Chief Authorities
Journals of House of Commons for period.
Journals of House of Lords for period.
Reports of Parliamentary Debates for period in Parliamentary Register, Parliamentary History, Senator and Parliamentary Debates.
Statutes, Public and Private for period.
Enclosure Awards in Record Office or Duchy of Lancaster.
Home Office Papers in Record Office.
Parliamentary Papers for period; specially—
For Enclosures—
Report from Select Committee on Standing Orders relating to Private Bills, 1775.
Report from Select Committee on Waste Lands. Ordered to be printed December 23, 1795.
Report from Select Committee on Waste Lands, 1797.
Report from Select Committee on Means of Facilitating Inclosure, 1800. (Deals specially with Expense).
Report from Select Committee on Constitution of Select Committees on Private Bills, 1825.
Report from Select Committee on Commons Inclosure, 1844.
For Poor Laws—
Report from Select Committee on Poor Laws, 1817.
Report from Lords Committee on Poor Laws, 1818.
Report from Select Committee on Poor Laws, 1819.
Report from Select Committee on Relief of Able-Bodied from the Poor Rate, 1828.
Report from Lords on Poor Law, 1828.
Documents in possession of Poor Law Commissioners, 1833.
Report of Poor Laws Commissioners, 1834
For Game Laws, Crime, and Punishment—
Report from Select Committee on Game Laws, 1823.
Report from Lords Committee on Game Laws, 1828.
Report from Select Committee on Criminal Commitments and Convictions, 1827.
Report from Select Committee on Criminal Commitments and Convictions, 1828.
Return of Convictions under the Game Laws from 1827–30.
Report from Select Committee on Secondary Punishments, 1831.
Report from Select Committee on Secondary Punishments, 1832.
Report from Select Committee on Transportation, 1838.
For other Social Questions—
Report from Select Committee on Agricultural Distress, 1821.
Report from Select Committee on Labourers’ Wages, 1824.
Reports from Select Committee on Emigration, 1826–7.
Report from Select Committee on Agriculture, 1833.
Report from Select Committee on Allotment System, 1843.
Publications of Board of Agriculture.
General Report on Enclosures, 1808.
Report on the Agricultural State of the Kingdom, 1816.
Agricultural Surveys of different Counties, by various writers, alluded to in text as Bedford Report, Middlesex Report, etc.
Annual Register for period.
Annals of Agriculture, 1784–1815 (46 vols.).
Cobbett’s Political Register, 1802–35.
The Tribune (mainly Thelwall’s lectures), 1795–6.
Reports of the Society for Bettering the Condition and Improving the Comforts of the Poor, (5 vols.), 1795–1808.
Ruggles, Thomas, History of the Poor, 1793 (published first in Annals of Agriculture).
Davies, David, The Case of Labourers in Husbandry stated and considered, 1795.
Eden, Sir Frederic Morton, The State of the Poor or An History of the Labouring Classes in England, 1797.
The Works of Arthur Young, William Marshall, and other contemporary writers on agriculture and enclosures; see list in Hasbach, History of the English Agricultural Labourer.
Footnotes
1 House of Commons, May 26, 1797, on Grey’s motion for Parliamentary Reform.
2 The only person who is known to have declined to sit on this account is Southey.
3 Outline of English Local Government, p. 152.
4 A clear and concise account of these developments is given by Lord Hobhouse, Contemporary Review, February and March 1886.
5 Holdsworth’s History of English Law.
6 Gregory King and Davenant estimated that the whole of the cultivated land in England in 1685 did not amount to much more than half the total area, and of this cultivated portion three-fifths was still farmed on the old common-field system.
7 For a full discussion, in which the ordinary view is vigorously combated in an interesting analysis, see Hasbach, History of the Agricultural Labourer: on the other side, Levy, Large and Small Holdings.
8 This was the general structure of the village that was dissolved in the eighteenth century. It is distinguished from the Keltic type of communal agriculture, known as run-rig, in two important respects. In the run-rig village the soil is periodically redivided, and the tenant’s holding is compact. Dr. Slater (Geographical Journal, Jan. 1907) has shown that in those parts of England where the Keltic type predominated, e.g. in Devon and Cornwall, enclosure took place early, and he argues with good reason that it was easier to enclose by voluntary agreement where the holdings were compact than it was where they were scattered in strips. But gradual enclosure by voluntary agreement had a different effect from the cataclysm-like enclosure of the eighteenth century, as is evident from the large number of small farmers in Devonshire.
9 See Webb, Manor and Borough, vol. i. p. 66 seq.
10 Slater, The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields, p. 77.
11 13 George III. c. 81.
12 This was done at Barnes Common; see for whole subject, Annals of Agriculture, vol. xvii. p. 516.
13 For cases where changes in the system of cultivation of common fields had been made, see Annals of Agriculture, vol. xvi. p. 606: ‘To Peterborough, crossing an open field, but sown by agreement with turnips.’ Cf. Report on Bedfordshire: ‘Clover is sown in some of the open clay-fields by common consent’ (p. 339), and ‘Turnips are sometimes cultivated, both on the sands and gravels, by mutual consent’ (p. 340).
14 Slater, p. 119.
15 Dr. Slater’s conclusion is that ‘in the open field village the entirely landless labourer was scarcely to be found,’ p. 130.
16 See Commons, Forests, and Footpaths, by Lord Eversley, p. 11.
17 Bedfordshire Report, 1808, p. 223, quoting from Arthur Young.
18 P. 114.
19 P. 138.
20 See on this point, Levy, Large and Small Holdings, p. 1.
21 Report of Select Committee on Waste Lands, 1795, p. 15, Appendix B.
22 Annals of Agriculture, vol. i. p. 72.
23 An Inquiry into the Connection between the present Price of Provisions and the Size of Farms, 1773, p. 81.
24 Report on Somerset, reprinted 1797, p. 52; compare Report on Commons in Brecknock, Annals of Agriculture, vol. xxii. p. 632, where commons are denounced as ‘hurtful to society by holding forth a temptation to idleness, that fell parent to vice and immorality’; also compare Ibid., vol. xx. p. 145, where they are said to encourage the commoners to be ‘hedge breakers, pilferers, nightly trespassers... poultry and rabbit stealers, or such like.’
25 P. 103.
26 Committee on Inclosures, 1844, p. 135.
27 House of Commons Journal, June 19, 1797.
28 Large and Small Holdings, p. 24.
29 Disappearance of Small Landowner, p. 90; Slater’s English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields, Appendix B.
30 Parliamentary Register, March 30, 1781.
31 See Dr. Slater’s detailed estimate.
32 There were probably many enclosures that had not the authority either of a special Act or of the Act of 1756, particularly in the more distant counties. The evidence of Mr. Carus Wilson upon the committee of 1844 shows that the stronger classes interpreted their rights and powers in a liberal spirit. Mr. Carus Wilson had arranged with the other large proprietors to let out the only common which remained open in the thirteen parishes in which his father was interested as a large landowner, and to pay the rent into the poor rates. Some members of the committee asked whether the minority who dissented from this arrangement could be excluded, and Mr. Wilson explained that he and his confederates believed that the minority were bound by their action, and that by this simple plan they could shut out all cattle from the common, except the cattle of their joint tenants.—Committee on Inclosures, 1844, p. 127.
