“On Friday night, Mr. Prentice, of whose contumacy before a Committee
of the House of Commons our readers have heard so much, arrived here,
having been recently released from Newgate. The day previous
handbills made their appearance, inviting the friends of Messrs.
Baring and Praed to accompany Prentice into town. About seven
o’clock on the first-mentioned evening a party of from twenty to
thirty left the house of a publican in Chapel Street, preceded with
band, colours, and banners down Regent Street, over the bridge, and
so on to Hopton. On the arrival of the “Morning Star” coach Prentice
was taken out and placed in an open landau, in which he stood
upright, bowing, as he went along, to the assemblage, which by this
time had become very large, induced thereto by the novelty of the
scene. The procession with much mock gravity moved on to the bridge,
by torch light, went round the town, and thence proceeded to the
Bowling Green, where the lion of the night spoke from a window. He
described the present as the proudest, the happiest day of his
life—said that although the Reform Bill had given him a vote, yet he
hated it,—he hated also the Corporation Reform Bill, and hoped that
the Lords would so mutilate it that Lord John Russell might not know
his own child again.”