A NIGHT IN ELY
The Isle of Ely, with the city in its midst, and the cathedral in the
midst of the city, is more ecclesiastical than Rome itself. Until
comparatively recent times the Bishop was a petty prince therein,
exercising powers of life and death. He did not indeed sit in the
courts himself, and himself sentence to the block and the gallows,
any more than did the Pope himself consign offenders to the flames.
The secular power was committed to a 'Temporal Steward,' who held his
office for life, and discharged the functions of High Sheriff, and the
Bishop washed his hands of all blood-guiltiness.
The courts of justice were, however, held in the Bishop's name, and the
gaols were institutions under his jurisdiction. The Bishop appointed
the municipal authorities and the justices of peace. From the High
Sheriff to the town-crier, all derived their authority by commission
from the Bishop.
As every acre of land in the isle and far away into the fen belonged to
either Bishop or Dean and Chapter, there were no county magnates near,
and no country gentry at all. Nay, even in the city itself there was
no gentry of independent position. In Rome there are princes who have
their territories. In Ely there were not even squires.
Accordingly, the ecclesiastical dignitaries lived very high up in
roseate clouds and in an ethereal atmosphere, far above the clay land
where grubbed and wriggled the professional men and the shopkeepers.
Perhaps the fact of being so completely under ecclesiastical government
paralysed all initiative in Ely, and rendered the inhabitants helpless
in cases of emergency. The citizens were but overgrown babies. The
lawyer, the surgeon, the M.D., the surveyor, the architect, were
accustomed to be swaddled and given suck by the Right Reverend
Father the Bishop, or the Very Reverend the Dean, or the Venerable
the Archdeacon; and all the officials, the temporal steward, and the
justices, and the chief constable, were wont to go in leading-strings.
And they were such good babies. They always thought as the reverend
fathers thought; they never cried and kicked; and the air of the Fens
must have been salubrious, for they had all ravenous appetites for
the fat of the land, which fell from the ecclesiastical tables. At
the time of our tale, co-operative stores had not been so much as
thought of. The Bishop, the Dean, and the canons got their groceries,
their drugs, their wines, and their stationery from the Ely tradesmen.
In return for their custom, these tradesmen professed the strictest
churchmanship and the staunchest Toryism.
The system of appointment to offices in Ely was distinctively
ecclesiastical. The magistrates were bespectacled and bewigged
officials connected by marriage with some of the members of the
Chapter. The constables were nominated for their general piety, or
because they were burdened with large families. The watchmen were
pensioned cripples or asthmatic incapables, whose utmost achievement
was to crawl about at night and proclaim the hour. Everything in the
city was managed for the residents by a benevolent and beneficent
ecclesiastical authority, which exhibited its benevolence and
beneficence by conferring offices, not on such as showed efficiency,
but on such men as were incompetent to earn a livelihood in any
profession or business that demanded the exercise of brain or of muscle.
When the turbulent crew from Littleport arrived in Ely, and the rumour
circulated that other Fen centres were sending their contingents of
the disaffected to the capital of the Fens, neither magistrates nor
constables were prepared to take prompt action to protect the town and
stop the spread of disturbance. Orders were indeed issued to have the
minster bell rung, to summon all sober, law-abiding citizens to unite
for the common defence, but, although the bell pealed its summons, no
one obeyed it, for no one knew where the rallying-point was, or what
was to be done by those summoned.
The temporal steward was in bed with a mustard poultice on his chest
and a dose of sweet nitre in his stomach. Consequently, when a
messenger from the Deanery came to request that he would do something,
the wife of the temporal steward was able to point out that he was
perspiring freely and the poultice drawing vigorously. To leave his bed
and the house was, therefore, out of the question.