33 E.g. Laxton enclosed on petition of Lord Carbery in 1772. Total area 1200 acres. Enclosure proceedings completed in the Commons in nineteen days. Also Ashbury, Berks, enclosed on petition of Lord Craven in 1770. There were contrary petitions. Also Nylands, enclosed in 1790 on petition of the lady of the manor. Also Tilsworth, Beds, enclosed on petition of Charles Chester, Esq., 1767, and Westcote, Bucks, on petition of the most noble George, Duke of Marlborough, January 24, 1765. Sometimes the lord of the manor associated the vicar with his petition: thus Waltham, Croxton and Braunston, covering 5600 acres, in Leicestershire, were all enclosed in 1766 by the Duke of Rutland and the local rector or vicar. The relations of Church and State are very happily illustrated by the language of the petitions, ‘A petition of the most noble John, Duke of Rutland, and the humble petition’ of the Rev. —— Brown or Rastall or Martin.
34 This Standing Order does not seem to have been applied universally, for Mr. Bragge on December 1, 1800, made a motion that it should be extended to the counties where it had not hitherto obtained. See Senator, vol. xxvii., December 1, 1800.
35 See particulars in Appendix.
36 A Six Months’ Tour through the North of England, 1771, vol. i. p. 122.
37 Pp. 21 f.
38 Cf. Otmoor in next chapter.
[39] See Appendix.
40 See Appendix.
41 See House of Commons Journal.
42 Eden, The State of the Poor, vol. ii. p. 157.
43 Eden, writing a few years later, remarks that since the enclosure ‘the property in Holy Island has gotten into fewer hands,’ vol. ii. p. 149.
44 Report of Select Committee on Most Effectual Means of Facilitating Enclosure, 1800.
45 Cf. also Wraisbury in Bucks, House of Commons Journal, June 17, 1799, where the petitioners against the Bill claimed that they spoke on behalf of ‘by much the greatest Part of the Proprietors of the said Lands and Grounds,’ yet in the enumeration of consents the committee state that the owners of property assessed at £6, 18s. are hostile out of a total value of £295, 14s.
46 House of Commons Journal, March 21, 1796.
47 House of Commons Journal, June 10, 1801; cf. also case of Laleham. See Appendix.
48 Ibid., June 15, 1801.
49 Ibid., May 3, 1809.
50 Ibid., June 29, 1797.
51 See Appendix A (13).
52 A Political Enquiry into the Consequences of enclosing Waste Lands, 1785, p. 108.
53 See Appendix A (12).
54 House of Commons, May 1, 1845.
55 Aglionby, House of Commons, June 5, 1844.
56 Thurlow was Chancellor from 1778 to 1783 (when Fox contrived to get rid of him) and from 1783 to 1792.
57 Parliamentary Register, House of Lords, March 30, 1781.
58 Sir George Savile (1726–1784), M.P. for Yorkshire, 1759–1783; carried the Catholic Relief Bill, which provoked the Gordon Riots, and presented the great Yorkshire Petition for Economical Reform.
59 Annual Register, 1867, p. 68. For a detailed history of the Stanwell Enclosure, see Appendix A (10). Unhappily the farmers were only reprieved; Stanwell was enclosed at the second attempt.
60 See Parliamentary Register, House of Lords, March 30, 1781; April 6, 1781; June 14, 1781.
61 John Warren (1730–1800).
62 John Hinchcliffe (1731–1794), at one time Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.
63 Parliamentary Register, March 30, 1781.
64 Senator, vol. xxvi., July 2, 1800.
65 For both speeches see Parliamentary Register, May 24, 1802.
66 Ibid., June 14, 1781.
67 See Cheshunt, Louth, Simpson, and Stanwell in Appendix.
68 Six Months’ Tour through the North of England, 1771, vol. i. p. 122.
69 See Annual Register, 1800, Appendix to Chronicle, p. 87.
70 Parliamentary Register, June 14, 1781.
71 Annals of Agriculture, vol. xxvi. p. 111.
72 February 1, 1793.
73 See Chapter iv.
74 Vol. xxvi. p. 70.
75 Sinclair’s language shows that this was the general arrangement. Of course there are exceptions. See e.g. Haute Huntre and other cases in Appendix.
76 Cf. Billingsley’s Report on Somerset, p. 59, where the arrangements are described as ‘a little system of patronage. The lord of the soil, the rector, and a few of the principal commoners, monopolize and distribute the appointments.’
77 Parliamentary Register, June 14, 1781.
78 General Report on Enclosures, 1808.
79 Six Months’ Tour through the North of England, vol. i. p. 122.
80 See Appendix A (6).
81 Report on Somerset, p. 192.
82 Parliamentary Register, January 21, 1772.
83 Carlisle MSS.; Historical MSS. Commission, pp. 301 ff.
84 Charles James Fox.
85 The earlier name of Brooks’s Club.
86 For the subsequent history of King’s Sedgmoor, see Appendix A (14).
87 Most private Enclosure Acts provided that if a commissioner died his successor was to be somebody not interested in the property.
88 Sir John Sinclair complained in 1796 that the Board had not even the privilege of franking its letters.—Annals of Agriculture, vol. xxvi, p. 506.
89 Vol. xxvi. p. 85.
90 From the Select Committee on the Means of Facilitating Enclosures in 1800, reprinted in Annual Register, 1800, Appendix to Chronicle, p. 85 ff., we learn that the fees received alone in the House of Commons (Bill fees, small fees, committee fees, housekeepers’ and messengers’ fees, and engrossing fees) for 707 Bills during the fourteen years from 1786 to 1799 inclusive amounted to no less than £59,867, 6s. 4d. As the scale of fees in the House of Lords was about the same (Bill fees, yeoman, usher, door-keepers’ fees, order of committee, and committee fees) during these years about £120,000 must have gone into the pockets of Parliamentary officials.
91 See Appendix A (5).
92 Bedford Report, 1808, p. 235.
93 Annual Register, 1799, Chron., p. 27.
94 Eden, 1. Preface, p. xviii.
95 Bedford Report, p. 249. Cf. writer in Appendix of Report on Middlesex, pp. 507–15, ‘a gentleman of the least sensibility would rather suffer his residence to continue surrounded by marshes and bogs, than take the lead in what may be deemed an obnoxious measure.’ This same writer urges, that the unpopularity of enclosures would be overcome were care taken ‘to place the inferior orders of mankind—the cottager and industrious poor—in such a situation, with regard to inclosures, that they should certainly have some share secured to them, and be treated with a gentle hand. Keep all in temper—let no rights be now disputed.... It is far more easy to prevent a clamour than to stop it when once it is raised. Those who are acquainted with the business of inclosure must know that there are more than four-fifths of the inhabitants in most neighbourhoods who are generally left out of the bill for want of property, and therefore cannot possibly claim any part thereof.’
