THE LAST LABOURERS’ REVOLT
II
The bands of men and boys who had given their rulers one moment of
excitement and lively interest in the condition of the poor had made
themselves liable to ferocious penalties. For the privileged classes
had set up a code under which no labourer could take a single step for
the improvement of the lot of his class without putting his life and
liberties in a noose. It is true that the savage laws which had been
passed against combination in 1799 and 1800 had been repealed in 1824,
and that even under the less liberal Act of the following year, which
rescinded the Act of 1824, it was no longer a penal offence to form a
Trades Union. But it is easy to see that the labourers who tried to
raise their wages were in fact on a shelving and most perilous slope.
If they used threats or intimidation or molested or obstructed, either
to get a labourer to join with them or to get an employer to make
concessions, they were guilty of a misdemeanour punishable with three
months’ imprisonment. They were lucky if they ran no graver risk than
this. Few of the prosecutions at the Special Commissions were under the
Act of 1825. A body of men holding a meeting in a village where famine
and unemployment were chronic, and where hardly any one had been taught
to read or write, might very soon find themselves becoming what the Act
of 1714 called a riotous assembly, and if a magistrate took alarm and
read the Riot Act, and they did not disperse within one hour, every
one of them might be punished as a felon. The hour’s interval did not
mean an hour’s grace, for, as Mr. Justice Alderson told the court at
Dorchester, within that hour ‘all persons, even private individuals,
may do anything, using force even to the last extremity to prevent the
commission of a felony.’
There were at least three ways in which labourers meeting together
to demonstrate for higher wages ran a risk of losing their lives, if
any of their fellows got out of hand from temper, or from drink, or
from hunger and despair. Most of the prosecutions before the Special
Commissions were prosecutions under three Acts of 1827 and 1828,
consolidating the law on the subject of offences against property and
offences against the person. Under the eighth section of one Act (7 and
8 George IV. c. 30), any persons riotously or tumultuously assembled
together who destroyed any house, stable, coach-house, outhouse, barn,
granary, or any building or erection or machinery used in carrying
on any trade or manufacture were to suffer death as felons. In this
Act there is no definition of riot, and therefore ‘the common law
definition of a riot is resorted to, and in such a case if any one of
His Majesty’s subjects was terrified there was a sufficient terror and
alarm to substantiate that part of the charge.’[449] Under the sixth
section of another Act, any person who robbed any other person of any
chattel, money, or valuable security was to suffer death as a felon.
Now if a mob presented itself before a householder with a demand for
money, and the householder in fear gave even a few coppers, any person
who was in that mob, whether he had anything to do with this particular
transaction or not, whether he was aware or ignorant of it, was guilty
of robbery, and liable to the capital penalty. Under section 12 of the
Act of the following year, generally known as Lansdowne’s Act, which
amended Ellenborough’s Act of 1803, it was a capital offence to attempt
to shoot at a person, or to stab, cut, or wound him, with intent to
murder, rob, or maim. Under this Act, as it was interpreted, if an
altercation arose and any violence was offered by a single individual
in the mob, the lives of the whole band were forfeit. This was put
very clearly by Baron Vaughan: ‘There seems to be some impression that
unless the attack on an individual is made with some deadly weapons,
those concerned are not liable to capital punishment; but it should
be made known to all persons that if the same injury were inflicted
by a blow of a stone, all and every person forming part of a riotous
assembly is equally guilty as he whose hand may have thrown it, and
all alike are liable to death.’ Under section 4 of one Act of 1827 the
penalty for destroying a threshing machine was transportation for seven
years, and under section 17 the penalty for firing a rick was death.
These were the terrors hanging over the village labourers of whom
several hundreds were now awaiting their trial.
The temper of the judges was revealed in their charges to the Grand
Juries. In opening the Maidstone Assizes on 14th December, Mr. Justice
Bosanquet[450] declared that though there might be some distress it
was much exaggerated, and that he was sure that those whom he had
the honour to address would find it not only their duty but their
pleasure to lend an ear to the wants of the poor.[451] Mr. Justice
Taunton[452] was even more reassuring on this subject at the Lewes
Assizes: the distress was less than it had been twelve months before.
‘I regret to say,’ he went on, ‘there are persons who exaggerate the
distress and raise up barriers between different classes--who use the
most inflammatory language--who represent the rich as oppressors of
the poor. It would be impertinent in me to say anything to you as to
your treatment of labourers or servants. That man must know little of
the gentry of England, whether connected with the town or country,
who represents them as tyrants to the poor, as not sympathising in
their distress, and as not anxious to relieve their burdens and to
promote their welfare and happiness.’[453] In opening the Special
Commission at Winchester Baron Vaughan[454] alluded to the theory that
the tumults had arisen from distress and admitted that it might be
partly true, but, he continued, ‘every man possessed of the feelings
common to our nature must deeply lament it, and endeavour to alleviate
it (as you gentlemen no doubt have done and will continue to do), by
every means which Providence has put within his power.’ If individuals
were aggrieved by privations and injuries, they must apply to the
Legislature, which alone could afford them relief, ‘but it can never be
tolerated in any country which professes to acknowledge the obligations
of municipal law, that any man or body of men should be permitted to
sit in judgment upon their own wrongs, or to arrogate to themselves
the power of redressing them. To suffer it would be to relapse into
the barbarism of savage life and to dissolve the very elements by
which society is held together.’[455] The opinions of the Bench on the
sections of the Act (7 and 8 George IV. c. 30) under which men could
be hung for assembling riotously and breaking machinery were clearly
expressed by Mr. Justice Parke[456] (afterwards Lord Wensleydale) at
Salisbury: ‘If that law ceases to be administered with due firmness,
and men look to it in vain for the security of their rights, our wealth
and power will soon be at an end, and our capital and industry would
be transferred to some more peaceful country, whose laws are more
respected or better enforced.’[457] By another section of that Act
seven years was fixed as the maximum penalty for breaking a threshing
machine. Mr. Justice Alderson[458] chafed under this restriction,
and he told two men, Case and Morgan, who were found guilty at the
Salisbury Special Commission of going into a neighbouring parish and
breaking a threshing machine, that had the Legislature foreseen such
crimes as theirs, it would have enabled the court to give them a
severer sentence.[459]
Mr. Justice Park[460] was equally stern and uncompromising in defending
the property of the followers of the carpenter of Nazareth against the
unreasoning misery of the hour. Summing up in a case at Aylesbury, in
which one of the charges was that of attempting to procure a reduction
of tithes, he remarked with warmth: ‘It was highly insolent in such men
to require of gentlemen, who had by an expensive education qualified
themselves to discharge the sacred duties of a Minister of the Gospel,
to descend from that station and reduce themselves to the situation of
common labourers.’[461]
Few judges could resist the temptation to introduce into their charges
a homily on the economic benefits of machinery. Mr. Justice Park was
an exception, for he observed at Aylesbury that the question of the
advantages of machinery was outside the province of the judges, ‘and
much mischief often resulted from persons stepping out of their line
of duty.’[462] Mr. Justice Alderson took a different view, and the
very next day he was expounding the truths of political economy at
Dorchester, starting with what he termed the ‘beautiful and simple
illustration’ of the printing press.[463] The illustration must have
seemed singularly intimate and convincing to the labourers in the dock
who had never been taught their letters.