There was no deputy sheriff to fill the place which the sheriff was
incapacitated from filling. The vacancy had not been filled up,
because the Bishop was hesitating, balancing the claims of one who was
stone-blind against one who was stone-deaf. The prelate himself was
absent on a confirmation tour, and he had taken his chaplains with
him, and, what was more to the point, his butler—a man who did most
of the thinking in sublunary matters for his master. The constables
then in Ely were few. The chief constable, Mr. Edwards, was the manager
of Mortlock's bank, and in the interests of the bank he had come to
the resolution to keep in the background so as in no way to excite
the angry passions of the mob. Another constable had swallowed a
fish-bone, and this was being extracted by a fellow constable. A fourth
was at the moment incapacitated for work by one of his constitutional
and chronic fits of the hiccups. It was precisely because he suffered
from this affliction that the benevolent and beneficent ecclesiastical
authority had nominated him to, and invested him with, the office of
constable.
As the combined municipal and collegiate forces of watchmen were
unprepared or unable to cope with the approaching masses of men, the
Dean sent off his coachman on a carriage horse to Bury St. Edmund's, to
invoke the aid of the military stationed there. The mob from Littleport
entered the town, as already said, preceded by the waggon, in which
were placed heavy wash guns loaded with slugs. To announce its arrival
a volley was fired, and the slugs rattled on the tiles and broke a few
windows.
No sooner had the Littleport body entered Ely, than it learned to its
disappointment that nothing had been heard of the Isleham and Swaffham
contingents.
In fact, discouragement had dissolved these at the onset. The small
landowner, Cutman, who had undertaken to lead the detachment from
Isleham, had reconsidered the matter, and resolved that heading a riot
could do him no possible good, and might do him very considerable
harm. The men assembled at the Duck at the appointed hour, waited,
and, as he did not appear, became uneasy, supposing that he had been
alarmed; they also reconsidered the matter, and, coming to much the
same conclusion as Cutman, dispersed quietly to their several homes.
The Swaffham men were also defaulters. The tidings of what was
meditated had been communicated to a large farmer there, and when the
rabble approached, he met them dauntlessly, along with his stalwart
sons and some trusty serving-men, all armed with blunderbusses. He
addressed the mob, and, by his bold front and resolute bearing, not
only prevented them from attacking his house, but persuaded them to
break up and abandon their undertaking.
The Littleport body, swelled by stragglers, and also by men who had
lived in the suburbs of Ely, formed a considerable host, and had they
been under efficient discipline, and had they known exactly what
demands to make, and how to enforce their demands, might have produced
serious results.
As it was, they did a certain amount of mischief, and took a certain
amount of loot, but all in an aimless manner; and in looting or
wrecking forgot the ostensible reasons for their assembly and purpose
of marching upon Ely.
No sooner were they in the town than the mob resolved itself,
without order given, into two detachments, whereof one attacked the
flour-mills, and the other broke into the victuallers' shops to seize
on their stores of ham, bacon, and sausages.
There was a large soak-mill in the lower part of the town, managed by a
man named Rickwood. This was the first assailed.
By this time the magistrates, at the advice and exhortation of their
wives, had plucked up sufficient courage to venture to parley with
the rioters. There were but three or four of these in the place; one
was a retired steward who was almost stone-deaf, the other two were
clergymen. These magistrates inquired of the fen-men what were their
demands, and were answered with confused cries for higher wages,
cheaper bread, and for money to be scattered among them.
Terrified by the shouts and the menacing attitude of the mob, they
entered into negotiations with them, and offered to raise a certain sum
of money from the inhabitants to satisfy their illegal demands. But the
rioters could not agree as to the price at which they would desist from
violence, nor could they wait with patience till the magistrates had
collected the sum offered.
Accordingly, the conference was broken up, and the mob proceeded to
smash Rickwood's windows and to beat open his doors.
The miller was not, as it chanced, at home himself, and his wife
entered into parley with the rabble from a window. They demanded fifty
pounds, and threatened, unless it were paid, to proceed to set fire to
the mill, and the miller's habitation adjoining.