96 Vol. xx. p. 456.
97 Vol. xxiv. p. 543.
98 The Appropriation and Enclosure of Commonable and Intermixed Lands, 1801.
99 ‘Allow to the cottager a little land about his dwelling for keeping a cow, for planting potatoes, for raising flax or hemp. 2ndly, Convert the waste lands of the kingdom into small arable farms, a certain quantity every year, to be let on favourable terms to industrious families. 3rdly, Restrain the engrossment and over-enlargement of farms. The propriety of those measures cannot, I think, be questioned.’—The Case of Labourers in Husbandry, p. 103.
100 Annals of Agriculture, vol. i. p. 52.
101 This scheme marks a great advance on an earlier scheme which Young published in the first volume of the Annals of Agriculture. He then proposed that public money should be spent in settling cottagers or soldiers on the waste, giving them their holding free of rent and tithes for three lives, at the end of which time the land they had redeemed was to revert to its original owners.
102 Slater, pp. 126–7.
103 Ibid., p. 128.
104 The Poor Man’s Best Friend, or Land to cultivate for his own Benefit. Letter to the Marquis of Salisbury, by the Rev. S. Demainbray, B.D., 1831.
105 P. 126.
106 See for this subject Cambridge Modern History, vol. viii. chap. 24, and P. Sagnac, La Législation Civile de la Révolution Française.
107 Vol. i. p. 119 ff.
108 Jackson’s Oxford Journal, September 11, 1830, said that a single cottager sometimes cleared as much as £20 a year by geese.
109 Oxford University and City Herald, September 25, 1830.
110 House of Commons Journal, February 17, 1815.
111 Alexander Croke (1758–1842), knighted in 1816, was from 1801–1815 judge in the Vice-Admiralty Court, Nova Scotia. As a lawyer, he could defend his own interests.
112 Dunkin’s Oxfordshire, vol. i. pp. 122–3.
113 Ibid., p. 123.
114 Jackson’s Oxford Journal, September 18, 1830.
115 Vol. i. p. 124.
116 Jackson’s Oxford Journal, September 11, 1830.
117 Ibid.
118 Ibid., September 18.
119 See Jackson’s Oxford Journal, and Oxford University and City Herald, for September 11, 1830, and also Annual Register, 1830, Chron., p. 142, and Home Office Papers, for what follows.
120 Oxford University and City Herald, September 11, 1830.
121 Ibid.
122 Jackson’s Oxford Journal, March 5, 1831.
123 See the Evidence of Witnesses before the Committee on Commons Inclosure of 1844. (Baily, land-agent): ‘General custom to give the Lord of Manor ¹⁄₁₆th as compensation for his rights exclusive of the value of minerals and of his rights as a common right owner.’ Another witness (Coulson, a solicitor) defined the surface rights as ‘game and stockage,’ and said that the proportion determined upon was the result of a bargain beforehand.
124 ‘Many small proprietors have been seriously injured by being obliged in pursuance of ill-framed private bills to enclose lands which never repaid the expense.’ Marshall, The Appropriation and Enclosure of Commonable and Intermixed Lands, 1801, p. 52.
125 Cost of Enclosure.—The expenses of particular Acts varied very much. Billingsley in his Report on Somerset (p. 57) gives £3 an acre as the cost of enclosing a lowland parish, £2, 10s. for an upland parish. The enclosure of the 12,000 acre King’s Sedgmoor (Ibid., p. 196) came (with the subdivisions) to no less than £59,624, 4s. 8d., or nearly £5 an acre. Stanwell Enclosure, on the other hand, came to about 23s. an acre, and various instances given in the Report for Bedfordshire work out at about the same figure. When the allotments to the tithe-owners and the lord of the manor were exempted, the sum per acre would of course fall more heavily on the other allottees, e.g. of Louth, where more than a third of the 1701 acres enclosed were exempt. In many cases, of course, land was sold to cover expenses. The cost of fencing allotments would also vary in different localities. In Somerset, from 7s. 7d. to 8s. 7d. for 20 feet of quickset hedge was calculated, in Bedfordshire, 10s. 6d. per pole. See also for expense Hasbach, pp. 64, 65, and General Report on Enclosures, Appendix xvii. Main Items:—
1. Country solicitor’s fees for drawing up Bill and attending in town;
2. Attendance of witnesses at House of Commons and House of Lords to prove that Standing Orders had been complied with;
3. Expenses of persons to get signatures of consents and afterwards to attend at House of Commons to swear to them (it once cost from £70 to £80 to get consent of principal proprietor);
4. Expense of Parliamentary solicitor, 20 gs., but more if opposition;
5. Expense of counsel if there was opposition;
6. Parliamentary fees, see p. 76.
126 Inquiry into the Advantages and Disadvantages resulting from Bills of Enclosure, 1780, p. 14.
127 Cf. Ashelworth, Cheshunt, Knaresborough.
128 Previous to enclosure there were twenty-five farmers: the land is now divided among five or six persons only.
129 It was then confidently said that several poor persons actually perished from want, and so great was the outcry that some of the farmers were hissed in the public market at Bicester.
130 Dunkin’s Oxfordshire, pp. 2 and 3.
131 F. Moore, Considerations on the Exorbitant Price of Proprietors, 1773, p. 22; quoted by Levy, p. 27.
132 Essay on the Nature and Method of ascertaining the specific Share of Proprietors upon the Inclosure of Common fields, with observations on the inconveniences of common fields, etc., p. 22.
133 The Kirton, Sutterton and Wigtoft (Lincs) Acts prescribed a penalty for taking turf or sod after the passing of the Act, of £10, and in default of payment imprisonment in the House of Correction with hard labour for three months.
134 P. 235.
135 The only provision for the poor in the Maulden Act, (36 Geo. III. c. 65) was a fuel allotment as a compensation for the ancient usage of cutting peat or moor turf. The trustees (rector, churchwarden and overseers) were to distribute the turf to poor families, and were to pay any surplus from the rent of the herbage to the poor rates.
136 P. 240.
137 At St. Neots a gentleman complained to Arthur Young in 1791 that in the enclosure which took place sixteen years before, ‘the poor were ill-treated by having about half a rood given them in lieu of a cow keep, the inclosure of which land costing more than they could afford, they sold the lots at £5, the money was drank out at the ale-house, and the men, spoiled by the habit, came, with their families to the parish.’—Annals of Agriculture, vol. xvi. p. 482.
138 Annals of Agriculture, vol. xxxvi. p. 508.
139 Davies, The Case of Labourers in Husbandry, p. 15.
140 In some instances it is reckoned as costing only 7s. Ibid., see p. 185.
141 Davies, p. 181.
142 Eden, vol. ii. p. 547.
143 Vol. xxv. p. 488.
144 See Annals of Agriculture, vol. ix. pp. 13, 14, 165–167, 636–646, and vol. x. pp. 218–227.
145 Capel Lofft (1751–1824); follower of Fox; writer of poems and translations from Virgil and Petrarch; patron of Robert Bloomfield, author of Farmer’s Boy. Called by Boswell ‘This little David of popular spirit.’
