Hulme; and so Matthew Cooper went with the Cleggs to church, not as a
gallant bridegroom, but, more suitably, to give away a bride.
And now how shall I describe the scene at the Old Church on Easter
Monday, to convey anything like an idea to modern readers, unacquainted
with the locality, the period, and the habits of the people?
It must be borne in mind that registrars’ offices did not exist;
that there was no marrying at dissenting chapels; that few, if any,
churches were licensed for the solemnisation of matrimony; and that
the collegiate parish church of Manchester was the nucleus towards
which the marriageable inhabitants of all the surrounding townships and
villages turned at the most important epoch of their lives.
The venerable pile (now being doctored by restorers) was set, as it
were, in a ring-fence of old houses, with an inner ring of low wall
encircling the churchyard, which, as grave-stones testified, had once
extended to the very house-steps. As I have elsewhere said, the path
between this wall and the houses was known as Half Street, a portion
of which, containing Mrs. Clowes’s old shop, still remains; and did
I enumerate all the public-houses in this ring-fence which offered
accommodation to wedding and christening parties, only a future
generation of antiquaries would thank me; and even they might doubt the
facts set down in a work of fiction.
Nevertheless on Easter Monday not one of these hostelries had a spare
foot of room. Every window and every door stood wide open. Men and
women, gaily dressed as their own means or friendly wardrobes would
allow, went in and out, filled rooms and passages, leaned from the
windows with ribbons flying loose, or with pipes and ale-pots in their
hands, calling to their friends below, whilst rival fiddlers (almost
every party having its own) scraped away in anything but harmony.
Horses and carts blocked up every avenue, and the churchyard itself was
thronged with an excited crowd.
Only the parties immediately interested were admitted into the sacred
edifice, but to reach the doors they had to force their way, and could
only return in couples through a dense avenue of humanity, amid a
shower of jests, many not the most seemly.
Bess wore only a white cambric gown, and a straw bonnet crossed with
white ribbon, both of which Mrs. Ashton had provided; but somewhere in
Tom’s Peninsular campaigns he had picked up a bright-coloured scarf,
which made her glorious to behold, and the envy of many a country
bride. His old uniform had been kept for the occasion, and they looked
grand together, but the quiet content on Bess’s face was better than
the grandeur.
Nat Bradshaw, the butcher-bridegroom, was of a jovial turn, and nothing
would do but the whole double wedding-party, Jabez included, should
turn into the Ring-o’-Bells to drink health and happiness to the
brides, and give them spirit to go through the ceremony befittingly.
Bess and Martha hung back blushing like peonies; but Nathaniel was not
to be gainsaid, and in they went: and whilst the brides sipped, he
quaffed, and pressed the others to do likewise.
At length Jabez, who had been brought up temperately, cried out
they would be too late—Parson Brookes had been gone into the church
half-an-hour.
There was a general rush from the room, and in the scramble to get
first the party got separated; Matthew pulling his daughter along and
leaving the bridegroom to follow. They elbowed their way into the
church, and reached the choir just as Joshua pronounced the benediction
over some twenty couples closely packed around the altar. Then there
was a jostle and a scramble for “first kisses,” amidst which rose the
rough voice of the chaplain.
“Now clear out, clear out! Do your kissing outside. There are other
folks waiting to be wed. Do you think I want to be kept here all day
tying up fools?”
That instalment of the married having been hustled away to sign
the church books, with their attendant witnesses, Joshua called out
impatiently to the waiting couples, amongst which were Bess and Tom.
“Come, come! How long do you mean to keep me standing here? Do you
intend to be married or not? Oh, it’s thee, is it? [to Bess] Well,
thah’s waited long enough.—See that you make her a good husband [to
Tom]. Kneel down here,” and he placed them, not roughly, almost in the
centre of the altar, pulling others to their knees beside them, with
scant ceremony.
“What do _you_ want here?” in his harshest tones he asked a very
youthful-looking couple.
“To be wed,” was the prompt answer of the young man.
“Ugh!” grunted the Parson, “what’s the world coming to? I used to marry
men and women—now I marry children! Here, you silly babies, take your
places.”
Another file of candidates for matrimony being ranged (after some
pushing and pulling) in pairs around the altar, Joshua took his book
and the service began.
