So much for this disgraceful and contemptible riot, during the whole of
which not one life was lost, and, with the exception of Platt, not one
person was even wounded or hurt. While these things were going on, it
has been seen that Castles had contrived to way-lay me, in Cheapside, on
my road from Wanstead towards Spafields; and, as I have before observed,
kindly invited me to accompany him to the Tower, which he said young
Watson had got possession of for more than an hour before.

In the evening the elder Watson and Thistlewood were taken near
Paddington or Islington, as they were endeavouring to make their escape
into the country. The worthy Mr. John Castles no doubt surrendered
himself, and soon after Preston and Hooper were apprehended, and they
were all five committed to prison. I believe a reward of 750_l_. was
offered for the apprehension of the chief conspirator, young Watson.
The next day the London papers were crammed full of the most wonderful
accounts of this most wonderful plot and insurrection; attributing
the whole of it to ME, and to the Spaflelds meeting. The London press
had raised such an outcry as never was heard of before; and if ten
thousand of the inhabitants of the city had been massacred, there could
not have been greater consternation produced throughout the whole
country; which consternation was sedulously kept up by the most
abominable falsehoods promulgated by almost the whole of the country
provincial newspapers. As a faithful account of the whole transaction
was published at the time by Mr. Cobbett, in his Register of the 13th of
December, in a letter which he addressed to me on the subject, and as it
contains matter worthy to be recorded in my Memoirs, I shall insert it
verbatim.

"_A Letter to Henry Hunt, Esq. of Middleton Cottage, near Andover, on