Hampden Clubs

Some also were found to possess a rude poetic talent, which rendered their effusions popular, and bestowed an additional charm on their assemblages; and by such various means, anxious listeners at first, and then zealous proselytes, were drawn from the cottages of quiet nooks and dingles, to the weekly readings and discussions of the Hampden clubs.

[3]In January 1817, regional Hampden Clubs and similar political debating societies sent 70 delegates to a convention at the Crown & Anchor tavern in Strand, London, well known as a meeting-place of radicals.

To avoid falling foul of the Seditious Societies Act, the convention met in public session and described itself as a gathering of deputies from petitioning communities, discussing how to achieve constitutional reform.

On 9 February 1817 a secret Parliamentary Committee report concluded that the real object of the Hampden Clubs and similar institutions was to foment "an insurrection, so formidable from numbers, as by dint of physical strength to overpower all resistance".

Private rooms were found, but by April 1817, in an atmosphere of suspicion and with the government spy and agent provocateur William J. Oliver active in the city, regular club meetings were suspended.

[7] In Manchester, the movement's leaders were targeted by the city's deputy constable, Joseph Nadin, who arrested many of them, including Samuel Bamford, after the unrest of March 1817 and sent them to London in irons, where some spent months in prison before their release without charge.

With the Hampden clubs stifled, the Lancashire leadership formed the Patriotic Union Society, the body that called the 1819 public meeting for political reform that became the Peterloo Massacre.