146 Thomas Ruggles (1737–1813), author of History of the Poor, published in 1793, Deputy-Lieutenant of Essex and Suffolk.
147 Sir Henry Gould, 1710–1794.
148 The Annals of Agriculture (vol. xvii. p. 293) contains a curious apology by a gleaner in 1791 to the owner of some fields, who had begun legal proceedings against her and her husband. ‘Whereas I, Margaret Abree, wife of Thomas Abree, of the city of New Sarum, blacksmith, did, during the barley harvest, in the month of September last, many times wilfully and maliciously go into the fields of, and belonging to, Mr. Edward Perry, at Clarendon Park, and take with me my children, and did there leaze, collect, and carry away a quantity of barley.... Now we do hereby declare, that we are fully convinced of the illegality of such proceedings, and that no person has a right to leaze any sort of grain, or to come on any field whatsoever, without the consent of the owner; and are also truly sensible of the obligation we are under to the said Edward Perry for his lenity towards us, inasmuch as the damages given, together with the heavy cost incurred, would have been much greater than we could possibly have discharged, and must have amounted to perpetual imprisonment, as even those who have least disapproved of our conduct, would certainly not have contributed so large a sum to deliver us from the legal consequences of it. And we do hereby faithfully promise never to be guilty of the same, or any like offence in future. Thomas Abree, Margaret Abree. Her + Mark.’ It is interesting to compare with this judge-made law of England the Mosaic precept: ‘And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not make clean riddance of the corners of thy field when thou reapest, neither shalt thou gather any gleaning of thy harvest: thou shalt leave them unto the poor, and to the stranger’ (Leviticus xxiii. 22).
149 Kent, Hints, p. 238.
150 P. 34; cf. Marshall on the Southern Department, p. 9, ‘Yorkshire bacon, generally of the worst sort, is retailed to the poor from little chandlers’ shops at an advanced price, bread in the same way.’
151 Notes on the Agriculture of Norfolk, p. 165.
152 Large and Small Holdings, p. 11.
153 Young’s Political Arithmetic, quoted by Lecky, vol. vii. p. 263 note.
154 See Appendix B for six of these budgets.
155 Ruggles, Annals of Agriculture, vol. xiv. p. 205.
156 Eden, vol. i. p. 180.
157 The parish might have the satisfaction of punishing the mother by a year’s hard labour (7 James I. c. 4, altered in 1810), but could not get rid of the child.
158 Wealth of Nations, vol. i. p. 194.
159 Quoted by Eden, vol. i. p. 347.
160 See Ibid., p. 296.
161 Vol. xiv. pp. 205, 206.
162 An example of a parish where the interests of the employer and of the parish officers differed is given in the House of Commons Journal for February 4, 1788, when a petition was presented from Mr. John Wilkinson, a master iron-founder at Bradley, near Bilston, in the parish of Wolverhampton. The petitioner states ‘that the present Demand for the Iron of his Manufacture and the Improvement of which it is capable, naturally encourage a very considerable Extension of his Works, but that the Experience he has had of the vexatious Effect, as well as of the constantly increasing Amount of Poor Rates to which he is subject, has filled him with Apprehensions of final Ruin to his Establishment; and that the Parish Officers... are constantly alarming his Workmen with Threats of Removal to the various Parishes from which the Necessity of employing skilful Manufacturers has obliged him to collect them.’ He goes on to ask that his district shall be made extra-parochial to the poor rates.
163 Hasbach, pp. 172–3.
164 Eden, vol. ii. p. 384.
165 See p. 148.
166 The unborn were the special objects of parish officers’ dread. At Derby the persons sent out under orders of removal are chiefly pregnant girls. (Eden, vol. ii. p. 126.) Bastards (see above) with some exceptions gained a settlement in their birthplace, and Hodge’s legitimate children might gain one too if there was any doubt about the place of their parents’ settlements.
167 Eden, vol. ii. p. 383.
168 Vol. ix. p. 660.
169 Eden, vol. ii. p. 288. In considering the accounts of the state of the commons, it must be remembered that the open parishes thus paid the penalty of enclosure elsewhere. Colluvies vicorum. But these open fields and commons were becoming rapidly more scarce.
170 Ibid., p. 691.
171 Eden, vol. iii. p. 743.
172 Ibid.
173 Ibid., vol. ii. p. 591.
174 Ibid., p. 654, re Litchfield. ‘In two or three small parishes in this neighbourhood, which consist of large farms, there are very few poor: the farmers, in order to prevent the introduction of poor from other parishes, hire their servants for fifty-one weeks only. I conceive, however, that this practice would be considered, by a court of justice, as fraudulent, and a mere evasion in the master; and that a servant thus hired, if he remained the fifty-second week with his master, on a fresh contract, would acquire a settlement in the parish.’
175 See Annual Register, 1817, p. 298.
176 Eden, vol. ii. p. 689.
177 Reading Mercury, April 20, 1795; also Ipswich Journal, March 28.
178 Ipswich Journal, April 18.
179 Ibid., August 8.
180 Ibid.
181 Ibid.
182 Reading Mercury, April 27, 1795.
183 Eden, vol. ii. p. 591.
184 Eden, vol. i. p. 495.
185 Resolution of Privy Council, July 6, 1795, and Debate and Resolution in House of Commons. Parliamentary Register, December 11, 1795, and Lord Sheffield in Annals of Agriculture, vol. xxv. p. 31.
186 See Senator for March 1, 1796, p. 1147.
187 See Wilberforce’s speech, Parliamentary Register and Senator, February 18, 1800.
188 Eden, vol. ii. pp. 104–6.
189 Ibid., p. 15.
190 Ibid., p. 280.
191 Ibid., p. 426.
192 See Annals of Agriculture, vol. xxiv. pp. 63, 171, 177, 204, 285, 316, etc.
193 Annals of Agriculture, vol. xxv. p. 678.
194 Eden, vol. i. p. 533.
195 Perhaps the unpopularity of soup is partly explained by a letter published in the Annals of Agriculture in December 1795, vol. xxvi. p. 215. The writer says it is the custom for most families in the country ‘to give their poor neighbours the pot liquor, that is, the liquor in which any meat has been boiled, and to which they sometimes add the broken bread from the parlour and kitchen tables: this,’ he adds, ‘makes but an indifferent mess.’ The publications of the time contain numerous recipes for cheap soups: ‘the power of giving an increased effect to Christian benevolence by these soups’ (Reports on Poor, vol. i. p. 167) was eagerly welcomed. Cf. Mrs. Shore’s account of stewed ox’s head for the poor, according to which, at the cost of 2s. 6d. with the leavings of the family, a savoury mess for fifty-two persons could be prepared (Ibid., p. 60).
