[1] Thomas Stewart Traill, in his memoir of Roscoe, called the circle a "small private literary society".
[2] There were links to Warrington Academy, through its education of dissenting ministers, and of the Lunar Society of Birmingham to Roscoe through Thomas Bentley.
[1] In its early days, the group of younger men around Roscoe opposed the Liverpool corporation.
[4] They added opposition to war with revolutionary France to their other political touchstones: reform of religious tests, abolition of slavery, free trade and the end of the East India Company monopoly.
[5] By the end of 1792, however, social pressure and street violence against reformers had changed the atmosphere greatly: as Roscoe explained in correspondence with the Marquess of Lansdowne, the example of the Priestley Riots of the previous year loomed large, and the local press was now closed to them.