the projected Chester expedition until
Monday, February 11th, 1867.

My employment was at this time in Liverpool, but I lived on the opposite
bank of the Mersey, at New Ferry. Anybody who has to travel in and out
of town, as I did by the ferry boat, to his employment gets so
accustomed to his fellow-passengers that he knows most of them by sight.
But this morning it was different. In a sense some of those I saw were
strangers to me, but I had a kind of instinct that they were my own
people. They were fine, athletic-looking young men, and had a
travel-stained appearance, as if they had been walking some distance
over dusty roads.

When I reached the landing stage and saw the morning's papers I got the
explanation--the police had heard of the projected raid.

These were our men returning from Chester, having been stopped on the
road by friends posted there for the purpose, and turned back--and were
now on their way through Liverpool to their homes in various parts of
Lancashire and Yorkshire. It seemed that the information of the project
being abandoned had not reached them in time to prevent many of the men
leaving their homes for Chester.

I heard from John Ryan, whom I saw a few days afterwards, that the word
had been sent round to a certain number of circles in the North of
England and the Midlands to move a number of picked men, some on the
Sunday night and some early on the Monday morning, and that the
promptness and cheerfulness with which the order was obeyed was
astonishing; so that, probably, not less than two thousand men were, by
different routes, quietly converging on Chester. Among these was Michael
Davitt and others, from Haslingden as well as from several other
Lancashire towns.

But it was promptly discovered that information had been given to the
police authorities almost at the last moment. Those, therefore, who had
already reached Chester were sent back, and men were placed at the
railway stations and on the roads leading to Chester to stop those who
were coming. In this way the whole of the men forming the expedition
dispersed as silently as they had come.

Corydon had given the information to Major Greig, the Liverpool Head
Constable, who at once communicated with Chester, where prompt measures
were taken to meet the threatened invasion.

According to his own evidence in the subsequent trial, Corydon had been
giving information to the police since the previous September. There had
been some