ABSTRACT
Following the introduction of the Treasonable Practices and the Seditious Meetings bills in parliament on 6 and 10 November 1795 respectively (see Debates on the Treasonable Practices and Seditious Meetings Bill (1795) in Volume 6), the LCS held an open-air general meeting in a field near Copenhagen House, on 12 November 1795, in protest against the pending legislation. The meeting was well-attended and while this Account records upwards of 300,000 spectators, other contemporary estimates of the crowd vary between 10,000 and 100,000. Irrespective of the exact number, Francis Place (1771-1854), onetime assistant secretary of the LCS, believed the meeting was probably the largest ever assembled’ (Add. MSS 27,808, fo. 54). The LCS did not authorize the publication of this narrative, which was printed for the radical printseller and bookseller, ‘Citizen’ Richard Lee (c. 1774-1798). Lee is an intriguing character in London’s radical milieu of 1790s. He emerged from relative obscurity to play an important role in the radical campaign at the time. Under the sign of The Tree of Liberty’ he published numerous political pamphlets and satires and was arrested in 1795 for publishing, amongst other things, A summary of the duties of citizenship. Written expressly for the members of the London Corresponding Society (see Volume 5). On 19 December 1795 he escaped custody and set sail for Hamburg with the wife of James Powell (fl. 1795-7), one of the most diligent spies in the London Corresponding Society. Lee eventually moved to America where he published the American Magazine until 1797 and it is believed he was soon after the victim of yellow fever. The proceedings of the LCS meeting on 12 November 1795 were also published under the title An account of the proceedings of the general meeting of the friends of freedom, as convened on Thursday, November 12, 1795. By the London Corresponding Society in a field near the Copenhagen House (1795), and sold by Arthur Seale (fl. 1792-1821), a bookseller, Francis Ward 1794-7), a hairdresser, and a bookseller by the name of Hughes. John Thelwall (1764-1834), who addressed the meeting, also published a narrative (see The speech of John Thel- wall, at the second meeting of the London Corresponding Society, and other friends of reform … November 12, 1795).