196 Davies, pp. 31–2.
197 Annals of Agriculture, vol. xxv. p. 455.
198 Parliamentary Register, November 2, 1795.
199 Eden, vol. iii. p. 769.
200 Ibid., vol. ii. p. 97.
201 Ibid., p. 621.
202 Ibid., p. 645.
203 In many budgets no milk is included.
204 Reports on Poor, vol. iv. p. 151.
205 Davies, p. 104.
206 Reports on Poor, vol. ii. p. 178.
207 Vol. ii. p. 587.
208 Reports on Poor, vol. i. p. 134; another reason for the dearth of milk was the growing consumption of veal in the towns. Davies says (p. 19), ‘Suckling is here so profitable (to furnish veal for London) that the poor can seldom either buy or beg milk.’
209 P. 27.
210 See Annals of Agriculture, vol. xxv. pp. 367–8.
211 Davies, p. 37.
212 Ibid., p. 39.
213 Annals of Agriculture, vol. xxvi. p. 121.
214 The dearness of malt was another fact which helped the introduction of tea. Cf. Davies, p. 38: ‘Time was when small beer was reckoned one of the necessaries of life, even in poor families.’
215 Lecky, History of England in Eighteenth Century, vol. ii. p. 318.
216 In connection with the dearth of milk it is important to notice the rise in the price of cheese. ‘Poor people,’ says Davies, (p. 19), ‘reckon cheese the dearest article they can use’ (cf. also p. 143), and in his comparison of prices in the middle of the eighteenth century with those of 1787–94 he gives the price of 112 lbs. of cheese at Reading Fair as from 17s. to 21s. in the first period, and 40s. to 46s. in the second. Retail cheese of an inferior sort had risen from 2½d. or 3d. a lb. to 4½d. or 5d. (p. 65); cf. also correspondent in Annals of Agriculture, vol. ii. p. 442. ‘Every inhabitant of Bath must be sensible that butter and cheese have risen in price one-third, or more, within these twenty years.’ (Written in 1784).
217 Reports on Poor, vol. i. p. 129.
218 Ibid., vol. iii. p. 78.
219 Annual Register, 1806, p. 974; ‘My local situation afforded me ample means of knowing how greatly the lower orders suffered from being unable to procure a supply of milk; and I am fully persuaded of the correctness of the statement that the labouring poor lose a number of their children from the want of a food so pre-eminently adapted to their support’; cf. also Curwen’s Hints.
220 Eden, vol. i. p. 510.
221 Vol. iii. p. 96.
222 Eden, vol. iii. p. 694.
223 Cf. Reports on Poor, vol. i. p. 43; ‘Where there are commons, the ideal advantage of cutting flags, peat, or whins, often causes a poor man to spend more time in procuring such fuel, than, if he reckoned his labour, would purchase for him double the quantity of good firing.’
224 Vol. iv. p. 496.
225 Vol. ii. p. 587.
226 Davies, p. 28.
227 Ibid., p. 118.
228 Eden, vol. iii. p. 805.
229 P. 179.
230 Cf. also Eden’s description of a labourer’s expenses, vol. iii. p. 797, where he says that whilst hedging and ditching, they are allowed to take home a faggot every evening, whilst the work lasts, ‘but this is by no means sufficient for his consumption: his children, therefore, are sent into the fields, to collect wood where they can; and neither hedges nor trees are spared by the young marauders, who are thus, in some degree, educated in the art of thieving.’
231 Vol. ii. p. 231.
232 Cf. also for the difficulties of the poor in getting fuel, the account by the Rev. Dr. Glasse; Reports on Poor, vol. i. p. 58. ‘Having long observed, that there is scarcely any article of life, in respect to which the poor are under greater difficulties, or for the supply of which they have stronger temptations to dishonest practices, than that of fuel,’ he laid up in summer a store of coals in Greenford (Middlesex), and Wanstead, and sold them rather under original cost price, carriage free, in winter. ‘The benefit arising from the relief afforded them in this article of coals, is obvious: they are habituated to pay for what they have; whereas at the shop they ran in debt. When their credit was at an end, they contrived to do without coals, by having recourse to wood-stealing; than which I know no practise which tends more effectually to introduce into young minds a habit of dishonesty; it is also very injurious to the farmer, and excites a degree of resentment in his breast, which, in many instances, renders him averse to affording relief to the poor, even when real necessity calls loudly for it.’
233 20 George II. c. 19.
234 Annals of Agriculture, vol. xxv. p. 305 ff.
235 Annals of Agriculture, vol. xxv. p. 298.
236 Parliamentary Register, December 9, 1795.
237 Ibid., February 12, 1796.
238 Annals of Agriculture, vol. xxv. p. 345.
239 Ibid., p. 316.
240 An Examination of Mr. Pitt’s Speech in the House of Commons, February 12, 1796.
241 P. 106 ff.
242 Annals of Agriculture, 1795, vol. xxv. p. 503.
243 Parliamentary Debates.
244 Printed in Parliamentary Papers for 1795–6.
245 The age was not filled up.
246 For report of debate see Parliamentary Register for that date.
247 See Parliamentary Register.
248 See Parliamentary Register, February 14, 1800.
249 Reports on Poor, vol. v. p. 23.
250 See p. 179.
251 Annals of Agriculture, vol. xxvi. p. 178.
252 22 George III. c. 83.
253 In 1834 there were 924 comprised in 67 incorporations (Nicholls, vol. ii. p. 91.)
254 9 George I. c. 7.
255 Eden, vol. i. p. 269.
256 E.g. Oxford and Shrewsbury.
257 There is a significant entry in the Abstracts of Returns to the 1775 Poor Relief Committee in reference to the building of that death-trap, the Bulcamp House of Industry. ‘In the Expences for Building is included £500 for building a Part which was pulled down by a Mob.’
258 At Heckingham in Norfolk a putrid fever, in 1774, killed 126 out of 220 inmates (Eden, vol. ii. p. 473, quoting Howlett); cf. also Ruggles, History of the Poor, vol. ii. p. 266.
259 ‘The Village,’ pp. 16 and 17.
260 Eden, vol. iii. p. 694 ff.
261 36 George III. c. 23.
262 The last of these systems had been included in a Bill introduced by Sir William Young in 1788. ‘In order to relieve agricultural labourers, who are often, during the winter, out of employment, the vestry in every parish is empowered, by notice affixed to the church door, to settle a rate of wages to be paid to labourers out of employ, from the 30th Nov. to the 28th of Feb.; and to distribute and send them round in rotation to the parishioners, proportionally as they pay to the Rates; to be paid by the person employing them two-thirds of the wages so settled, and one-third by the parish-officers out of the Rates.’—Eden, vol. i. p. 397.
263 Parliamentary Register, February 12, 1796.
264 Ibid., December 22, 1796.
265 The Bill is printed in House of Commons Papers, 1796. The ‘Heads of the Bill’ as circulated appear in the Annals of Agriculture, vol. xxvi. pp. 260 ff. and 359 ff. Eden gives in the form of Appendices (1) the Heads of the Bill, (2) the Amendments introduced in Committee.
266 House of Commons Journal.
267 Parliamentary Register, February 11, 1800.
268 35 George III. c. 101.
