requiring urgent attention, but sought to remedy them by fundamental political change. Whereas Oastler openly opposed the constitutional aspirations of the Chartists, and did not become involved in Chartism, Stephens addressed Chartist meetings and was elected a delegate to the National Conference. However, as he later told his congregation, he was never a Radical, let alone a 'five-point man' : "I would rather walk to London on my bare knees, on sharp flint stones to attend an Anti-poor Law meeting, than be carried to London in a coach and six, pillowed with down to present that petition - the "national petition" to the House of Commons" Nor did his advice to followers to arm themselves indicate any support for 'physical force' Chartism or the overthrow of the existing order by violence or by general strike: "My friends, never put your trust in, and never follow after, men who pretend to be able to manufacture a revolution. A revolution, a rolling away of the whole from evil to good, from wrong to right, from injustice and oppression to righteousness and equal rule, never yet was manufactured, and never will be manufactured. God, who teaches you what your rights are, what the blessings He has endowed you withal, will, in his own good time, if that time should come - God will teach your hands to war, and your fingers to fight" Imprisonment In December 1838, Stephens was arrested, charged with having participated in a tumultuous assembly at Leigh on 13 November 1838 and having incited the meeting to violence against inhabitants of the neighbourhood. A Lancashire grand jury returned a true bill both for the Leigh meeting and for sermons preached in Ashton-under-Lyne: however Stephens was eventually tried at Chester in connection with a meeting at Hyde (then in Cheshire) on 14 November 1838. Stephens was charged with attending "an unlawful meeting , seditiously and tumultuously met together by torch-light, and with fire-arms disturbing the public peace" and two counts of speaking at the meeting. Witnesses said attendance at the meeting had been about 5,000 mostly from outside Hyde, firearms had been discharged, banners with slogans such as "Tyrants, believe, and tremble" and "BLOOD" had been displayed and the meeting had not broken up until midnight. It had been successfully argued (to secure the conviction of Orator Hunt in the aftermath of the Peterloo massacre) that to be unlawful a meeting