Such was the temper of the judges. Who and what were the prisoners
before them? After the suppression of the riots, the magistrates could
pick out culprits at their leisure, and when a riot had involved the
whole of the village the temptation to get rid by this method of
persons who for one reason or another were obnoxious to the authorities
was irresistible. Hunt, speaking in the House of Commons,[464] quoted
the case of Hindon; seven men had been apprehended for rioting and they
were all poachers. Many of the prisoners had already spent a month in
an overcrowded prison; almost all of them were poor men; the majority
could not read or write.[465] Few could afford counsel, and it must
be remembered that counsel could not address the court on behalf of
prisoners who were being tried for breaking machines, or for belonging
to a mob that asked for money or destroyed property. By the rules of
the gaol, the prisoners at Salisbury were not allowed to see their
attorney except in the presence of the gaoler or his servant. The
labourers’ ignorance of the law was complete and inevitable. Many of
them thought that the King or the Government or the magistrates had
given orders that machines were to be broken. Most of them supposed
that if a person from whom they demanded money threw it down or gave
it without the application of physical force, there was no question
of robbery. We have an illustration of this illusion in a trial at
Winchester when Isaac Hill, junior, who was charged with breaking a
threshing machine near Micheldever, for which the maximum penalty was
seven years, pleaded in his defence that he had not broken the machine
and that all that he did ‘was to ask the prosecutor civilly for the
money, which the mob took from him, and the prosecutor gave it to him,
and that he thanked him very kindly for it,’[466] an admission which
made him liable to a death penalty. A prisoner at Salisbury, when he
was asked what he had to say in his defence to the jury, replied:
‘Now, my Lord, I ‘se got nothing to say to ’em, I doant knaow any on
’em.’[467] The prisoners were at this further disadvantage that all
the witnesses whom they could call as to their share in the conduct
of a mob had themselves been in the mob, and were thus liable to
prosecution. Thus when James Lush (who was afterwards selected for
execution) and James Toomer appealed to a man named Lane, who had just
been acquitted on a previous charge, to give evidence that they had
not struck Mr. Pinniger in a scuffle, Mr. Justice Alderson cautioned
Lane that if he acknowledged that he had been in the mob he would be
committed. Lane chose the safer part of silence.[468] In another case a
witness had the courage to incriminate himself. When the brothers Simms
were being tried for extorting money from Parson Easton’s wife, a case
which we have already described, Henry Bunce, called as a witness for
the defence, voluntarily declared, in spite of a caution from the judge
(Alderson), that he had been present himself and that William Simms did
not use the expression ‘blood or money.’ He was at once ordered into
custody. ‘The prisoner immediately sprung over the bar into the dock
with his former comrades, seemingly unaffected by the decision of the
learned judge.’[469]
Perhaps the darkest side of the business was the temptation held
out to prisoners awaiting trial to betray their comrades. Immunity
or a lighter sentence was freely offered to those who would give
evidence. Stokes, who was found guilty at Dorchester of breaking a
threshing machine, was sentenced by Mr. Justice Alderson to a year’s
imprisonment, with the explanation that he was not transported
because ‘after you were taken into custody, you gave very valuable
information which tended greatly to further the ends of justice.’[470]
These transactions were not often dragged into the daylight, but
some negotiations of this character were made public in the trial of
Mr. Deacle next year. Mr. Deacle, a well-to-do gentleman farmer, was
tried at the Lent Assizes at Winchester for being concerned in the
riots. One of the witnesses against him, named Collins, admitted in
cross-examination that he believed he should have been prosecuted
himself, if he had not promised to give evidence against Mr. Deacle;
another witness, named Barnes, a carpenter, stated in cross-examination
that during the trials at the Special Commission, ‘he being in the
dock, and about to be put on his trial, the gaoler Beckett called
him out, and took him into a room where there were Walter Long, a
magistrate, and another person, whom he believed to be Bingham Baring,
who told him that he should not be put upon his trial if he would
come and swear against Deacle.’ When the next witness was about to be
cross-examined, the counsel for the prosecution abruptly abandoned the
case.[471]
* * * * *
The first Special Commission was opened at Winchester with suitable
pomp on 18th December. Not only the prison but the whole town was
crowded, and the inhabitants of Winchester determined to make the best
of the windfall. The jurymen and the _Times_ special correspondent
complained bitterly of the abnormal cost of living, the latter
mentioning that in addition to extraordinary charges for beds, 5s.
a day was exacted for firing and tallow candles, bedroom fire not
included. The three judges sent down as commissioners were Baron
Vaughan, Mr. Justice Parke, and Mr. Justice Alderson. With them were
associated two other commissioners, Mr. Sturges Bourne, of assistant
overseer fame, and Mr. Richard Pollen. The Duke of Wellington, as
Lord-Lieutenant, sat on the Bench. The Attorney-General, Mr. Sergeant
Wilde, and others appeared to prosecute for the Crown. The County took
up every charge, the Government only the more serious ones.
There were three hundred prisoners, most of them charged with extorting
money by threats or with breaking machinery. What chance had they of a
fair trial? They started with the disabilities already described. They
were thrown by batches into the dock; the pitiless law was explained
to the jury; extenuating circumstances were ruled out as irrelevant.
‘We do not come here,’ said Mr. Justice Alderson, ‘to inquire into
grievances. We come here to decide law.’ But though evidence about
wages or distress was not admitted, the judges did not scruple to give
their own views of the social conditions which had produced these
disturbances. Perhaps the most flagrant example was provided by a trial
which happily was for a misdemeanour only. Seven men were indicted
for conspiring together and riotously assembling for the purpose of
raising wages and for compelling others to join them. The labourers of
the parish of Fawley had combined together for two objects, the first
to raise their wages, which stood at 9s. a week, the second to get rid
of the assistant overseer, who had introduced a parish cart, to which
he had harnessed women and boys, amongst others an idiot woman, named
Jane Stevens. The labourers determined to break up the cart, but they
desisted on the promise of a farmer that a horse should be bought for
it. Lord Cavan was the large landowner of the parish. He paid his men
as a rule 9s. a week, but two of them received 10s. The mob came up to
his house to demand an increase of wages: Lord Cavan was out, quelling
rioters elsewhere. Lady Cavan came down to see them. ‘Seeing you are my
neighbours and armed,’ said she, ‘yet, as I am an unprotected woman,
I am sure you will do no harm.’ The labourers protested that they
meant no harm, and they did no harm. ‘I asked them,’ said Lady Cavan
afterwards, in evidence, ‘why they rose then, there was no apparent
distress round Eaglehurst, and the wages were the same as they had been
for several years. I have been in several of their cottages and never
saw any appearance of distress. They said they had been oppressed long
and would bear it no longer.’ One man told her that he had 9s. a week
wages and 3s. from the parish, he had heard that the 3s. was to be
discontinued. With the common-sense characteristic of her class Lady
Cavan assured him that he was not improving his position by idling.
