further imprisoned until the sureties were found; and lastly to be struck off the roll of attorneys. While one of the witnesses against Frost was waiting to hear sentence passed he was seized with a fit. It is said that Frost taunted him with his sufferings as a proof of divine vengeance. On the expiration of his sentence, 19 Dec. 1793, Frost was brought out of Newgate almost in a state of collapse. He was placed in a coach, and rolled in blankets. Kirby, the keeper, accompanied him to the house of Justice Grose, in Bloomsbury Square, where, with two sureties, he entered into his recognisances. As soon as he was at liberty the multitude took the horses out of the carriage and drew him along the streets, stopping at every marked place, and particularly before the Prince of Wales's house, to shout and express their joy. In this state he was conducted to his house in Spring Gardens, where Thelwall made a speech, entreating the crowd to separate peaceably.
The Corresponding Society continued its work of agitation, and during a debate in the House of Commons in May 1794 Pitt stated that it had laid in due form before the Society for Constitutional Information a deliberate plan for assembling a convention for all England, to overturn the established system of government. At length, on 28 July 1797, the members of the Corresponding Society assembled in a field near St. Pancras, when the proceedings were interrupted by the magistrates, who arrested the principal speakers, and kept them in custody until they procured bail. The society itself was then formally suppressed by the government.
Frost was a candidate for the representation of East Grinstead in 1802, and petitioned against his opponent's return, but a committee of the House of Commons found that the petition was frivolous and vexatious. In December 1813 Frost received from the prince regent, acting in the name and on behalf of the king, a free pardon, in consequence of which, on 8 Feb. 1815, the court of king's bench was moved to replace his name on the roll of attorneys. The court held that his want of practice and experience in the profession made him presumably unfit for the employment.
The effects of his imprisonment remained with him for many years, but he lived to the great age of ninety-one, dying at Holly Lodge, near Lymington, Hampshire, on 25 July 1842 (Gent. Mag. October 1842, pp. 442–3).
[Papers of the Corresponding and Constitutional Societies; Ann. Reg. 1842; Edinburgh Review, vol. xvi.; State Trials, vol. xxii.; Hampshire Independent, 30 July 1842.]
FROST, JOHN (d. 1877), chartist, was the son of John and Sarah Frost, who kept the Royal Oak public-house in Mill Street, Newport, Monmouthshire, for nearly forty years. When about sixteen years of age he was apprenticed to a tailor in Cardiff. On his return to Newport in 1811 he commenced business as a tailor and draper, and shortly afterwards married the widow of a Mr. Geach, a timber dealer, by whom Frost had two sons and five daughters. In 1816 he began first to take an interest in politics, and from that time advocated the principles which were subsequently embodied in the People's Charter. In 1822 he suffered six months' imprisonment for libel. He took an active part in the struggle for reform, and when the Municipal Corporation Act came into operation Frost was elected a member of the town council of Newport. He was appointed a magistrate for the borough in 1835, and in the following year filled the office of mayor. In 1838 he was elected as the delegate to represent the chartists of Monmouthshire at the national convention of the working classes which met in London for the first time on 4 Feb. 1839. A few weeks afterwards he was removed from the commission of the peace by Lord John Russell, who was then home secretary, for using seditious language at local meetings (see the correspondence between Russell and Frost, given at length in the Annual Register, 1839, Chron. pp. 22–6). In consequence of this Frost's popularity among the chartists was greatly increased, and his name became well known throughout the country as one of the leaders of the chartist movement. During the course of the year a number of the more prominent chartists were convicted of sedition, and on 14 Sept. the convention, weakened in numbers by resignations and arrests, was dissolved on the casting vote of Frost, who acted as chairman on that occasion. Frost, however, was resolved to appeal to physical force, and on 4 Nov. led a large body of working men chiefly miners, armed with guns and bludgeons, into Newport. Two other divisions, commanded respectively by Jones, a watch-maker of Pontypool, and Williams, a beershop keeper of Nantyglo, were to have joined forces with Frost in his attack upon the town, but the men of Nantyglo arrived late, and those from Pontypool never came. Frost with his division attacked the Westgate hotel, where, under the direction of Phillips, the mayor of the town, some thirty men of the 45th regiment and a number of special constables had been posted. The ill-armed and undisciplined mob were easily repulsed, twenty chartists being shot dead and many
