This scarcity of food, and the heavy burdens, both in taxation, the levying of men, and the pressgangs, fell sorely on the poor, who murmured loudly,—a fact which was duly taken advantage of by the demagogues for their own seditious purposes. They agitated for universal suffrage and annual parliaments, and the movement gathered strength. On the 26th October, the Corresponding Society held a mass meeting in Copenhagen Fields, and the inflammatory speeches there delivered, no doubt, bore their fruit three days afterwards, when the mob stoned the King. As the Times' account of this assault is very meagre, compared with that in the Annual Register, I copy the latter verbatim.
"29th October.—On the occasion of His Majesty's going to the House of Lords, the Mall and the Parade of St. James's Park, and Parliament Street, were completely choked up with spectators. The crowd was by no means so great at the Coronation, and, to see the King go to the House, there never were before more than a tenth part of the numbers of this day; for they, at least, amounted to 200,000. Several noblemen and Cabinet Ministers passed through the Park from Buckingham House about two o'clock. The Earl of Chatham, Duke of Gloucester, &c., were hissed, and the Duke of Portland was very much hooted.
"About twenty minutes afterwards the King left Buckingham House, and was violently hissed and hooted and groaned at the whole way; but no violence was offered till he arrived opposite the Ordnance Office, when a small pebble, or marble, or bullet, broke one of the windows. In returning, the moment His Majesty entered the Park the gates of the Horse Guards were shut, for the purpose of excluding the mob who followed the carriage; at which, as it passed opposite Spring Gardens Terrace, another stone was thrown, but it fortunately struck the woodwork between the windows.
"The crowd now pressed closely round the coach, and His Majesty, in considerable agitation, signified, by waving his hands to the Horse Guards on each side, his anxiety that the multitude should be kept at a distance. In this way he passed on through the Park, and round by the Stable Yard, into St. James's Palace, at the front gate, the bottom of St. James's Street. A considerable tumult took place when His Majesty was about to alight, and one of the horses in the state coach took fright, threw down an old groom of the name of Dorrington, and broke one of his thighs, but it proved, fortunately, a simple fracture; his other thigh was considerably bruised, but not dangerously.
"A few minutes after His Majesty had entered the palace, the mob attacked the state coach with stones, and did it great injury. In its way along Pall Mall to the Mews many things were also thrown at it. After a short time the King went, in his private coach, from St. James's to Buckingham House; but, on his way through the Park the mob surrounded the carriage, and prevented it from proceeding, crying out, 'Bread! Bread! Peace! Peace!'—The Guards were, however, speedily brought up, and they protected the carriage till His Majesty got safe into Buckingham House.
"When His Majesty entered the House of Peers, the first words he uttered were these, to the Lord Chancellor: 'My Lord, I have been shot at!' This alluded to the substance which had broke the window while passing the Ordnance Office.
"Three or four persons were apprehended on suspicion of having thrown stones, &c., at the King, and one of them was charged with having called out, 'No king,' and other such expressions. They were all examined at the Duke of Portland's office; and, waiting the result of this business, nothing was done in the House of Lords till near six o'clock, when Lord Westmoreland, who rode in the carriage with the King, having previously moved 'that strangers be ordered to withdraw,' stated the insult and outrage with which the King had been treated; and added that His Majesty, and those who had accompanied him, were of opinion that the glass of the coach had been broken by a ball from an air-gun, which had been shot from a bow window of a house adjoining the Ordnance Office, with a view to assassinate him.
"The King, through the whole of the riot, displayed the cool magnanimity for which the family have ever been distinguished. At the time that the glass of the coach was broken, he said to Lord Westmoreland, 'That is a shot;' and, instead of leaning back in the carriage, or striving to avoid the assassin, he pointed to the round hole in the pane, and examined it. But this was not all; he went into the private coach, to go from St. James's to the Queen's house, in the midst of the wildest commotions of the multitude, thereby exposing himself, almost without guards, to their fury; and then it was that His Majesty's person was most imminently in danger."
"30th October.—Confident in the attachment of his people, notwithstanding the alarms of the preceding day, the King, accompanied by Her Majesty and three of the Princesses, visited Covent Garden Theatre, and, at their entrance, was received with the usual burst of applause. 'God save the King' was sung twice, and, by a considerable part of the house, over-zealously called for a third time; this, in a corner of the gallery, provoked a few hisses, which, however, were soon overruled, and one or two of the most active of the turbulent party were turned out; after which the performance went on."
Five persons were apprehended for this outrage, but with the exception of one, Kidd Wake, aged 27, a journeyman printer, who owned to his hissing and hooting at His Majesty, and who was committed to take his trial on 14th November, I cannot trace their fate; probably they were discharged for want of evidence.