The labourers impressed the Cavan men, and went on their peaceful way
round the parish. The farmers who gave evidence for the prosecution
were allowed to assert that there was no distress, but when it came to
evidence for the defence a stricter standard of relevancy was exacted.
One witness for the prisoners said of the labourers: ‘The men were in
very great distress; many of the men had only a few potatoes in their
bag when they came to work.’ ‘The learned judges objected to this
course of examination being continued: it might happen that through
drinking a man might suffer distress.’ The Attorney-General, in his
closing speech, asserted again that the prisoners did not seem to have
been in distress. Baron Vaughan, in summing up, said that men were not
to assemble and conspire together for the purpose of determining what
their wages should be. ‘That which at first might be in itself a lawful
act, might in the event become illegal.... A respectful statement or
representation of their grievances was legal, and to which no one would
object, but the evidence, if they believed it, showed that the conduct
of this assembly was far from being respectful. No one could feel more
for the distresses of the people than he did, but he would never endure
that persons should by physical strength compel wages to be raised.
There was no country where charity fell in a purer stream than in
this. Let the man make his appeal in a proper and respectful manner,
and he might be assured that appeal would never be heard in vain....
His Lordship spoke very highly of the conduct of Lady Cavan. She had
visited the cottages of all those who lived in the neighbourhood, she
knew they were not distressed, and she also felt confident from her
kindness to them that they would not offer her any violence.’ All seven
were found guilty; four were sentenced to six months hard labour, and
three to three months.
Very few, however, of the cases at Winchester were simple
misdemeanours, for in most instances, in addition to asking for higher
wages, the labourers had made themselves liable to a prosecution for
felony, either by breaking a threshing machine or by asking for money.
Those prisoners who had taken part in the Fordingbridge riots, or in
the destruction of machinery near Andover, or in the demolition of
the Headley Workhouse, were sentenced to death or to transportation
for life. Case after case was tried in which prisoners from different
villages were indicted for assault and robbery. The features varied
little, and the spectators began to find the proceedings monotonous.
Most of the agricultural population of Hampshire had made itself liable
to the death penalty, if the authorities cared to draw the noose. The
three hundred who actually appeared in Court were like the men on whom
the tower of Siloam fell.
A case to which the prosecution attached special importance arose out
of an affair at the house of Mr. Eyre Coote. A mob of forty persons,
some of whom had iron bars, presented themselves before Mr. Coote’s
door at two o’clock in the morning. Two bands of men had already
visited Mr. Coote that evening, and he had given them beer: this third
band was a party of stragglers. Mr. Coote stationed his ten servants
in the portico, and when the mob arrived he asked them, ‘What do you
want, my lads?’ ‘Money,’ was the answer. ‘Money,’ said Mr. Coote, ‘you
shan’t have.’ One of the band seemed to Mr. Coote about to strike him.
Mr. Coote seized him, nine of the mob were knocked down and taken, and
the rest fled. Six of the men were prosecuted for feloniously demanding
money. Baron Vaughan remarked that outrages like this made one wonder
whether one was in a civilised country, and he proceeded to raise its
moral tone by sentencing all the prisoners to transportation for life,
except one, Henry Eldridge, who was reserved for execution. He had
been already capitally convicted of complicity in the Fordingbridge
riots, and this attempt to ‘enter the sanctuary of Mr. Eyre Coote’s
home’ following upon that crime, rendered him a suitable ‘sacrifice to
be made on the altar of the offended justice’ of his country.
In many of the so-called robberies punished by the Special Commissions
the sums taken were trifling. George Steel, aged eighteen, was
sentenced to transportation for life for obtaining a shilling, when
he was in liquor, from Jane Neale: William Sutton, another boy of
eighteen, was found guilty of taking 4d. in a drunken frolic: Sutton,
who was a carter boy receiving 1s. 6d. a week and his food, was given
an excellent character by his master, who declared that he had never
had a better servant. The jury recommended him to mercy, and the judges
responded by sentencing him to death and banishing him for life. George
Clerk, aged twenty, and E. C. Nutbean, aged eighteen, paid the same
price for 3d. down and the promise of beer at the Greyhound. Such cases
were not exceptional, as any one who turns to the reports of the trials
will see.
The evidence on which prisoners were convicted was often of the most
shadowy kind. Eight young agricultural labourers, of ages varying from
eighteen to twenty-five, were found guilty of riotously assembling
in the parish of St. Lawrence Wootten and feloniously stealing £2
from William Lutely Sclater of Tangier Park. ‘We want to get a little
satisfaction from you’ was the phrase they used. Two days later another
man, named William Farmer, was charged with the same offence. Mr.
Sclater thought that Farmer was like the man in the mob who blew a
trumpet or horn, but could not swear to his identity. Other witnesses
swore that he was with the mob elsewhere, and said, ‘Money wa want and
money wa will hae.’ On this evidence he was found guilty, and though
Mr. Justice Alderson announced that he felt warranted in recommending
that he should not lose his life, ‘yet, it was his duty,’ he continued,
‘to state that he should for this violent and disgraceful outrage be
sent out of the country, and separated for life from those friends and
connections which were dear to him here: that he should have to employ
the rest of his days in labour, at the will and for the profit of
another, to show the people of the class to which the prisoner belonged
that they cannot with impunity lend their aid to such outrages against
the peace and security of person and property.’
We have seen that at the time of the riots it was freely stated
that the farmers incited the labourers to make disturbances. Hunt
went so far as to say in the House of Commons that in nineteen
cases out of twenty the farmers encouraged the labourers to break
the threshing machines. The county authorities evidently thought it
unwise to prosecute the farmers, although it was proved in evidence
that there were several farmers present at the destruction of the
Headley Workhouse, and at the demonstration at Mr. Cobbold’s house.
Occasionally a farmer, in testifying to a prisoner’s character, would
admit that he had been in a mob himself. In such cases the judge
administered rebukes, but the prosecution took no action. There was,
however, one exception. A small farmer, John Boys, of the parish of
Owslebury, had thrown himself heartily into the labourers’ cause. A
number of small farmers met and decided that the labourers’ wages
ought to be raised. Boys agreed to take a paper round for signature.
The paper ran as follows: ‘We the undersigned are willing to give 2s.
per day for able-bodied married men, and 9s. per week for single men,
on consideration of our rents and tithes being abated in proportion.’
In similar cases, as a rule, the farmers left it to the labourers to
collect signatures, and Boys, by undertaking the work himself, made
himself a marked man. He had been in a mob which extorted money from
Lord Northesk’s steward at Owslebury, and for this he was indicted for
felony. But the jury, to the chagrin of the prosecution, acquitted
him. What followed is best described in the report of Sergeant Wilde’s
speech in the House of Commons (21st July 1831). ‘Boyce was tried
and acquitted: but he (Mr. Wilde) being unable to account for the
acquittal, considering the evidence to have been clear against him,
and feeling that although the jury were most respectable men, they
might possibly entertain some sympathy for him in consequence of his
situation in life, thought it his duty to send a communication to the
Attorney-General, stating that Boyce was deeply responsible for the
acts which had taken place: that he thought he should not be allowed to
escape, and recommending that he be tried before a different jury in
the other Court. The Attorney-General sent to him (Mr. Wilde) to come
into the other Court, and the result was that Boyce was then tried and
convicted.’ In the other more complaisant Court, Farmer Boys and James
Fussell, described as a genteel young man of about twenty, living with
his mother, were found guilty of heading a riotous mob for reducing
rents and tithes and sentenced to seven years’ transportation.[472]
This was not the only case in which the sympathies of the jury created
a difficulty. The Home Office Papers contain a letter from Dr.
