On Monday 4 November 1839, approximately 4,000 Chartist sympathisers, under the leadership of John Frost, marched on the town of Newport, Monmouthshire.

[2] Among the factors that precipitated the rising were the House of Commons' rejection of the first Chartist petition for democracy, in the People's Charter of 1838 (which called for universal suffrage, secret ballot, a salary for MPs, giving those who did not own property the right to vote, etc.)

[3] Some kind of rising had been in preparation for a few months and the march had been gathering momentum over the course of the whole weekend, as John Frost and his associates led their followers down from the industrialised valley towns to the north of Newport.

The exact rationale for the confrontation remains opaque, although it may have its origins in Frost's ambivalence towards the more violent attitudes of some Chartists, and the personal animus he bore towards some of the Newport establishment.

Jones and his men from Pontypool in fact never arrived, delaying the final march into Newport into the daylight hours, which might have prevented further deaths at the hands of the soldiers.

As the columns progressed down the valleys on the Sunday morning, even one entire chapel congregation willingly joined, swelling the ranks of the Chartists.

The flash point came when the Chartists, who had surrounded the hotel arranged in regular order, demanded the release of those imprisoned inside, when one side or the other (it is not known which) began firing.

An urban myth persists that some of the bullet holes from the skirmish remained in the masonry of the hotel entrance porch until well into modern times.

After a nationwide petitioning campaign and, extraordinarily, direct lobbying of the Home Secretary by the Lord Chief Justice the government eventually commuted the sentences of each to transportation for life.

Testimonies exist from contemporaries, such as the Yorkshire Chartist Ben Wilson, that a successful rising at Newport was to have been the signal for a national uprising.

Initially, while the majority of Chartists, under the leadership of Feargus O'Connor, concentrated on petitioning for Frost, Williams and Jones to be pardoned, significant minorities in Sheffield, East End of London and Bradford planned their own risings in response.

[10] After this Chartism turned to a process of internal renewal and more systematic organisation, but the transported and imprisoned Newport Chartists were regarded as heroes and martyrs amongst workers.

Newport Mayor Thomas Phillips was proclaimed a national hero for his part in crushing the rising and was knighted by Queen Victoria barely six weeks later.

[11] But he never lived in Newport again, settling instead in Stapleton near Bristol, where he continued to publish articles advocating reform until his death, aged 93, in 1877.

[12] In 1939, to commemorate the centenary of the Rising, Newport Borough Council erected a plaque on the Post Office building near the birthplace of John Frost.

In 1991 three statues, 'Union, Prudence, Energy' by Christopher Kelly, commemorating the uprising were installed on Commercial Street at the front of the Westgate Hotel.

The track "The View from Stow Hill", on the Manic Street Preachers' 2014 album Futurology, written by bassist Nicky Wire, was based on the events of the Newport Rising.

[24][25] In August 2022, the Welsh ragga metal band Dub War released the album Westgate Under Fire, inspired by the events of the Newport Rising.