Rural Rides Read online

  6. Blanketteers: Northern textile workers who marched on London in 1817 to petition the King about industrial distress. Many were arrested near Manchester and temporarily detained. In index of Persons, see William Ogden.

  7. these things: Cobbett’s figures were not far off: the national debt stood at about 700 million pounds when Napoleon was finally retired in 1815. Annual interest on the debt was approximately 30 million pounds.

  8. Irish Tithe Bill: This provided for the commutation of Irish tithes into a money payment.

  9. Ireland’s lazy root… extreme unction: Cobbett looked upon the potato as ‘a component part of the tea-drinking system’ that cumulatively robbed English workers of time, energy and good health (PR, 11 November 1815, p. 167); see also Dyck, Cobbett and Popular Rural Culture, pp. 116–20.

  10. The Morning Chronicle: In index of Persons, see John Black.

  11. punishment for looking out… of the factory: Cobbett got into some silly arguments about working conditions in factories. He was not knowledgeable about the matter, as he would enter only two factories in his entire life (Robert Owen’s and John Fielden’s) – and he had visited none at this point in his life. John Fielden is not mentioned in Rural Rides, but would later become a strong advocate of Cobbett’s, and in 1833 they were jointly elected MPs for the borough of Oldham, with Fielden representing industrial issues in Parliament while Cobbett focused on matters rural and agrarian. See Dyck, Cobbett and Rural Popular Culture, pp. 199–201.

  12. rough him: Cobbett’s meaning here is not clear. He might be alluding to his defiance of heavy precipitation, as manifested by his penchant for shirtless horseback rides in rain. He held this to be a cure for the common cold.

  13. consumption of Malt was neglected: Brougham’s ‘Beer Act’ of 1823 allowed for the brewing and sale of a medium-strength, moderately-taxed beer (5s. tax on a barrel) that could be vended without a publican’s licence. Cobbett preferred that the labourers brew all of their own beer, but he was in favour of this measure. It gave rise to ‘beershops’ in the countryside that would later be seen as havens of vice and radicalism by parsons and magistrates.

  THROUGH HAMPSHIRE AND SURREY

  1. my stay at this place: Cobbett fanned at Botley between 1805 and 1817, when he fled to the United States. He lost the farm in 1820 upon declaring bankruptcy. The cottages to which he alludes are probably the cottages that he built for his own workers – see Dyck, Cobbett and Popular Rural Culture, pp. 139–45. For ‘the Botley Parson’, in index of Persons, see Richard Baker.

  2. Ellenborough… Bailey: These are the judges who sentenced Cobbett to two years in Newgate (1810–12) for criticizing the flogging of militiamen at Ely. (The last is ‘Bayley’.)

  3. Methodist sermons: As a youth, Cobbett attended an outdoor revival meeting by John Wesley (1703–91), the founder of Methodism. But as a Radical, Cobbett came to despise the movement, alleging that Methodist parsons were opposed to political reform and that they plied their congregations with ‘hobgoblins and devils’ instead of informing them of ‘the cause of the emptiness of their bellies and the raggedness of their backs’. He also believed that a ‘ranting and raving’ sermon was ‘more mischievous than the brawls of the alehouse’. Ironically, many of Cobbett’s social and economic precepts bear a remarkable resemblance to those of Wesley. See Dyck, William Cobbett and Rural Popular Culture, pp. 96–100; PR, 3 November 1821, p. 842; and Cobbett, Cottage Economy, para. 263. See also ‘Through Sussex and Kent’, note 8 below.

  4. two-penny trash: The pejorative label given to the cheap edition of Cobbett’s Political Register (1816–17) by some of his critics. He sometimes informally referred to it as ‘two-penny trash’ after 1820, and in 1830–32 published a monthly periodical with that precise title.

  5. would have murdered me at Coventry: Cobbett stood for election in a rough-and-tumble contest at Coventry in 1820, but came at the bottom of the poll. There was a good deal of violence on and off the hustings. See Spater, William Cobbett, vol. II, pp. 392–7.

  6. Plantagenet. The royal house that ruled England and parts of France from the succession of Henry II in 1154 until the death of Richard II in 1400, when the dynasty divided into the rival houses of Lancaster and York.

