The examination of Morgan James, at the trial of the Chartist leaders, following the Rising at Newport, November 1839. Morgan James lived at Pillgwenlly, Newport, and worked as a labourer at a the Fleur-de-Lis colliery, near Blackwood. He had enrolled as a member of the Chartists at Newport and attended several Chartist meetings in the area. Under cross-examination, James related the events of a large meeting held at Dukestown in August 1839 where both John Frost and William Jones were present. According to James, they told the meeting that there were enough people at Dukestown to 'take the Charter by force'. Although he worked in Blackwood, James returned to his home in Pillgwenlly every weekend, and he related how on the weekend of the Rising, he was asked by Jenkin Morgan, a well-known Chartist, how the 'Chartist got on up the Hills'. Jenkin Morgan visited him the following day, Sunday, 3 November, and told him not to leave the town as there as 'John Frost was on the Hills, that he was coming down with thousands of men to attack the soldiers, he was coming down that night'. Morgan James accompanied Jenkin Morgan to the outskirts of Newport, where Jenkin Morgan told him that 'things were to take place all over the kingdom at the same hour and that the consequences would be the Charter being the law of the land'. In his evidence, Morgan James also revealed that a man called Dr. Price had chaired the Chartist meeting at Dukestown, but that was the first and the last time that James had seen him at a Chartist meeting. This was Dr. William Price of Pontypridd (1800-93), who was one of the leaders of the Chartists in Pontypridd, but left the movement because he opposed the violent methods adopted by some members.

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