 The Manchester magistrates held a supposedly public meeting on 19 August, so that resolutions supporting the action they had taken three days before could be published.Cotton merchants Archibald Prentice (later editor of "The Manchester Times") and Absalom Watkin (a later corn-law reformer), both members of the "Little Circle", organised a petition of protest against the violence at St Peter's Field and the validity of the magistrate's meeting.Within a few days it had collected 4,800 signatures.