  7. New Game-laws and Old Ellenborough’s Act: Soon after becoming Lord Chief Justice in 1802, Lord Ellenborough toughened the criminal code by creating several new capital offences (see The Parliamentary History of England from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, vol. XXXVI, pp. 1245–7). Gamekeepers were given authority to make lawful arrests; so while the new laws did not expressly mention poaching, they made it an offence to ‘resist lawful apprehension… by shooting, attempting to shoot at, stabbing, or cutting’.

  8. E O Table: Table game of chance in which players bet on whether a ball would come to rest in grooves or notches marked ‘E’ or ‘O’

  9. this system… born in hell: Cobbett attributed the ethos of a national debt to William of Orange and his supporters, including Bishop Burnet.

  10. lawyer: In the index of Persons, see Francis Holt.

  THROUGH SUSSEX AND KENT, TO DOVER

  1. Mr CARLILE’s SISTER: In the index of Persons, see Mary Ann Carlile.

  2. ‘Train up a child as he should walk’: Proverbs 22:6: ‘Train up a child in the way he should go.’

  3. MARQUIS CAMDEN’S! Milton talks of the Leviathan: In the index of Persons, see John Jeffreys Pratt. The latter allusion is to Milton’s sea beast in Paradise Lost (Book I, 200–201; Book VII, 412–24).

  4. forestalling: The practice of withholding crops from market, or purchasing them prior to their arrival there, in anticipation of receiving a better price. The common people deemed it a most loathsome act, as is readily seen in the popular literature of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries.

  5. National Schools: The Church of England oriented schools of Andrew Bell, begun in 1811.

  6. 2 Chronicles, ch. 31. v. 21… all his heart: 2 Chronicles 31:21: ‘And in every work that [Hezekiah] began in the service of the house of God, and in the law, and in the commandments, to seek his God, he did it with all his heart, and prospered.’

  7. Do you KNOW… you have houses in the heavens not made with hands: The belief that Christians have a certain dwelling place in heaven: 2 Corinthians 5:1: ‘For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.’

  8. no power on the minds… but the miserable: Cobbett is an early and little-recognized contributor to the great debate on the ‘missing revolution’ in nineteenth-century England. Like Elie Halévy and E. P. Thompson, he saw Methodism as an encumbrance to radicalism and revolution. See E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (1963), ch. 11, and Elie Halévy, The Birth of Methodism in England (1906), trans, and ed. Bernard Semmel (London, 1971).

  9. shoyhoy: Hampshire term for a scarecrow. Cobbett applied the term to moderate reformers and those whose actions failed to match their words.

  10. Saint Peter’s Epistles… 18th Chapter and 4th Verse: Actually 1 Peter 4:18: ‘And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear.’

  11. MARTELLO TOWERS: Chain of round fortresses erected along the south-east coast of England at the time of Napoleon’s invasion threat; some still survive.

  12. desolation of abomination, standing in high places: See Matthew 24:15: ‘When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place…’

  FROM DOVER TO THE WEN

  1. the fir frigates: This was Canning’s description of the American navy at the time of the War of 1812.

  2. threshing machines… men upon the roads: The advent of the threshing machine reduced the amount of winter employment for labourers. Threshing was traditionally done in barns, with hand-held flails. The machines were targeted by the Captain Swing rioters in 1830–31. The Swing rioters also complained about parish ove
rseers who assigned them to work on the roads.

  3. Kensington… cuttings imported last Spring: Cobbett had a four-acre seed and tree farm at Kensington between 1821 and 1830. He also imported seeds from the United States and issued an edition of William Forsyth’s Treatise on the Cultivation and Management of Fruit Trees (London, 1802).

  4. BROTHER OF THE GREAT ORACLE: In the index of Persons, see Jacob and David Ricardo, respectively.

  5. ‘tall soul’: From Lord John Russell’s poetic drama Don Carlos or Persecution, A Tragedy in Five Acts (1822), which Cobbett criticized at length in the Political Register (4 January 1823), claiming that it was devoid of plot and probability.

  6. newspaper… hell of Pall Mall: In the index of Persons, see Rev. Sir Henry Bate Dudley.

  7. look at Spain: In the index of Persons, see Spain, Ferdinand VII, King of.

