Élie Halévy considered them a panic-stricken extension of "the counter-revolutionary terror ... under the direct patronage of Lord Sidmouth and his colleagues";[1] some later historians have treated them as relatively mild gestures towards law and order, only tentatively enforced.

[2] Following the Yeomanry killing of unarmed men and women in St Peter's Field (Peterloo),[3] a wave of protest meetings swept the North of England, spilling over into the Midlands and the Lowlands, and involving in all some seventeen counties.

[4] Local magistrates appealed in the face of the protests for central support; and in response the Parliament of the United Kingdom was reconvened on 23 November and the new acts were introduced by the Home Secretary, Henry Addington.

The acts were aimed at gagging radical newspapers, preventing large meetings, and reducing what the government saw as the possibility of armed insurrection.

[5] Nevertheless, the Six Acts were eventually passed by prime minister Lord Liverpool and his colleagues, as part of their repressive approach focused on preventing a British revolution.