269 For Whitbread’s proposals to amend the Law of Settlement in 1807 see next chapter. An attempt was made in 1819 (59 George III. c. 50) to define and simplify the conditions under which the hiring of a tenement of £10 annual value conferred the right to a settlement. The term of residence was extended to a year, the nature of the tenement was defined, and it was laid down that the rent must be £10, and paid for a whole year. But so unsuccessful was this piece of legislation that it was found necessary to pass a second Act six years later (1826, 6 George IV. c. 57), and a third Act in 1831 (1 William IV. c. 18).
270 Senator, March 1800.
271 See Debates in Senator, March 31 and April 3, 1800, and Parliamentary Register. Cf. for removals for temporary distress, Sir Thomas Bernard’s Charge to Overseers in the Hundred of Stoke. Bucks. Reports on Poor, vol. i. p. 260. ‘With regard to the removal of labourers belonging to other parishes, consider thoroughly what you may lose, and what the individual may suffer, by the removal, before you apply to us on the subject. Where you have had, for a long time, the benefit of their labour, and where all they want is a little temporary relief, reflect whether, after so many years spent in your service, this is the moment and the cause, for removing them from the scene of their daily labour to a distant parish, etc.’ (1798).
272 Davies, pp. 102–4.
273 15 George III. c. 32.
274 Reports on Poor, vol. ii. p. 171.
275 Reports on Poor, vol. ii. p. 136.
276 Ibid., p. 137.
277 Ibid., vol. v. p. 66.
278 Mr. Estcourt mentions that the land ‘would let to a farmer at about 20s. per acre now.’
279 It is interesting to find that these allotments were still being let out successfully in 1868. See p. 4145 of the Report on the Employment of Children, Young Persons, and Women in Agriculture, 1868.
280 Reports on Poor, vol. iii. p. 329.
281 1803, p. 850.
282 Reports on Poor, vol. i. p. 100.
283 Vol. xxvi. p. 4.
284 The most distinguished advocate of this policy was William Marshall, the agricultural writer who published a strong appeal for the labourers in his book On the Management of Landed Estates, 1806, p. 155; cf. also Curwen’s Hints, p. 239: ‘A farther attention to the cottager’s comfort is attended with little cost; I mean giving him a small garden, and planting that as well as the walls of his house with fruit trees.’
285 Vol. xxv. p. 349.
286 Ibid., p. 358.
287 Reports on Poor, vol. ii. p. 184.
288 Ibid., p. 134.
289 Cf. Poor Law Report, 1817, Appendix G, p. 4.
290 Capes, Rural Life in Hampshire, p. 282.
291 Poor Law Report, 1834, p. 61; cf. ibid., p. 185.
292 Notes to Kent’s Norfolk, p. 178.
293 See Poor Law Report, 1834, p. 181, and Allotments Committee, 1843, p. 108.
294 59 George III. c. 12.
295 1 and 2 William IV. c. 42.
296 Speenhamland is now part of Newbury. The Pelican Inn has disappeared, but the Pelican Posting House survives.
297 Charles Dundas, afterwards Lord Amesbury, 1751–1832; Liberal M.P. for Berkshire, 1794–1832, nominated by Sheridan for the Speakership in 1802 but withdrew.
298 Reading Mercury, April 20, 1795.
299 Reading Mercury, April 20, 1795.
300 See Ibid., May 11, 1795.
301 Eden, vol. i. p. 578.
302 On the same day a ‘respectable meeting’ at Basingstoke, with the Mayor in the chair, was advocating the fixing of labourers’ wages in accordance with the price of wheat without any reference to parish relief.—Reading Mercury, May 11, 1795.
303 See Ipswich Journal, February 7, 1795, and Reading Mercury, July 6, 1795.
304 Eden, vol. ii. p. 384.
305 Ibid., p. 548.
306 Ibid., p. 27.
307 Eden, vol. ii. p. 29.
308 Ibid., p. 32.
309 ‘The Village,’ Book I.
310 Poor Law Report, 1834, p. 60.
311 The big landlord under this method shared the privilege of paying the labourer’s wages with the small farmer.
312 Tribune, vol. ii. p. 317.
313 Ibid., p. 339.
314 Poor Law Commission Report of 1834, p. 126.
315 See Curtler’s Short History of Agriculture, p. 249.
316 Smart, Economic Annals, p. 36.
317 ‘It was during the war that the cottagers of England were chiefly deprived of the little pieces of land and garden, and made solely dependent for subsistence on the wages of their daily labour, or the poor rates. Land, and the produce of it, had become so valuable, that the labourer was envied the occupation of the smallest piece of ground which he possessed: and even “the bare-worn common” was denied.’—Kentish Chronicle, December 14, 1830.
318 Curtler, p. 243.
319 Agricultural State of the Kingdom, Board of Agriculture, 1816, p. 7.
320 Ibid., pp. 250–1.
321 P. 144.
322 C. C. Western (1767–1844); whig M.P., 1790–1832; chief representative of agricultural interests; made peer in 1833.
323 Annual Register, 1816, Chron., p. 67.
324 The disturbances at Brandon ceased immediately on the concession of the demands of the rioters; flour was reduced to 2s. 6d. a stone, and wages were raised for two weeks to 2s. a head. The rioters were contented, and peace was restored.—Times, May 23, 1816.
325 Annual Register, 1816, Chron., p. 67.
326 Cambridge Chronicle, June 28, 1816.
327 Times, June 26. A curious irony has placed side by side with the account in the Annual Register of the execution of the five men who were hung for their share in this spasm of starvation and despair, the report of a meeting, with the inevitable Wilberforce in the chair, for raising a subscription for rebuilding the Protestant Church at Copenhagen, which had been destroyed by the British Fleet at the bombardment of Copenhagen in 1807.
328 Agricultural State of the Kingdom, p. 13.
329 59 George III. c. 50.
330 See Annual Register, 1819, p. 320.
331 Those assessed at £100 were to have two votes, those at £150 three votes, and those at £400 four votes. Whitbread did not propose to copy the provision of Gilbert’s Act, which withdrew all voting power in vestries in parishes that adopted that Act from persons assessed at less than £5.
332 Political Register, August 29, 1807, p. 329.
333 Letter to Samuel Whitbread, M.P., on his proposed Bill for the Amendment of the Poor Laws, 1807.
334 58 George III. c. 69.
335 59 George III. c. 12.
336 H. O. Papers, Municipal and Provincial.
337 Of course the system was only one of the causes of this difference in wages.
338 P. 99.
339 See Agricultural State of the Kingdom, Board of Agriculture, p. 231, and Cobbett, Political Register, October 5, 1816.
340 Pp. 21 and 23.
341 The table is given in the Report of the Committee on the Poor Laws, 1828.
342 Cobbett, Political Register, September 21, 1822. Cobbett wrote one of his liveliest articles on this scale, setting out the number of livings held by the five parsons, and various circumstances connected with their families.
343 Ibid., September 9, 1826.
344 Rural Rides, p. 17.
345 Ibid., p. 609.
346 The farmers were usually sympathetic to poaching as a habit, but it was not so much from a perception of its economic tendencies, as from a general resentment against the Game Laws.