So long as it was general, all went tolerably smoothly—women and men
alike were too bashful and confused to know much what was said, or what
they responded, and certainly they rarely looked in each other’s faces.
At length there was a slight stir and a whispering from the quarter
where Matt Cooper stood beside his daughter.
“Silence there!” roared Joshua, in a voice which set a row of hearts in
a flutter, and there _was_ silence.
But he had come to the troth-plight, and again the same commotion was
apparent as he approached the Coopers.
“What’s wrong here?” he demanded, pausing before Martha, who was all in
a tremble.
“Moi lass is waitin’ fur her mon,” answered Matthew from behind.
“Ugh! I can’t wait for laggards.—Here, you, [addressing Tom Hulme,]
answer for him.—What’s his name?” [to Martha].
“Nathaniel,” she faltered.
“I, Nathaniel, take thee, Martha, to be my——” he went on, insisting on
the response of Tom, who looked aghast at the prospect of marrying the
wrong woman, and being told “to pair as they went out,” as Joshua had
summarily adjusted a like mistake heretofore; or what was worse, of
being saddled with two wives.
On imperturbable Joshua went with the ceremony, bent on a marriage by
proxy. His experience having taught him that women of the working class
as a rule took charge of their wedding-rings, he asked Martha for hers,
which was duly produced, and without further ado he directed Tom Hulme
to place it on Martha’s finger, as he had previously put one on Bess’s,
and with the same formula.
They had got as far as “With this ring I thee wed,” when the missing
bridegroom came in hot haste through the side door into the chancel,
closely followed by Jabez, who had been in quest of him.
He was flushed with ale and excitement, but was clear-headed enough to
perceive what was going forward, and to the chaplain’s chagrin, plucked
the young woman back from the altar and his proxy, and the ring rolled
to the ground.
Then ensued an altercation between the butcher and Joshua Brookes,
the latter insisting that what was good enough for princes might be
good enough for him, and refusing to go over the ceremony again. But
an apparitor drew the tardy bridegroom aside, and whispered to him a
few mollifying words, whilst Joshua concluded the ceremonial, and then
hurried from the altar with hardly a look at either Jabez or Simon as
he passed out of the chancel, chafed and angry. Another clergyman took
his place, and in the next group Nat Bradshaw and the half-married
Martha took theirs. The lost ring had a substitute provided by the
clerk for such emergencies; and this time they were as surely married
as Bess and Tom had been.
Jabez had found the truant bridegroom at the “Ring-o’-Bells,” oblivious
of the flight of time, or of his party. The story having got wind,
there was a general rush in their direction.
“Here’s th’ mon wur too late to be wed!”—“Tak’ care thi woife hasna two
husbants!”—“Hoo’s getten two husbants o’ready!”—“See thah’s tied oop
gradely, lass!”—“Thah’rt a pratty fellow!” and much more which might
have provoked a man less good-humoured in his cups.
As it was the new brides clung to their husbands, half afraid of those
noisy demonstrations, and were not sorry to get clear of the crowd, and
thread their way to Ancoats Lane, where the thriving butcher, assisted
by Mrs. Ashton, Mrs. Clowes, and Mrs. Clough, had prepared a dinner
which bore no proportion to the “short commons” of every-day fare.
CHAPTER THE NINETEENTH.
PETERLOO.
People had been naturally sanguine that the conclusion of peace would
inaugurate prosperity, that commerce would flourish with the flourish
of pens on the parchments of a treaty. But the war had been of too long
continuance, too universal, too destructive of life and property and
crops. When grounds lie untilled for years: when swords reap harvests
that should have been left for the sickle; when cattle are slaughtered
wholesale for unproductive soldiery, or for lack of provender; when
orchards and vineyards which have taken years to mature are given to
the flames, there can be no sudden re-adjustment of commercial matters.
Food products are the staple of trade, which is only a system of
exchange facilitated by coin and paper.
What could a food-producing continent, down-trod by the iron hoof of
war, have to offer in exchange for our textile fabrics and hardware?
Trade could not revive, until there was food to sustain it. Yet the
mass of the people in 1816, still further impoverished by a deficient
home harvest, imputed the evil to defective legislation, and the
exclusion of foreign corn save at famine prices; and discontent became
universal.