  8. enemies of the QUEEN: In the index of Persons, see Caroline of Brunswick, Queen.

  9. ‘Friends’: Cobbett means the Society of Friends, or Quakers.

  ACROSS SURREY

  1. feed labourers in the house: Cobbett was a great believer in the old custom of ‘living-in’ for farm servants. At his farmhouse in Botley he accommodated as many as twenty farm servants at a time, while building fine new cottages for his married workers. See Dyck, Cobbett and Rural Popular Culture, pp. 34, 64–6, 139–45, 149, 186.

  2. your COTTAGE ECONOMY: Cobbett’s own Cottage Economy, paras. 171–5.

  FROM CHILWORTH TO WINCHESTER

  1. THING: Cobbett meant the network of sinecures, fund-holding, debt, paper-money and borough-mongering that he so despised. The ‘THING’ would be exploded, in his view, by a radical reform of Parliament.

  2. London University: Founded in 1825; it would evolve into University College, London.

  3. ‘Protestant Reformation’: Part I of Cobbett’s History of the Protestant ‘Reformation’ in England and Ireland was published in 1824; Part II in 1827. Regarding editions and translations see Pearl, Cobbett, no. 132.

  FROM WINCHESTER TO BURGHCLERE

  1. education: For Cobbett ‘education’ meant ‘breeding up, bringing up or rearing up; and nothing more’ (Cottage Economy, para. 11).

  2. Small-note Bill: It was Cobbett’s view that the Small Note Act of 1822 rescinded enough of Peel’s Act of 1819 to preserve the accuracy of his prophecy that the Bank of England could not return to full cash payments without defaulting on the national debt. See ‘From Kensington to Uphusband’, note 8 above.

  3. SIR JAMMY: In the index of Persons, see Sir James Mackintosh.

  4. the tract and the Bible affair: Cobbett thought that the circulation of Bibles and of religious or secular tracts by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge or the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge was misguided. ‘The “expansion of the mind” is very well,’ he argued, ‘but, really the thing which presses the most, at this time, is the getting of… a little more bread, bacon and beer’ (PR, 15 November 1823, p. 488).

  5. isthmus of Darien: Neck of land in Panama (part of independent Colombia in Cobbett’s time) that was chosen as site of the canal in the early twentieth century.

  6. bright patrician: Ungenerous allusion to the troubled Earl of Portsmouth. See index of Persons.

  7. King’s Speech, do not, then, all continue to flourish: The King’s Speech of February 1825 alluded to the great prosperity of the land. During the second half of the year, however, trade and manufacturing industry joined agriculture in an economic downturn.

  8. Huskisson… quatre vingt neuf: He was raised in Paris where he was a member of this pro-reform club during the early days of the Revolution. He left France in 1792.

  9. permanent occupation… of Spain by France: In the index of Persons, see Spain, Ferdinand VII, King of.

  10. Saint Domingo was independent: The Republic of Saint Domingo, or Haiti, attained independence in 1804, but it is more likely that Cobbett meant the western side of the island Hispaniola (the present-day Dominican Republic) from which the Spanish were ousted in 1821 and which Haiti claimed in 1822.

  11. Corn Laws… petition for their repeal: Cobbett favoured free trade in corn and was therefore opposed to the duties provided for by the Corn Law of 1815, which he petitioned and spoke against. The protective laws would be repealed in 1846.

  FROM BURGHCLERE TO PETERSFIELD

  1. HAMPSHIRE PARSONS: Cobbett despised them for their opposition to his political platform at the many Hampshire county meetings that he attended during his years at Botley (1805–17). ‘I know of no body of men so despicable, and yet, what sums of public money do they swallow’ (A Year’s Residence, para. 446).

  2. Spinning Jenny: Machine invented during the 1760s by James Hargreaves that was capable of spinning several threads at once.

  3. SIR GLORY: Cobbett’s nickname for Sir Francis Burdett (see index of Persons).

  4. the STAR: Evening newspaper (1788–1831); it began with a circulation of about 2,000, but had trailed off to a mere 150 copies by the 1820s (G. A. Cranfield, The Press and Society (London, 1978), pp. 77–9, 86, 156).