Quarrier, a Hampshire magistrate, who had been particularly vigorous in
suppressing riots, stating that Sir James Parke discharged a jury at
the Special Commission ‘under the impression that they were reluctant
to convict the Prisoners which was more strongly impressed upon the
mind of the Judge, by its being reported to his Lordship that “some of
the Gosport Jurors had said, while travelling in the stage coach to
Winchester, that they would not convict in cases where the Labourers
had been driven to excess by Poverty and low Wages!” It was ascertained
that some of those empannelled upon the acquitting Jury were from
Gosport, which confirmed the learned Judge in the determination to
discharge them.’[473]
An interesting feature of the trials at Winchester was the number of
men just above the condition of agricultural labourers who threw in
their lot with the poor: the village mechanics, the wheelwrights,
carpenters, joiners, smiths, and the bricklayers, shoemakers, shepherds
and small holders were often prominent in the disturbances. To the
judges this fact was a riddle. The threshing machines had done these
men no injury; they had not known the sting of hunger; till the time
of the riots their characters had been as a rule irreproachable.
_Nemo repente turpissimus fuit_, and yet apparently these persons had
suddenly, without warning, turned into the ‘wicked and turbulent men’
of the archbishop’s prayer. Such culprits deserved, in the opinions
of the bench, severer punishment than the labourers, whom their
example should have kept in the paths of obedience and peace.[474]
Where the law permitted, they were sentenced to transportation for
life. One heinous offender of this type, Gregory, a carpenter, was
actually earning 18s. a week in the service of Lord Winchester. But
the most interesting instances were two brothers, Joseph and Robert
Mason, who lived at Bullington. They rented three or four acres, kept
a cow, and worked for the neighbouring farmers as well. Joseph, who
was thirty-two, had a wife and one child; Robert, who was twenty-four,
was unmarried. Between them they supported a widowed mother. Their
characters were exemplary, and the most eager malice could detect no
blot upon their past. But their opinions were dangerous: they regularly
took in Cobbett’s _Register_ and read it aloud to twenty or thirty
of the villagers. Further, Joseph had carried on foot a petition
for reform to the king at Brighton from a hundred and seventy-seven
‘persons, belonging to the working and labouring classes’ of Wonston,
Barton Stacey and Bullington, and was reported to have given some
trouble to the king’s porter by an importunate demand for an audience.
The recital of these facts gave rise to much merriment at his trial,
and was not considered irrelevant by judges who ruled out all allusions
to distress.[475] An interesting light is thrown on the history of
this petition by a fragment of a letter, written by Robert Mason to
a friend, which somehow fell into the hands of a Captain Thompson of
Longparish, and was forwarded by him to the Home Office as a valuable
piece of evidence.
‘_P.S._--Since I wrote the above I have saw and talked with two
persons who say “Bullington Barton and Sutton has sent a petition and
why not Longparish Hursborne and Wherwell send another.” I think as
much, to be sure if we had all signed one, one journey and expense
would have served but what is expence? Why I would engage to carry a
Petition and deliver it at St. James for 30 shillings, and to a place
like Longparish what is that? If you do send one pray do not let
Church property escape your notice. There is the Church which cost
Longparish I should think nearly £1500 yearly: yes and there is an old
established Chaple which I will be bound does not cost £25 annually.
For God sake....’ (illegible).
The first charge brought against the Masons was that of robbing Sir
Thomas Baring’s steward of £10 at East Stretton. The money had been
taken by one of the mobs; the Masons were acquitted. They were next
put on their trial together with William Winkworth, a cobbler and a
fellow reader of Cobbett, and ten others, for a similar offence. This
time they were accused of demanding £2 or £5 from Mr. W. Dowden of
Micheldever. The Attorney-General, in opening the case, drew attention
to the circumstances of the Masons and Winkworth, saying that the
offence with which they were charged was of a deeper dye, because they
were men of superior education and intelligence. A humane clergyman,
Mr. Cockerton, curate of Stoke Cheriton, gave evidence to the effect
that if the men had been met in a conciliatory temper in the morning
they would have dispersed. Joseph Mason and William Winkworth were
found guilty, and sentenced, in the words of the judge, to ‘be cut off
from all communion with society’ for the rest of their lives. Robert
Mason was still unconvicted, but he was not allowed to escape. The next
charge against him was that of going with a mob which extorted five
shillings from the Rev. J. Joliffe at Barton Stacey. He admitted that
he had accompanied the mob, partly because the labourers had urged him
to do so, partly because he hoped that Mr. Joliffe, being accustomed to
public speaking, would be able to persuade the labourers to disperse
before any harm was done. There was no evidence to show that he had
anything to do with the demand for money. He was found guilty and
sentenced to transportation for life. When asked what he had to say
for himself, he replied, ‘If the learned Counsel, who has so painted
my conduct to you, was present at that place and wore a smock frock
instead of a gown, and a straw hat instead of a wig, he would now be
standing in this dock instead of being seated where he is.’
* * * * *
Six men were reserved for execution, and told that they must expect
no mercy on this side of the grave: Cooper, the leader in the
Fordingbridge riots; Holdaway, who had headed the attack on Headley
Workhouse; Gilmore, who had entered the justices’ room in Andover
‘in rather a violent manner’ and parleyed with the justices, and
afterwards, in spite of their remonstrances, been a ringleader in the
destruction of a foundry in the parish of Upper Clatford; Eldridge,
who had taken part in the Fordingbridge riot and also ‘invaded the
sanctuary’ of Mr. Eyre Coote’s home; James Aunalls, a lad of nineteen,
who had extorted money at night with threats of a fire, from a person
whom he bade look over the hills, where a fire was subsequently seen,
and Henry Cook. Cook was a ploughboy of nineteen, who could neither
read nor write. For most of his life, since the age of ten, he had
been a farm hand. For six months before the riots he had been employed
at sawing, at 10s. a week, but at the time of the rising he was out
of work. After the riots he got work as a ploughboy at about 5s. a
week till his arrest. Like the other lads of the neighbourhood he had
gone round with a mob, and he was found guilty, with Joseph Mason, of
extorting money from William Dowden. For this he might have got off
with transportation for life, but another charge was preferred against
him. Mr. William Bingham Baring, J.P., tried, with the help of some
of his servants, to quell a riot at Northingdon Down Farm. Silcock,
who seemed the leader of the rioters, declared that they would break
every machine. Bingham Baring made Silcock repeat these words several
times and then seized him. Cook then aimed a blow at Bingham Baring
with a sledge-hammer and struck his hat. So far there was no dispute
as to what had happened. One servant of the Barings gave evidence to
the effect that he had saved his master’s life by preventing Cook from
striking again; another afterwards put in a sworn deposition to the
effect that Cook never attempted to strike a second blow. All witnesses
agreed that Bingham Baring’s hat had suffered severely: some of them
said that he himself had been felled to the ground. Whatever his
injuries may have been, he was seen out a few hours later, apparently
in perfect health; next day he was walking the streets of Winchester;
two days later he was presented at Court, and within a week he was
strong enough to administer a sharp blow himself with his stick to a
handcuffed and unconvicted prisoner, a display of zeal for which he had
to pay £50. Cook did not put up any defence. He was sentenced to death.