347 See Cobbett; Letters to Peel; Political Register; and Dr. Hunt’s evidence before the Select Committee on Criminal Commitments and Convictions, 1827.
348 A manifesto was published in a Bath paper in reply to this Act; it is quoted by Sydney Smith, Essays, p. 263: ‘Take Notice.—We have lately heard and seen that there is an act passed, and whatever poacher is caught destroying the game is to be transported for seven years.—This is English Liberty!
‘Now we do swear to each other that the first of our company that this law is inflicted on, that there shall not be one gentleman’s seat in our country escape the rage of fire. The first that impeaches shall be shot. We have sworn not to impeach. You may think it a threat, but they will find it a reality. The Game Laws were too severe before. The Lord of all men sent these animals for the peasants as well as for the prince. God will not let his people be oppressed. He will assist us in our undertaking, and we will execute it with caution.’
349 The Archbishop of Canterbury prosecuted a man under this Act in January 1831, for rescuing a poacher from a gamekeeper without violence, on the ground that he thought it his duty to enforce the provisions of the Act.
350 House of Lords, September 19, 1831.
351 A magistrate wrote to Sir R. Peel in 1827 to say that many magistrates sent in very imperfect returns of convictions, and that the true number far exceeded the records.—Webb, Parish and County, p. 598 note.
352 Brougham Speeches, vol. ii. p. 373.
353 Political Register, March 29, 1823, vol. xxiv. p. 796.
354 Select Committee on Criminal Commitments and Convictions, 1827, p. 30.
355 Ibid., p. 39.
356 Quoted in Times, December 18, 1830.
357 Return of Convictions under the Game Laws from 1827 to 1830. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, February 14, 1831, p. 4.
358 Hansard, June 9, 1817.
359 Scotland was exempted from the operation of this statute, for whilst the Bill was going through Parliament, a case raised in a Scottish Court ended in a unanimous decision by the six Judges of the High Court of Justiciary that killing by a spring gun was murder. Hence the milder provisions of this Act were not required. See Annual Register, 1827, p. 185, and Chron., p. 116.
360 That Coke of Norfolk did not err on the side of mercy towards poachers is clear from his record. His biographer (Mrs. Stirling) states that one of his first efforts in Parliament was to introduce a Bill to punish night poaching.
361 P. 29 ff.
362 Annual Register, 1827, p. 184.
363 Edinburgh Review, December 1831.
364 Parliamentary Register, February 25, 1782.
365 P. 42.
366 ‘Speaking now of country and agricultural parishes, I do not know above one instance in all my experience.’
367 Some Enclosure Acts prescribed special penalties for the breaking of fences. See cases of Haute Huntre and Croydon in Appendix.
368 See Mr. Estcourt’s evidence before Select Committee on Secondary Punishments, 1831, p. 41.
369 Present State of the Law, p. 41.
370 From Ploughshare to Parliament, p. 186; the Annual Register for 1791 records the execution of two boys at Newport for stealing, one aged fourteen and the other fifteen.
371 Sydney Smith, Essays, p. 487.
372 Vol. ii. p. 153.
373 Romilly, Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 181.
374 It was again rejected in 1813 by twenty to fifteen, the majority including five bishops.
375 Correspondence on the Subject of Secondary Punishments, 1834, p. 22.
376 See Select Committee on Secondary Punishments, 1831, and Select Committee on Transportation, 1838.
377 See evidence of Dr. Ullathorne, Roman Catholic Vicar-General of New Holland and Van Diemen’s Land, before the 1838 Committee on Transportation.
378 Reflections on the Revolution in France (fourth edition), p. 359.
379 Eden, vol. i. p. 579.
380 Reports on Poor, vol. ii. p. 325.
381 Political Register, vol. lxxviii. p. 710.
382 Hasbach, p. 131.
383 ‘Village,’ Book 1.
384 Vol. xxxviii. p. 750 ff.
385 Cobbett’s Political Register, March 17, 1821, p. 779.
386 Bamford, Passages in the Life of a Radical, p. 38.
387 Rural Rides, p. 460.
388 Reflections, p. 61.
389 Poor Law Report, 1817.
390 Cf. Ibid., 1834, p. 161.
391 Cf. case of apprentice, Annual Register, 1819, p. 195.
392 Poor Law Report, 1817; in some cases there were amicable arrangements to keep down legal expenses; e.g. at Halifax (Eden), the overseer formed a society of the officers of adjoining parishes. Cases were referred to them, and the decision of the majority was accepted.
393 Wealth of Nations, vol. iii. p. 234.
394 Life in an English Village, by Maude F. Davies, p. 58.
395 Inquiry into the State of the Public Mind among the Lower Classes, p. 27.
396 The parsons under Squire Allworthy’s roof, the parson to whom Pamela appealed in vain, and, most striking of all, Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice.
397 Life, vol. iv. p. 277.
398 Parliamentary Register, April 18, 1800.
399 Report of the Poor Law Commission, 1834, p. 243.
400 Ibid., p. 84.
401 Ibid., pp. 56–7.
402 Report of the Poor Law Commission, 1834, p. 244.
403 Report of the Poor Law Commission, 1834, pp. 78–9.
404 Ibid., p. 80.
405 Ibid., p. 291.
406 Report of the Poor Law Commission, 1834, p. 94.
407 Ibid., p. 172.
408 Ibid., p. 66.
409 Report of the Poor Law Commission, 1834, pp. 98–104.
410 Ibid., p. 100.
411 Report of the Poor Law Commission, 1834, p. 108.
412 Ibid., p. 210.
413 Report of the Poor Law Commission, 1834, p. 73.
414 Ibid., p. 157.
415 Ibid., p. 158.
416 Ibid., p. 161.
417 Ibid., p. 130.
418 Appendix F, No. 3, to 1st Report of Commissioners.
419 See Webb’s History of Trade Unionism, p. 59.
420 Tom Jones, Bk. XII. chap. i.
421 See Fawley, p. 279.
422 Kent Herald, September 2, 1830.
423 Times, January 3, 1831.
424 September 30, 1830.
425 Brighton Chronicle, October 6, quoted in Times, October 14.
426 For Brede see H. O. Papers, Extracts from Poor Law Commissioners’ Report, published 1833, and newspapers.
427 They were signed by G. S. Hill, minister, by eight farmers and the four labourer delegates.
428 Affidavit in H. O. Papers.
429 Times, November 25.
430 The petition was as follows: ‘We feel that in justice we ought not to suffer a moment to pass away without communicating to your Grace the great and unprecedented distress which we are enabled from our own personal experience to state prevails among all the peasantry to a degree not only dreadful to individuals, but also to an extent which, if not checked, must be attended with serious consequences to the national prosperity.’ Mr. Hodges does not mention the date, merely stating that it was sent to Wellington when Prime Minister.
431 H. O. Papers.
432 Ibid.
433 Ibid.
434 H. O. Papers.
435 Ibid.
436 Transported for life to New South Wales.
437 Ford was capitally convicted and sentenced to transportation for life, but his sentence was commuted to imprisonment.
