ABSTRACT
This chapter examines one of the most turbulent, complex and trying years in William Cobbett's life: from his arrival in England in November 1819, after self-imposed exile in America, until his trial for libel in December 1820. Arriving back only weeks After the Peterloo massacre that had taken place in Manchester on 16 August, with Thomas Paine's bones in tow, Cobbett suspected by the government of coming back to Britain to foster insurrection at a time of crisis. Cobbett forged a close relationship with the surgeon Thomas Wakley, who thought to the masked executioner who had, with a small surgical knife, removed the heads of the five conspirators. Both Cobbett and Wakley felt threatened by supporters of the Cato Street men and they formed a friendship that helped bring about the arrival of the journal The Lancet, a Political Register for the medical profession. But most remarkably that year Cobbett became speechwriter to Queen Caroline of Brunswick.
