 At about noon , several hundred special constables were led onto the field . They formed two lines in the crowd a few yards apart , in an attempt to form a corridor through the crowd between the house where the magistrates were watching and the hustings , two waggons lashed together . Believing that this might be intended as the route by which the magistrates would later send their representatives to arrest the speakers , some members of the crowd pushed the waggons away from the constables , and pressed around the hustings to form a human barrier . 
