 On 10 March 1817 a crowd of 5,000 gathered in St Peter's Fields to send off some of their number to march to London to petition the Prince Regent to force parliament into reform—the so-called 'blanket march', after the blankets which the protesters carried with them to sleep in on the way.After the magistrates read the Riot Act, the crowd was dispersed without injury by the King's Dragoon Guards.The ringleaders were detained for several months without charge under the emergency powers then in force which suspended "habeas corpus", the right to be either charged or released.