Perhaps it was felt that this victim to justice was in some respects
ill chosen, for reasons for severity were soon invented. He was a
heavy, stolid, unattractive boy, and his appearance was taken to
indicate a brutal and vicious disposition. Stories of his cruelties
to animals were spread abroad. ‘The fate of Henry Cook,’ said the
_Times_ correspondent (3rd January 1831), ‘excites no commiseration.
From everything I have heard of him, justice has seldom met with a
more appropriate sacrifice. He shed some tears shortly after hearing
his doom, but has since relapsed into a brutal insensibility to his
fate.’ His age was raised to thirty, his wages to 30s. a week. Denman
described him in the House of Commons, after his execution, as a
carpenter earning 30s. a week, who had struck down one of the family of
his benefactor, and had only been prevented from killing his victim by
the interposition of a more faithful individual. This is the epitaph
written on this obscure ploughboy of nineteen by the upper classes.
His own fellows, who probably knew him at least as well as a Denman
or a Baring, regarded his punishment as murder. Cobbett tells us that
the labourers of Micheldever subscribed their pennies to get Denman’s
misstatements about Cook taken out of the newspapers. When his body was
brought home after execution, the whole parish went out to meet it, and
he was buried in Micheldever churchyard in solemn silence.
Bingham Baring himself, as has been mentioned, happened to offend
against the law by an act of violence at this time. He was not like
Cook, a starving boy, but the son of a man who was reputed to have made
seven millions of money, and was called by Erskine the first merchant
in Europe. He did not strike his victim in a riot, but in cold blood.
His victim could not defend himself, for he was handcuffed, being taken
to prison on a charge on which he was subsequently acquitted. The man
struck was a Mr. Deacle, a small farmer who had had his own threshing
machine broken, and was afterwards arrested with his wife, by Bingham
Baring and a posse of magistrates, on suspicion of encouraging the
rioters. Deacle’s story was that Baring and the other magistrates
concerned in the arrest treated his wife with great insolence in the
cart in which they drove the Deacles to prison, and that Bingham Baring
further struck him with a stick. For this Deacle got £50 damages in an
action he brought against Baring. ‘This verdict,’ said the _Morning
Herald_, ‘seemed to excite the greatest astonishment; for most of the
Bar and almost every one in Court said, if on the jury, they would have
given at least £5000 for so gross and wanton an insult and unfeeling
conduct towards those who had not offered the least resistance; the
defendants not addressing the slightest evidence in palliation or
attempting to justify it.’ The judge, in summing up, ‘could not help
remarking that the handcuffing was, to say the least of it, a very
harsh proceeding towards a lady and gentleman who had been perfectly
civil and quiet.’ Meanwhile the case of the magistrates against the
Deacles had collapsed in the most inglorious manner. Though they had
handcuffed these two unresisting people, they had thought it wiser
not to proceed against them. Deacle, however, insisted on being tried,
and by threatening the magistrates with an action, he obliged them
to prosecute. He was tried at the Assizes, and, as we have seen, the
trial came to an abrupt conclusion under circumstances that threw the
gravest suspicion on the methods of the authorities.[476] Meanwhile
the treatment these two persons had received (and we can imagine from
their story how innocent poor people, without friends or position,
were handled) had excited great indignation, and the newspapers were
full of it. There were petitions sent up to Parliament for a Committee
of Inquiry. Now the class to which Cook was unlucky enough to belong
had never sent a single member to Parliament, but the Baring family
had five Members in the House of Commons at this very moment, one of
whom had taken part with Bingham Baring in the violent arrest of the
Deacles. The five, moreover, were very happily distributed, one of them
being Junior Lord of the Treasury in Grey’s Government and husband
of Grey’s niece, and another an important member of the Opposition
and afterwards Chancellor of the Exchequer under Peel. The Barings
therefore were in less danger of misrepresentation or misunderstanding;
the motion for a Committee was rejected by a great majority on the
advice of Althorp and Peel; the leader of the House of Commons came
forward to testify that the Barings were friends of his, and the
discussion ended in a chorus of praise for the family that had been
judged so harshly outside the walls of Parliament.
When the Special Commission had finished its labours at Winchester,
101 prisoners had been capitally convicted; of these 6 were left for
execution. The remaining 95 were, with few exceptions, transported for
life. Of the other prisoners tried, 36 were sentenced to transportation
for various periods, 65 were imprisoned with hard labour, and 67 were
acquitted. Not a single life had been taken by the rioters, not a
single person wounded. Yet the riots in this county alone were punished
by more than a hundred capital convictions, or almost double the number
that followed the devilish doings of Lord George Gordon’s mob. The
spirit in which Denman regarded the proceedings is illustrated by his
speech in the House of Commons on the amnesty debate: ‘No fewer than
a hundred persons were capitally convicted at Winchester, of offences
for every one of which their lives might have been justly taken,
and ought to have been taken, if examples to such an extent had been
necessary.’[477]
* * * * *
These sentences came like a thunderclap on the people of Winchester,
and all classes, except the magistrates, joined in petitions to the
Government for mercy. The _Times_ correspondent wrote as follows:--
‘WINCHESTER, Friday Morning, _7th Jan._
‘The scenes of distress in and about the jail are most terrible. The
number of men who are to be torn from their homes and connexions is so
great that there is scarcely a hamlet in the county into which anguish
and tribulation have not entered. Wives, sisters, mothers, children,
beset the gates daily, and the governor of the jail informs me that
the scenes he is obliged to witness at the time of locking up the
prison are truly heart-breaking.
‘You will have heard before this of the petitions which have been
presented to the Home Office from Gosport, Portsmouth, Romsey,
Whitchurch, and Basingstoke, praying for an extension of mercy to
all the men who now lie under sentence of death. A similar petition
has been got up in this city. It is signed by the clergy of the Low
Church, some of the bankers, and every tradesman in the town without
exception. Application was made to the clergy of the Cathedral for
their signatures, but they refused to give them, except conditionally,
upon reasons which I cannot comprehend. They told the petitioners,
as I am informed, that they would not sign any such petition unless
the grand jury and the magistracy of the county previously affixed
their names to it. Now such an answer, as it appears to me, is an
admission on their part that no mischief would ensue from not carrying
into effect the dreadful sentence of the law; for I cannot conceive
that if they were of opinion that mischief would ensue from it, they
would sign the petition, even though it were recommended by all the
talent and respectability of the Court of Quarter Sessions. I can
understand the principles on which that man acts, who asserts and
laments the necessity of vindicating the majesty of the law by the
sacrifice of human life; but I cannot understand the reasons of those
who, admitting that there is no necessity for the sword of justice to
strike the offender, decline to call upon the executive government to
stay its arm, and make their application for its mercy dependent on
the judgment, or it may be the caprice, of an influential aristocracy.
