espair, determined
to proceed to London to explain their distress to the regent in person.
Each individual provided himself with a blanket and a small stock of
provisions. On the day of their departure they met near St. Peter's
church; and such crowds assembled around them that the magistrates
thought it expedient to call out the military. The principal instigators
of the mob were arrested; but, nevertheless, a considerable number set
out on their mission to London. More than five hundred proceeded as
far as Macclesfield, where a troop of yeomanry was stationed to
provide against contingencies. All, however, remained quiet; and this
"Blanketeering Expedition" penetrated into Staffordshire, where it
ended; the poor creatures who composed it being obliged to give it up
from exhaustion and the want of sustenance. But these riots had at least
one effect, it filled the prisons throughout the country with objects of
suspicion or of crime. Many of these were as arbitrarily released by the
authorities as they had been committed; but the more prominent leaders
were either detained in custody, or sent, for greater security, to the
metropolis. The trial of the prisoners in the Tower was commenced in the
month of June; but Watson, the first tried, being acquitted by the jury,
the other cases were abandoned. The prisoners captured in the riots
which took place in the northern and midland counties were tried at
Derby by a special commission, and twenty-three received sentence of
death; three of them only, however, suffered the extreme penalty of
the law. The last prosecution was that of a man named Hone, for some
political parodies on the Litany and other parts of our church-service.
He was tried for a blasphemous libel; but he was acquitted, chiefly on
the ground that his parodies were political, and hence not blasphemous;
and the public sympathized with the demagogue by raising a subscription,
in order to reimburse him for his expenses, and to reward him for the
trouble and fatigue which he had undergone in the prosecution. Hone
seems to have profited by the lesson he had received; for he withdrew
from the disgraceful career which he had commenced, and engaged in
literary pursuits more worthy of a rational and thinking being, and of a
good citizen of the world.

DEATH OF THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE.

The close of this year was marked by an event that filled the nation
with mourning; this was the death of the idolized hope of a fr