On 25 November 1830, John Benett, Tory MP for Wiltshire, met a group of "Swing" rioters approaching his property near Salisbury. Though their threat to break his agricultural machinery obviously disturbed him, Benett was also struck by their appearance. The leaders of the group were wearing what he described as "partycoloured sashes." Benett warned one leader: "I am sorry to see you with that sash on […] Young man, that sash will hang you." The rioters blankly refused to take off their adornments and continued towards his land; Benett called out the yeomanry and a disturbance ensued. 1
On 4 October 1819, a public meeting was held on Skircoat Moor, two miles south of Halifax in Yorkshire. The event was one of several around the country organized by local radicals to petition for parliamentary reform and to protest against the 'Peterloo massacre' that had occurred in Manchester that August. Radical societies from most of the surrounding villages carried over seventy elaborate banners and sixteen 'caps of liberty' to the platform. The crowd was addressed by the three Mancunian radical orators, Knight, Saxton and Mitchell, who recounted the horrors they had seen on the field of St Peter's. The Manchester Observer gave a detailed account of the elaborate processions that climbed Skircoat Moor that afternoon: The appearance from the front of the hustings of the approaching multitude surpassed everything the mind can conceive; the hedges and trees seemed all in motion, and when we even now contemplate the grand and imposing spectacle, it has more the appearance of a dream than a circumstance of reality. 1 Of course, this description was in part hyperbole from an ambitious journalist at an avowedly sympathetic radical newspaper. Nevertheless, it points to significant features of mass meetings which resonated with contemporary observers and participants. The
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