Surely, of all classes of society, the clergy is that which ought not
to be backward in the remission of offences. They are daily preaching
mercy to their flocks, and it wears but an ill grace when they are
seen refusing their consent to a practical application of their own
doctrines. Whatever my own opinion may be, as a faithful recorder
of the opinions of those around me, I am bound to inform you, that,
except among the magistracy of the county, there is a general, I had
almost said a universal, opinion among all ranks of society, that no
good will be effected by sacrificing human life.’[478]
This outburst of public opinion saved the lives of four of the six men
who had been left for execution. The two who were hung were Cooper
and Cook. But the Government and the judges were determined that the
lessons of civilisation should not be wanting in impressiveness or in
dignity. They compelled all the prisoners who had been condemned by
the Commission to witness the last agonies of the two men whom public
opinion had been unable to rescue. The account given in the _Times_
of 17th January shows that this piece of refined and spectacular
discipline was not thrown away, and that the wretched comrades of
the men who were hanged suffered as acutely as Denman or Alderson
themselves could have desired. ‘At this moment I cast my eyes down
into the felons’ yard, and saw many of the convicts weeping bitterly,
some burying their faces in their smock frocks, others wringing their
hands convulsively, and others leaning for support against the wall
of the yard and unable to cast their eyes upwards.’ This was the last
vision of English justice that each labourer carried to his distant
and dreaded servitude, a scene that would never fade from his mind.
There was much that England had not taught him. She had not taught him
that the rich owed a duty to the poor, that society owed any shelter
to the freedom or the property of the weak, that the mere labourer
had a share in the State, or a right to be considered in its laws, or
that it mattered to his rulers in what wretchedness he lived or in
what wretchedness he died. But one lesson she had taught him with such
savage power that his simple memory would not forget it, and if ever
in an exile’s gilding dreams he thought with longing of his boyhood’s
famine-shadowed home, that inexorable dawn would break again before
his shrinking eyes and he would thank God for the wide wastes of the
illimitable sea.
* * * * *
The Special Commission for Wiltshire opened at Salisbury on 2nd
January 1831. The judges were the same as those at Winchester; the
other commissioners were Lord Radnor, the friend of Cobbett, and Mr. T.
G. B. Estcourt. Lord Lansdowne, the Lord-Lieutenant, sat on the bench.
The foreman of the Grand Jury was Mr. John Benett, who has already
figured in these pages as the proprietor whose property was destroyed
and the magistrate who committed the culprits. There were three hundred
prisoners awaiting trial.
The method in which the prosecutions were conducted in Wiltshire,
though it did not differ from the procedure followed in Hampshire and
elsewhere, provoked some criticism from the lawyers. The prosecutions
were all managed by the county authorities. The clerks of the
committing magistrates in the different districts first took the
depositions, and then got up all the prosecutions in their capacity of
solicitors to the same magistrates prosecuting as county authorities,
to the exclusion of the solicitors of the individual prosecutors.
Further, all the prosecutions were managed for the county by a single
barrister, who assisted the Attorney-General and left no opening for
other members of the Bar. The counsel for one of the prisoners objected
to this method, not only on the ground of its unfairness to the legal
profession, but on the wider ground of the interests of justice. For
it was inconsistent with the impartiality required from magistrates
who committed prisoners, that they should go on to mix themselves up
with the management of the prosecution; in many cases these magistrates
served again as grand jurors in the proceedings against the prisoners.
Such procedure, he argued ‘was calculated to throw at least a strong
suspicion on the fair administration of justice.’ These protests,
however, were silenced by the judges, and though the Attorney-General
announced that he was willing that the counsel for the magistrates
should retire, no change was made in the arrangements.
The Salisbury prisoners were under a further disadvantage peculiar,
it is to be hoped, to that gaol. They were forbidden to see their
attorney except in the presence of the gaoler or his servants. This
rule seems to have been construed by the authorities in a manner that
simplified considerably the task of the prosecution. The facts of the
case of James Lush, condemned to death on two charges of extorting
money in a mob, were made public by Hunt in a letter to the _Times_,
22nd January 1831. Lush was a very poor man, but when first committed
he sent for an attorney and made a full confession. ‘This confession,
so confidentially made to his attorney (by an extraordinary rule of
the gaol) the legal adviser was compelled to submit to the inspection
of the gaoler, which paper he kept in his hands for several days and
in all human probability, this document, or a copy of it, was either
submitted to the inspection of the judge, or placed in the hands of
the prosecutor, the Crown Solicitor, or the Attorney-General: when
this man was called up for trial, such was his extreme poverty, that
he could not raise a guinea to fee counsel, and he was left destitute,
without legal advice or assistance.’ The Attorney-General could only
answer this charge in the House of Commons by declaring that he had no
recollection of any such circumstance himself, and that no gentleman of
the Bar would avail himself of information obtained in such a manner.
Lush could not distinguish these niceties of honour, or understand why
his confession should be examined and kept by the gaoler unless it
was to be used against him, and it is not surprising that he thought
himself betrayed. It is only fair to Lord Melbourne to add that when
Hunt drew his attention to this iniquitous rule in Salisbury Gaol he
had it abolished.
The cases tried were very similar to those at Winchester; batch after
batch of boys and men in the prime of life were brought up to the dock
for a brief trial and sentence of exile. Such was the haste that in one
case at least the prisoners appeared with the handcuffs still on their
wrists, a circumstance which elicited a rebuke from the judge, and
an excuse of overwork from the gaoler. Amongst the first cases eight
prisoners, varying in age from seventeen to thirty, were sentenced to
transportation for life for doing £500 worth of damage at Brasher’s
cloth mill at Wilton. Thirteen men were transported for seven years and
one for fourteen years for breaking threshing machines on the day of
the Pyt House affray. Mr. John Benett was satisfied with this tale of
victims in addition to the man killed by the yeomanry, and refrained
from prosecuting for the stones thrown at him. For this he took great
credit in the House of Commons, and no doubt it was open to him to
imitate Bingham Baring’s friends, and to talk of that kind of outrage
as ‘murder.’
At Salisbury, as at Winchester, evidence about distress and wages was
ruled out by the judges whenever possible; thus when twelve men, nine
of whom were afterwards transported for seven years, were being tried
for breaking a threshing machine on the farm of a man named Ambrose
Patience, the cross-examination of Patience, which aimed at eliciting
facts about wages and distress, was stopped by the court on the ground
that in a case of this sort such evidence was scarcely regular; it was
intimated, however, that the court would hear representations of this
kind later. But some light was thrown incidentally in the course of
the trials on the circumstances of the prisoners. Thus one of the Pyt
House prisoners urged in his defence: ‘My Lord, I found work very bad
in my own parish for the last three years, and having a wife and three
children to support I was glad to get work wherever I could get it. I
had some work at a place four miles from my house.’ He then described
how on his way to work he was met by the mob and forced to join them.