Mrs. Rickwood, in terror, promised the sum, but said that she had not
so much coin in the house. She would send her son for the money to the
bank.
'No! no! Come yourself!' shouted the men, and proceeded to demolish the
windows.
Accordingly, Mrs. Rickwood descended, and in deadly fear issued forth
into the street, after having committed the mill to the care of her son.
The banker was also, as already said, chief constable, and in the
interest of Messrs. Mortlock was remaining at home, and sitting in his
back parlour.
When the mob reached his house, which was one with the bank, loud cries
were raised for him, and Mrs. Rickwood knocked at the front door. After
long waiting, he appeared in the doorway, as white as chalk. Mrs.
Rickwood then entreated him to furnish her with fifty sovereigns in
gold, in order that she might purchase immunity for her mill from the
insurgent peasantry.
'Nothing in the world will induce me to do this!' exclaimed the chief
constable heroically. Whereupon a stone was thrown at him, and struck
his head, so that a little blood flowed.
'That is to say,' said Edwards, 'nothing save compulsion;' and he
hastened within to find the money.
The second body of rioters in the meantime was engaged in sacking the
grocery-shops and provision-stores. One of the magistrates, the Rev.
Mr. Metcalf, endeavoured to calm the mob by an assurance that he would
induce the owners of the shops to purchase their immunity. But he was
successful in two instances only. In some the rabble took the money,
and, notwithstanding, plundered the shops. Then a second mill was
attacked, but, on ten pounds being produced, no further violence was
done to it.
The night was dark. The rioters went round requisitioning faggots and
coals, and soon an immense bonfire was kindled before the cathedral
west front, and a second in face of St. Mary's church. The first
lighted up the splendid pile, bringing out every detail of sculpture,
and twinkling in the glass that filled the Norman windows.
Round this fire the young men and girls danced. Some of the men had
carried provisions to the Galilee, and prepared for a carouse. The
taverns had been attacked very early, and the publicans had been
constrained to allow the rioters free use of their liquor.
As Mark had assured Kerenhappuch, Ephraim Beamish had pushed his way
after the rabble, undeterred by the treatment he had received at its
hands, his enthusiasm unquenched by his plunge in the icy water. As
there was no organisation in the mob, he was suffered to rejoin it with
an occasional protest only, but Chevell, Harley, and Tansley would not
allow him to remount the waggon.
No sooner did Beamish find that a great body of the insurgents were
setting themselves to eat, drink, and revel about the great fire
in front of the cathedral, than he got a chair, and endeavoured to
harangue them, to point out to them that they were throwing away their
occasion, neglecting to enforce their grievances on the employers of
labour, and that they were making enemies among all the well-disposed
by their capricious and lawless proceedings. But directly his face was
discerned by the flicker of the fire, and his voice recognised, beaten
back by the cathedral walls, than shouts were raised of, 'That's the
fellow who stole the Cheap Jack girl's money. We want no preaching
here.'
His chair was tripped up, and he was sent sprawling in the dirt.
He rose angry and disconcerted. The movement of which he was the
instigator, and of which he had been appointed director by vote of the
men, had rejected his direction, and was taking its own suicidal course.
The fens immediately surrounding the isle on which Ely stood were
farmed by men whose homesteads were on the gault excrescence that
formed the isle. According to the preconcerted scheme, the Union of Fen
Labourers was to proceed to these farmsteads one by one, to exact of
the farmers a contribution to the cause, and an oath to raise the wage.
It was true enough that two or three farms had been visited which
lay to right and left of the road from Littleport to Ely, but no
sooner had the men reached the Fen capital, than they forgot their
purpose, directed their attention to the provision-shops, waylaid and
blackmailed passengers, broke into the taverns, and thought only of
eating, drinking, and making money. They entirely neglected the scheme
that had been agreed to. Not a single farm in the isle was molested,
not a single farmer coerced.