan of my own. From time to time I got one of the very largest beetles that I could find, something that I was quite sure of, and turned it into my teacher. I carefully dissected it and matched the parts to the details of the description given by Stephens. The process was very tedious and required great care, but I got a sound foundation, and by making a kind of synopsis of the chief points of classification I got a start. To this day (1891) I have my old Stephens’s Manual with my own pencil markings, that started me on my unaided course. Identification was very difficult for a long time, but I “looked out” my beetles laboriously till I thought I was sure of the name, and then, to make quite certain, I took the subject the other way forward—worked back systematically from the species till I found that there was no other kind that it could be. Killing my specimens was another difficulty. I had been told that if beetles were dropped into hot water death was instantaneous. I was not aware that it should be boiling. So into the kitchen I went with a water beetle, which in after years I found must have been Dytiscus marginalis—a large water beetle which has great powers of rapid swimming—got a tumbler of hot water, and dropped my specimen in. But to my perfect horror, instead of being killed instantaneously, it skimmed round and round on the water for perhaps a minute as if in the greatest agony. This was my second lesson; thenceforward I supplied myself with chloroform.

My first experience in the use of the microscope was gained by helping my brother William to prepare botanical specimens for examination under his microscope. I thus had useful practice early in life, 1849 (?), in the management of a good instrument. I bought my own about 1864, after my brother John’s death—one of Pillischer’s—a good working instrument with excellent 1-inch and ¼-inch lenses on a nose-piece. I first studied with it the hairs of different animals. I also worked preparations of teeth, showing the fluid contents when in a fresh state.

PLATE XVII.
Chepstow with the Road Bridge over the Wye (opened in 1816), Chepstow Castle on the River-bank, and rising ground behind.
Frith photo.