Strangely enough, the agricultural districts which the Corn Laws were
supposed to protect, were the first to cry out against them, and
to break out into riot—not Manchester, Oldham, Nottingham, and the
manufacturing centres.
This year closed on a popular demand for Parliamentary reform, but not
a riotous one. Sunday schools had created readers on humble hearths,
and William Cobbett supplied them with books and pamphlets bearing on
their own rights and wrongs. They were read with avidity, and he became
a power. He counselled peaceful persistence, not armed resistance.
Hampden Clubs were formed all over the country, in which the political
questions of the day were discussed with as much freedom as stringent
law permitted. Public speakers and poets, of whom Samuel Bamford was
one, arose from the ranks of the working classes; and the men banded
together under such leadership called themselves Radical Reformers, a
title which soon degenerated into Radicals.
The members of these rapidly-spreading clubs subscribed a penny a week
each. Delegates were sent to meet and debate together; and on the
4th November, 1816, a large meeting was held in St. Peter’s Field,
Manchester (strangely enough, the site of the present Free Trade Hall),
“to take into consideration the distressed state of the country.”
Other meetings were held by the Reformers and their delegates;
and on the 13th January, 1817, their political opponents held a
counter-meeting, to consider the “necessity of adopting measures for
the maintenance of the public peace;” for certainly the meeting of
large masses of disaffected people, however peacefully disposed in the
outset, and individually, becomes threatening in the aggregate. No one
cares much for a grain of gunpowder; but mass the grains into pounds,
and the pounds into tons, and there is certainly need of precaution in
dealing with it.
Amongst the precautionary measures deemed necessary for the protection
of the peace, and the suppression of seditious meetings, were the
suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, and the enrolment of the
Manchester and Cheshire Yeomanry Cavalry, under the command of Sir T.
J. Trafford; Laurence Aspinal, Ben Travis, and John Walmsley joining
the corps.
On the 24th of March—since known as Blanket Monday—a large number of
men assembled in St. Peter’s Field, with blankets upon their shoulders,
with the openly-expressed design of walking to London, to lay their
grievances before George, the Prince Regent, in person. The blankets
were intended for coverlets on the wayside beds Mother Earth alone
would spread for them. The meeting was dispersed by military, the
newly-formed Yeomanry distinguishing themselves by trapping a number
of the Blanketeers who had prematurely set out, and who had not got
farther than Stockport.
This was the signal for widespread alarm, and for Joseph Nadin to prove
his discrimination and vigilance by scenting out imaginary plots,
and arresting suspected plotters, whom he tied together, handcuffed,
ill-used, and hauled to prison, or before magistrates (whether for
acquital or conviction), for little other reason than the dangerous
power given by the suspension of the Habeas Corpus. He was a big,
blustering, overbearing fellow, with a large grizzled head, closely set
on strong broad shoulders, with overhanging brows drawn close, and a
sallow skin; and his officious zeal in arresting such persons as Samuel
Bamford the weaver-poet, Thomas Walker, and the amateur actors he laid
hands on at a public house in Ancoats-lane, laying to their charge
plots which had their origin in his own brain, did more to embitter the
people against their rulers than those dust-blinded rulers suspected.
The Radical agitation reached its climax in 1819, when our friend Jabez
was a well-formed, well-favoured young man of twenty, high in the
estimation of his master and mistress. Popular rights had found a fresh
champion in Henry Hunt, the son of a well-descended Wiltshire yeoman, a
man of gentlemanlike bearing and attire, agreeable features mobile in
expression, and dull grey eyes which lit like fiery stars when in the
fervour of his speech his soul shone out of them.
“Orator Hunt,” as he was ironically dubbed by those who loved him not,
was the very man to move the people as he himself was moved; his energy
and fervid eloquence carried his hearers with him, and as he was wont
to lash himself to a fury which streaked his pale eyes with blood,
and forced them forward in their sockets, no wonder the Manchester
magnates were afraid of his influence on the multitude, or that the
Prince Regent should issue a proclamation against seditious meetings
and writings, or the military drilling of the populace, then carried on
with so fervid an orator to inflame them.
