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On Sunday morning I left London with my servant, and drove to a friend's, at Wanstead, in Essex, where I passed the day and slept, on purpose to be out of the way of the party which I had before met at Spafields; as, after what I had seen and heard when Mr. Castles was present, I was determined to avoid having any communication with any of them, unless it was in public.

"That as to the pike-heads, your petitioner begs leave to state to your Right Honourable House, that while he was at the last Spafields meeting, an anonymous letter was put into the hands of your petitioner's servant, who afterwards gave it to your petitioner; that this letter stated that one Bentley, a smith, of Hart-street, Covent-Garden, had been employed by a man, in the dress of a game-keeper, to make some spikes to put round a fish-pond; that the game-keeper came and took a parcel away and paid for them; that he came soon afterwards and said the things answered very well, and ordered more to be made; that, in a little while after this, the said Bentley was sent for to the Bow-street Office, and, after a private examination, was desired to make a pike, or spike, of the same sort, and to carry it to the office, which he did.

My letter had explained the object of my visit, and, after having briefly apologised for intruding at a time when he was surrounded by others, I expressed my wish to have the petition of 100,000 of the distressed inhabitants of the metropolis, who had assembled in Spafields the preceding Monday, presented to the Prince Regent; and I then put into his hands the petition: he read it over attentively, and having finished the perusal of it, he said that it was a most important paper, and was couched in such proper language, that he should feel it his duty to lay it before his Royal Master the very first thing on the following morning, and he had not the least doubt but every attention would be paid to the prayer of it.

The fact was this: Watson and Thistlewood found that I would not have any thing to do with their wild schemes, whatever they might be; they therefore assembled in Spafields about eleven o'clock in the morning, more than an hour before the persons who meant to attend the meeting began to meet together; they mounted the waggon, and addressed the few individuals that surrounded them, perhaps at the time two or three hundred; the elder Watson harangued them upon the advantages of the Spencean plan, and young Watson, urged on by Castles, having briefly addressed them, jumped from the waggon, and called upon those who wished to be led on to victory to follow him; the villain Castles taking care to leave a few bullets, wrapped up in an old stocking, so exposed in the waggon, that those who remained could not avoid seeing them.

And yet, it was a crime in you, and the sanguinary sons of corruption called for your instant execution, because you obeyed the call of the distressed to hold a meeting of them in Spafields! Not to have obeyed that call would indeed have been a crime; but, it was a crime of which your nature was incapable. "I now come to the City Petition and the answer of the Prince Regent.

"That your petitioner, who had the honour to be the mover of the petitions at the recent meetings held in Spafields, one of which petitions has been received by his Royal Highness the Prince Regent, and two of which petitions have been presented to, and received by, the Honourable the House of Commons, has read, in the public prints, a paper entitled a Report of the Secret Committee of your Right Honourable House, and which Report appears to your petitioner, as far as his humble powers of disentanglement have enabled him to analyse the same, to submit to your Right Honourable House, as solemn truths, the following assertions; to wit: "That the first public meeting in Spafields, which had for its ostensible object a petition for relief and Reform, was closely connected with, and formed part of, a Conspiracy to produce an insurrection for the purpose of overthrowing the Government.

I wish I had a copy of the resolutions and petition by me, that I might insert them here, as I conceive this to have been the most momentous petition that was ever presented to the House of Commons; and the effect which it produced was more important than that of any other petition that was ever passed at any public meeting, not excepting that which was passed at Spafields.

He beckoned me, and I drew up to the pavement to inquire the cause of what appeared to me rather extraordinary. Before, however, I could put the question to Mr. Castles, he inquired where I was going? to which I replied, "to Spafields, to be sure."

Therefore, in the hope of producing this conviction in the mind of your Right Honourable House, your petitioner begs leave to proceed to state: that he, who was then at his house in the country, received, a short time before the 16th of November last, a letter from Thomas Preston, Secretary of a Committee, requesting your petitioner to attend a public meeting of the distressed inhabitants of the metropolis, intended to be held in Spafields on the day just mentioned; that your petitioner thereupon wrote to Thomas Preston to know what was the object of the intended meeting; that he received, in the way of answer, a newspaper called the Independent Whig, of November 10th, 1816, containing an advertisement in these words; to wit: 'At a meeting held at the Carlisle, Shoreditch, on Thursday evening, it was determined to call a meeting of the distressed Manufacturers, Mariners, Artizans, and others of the Cities of London and Westminster, the Borough of Southwark, and parts adjacent, in Spafields, on Friday, the 15th instant, precisely at 12 o'clock, to take into consideration the propriety of petitioning the Prince Regent and Legislature, to adopt immediately such measures as will relieve the sufferers from the misery which now overwhelms them.

I looked at the clock of Bow-Church, and saw that it wanted a quarter of an hour to one. I drove on at a smart pace towards Spafields, and observed to my servant, that I had no doubt in my own mind that Castles, the villain whom we had met, was an agent of the Government, a spy; and the suspicions which I entertained of him when I first met him, were now fully confirmed.