Castle from an attack early in the evening. Affairs went very quietly up to four o’clock, when a train from Manchester and Stalybridge brought a reinforcement of four hundred in one batch. Later on forty men arrived from Halifax and seventy from Leeds. Shortly after five it was ascertained that the Fenians numbered from 1,400 to 1,500. A number of men who were supposed to be their leaders collected at a house where the police had been informed they would meet for orders. Spies and scouts had been sent out among the Fenians early in the day, but found them extremely reticent, and could get no clue from them. At 6 p.m. these scouts brought information that the men were forming in column on the Liverpool and other principal roads. Captain Smith, the county chief constable, had drafted a body of the county constabulary into the Castle to assist the military. A copy of the following anonymous letter sent to the chief of the Liverpool police was received by Major Fenwick in the evening, and coincided singularly with the information already in his possession: DEAR SIR, You could do your country much service, as at present there are 600 men in Chester, to be increased by night to 700, to take the arms and ammunition of the garrison; and as the garrison is disaffected, it is supposed they will do it with little loss. They are to leave Birkenhead by every train from the first in the morning. All to be there by seven at the latest. They leave in numbers of from thirty to sixty in every train. At night the Mayor convened a public meeting, which was most earnest; and over 500 citizens were sworn in as special constables, and paraded the town in large bodies throughout the night. It was deemed desirable to call out the yeomanry, and for that purpose the permission of Earl Grosvenor and Lord de Tabley was telegraphed for. Earl Grosvenor replied that he would come down by the night mail, and accordingly he and Lord Richard Grosvenor arrived in Chester at 12.48 on Tuesday morning and remained with the magistrates through the night. Before leaving London, Earl Grosvenor communicated with the Commander-in-Chief, who at once telegraphed that he had ordered a battalion of Guards by special train to Chester. During the night the Fenians evidently came to the conclusion that the preparations were too much for them, and as the night advanced, parties of tens and twenties were seen leaving, on foot, for Warrington and other neighbouring towns. Although all danger of any serious attempt had died away after the town’s meeting, the police were kept on duty, as many suspicious characters were still to be seen in the streets. About nine o’clock on Tuesday morning two haversacks with green bands and a quantity of ball cartridges of private make were discovered on a piece of vacant land close to the railway-station. REFORM BILL: THREE-CORNERED CONSTITUENCIES (1867).