  5. NORFOLK PETITION: One of Cobbett’s proudest moments was the adoption of his petition at a county meeting (with some 7,000 persons in attendance) at Norwich in January 1823. It called for an ‘equitable adjustment’ (see ‘From Kensington to Uphusband’, note 8 above), a reduction in the size of the standing army and an end to state sinecures and pensions. The petition was passed in the face of objections by Thomas Coke and many other prominent landowners.

  6. Mr Brougham’s ‘best public instructor’: Cobbett liked to repeat Henry Brougham’s claim that London daily newspapers comprised the ‘best possible public instructor’ (Spater, William Cobbett, vol. II, p. 607 n. 56; PR, 29 July 1826, p. 305 and 5 January 1828, pp. 8–9).

  7. the wise barn-orator: In the index of Persons, see Edmond Wodehouse.

  FROM PETERSFIELD TO KENSINGTON

  1. father of Saxe-Coburg itself: This is a vague allusion. Perhaps Cobbett had in mind Francis Josiah, father of Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg.

  FROM KENSINGTON TO EAST EVERLEY

  1. the petitioners of Manchester bawl: A town meeting in Manchester was convened in the summer of 1826 to petition the government for relief from economic distress: see PR, 5 August 1826.

  DOWN THE VALLEY OF THE AVON

  1. transport the people of England: Cobbett did not like the various schemes for emigration of the poor which were on offer during the late 1820s, especially if Parliament was involved with their promotion. He later wrote a manual about emigration for those who volunteered to leave England for the United States: Emigrant’s Guide (1829).

  2. ACCURSED HILL (Old Sarum): The allusion is to the ‘rotten borough’ (also p. 298), a ready metaphor for the unreformed Parliament. Sarum throve in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, but greatly declined in population after its cathedral was demolished and the bishopric moved. The borough was abolished by the Great Reform Act of 1832.

  3. Emigration Committee: Issued three reports in 1826–7. It was chaired by Wilmot Horton – an enthusiastic supporter and voluminous writer in support of the emigration of the poor, particularly to Nova Scotia.

  4. slave-produce: Cobbett presumably means rum.

  5. Senator SNIP… ‘Collective Wisdom’: In the index of Persons, see John Maberley. The ‘Collective Wisdom’, of course, was a sarcastic reference to the Lords and Commons in Parliament assembled.

  6. LETTER TO THE LUDDITES: An early cheap Register of 1816 – price twopence. Issued in broadside form, it appealed to the Luddites to cease their destruction of machines and instead to petition Parliament for political reform. See Dyck, Cobbett and Rural Popular Culture, pp. 78–82.

  7. wounded the game-keepers of ASHTON SMITH and LORD PALMERSTON: In the index of Persons, see James Turner, Charles Smith and Robert Snelgrove.

  FROM SALISBURY TO HIGHWORTH

  1. the late Order in Council: This Order decreased the duty on imported corn: see PR, 1 September 18
26.

  2. 16th of August at Manchester: See ‘Through Surrey, Sussex and Hampshire’, note 2, above.

  3. the ‘individual’ of the Derby family: In the index of Persons, see Edward Stanley.

  FROM HIGHWORTH TO MALMSBURY

  1. married state without having children: Cobbett seems to have suspected that Robert Owen promoted family planning. Owen’s son Robert Dale Owen (1801–77) openly advocated birth control.

  2. Locust trees: See Cobbett’s Woodlands and A Year’s Residence in the United States.

  3. English poor-laws: Cobbett did not like the use of the Poor Law to subsidize wages. Nor did he like Queen Elizabeth who helped bring the Law about. Nonetheless he took pride in the existence of the Law when reflecting upon the lack of one in Scotland and Ireland. He also began to talk of the need for revolution when the Whigs undertook to amend the Poor Law in 1834. See Cobbett’s Legacy to Labourers (1834) and Dyck, Cobbett and Rural Popular Culture, pp. 202–10.

  4. Jubilee George: This doubtless alludes to the fiftieth anniversary of the accession of George III, celebrated in 1810. Cobbett opposed the celebration at the time and later.

  FROM MALMSBURY INTO WORCESTERSHIRE

  1. DON QUIXOTE: Cobbett was not widely read in non-English writings, but he was familiar with Miguel De Saavedra Cervantes’s sprawling novel Don Quixote (1605–15).