When Henry Hunt made a public entry into Manchester, and attended the
theatre the same evening, a disturbance ensued, and he was expelled,
and the next evening the theatre was closed, to preserve peace. Then a
Watch-and-Ward, composed of the chief inhabitants, was established; a
meeting called by the Radicals was prohibited; but that did not deter
the calling of another on St. Peter’s Field, on the 16th of August,
when a couple of large wagons were boarded over to serve as temporary
hustings, whence Orator Hunt from the midst of his friends might
address the assembled multitude.
Augusta Ashton had just passed her fifteenth birthday. She was slim,
graceful, and tall beyond her age, and was surpassing lovely. She was
still under Mrs. Broadbent’s care, and went to school that morning as
usual, other meetings having passed off quietly, and no apprehension
of disorder being entertained until long after nine o’clock.
About that hour the people began to assemble from all quarters on the
open ground near St. Peter’s Church—not bloodthirsty roughs, but men,
women, and children, drawn thither for a sight of a holiday spectacle.
True, of the collective eighty thousand, though there were many
thousands of earnest, thinking men who went to grapple with important
questions, yet no such mighty gathering could be without its leaven of
savagery and mischief.
But those who went from the mills and the workshops, the hills and the
valleys around Manchester, walking in procession, with bugles playing
and gay banners flying, though they might look haggard, pinched and
careworn, made no attempt to look deplorable, or excite compassion.
They wore their Sunday suits and clean neckties; and by the side of
fustian and corduroy walked the coloured prints and stuffs of wives and
sweethearts, who went as for a gala-day, to break the dull monotony of
their lives, and to serve as a guarantee of peaceable intention.
Such at least was the main body, marshalled in Middleton by stalwart,
stout hearted Samuel Bamford, which passed in marching order, five
abreast, down Newton Lane, through Oldham Street, skirted the Infirmary
Gardens, and along Mosley Street, each leader with a sprig of peaceful
laurel in his hat. Women and little ones preceded them, or ran on the
footway, singing, dancing, shouting gleefully in the bright sunshine,
as at any other pageant to which the music of the bugle gave life and
spirit, and waving flags gave colour.
Such too were the bands which, with banners and music, fell in with
them on their route, and together parted the dense multitude as a
wedge, on their way to the decorated platform. Thence Samuel Bamford
observed that other leaders had been less temperate. There were to
be seen black banners and placards inscribed with seditious mottoes
and emblems: caps of liberty, skull and crossbones, “Bread or Blood,”
“Liberty or Death,” “Equal Representation or Death;” this last with an
obverse of clasped hands and heart, and the one word “Love,” but all of
the same funereal black and white.
But ere he could well note or deplore this, the scattered bands struck
up “God save the King,” and “Rule, Britannia,” deafening shouts rent
the air, and Henry Hunt, drawn in an open barouche by white horses,
made his way slowly to the hustings amidst the enthusiastic cheering
of the multitude. A Mrs. Fildes, arrayed in white, with a cap of
liberty on her head, and a red cap borne on a pole before her, sat on
the box-seat. It is said she had been hoisted there from the crowd. Be
this as it may, she paid dearly for her temerity before the day was out.
Barely had Henry Hunt ascended the platform, taken off his white hat,
and begun to address his attentive auditory, when there was a startling
cry, “The soldiers are upon us!” and the 15th Hussars, galloping round
a corner, came with their spare jackets flying loose, their sabres
drawn, and threw themselves men and horse, upon the closely-packed
mass, without a note of warning. All had been preconcerted,
pre-arranged.
From the early morning, magistrates had been sitting in conclave at the
“Star Inn,” and there Hugh Birley, a cotton-spinner, was said to have
regaled too freely the officers and men of his yeomanry corps, so soon
to be let loose on the “swinish multitude,” as they called them.
A cordon of military and yeomanry had been drawn round St. Peter’s
Field, like a horde of wolves round a flock of sheep. The boroughreeve
and other magistrates issued their orders from a house at the corner
of Mount Street, which overlooked the scene; and thence (not from a
central position, where he could be properly seen and heard) a clerical
magistrate read the Riot Act from a window in an inaudible voice.
Then Nadin, the cowardly bully, having a warrant to apprehend the
ringleaders—although he had a line of constables thence to the
hustings,—declared he _dared_ not serve it without the support of the
military.