‘It is a hard case with me, my Lord; I was glad to get work though I
could earn only seven shillings per week, and it cost me a shilling a
week for iron, so that I had only six shillings a week to support five
persons.’ Another prisoner, Mould of Hatch, was stated by Lord Arundel
to be very poor: he had a wife and six children, of whom one or two had
died of typhus since his committal. They had nothing to live on but
what they got at Lord Arundel’s house. The benevolent Lord Arundel, or
the parish, must have supported the survivors indefinitely, for Mould
was exiled for seven years. Barett again, another of these prisoners,
was supporting himself, a wife, and a child on 5s. a week. The usual
rate of wages in Wiltshire was 7s. a week.
Evidence about the instigation of the labourers by those in good
circumstances was also ruled out, and much that would be interesting
in the history of the riots has thus perished. When six men were being
prosecuted for breaking a threshing machine on the farm of Mr. Judd at
Newton Toney, counsel for the defence started a cross-examination of
the prosecutor designed to show that certain landowners in the parish
had instigated the labourers to the outrages, but he was stopped by Mr.
Justice Alderson, who declared that such an inquiry was not material to
the issue, which was the guilt or innocence of the prisoners. If the
prisoners were found guilty these circumstances would be laid before
the court in mitigation of punishment. However strong the mitigating
circumstances in this case were, the punishment was certainly not
mitigated, for all six men were sentenced to the maximum penalty of
seven years’ transportation. In a similar case in Whiteparish it
came out in the evidence that Squire Bristowe had sent down buckets
of strong beer, and that Squire Wynne, who was staying with Squire
Bristowe, was present at the breaking of the machine. In the affair at
Ambrose Patience’s farm already mentioned, the defence of the prisoners
was that Farmer Parham had offered them half a hogshead of cider if
they would come and break his machine, whilst in another case three
men were acquitted because one of the witnesses for the prosecution,
a young brother of the farmer whose property had been destroyed,
unexpectedly disclosed the fact that his brother had said to the mob:
‘Act like men, go and break the machine, but don’t go up to the house.’
The proportion of charges of extorting money was smaller at Salisbury
than at Winchester: most of the indictments were for breaking machines
only. In some instances the prosecution dropped the charge of robbery,
thinking transportation for seven years a sufficient punishment for
the offence. Three brothers were sentenced to death for taking half a
crown: nobody received this sentence for a few coppers. In this case
the three brothers, William, Thomas, and John Legg, aged twenty-eight,
twenty-one, and eighteen, had gone at midnight to the kitchen door
of the house of Mrs. Montgomery, wife of a J.P., and asked the
manservant for money or beer. The man gave them half a crown, and they
thanked him civilly and went away. A curious light is thrown on the
relations between robbers and the robbed in the trial of six men for
machine-breaking at West Grimstead: the mob of fifty persons asked the
farmer for a sovereign, he promised to pay it next day, whereupon one
of the mob, a man named Light who was his tenant, offered to pay the
sovereign himself and to deduct it from the rent.
At Salisbury, as at Winchester, the fate of the victims depended
largely on the character given to the prisoners by the local gentry.
This was especially the case towards the end when justice began to
tire, and a good many charges were dropped. Thus Charles Bourton was
only imprisoned for three months for breaking a threshing machine,
whilst John Perry was transported for seven years for the same offence.
But then John Perry had been convicted seven or eight times for
poaching.
In Wiltshire, as in Hampshire, the judges were particularly severe
to those prisoners who were not agricultural labourers. A striking
instance is worth quoting, not only as illustrating this special
severity, but also because it shows that the judges when inflicting the
maximum penalty of seven years’ transportation for machine-breaking
were well aware that it was tantamount to exile for life. Thomas
Porter, aged eighteen, a shepherd, Henry Dicketts, aged nineteen, a
bricklayer’s labourer, Aaron Shepherd, aged forty (occupation not
stated), James Stevens, aged twenty-five, an agricultural labourer, and
George Burbage, aged twenty-four, also an agricultural labourer, were
found guilty of machine-breaking at Mr. Blake’s at Idmiston. Stevens
and Burbage escaped with two years’ and one year’s imprisonment with
hard labour, respectively, and the following homily from Mr. Justice
Alderson to think over in prison: ‘You are both thrashers and you might
in the perversion of your understanding think that these machines are
detrimental to you. Be assured that your labour cannot ultimately be
hurt by the employment of these machines. If they are profitable to
the farmer, they will also be profitable ultimately to the labourer,
though they may for a time injure him. If they are not profitable to
the farmer he will soon cease to employ them.’ The shepherd boy of
eighteen, the bricklayer’s labourer of nineteen, and their companion of
forty were reserved for a heavier penalty: ‘As to you, Aaron Shepherd,
I can give you no hope of remaining in this country. You Thomas Porter,
are a shepherd, and you Henry Dicketts, are a bricklayer’s labourer.
You have nothing to do with threshing machines. They do not interfere
with your labour, and you could not, even in the darkness of your
ignorance, suppose that their destruction would do you any good.... I
hope that your fate will be a warning to others. You will leave the
country, all of you: you will see your friends and relations no more:
for though you will be transported for seven years only, it is not
likely that at the expiration of that term you will find yourselves in
a situation to return. You will be in a distant land at the expiration
of your sentence. The land which you have disgraced will see you no
more: the friends with whom you are connected will be parted from you
for ever in this world.’
Mr. Justice Alderson’s methods received a good deal of attention in
one of the Salisbury trials, known as the Looker case. Isaac Looker,
a well-to-do farmer, was indicted for sending a threatening letter to
John Rowland: ‘Mr. Rowland, Haxford Farm, Hif you goes to sware against
or a man in prisson, you have here farm burnt down to ground, and thy
bluddy head chopt off.’ Some evidence was produced to show that Isaac
Looker had asserted in conversation that it was the magistrates and
the soldiers, and not the mobs, who were the real breakers of the
peace. But this did not amount to absolute proof that he had written
the letter: to establish this conclusion the prosecution relied on the
evidence of four witnesses; the first had quarrelled with Looker, and
had not seen his writing for four or five years; the second denied that
there had been any quarrel, but had not been in the habit of speaking
to the prisoner for five or six years, or seen his writing during that
time; the third had not had ‘much of a quarrel’ with him, but had not
seen his writing since 1824; the fourth was the special constable who
found in Looker’s bureau, which was unlocked and stood in the kitchen
where the family sat, a blank piece of paper that fitted on to the
piece on which the letter was written. More witnesses were called for
the defence than for the prosecution, and they included the vestry
clerk of Wimborne, an ex-schoolmaster; all of these witnesses had known
Looker’s writing recently, and all of them swore that the threatening
letter was not in his writing. Mr. Justice Alderson summed up against
the prisoner, the jury returned a verdict of guilty, and sentence of
transportation for life was passed upon Looker in spite of his vehement
protestations of innocence. ‘I cannot attend to these asseverations,’
said Mr. Justice Alderson, ‘for we all know that a man who can be
guilty of such an offence as that of which you have been convicted,
will not hesitate to deny it as you now do. I would rather trust to
such evidence as has been given in your case, than to the most solemn
declarations even on the scaffold.’