438 H. O. Papers.
439 According to local tradition he was killed not by the yeomanry but by a farmer, before the troop came up. See Hudson, A Shepherd’s Life, p. 248.
440 Transported for life to New South Wales.
441 Transported for life to New South Wales.
442 H. O. Papers.
443 Ibid.
444 Ten days later, after Lord Melbourne’s circular of December 8, Dr. Newbolt changed his tone. Writing to the Home Office he deprecated the censure implied in that circular, and stated that his conduct was due to personal infirmities and threats of violence: indeed he had subsequently heard from a certain Mr. Wickham that ‘I left his place just in time to save my own life, as some of the Mob had it in contemplation to drag me out of the carriage, and to destroy me upon the spot, and it was entirely owing to the interference of some of the better disposed of the Peasantry that my life was preserved.’
445 See p. 258.
446 H. O. Papers.
447 Ibid.
448 See Oxford University and City Herald, November 20 and 27, 1830.
449 Russell, On Crimes and Misdemeanours, p. 371.
450 Sir J. B. Bosanquet (1773–1847).
451 Times, December 15, 1830.
452 Sir W. E. Taunton (1773–1835).
453 The Times on December 25 quoted part of this charge in a leading article with some sharp strictures.
454 Sir John Vaughan (1769–1839).
455 Times, December 21, 1830.
456 Sir James Parke (1782–1868).
457 Times, January 3, 1831.
458 Sir E. H. Alderson (1787–1857).
459 Times, January 6, 1831. Cf. letter of Mr. R. Pollen, J.P., afterwards one of Winchester Commissioners, to Home Office, November 26: ‘It may be worth considering the law, which exempts all Threshing Machines from capital punishment, should such scenes as these occur again amongst the agricultural classes. I confess I view with great regret that they have found the mode of combining, which I had hoped was confined to the manufacturing classes.’
460 Sir J. A. Park (1763–1838).
461 Times, January 15, 1831.
462 Ibid., January 12, 1831.
463 Ibid.
464 February 8, 1831.
465 There are no statistics for Wilts, Hants, Bucks, and Dorsetshire prisoners. At Reading out of 138 prisoners 37 could read, and 25 of the 37 could also write. At Abingdon, out of 47, 17 could read, and 6 of them could also write. In Wilts and Hants the proportion was probably smaller, as the people were more neglected.
466 Times, December 24, 1830.
467 Ibid., January 8, 1831.
468 Times, January 7, 1831.
469 Ibid., December 24, 1830. Henry Bunce was transported for life to New South Wales.
470 Ibid., January 14.
471 Cobbett, Political Register, vol. lxxiii. p. 535, and local papers.
472 Fussell’s sentence was commuted to imprisonment. Boys was sent to Van Diemen’s Land.
473 H. O. Papers, Municipal and Provincial. Hants, 1831, March 24.
474 As early as November 26, Mr. Richard Pollen, Chairman of Quarter Sessions and afterwards a commissioner at Winchester, had written to the Home Office, ‘I have directed the Magistrates’ attention very much to the class of People found in the Mobs many miles from their own homes, Taylors, Shoemakers etc., who have been found always very eloquent, they are universally politicians: they should be, I think, selected.’—H. O. Papers.
475 For a full account of the incident, including the text of the petition and list of signatures, see Cobbett’s Two-penny Trash, July 1, 1832.
476 See p. 277.
477 February 8, 1831.
478 Times, January 8, 1831. The Times of the same day contains an interesting petition from the Birmingham Political Union on behalf of all the prisoners tried before the Special Commissions.
479 The scene is still vividly remembered by an old woman over ninety years of age with whom Mr. Hudson spoke.
480 H. O. Papers, Disturbance Entry-Book, Letter of January 3, 1831.
481 See p. 268.
482 Three boats carried the convicts, the Eliza and the Proteus to Van Diemen’s Land, the Eleanor to New South Wales. The list of the prisoners on board shows that they came from the following counties:—
Berks, 44
Bucks, 29
Dorset, 13
Essex, 23
Gloucester, 24
Hampshire, 100
Hunts,
Kent, 22
Norfolk, 11
Oxford, 11
Suffolk, 7
Sussex, 17
Wilts, 151
Total, 457
If this represents the total, some sentences of transportation must have been commuted for imprisonment; possibly some rioters were sent later, for Mr. Potter MacQueen, in giving evidence before the Committee on Secondary Punishments, spoke of the six hundred able-bodied men who had been transported in consequence of being concerned in the Swing offences.—Report of Committee, p. 95. Four years later Lord John Russell, as Home Secretary, pardoned 264 of the convicts, in 1836 he pardoned 86 more, and in 1837 the survivors, mostly men sentenced for life or for fourteen years, were given pardons conditional on their ‘continuing to reside in Australia for the remainder of their sentences.’ No free passages back were granted, and Mr. Hudson states that very few, not more than one in five or six, ever returned.—A Shepherd’s Life, p. 247.
483 See Hudson, Ibid.
484 See Annual Register and local papers.
485 He was sent to Van Diemen’s Land. It is only fair to Lord Sheffield to say that he applied in vain to Lord Melbourne for a mitigation of the life sentence. See Criminal Entry-Book, H. O. Papers.
486 Correspondence on Secondary Punishment, March 1834, p. 23.
487 See a remarkable letter from Lord Dudley. ‘He has already been enough on the Continent for any reasonable end, either of curiosity or instruction, and his availing himself so immediately of this opportunity to go to a foreign country again looks a little too much like distaste for his own.’—Letters to Ivy from the first Earl of Dudley, October 1808.
488 See on this subject a very interesting article by Mr. L. March Phillipps in the Contemporary Review, August 1911.
489 Helpstone was enclosed by an Act of 1809. Clare was then sixteen years old. His association with the old village life had been intimate, for he had tended geese and sheep on the common, and he had learnt the old country songs from the last village cowherd. His poem on Helpstone was published in 1820.
490 Referred to below as ‘A’.
491 Referred to below as ‘B’.
492 Note that the compensation to the Lords of the Manor added together comes to less than one ninety-first part of the soil.
493 I.e. lands over which there is right of common for half the year between Michaelmas and Lady Day or Lammas and Lady Day.
494 This referred to roads only, see Act.
495 It took twenty-nine years.
496 Sir James Lowther, afterwards Lord Lowther, who had originally petitioned for enclosure, had died in 1802. He was succeeded by his cousin, Wordsworth’s patron.
497 These allotments were fenced by the other proprietors and did not bear any of the expenses of the Act.
498 Including 8 acres 1 rood 5 perches for rights of soil.
499 Nine of them women.
500 See p. 55.
501 See Petition, p. 379, where nearly a hundred are said to do so.
502 Billingsley’s Somerset, p. 191.
503 Ibid., pp. 191–2.
504 Eden, vol. iii. p. cccxxxix.
505 Davies, p. 152.
506 Davies puts 1½d., but this is probably a slip.
507 Davies, p. 166.
508 Eden, vol. iii. p. cccxlii.
509 Davies, p. 176.
510 Eden, vol. iii. p. cccxlvi.