His plea was heard; and thus through the blindness, the incapacity, the
cowardice, or the self-importance of this one man, soldiery hardened
in the battle-field, yeomanry fired with drink, were let loose like
barbarians on a closely-wedged mass of unarmed people, and one of the
most atrocious massacres in history was the result.
Amid the shouts and shrieks of men and women, cries of “Shame! shame!”
“Break! break!” “They are killing them in front!” “Break! break!”
hussars, infantry, yeomanry rushed on the defenceless people. They
were sabred, stabbed, shot, pressed down, trampled down by horse and
infantry; and in less than ten minutes, the actual field was cleared
of all but mounds of dead and dying, severed limbs, torn garments,
pools of blood, pawing steeds and panting heroes(?). Men and maidens,
mothers and babes, had been butchered by their own countrymen for no
crime.
Hunt had been taken, Bamford had escaped—to be arrested afterwards—and
Mrs. Fildes, hanging suspended by a nail in the platform which had
caught her white dress, was slashed across her exposed body by one of
the brave cavalry.
But the butchery and the panic had spread from the deserted Aceldama
over the whole town; and the roar of cannon began to add its thunder
to the terrors of the day. As the first shrieking fugitives rushed
for their lives down Mosley Street, with the Manchester and Cheshire
Yeomanry in swift pursuit, Mrs. Ashton, for the first time alarmed for
the safety of Augusta, hurried through the warehouse in search of Mr.
Ashton, who was nowhere to be found. On the stairs she met Jabez in a
state of equal excitement.
“Miss Augusta! Is she at school? Had I not better——”
“Oh, yes! Run! run!” cried the mother, anticipating him. “Go through
the back streets, and take her to her aunt’s. It is not safe to bring
her home.”
He was gone before she concluded. (His master’s daughter was the
very light of his young eyes). From Back Mosley Street he tore down
Rook Street and Meal Street, into Fountain Street, across Market
Street—already in a ferment—and onward down High Street without a pause.
By good fortune he met the young girl and a school-fellow, on their
usual homeward route, at the corner of Church Street, almost afraid to
proceed, the distant firing had so scared them.
“This way, this way, Miss Ashton!” was his impetuous cry, as he hurried
them from the main thoroughfare (into which a stream of terror-stricken
people was flowing), through by-streets, and a long entry to the back
door of Mr. Chadwick’s house, which they found unfastened; and then he
thanked God in his heart of hearts that she at least was safe.
Upstairs rushed Augusta, followed by her friend, in search of her
aunt and cousin, whom she found in the drawing-room in a state of the
greatest trepidation and alarm.
Dolly, a stout woman-servant, had gone to Fountain Street, as was
her custom, to assist her paralysed master home to dinner. From the
windows they had seen men, women, and children flying along, hatless,
bonnetless, shoeless, their clothes rent, their faces livid and
ghastly, cut and bleeding, shrieking in pain and terror as they ran
or dropped in the path of pursuing troopers; and their hearts throbbed
wildly with affright as they pictured that helpless old man caught in
that whirlpool of horror and destruction with only a woman’s arm to
protect him.
“Jabez will go and meet them,” cried Augusta; “he is below!”
“Jabez!” exclaimed Ellen, starting to her feet, her white face flushed
for a brief moment. “Oh, no!”
But without waiting to hear her cousin’s exclamation, or to note her
change of colour, Augusta had run downstairs to Jabez, waiting in the
long kitchen, and communicated her aunt’s fears to him.
Personal danger was unthought of when Augusta Ashton pointed to
needful service. The lobby door closed after him with a bang before
she had well explained her wishes; and when Augusta re-appeared in the
drawing-room, Ellen Chadwick’s head was stretched from the window,
watching the sturdy young man stem the on-rushing tide of humanity—the
only one in all that crowd with his face turned towards the danger from
which the rest fled in desperation.
The sights and sounds that met her eyes and ears were terrible: gashed
faces and maimed limbs; appeals and imprecations mingled with the roar
of a surging crowd; the dropping fire of musketry; the coarse shouts of
the yeomanry, drunk with wine and blood!
As her fearful eyes followed Jabez, a man rushed past whose hand had
been chopped off at the wrist. With the remaining hand he held his hat
to catch the vital stream which gushed from the bleeding stump; and as
he ran, he cried, “Blood for blood! blood for blood!” in a tone which
made her shudder.