Robert Buchanan

andering preacher of the cause who visited the district. He entertained the lecturers, he presided at their meetings, he furthered, both publicly and privately, the dissemination of the new doctrines, and only his great popularity with the lower classes saved him from personal violence. Again and again when the mob rose in its fury, when public halls were wrecked and Owen's lecturers were compelled to fly for their lives, the only refuge in Stoke was the house of "Lawyer Williams," and while some trembling apostle of freethought was being smuggled away through the back door, the "poor man's friend" faced the furies and diverted their attention to his own person. Any other man's house would have been burned down or razed to the ground; any other man would, in all likelihood, have been torn to pieces. Both the men and women of Stoke respected the man who had befriended them in a thousand ways, who had sacrificed time and money and reputation to the legal defence of the poorest and most wretched among them, and