The meetings had been planned by a small group of revolutionary Spenceans, who invited the popular radical speaker Henry Hunt to address the crowd.
The first meeting ended peacefully, with Hunt being elected to deliver a petition to the Prince Regent, requesting electoral reform and relief from hardship and distress.
In the aftermath of the riots, four leading Spenceans, John Hooper, Thomas Preston, Arthur Thistlewood and James Watson, were arrested and charged with high treason.
[1][2] Radical leaders in London had organised petitions calling for parliament to relieve distress, but without success,[3][4] and the Spenceans thought that more extreme action was needed.
They called a mass public meeting at Spa Fields for 15 November 1816, with the object of marching to the Prince Regent's house to deliver their demands, which included universal (male) suffrage, annual parliaments, secret ballots and redistribution of land.
[5] They invited several leading radical speakers to attend,[6] but Hunt was the only one to agree, and when he met the organisers prior to the meeting he persuaded them not to march to the house and to moderate their demands by dropping land reform.
[5] He prevented any departure from the agreed plan and the meeting passed off peacefully, with Hunt and Sir Francis Burdett being elected to deliver the petition.
[9] Hunt made two attempts to present the petition to the Prince Regent (without Burdett, who had declined to participate) but had been refused admittance.
[14] Defence counsel exposed previous instances where Castle had entrapped others into committing crimes and, without naming him as a spy, presented him to the jury as an agent provocateur.