The learned judge and the jury then retired for refreshment, when a
curious development took place. Edward, son of Isaac Looker, aged
eighteen years, came forward and declared that he had written the
letter in question and other letters as well. He wrote a copy from
memory, and the handwriting was precisely similar. He explained that
he had written the letters without his father’s knowledge and without
a thought of the consequences, in order to help two cousins who were
in gaol for machine-breaking. He had heard people say that ‘it would
get my cousins off if threatening letters were written.’ He had let his
father know in prison that he had written the letters, and had also
told his father’s solicitor. Edward Looker was subsequently tried and
sentenced to seven years’ transportation: Isaac’s case was submitted to
the Home Secretary for pardon.
Although, as we have said, the Government, or its representatives, grew
rather more lenient towards the end of the proceedings at Salisbury,
it was evidently thought essential to produce some crime deserving
actual death. The culprit in this case was Peter Withers, a young man
of twenty-three, married and with five children. His character till
the time of the riots was exemplary. He was committed on a charge of
riot, and briefed a lawyer to defend him for this misdemeanour. Just
before the trial came on the charge was changed, apparently by the
Attorney-General, to the capital charge of assaulting Oliver Calley
Codrington with a hammer. His counsel was of course unprepared to
defend him on this charge, and, as he explained afterwards, ‘it was
only by the humane kindness of the Attorney-General who allowed him
to look at his brief that he was aware of all the facts to be alleged
against his client.’ Withers himself seemed equally unprepared; when
asked for his defence he said that he would leave it to his counsel, as
of course he had arranged to do when the charge was one of misdemeanour
only.
The incident occurred in an affray at Rockley near Marlborough. Mr.
Baskerville, J.P., rode up with some special constables to a mob of
forty or fifty men, Withers amongst them, and bade them go home. They
refused, declaring that they did not care a damn for the magistrates.
Mr. Baskerville ordered Mr. Codrington, who was a special constable, to
arrest Withers. A general mêlée ensued, blows were given and received,
and Codrington was hit by a hammer thrown by Withers. Withers’ own
version of the affair was that Codrington attacked him without
provocation in a ferocious manner with a hunting whip, loaded with
iron at the end. Baskerville also struck him. He aimed his hammer at
Codrington and it missed. Codrington’s horse then crushed him against
the wall, and he threw his hammer a second time with better aim. There
was nothing in the evidence of the prosecution to discredit this
version, and both Baskerville and Codrington admitted that they might
have struck him. Codrington’s injuries were apparently more serious
than Bingham Baring’s; it was stated that he had been confined to bed
for two or three days, and to the house from Tuesday to Saturday, and
that he had a scar of one and a half inches on the right side of his
nose. No surgeon, however, appeared as a witness, and the hammer was
not produced in court. Withers was found guilty and reserved, together
with Lush, for execution.
The special correspondent of the _Times_ who had been present at
Winchester made an interesting comparison between the Hampshire and
the Wiltshire labourers on trial (8th January 1831). The Wiltshire
labourers he described as more athletic in appearance and more hardy
in manner. ‘The prisoners here turn to the witnesses against them with
a bold and confident air: cross-examine them, and contradict their
answers, with a confidence and a want of common courtesy, in terms of
which comparatively few instances occurred in the neighbouring county.’
In this behaviour the correspondent detected the signs of a very low
state of moral intelligence.
* * * * *
When the time came for the last scene in court there was no trace of
the bold demeanour which had impressed the _Times_ correspondent during
the conduct of the trials. For the people of Wiltshire, like the people
of Hampshire, were stunned by the crash and ruin of this catastrophic
vengeance. The two men sentenced to death were reprieved, but one
hundred and fifty-four men and boys were sentenced to transportation,
thirty-three of them for life, the rest for seven or fourteen years,
with no prospect of ever returning to their homes. And Alderson and
his brother judges in so punishing this wild fling of folly, or
hope, or despair, were not passing sentence only on the men and boys
before them: they were pronouncing a doom not less terrible on wives
and mothers and children and babes in arms in every village on the
Wiltshire Downs. One man begged to be allowed to take his child,
eight months old, into exile, for its mother had died in childbirth,
and it would be left without kith or kin. He was told by the judge
that he should have remembered this earlier. The sentence of final
separation on all these families and homes was received with a frenzy
of consternation and grief, and the judges themselves were affected
by the spectacle of these broken creatures in the dock and round the
court, abandoned to the unchecked paroxysms of despair.[479] ‘Such a
total prostration of the mental faculties by fear,’ wrote the _Times_
correspondent, ‘and such a terrible exhibition of anguish and despair,
I never before witnessed in a Court of Justice.’ ‘Immediately on the
conclusion of this sentence a number of women, who were seated in court
behind the prisoners, set up a dreadful shriek of lamentation. Some of
them rushed forward to shake hands with the prisoners, and more than
one voice was heard to exclaim, “Farewell, I shall never see you more.”’
‘The whole proceedings of this day in court were of the most afflicting
and distressing nature. But the laceration of the feelings did not end
with the proceedings in court. The car for the removal of the prisoners
was at the back entrance to the court-house and was surrounded by
a crowd of mothers, wives, sisters and children, anxiously waiting
for a glance of their condemned relatives. The weeping and wailing
of the different parties, as they pressed the hands of the convicts
as they stepped into the car, was truly heartrending. We never saw
so distressing a spectacle before, and trust that the restored
tranquillity of the country will prevent us from ever seeing anything
like it again.’
The historian may regret that these men do not pass out before him in
a cold and splendid defiance. Their blind blow had been struck and it
had been answered; they had dreamt that their lot might be made less
intolerable, and the governing class had crushed that daring fancy for
ever with banishment and the breaking of their homes; it only remained
for them to accept their fate with a look of stone upon their faces
and a curse of fire in their hearts. So had Muir and Palmer and many
a political prisoner, victims of the tyrannies of Pitt and Dundas,
of Castlereagh and Sidmouth, gone to their barbarous doom. So had
the Lantenacs and the Gauvains alike gone to the guillotine. History
likes to match such calm and unshaken bearing against the distempered
justice of power. Here she is cheated of her spectacle. Outwardly it
might seem a worse fate for men of education to be flung to the hulks
with the coarsest of felons: for men whose lives had been comfortable
to be thrust into the dirt and disorder of prisons. But political
prisoners are martyrs, and martyrs are not the stuff for pity. However
bitter their sufferings, they do not suffer alone: they are sustained
by a Herculean comradeship of hopes and of ideas. The darkest cage is
lighted by a ray from Paradise to men or women who believe that the
night of their sufferings will bring a dawn less cold and sombre to
mankind than the cold and sombre dawn of yesterday. But what ideas
befriended the ploughboy or the shepherd torn from his rude home? What
vision had he of a nobler future for humanity? To what dawn did he
leave his wife or his mother, his child, his home, his friends, or his
trampled race? What robe of dream and hope and fancy was thrown over
his exile or their hunger, his poignant hour of separation, or their
ceaseless ache of poverty and cold
‘to comfort the human want
From the bosom of magical skies’?
* * * * *