Regency Era Happenings: The Panic of 1825

Posted on September 16, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

18 August 1825 – On this date, Scottish adventurer Gregor MacGregor issues a £300,000 loan with 2.5% interest through the London bank of Thomas Jenkins & Company for the fictitious Central American republic of Poyais. His actions lead to the Panic of 1825, the first modern stock market crash, starting in the Bank of England and precipitating the closure of six London banks and sixty country ones in England.

The Panic of 1825 was a stock market crash that started in the Bank of England arising in part out of speculative investments in Latin America, including the imaginary country of Poyais. The crisis was felt most acutely in England where it precipitated the closing of six London banks and sixty country banks in England, but was also manifest in the markets of Europe, Latin America, and the United States. An infusion of gold reserves from the Banque de France saved the Bank of England from complete collapse.

The panic has been referred to as the first modern economic crisis not attributable to an external event, such as a war, and thus the start of modern economic cycles. The period of the Napoleonic Wars had been exceptionally profitable for all sectors of the British financial system, and the expansionist monetary actions taken during transition from wartime to peacetime economy initiated a surge of prosperity and speculative ventures. The stock market boom became a bubble and banks caught up in the euphoria made risky loans.

Bank Improvements
Seventy banks failed. The current view puts much of the fault of the crash on the banks for not collecting quality information, performing inadequate surveillance, and not doing simple due diligence on ventures. The usual list of causes of the crisis are:

**Latin American debt issues
**Ease of issuance of banknotes from country banks led to unscrupulous partners investing in high risk, high return ventures
**Bank of England’s actions of rapidly increasing the money supply, then rapidly tightening it, initiating bank runs and finally refusing to act as lender of last resort until too late.

At the time, the Bank of England was not a central bank but a public, for-profit bank with three loyalties: its shareholders, the British government, and its correspondent commercial bankers. The Bank of England raised the lending rate to protect its investors, instead of lowering it to protect the public. The self-interest of the Bank of England thereby caused additional failures. Although banker Henry Thornton described in 1802 the proper lender of last resort actions to be taken by a central bank in such a crisis, it was not until 1866 with the Overend Gurney crisis of 1866 that the Bank of England would take actions to prevent widespread panic withdrawals.

Inaction by the Bank of England led to a systemic stoppage of the banking system, and was followed by widespread bankruptcies, recession and unemployment.

In Fiction
An historical novel by Stanley J. Weyman, Ovington’s Bank, is centered on the Panic of 1825.

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Regency Celebrity: 2nd Earl Charles Grey, Prime Minister and Governmental Reformer

Posted on September 13, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

245px-Charlesgrey2 Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, KG, PC (13 March 1764 – 17 July 1845), known as Viscount Howick between 1806 and 1807, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 22 November 1830 to 16 July 1834. A member of the Whig Party, he backed significant reform of the British government and was among the primary architects of the Reform Act 1832. His administration also saw the abolition of slavery in the British Empire. In addition to his political achievements, he has come to be associated with Earl Grey tea.

Early Life
Descended from a long-established Northumbrian family seated at Howick Hall, Grey was the second but eldest surviving son of General Sir Charles Grey KB (1729–1807) and his wife, Elizabeth (1743/4–1822), daughter of George Grey of Southwick, co. Durham. He had four brothers and two sisters. He was educated at Richmond School, followed by Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, acquiring a facility in Latin and in English composition and declamation that enabled him to become one of the foremost parliamentary orators of his generation.

Grey was elected to Parliament for the Northumberland constituency on 14 September 1786, aged just 22. He became a part of the Whig circle of Charles James Fox, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and the Prince of Wales, and soon became one of the major leaders of the Whig party. He was the youngest manager on the committee for prosecuting Warren Hastings. The Whig historian T. B. Macaulay wrote in 1841:

“At an age when most of those who distinguish themselves in life are still contending for prizes and fellowships at college, he had won for himself a conspicuous place in Parliament. No advantage of fortune or connection was wanting that could set off to the height his splendid talents and his unblemished honour. At twenty-three he had been thought worthy to be ranked with the veteran statesmen who appeared as the delegates of the British Commons, at the bar of the British nobility. All who stood at that bar, save him alone, are gone, culprit, advocates, accusers. To the generation which is now in the vigour of life, he is the sole representative of a great age which has passed away. But those who, within the last ten years, have listened with delight, till the morning sun shone on the tapestries of the House of Lords, to the lofty and animated eloquence of Charles Earl Grey, are able to form some estimate of the powers of a race of men among whom he was not the foremost.”

Grey was also noted for advocating Parliamentary reform and Catholic emancipation. His affair with the Duchess of Devonshire, herself an active political campaigner, did him little harm, although it nearly caused her to be divorced by her husband.

In 1806, Grey, by then Lord Howick owing to his father’s elevation to the peerage as Earl Grey, became a part of the Ministry of All Talents (a coalition of Foxite Whigs, Grenvillites, and Addingtonites) as First Lord of the Admiralty. Following Fox’s death later that year, Howick took over both as Foreign Secretary and as leader of the Whigs.

In Charon’s Boat (1807), James Gillray caricatured the fall from power of the Whig administration, with Howick taking the role of Charon rowing the boat.

The government fell from power the next year, and, after a brief period as a Member of Parliament for Appleby from May to July 1807, Howick went to the Lords, succeeding his father as Earl Grey. He continued in opposition for the next 23 years.

Great Reform Act
In 1830, when the Duke of Wellington resigned on the question of Parliamentary reform, the Whigs finally returned to power, with Grey as Prime Minister. His Ministry was a notable one, seeing passage of the Reform Act 1832, which finally saw the reform of the House of Commons, and the abolition of slavery throughout the British Empire in 1833. As the years had passed, however, Grey had become more conservative, and he was cautious about initiating more far-reaching reforms, particularly since he knew that the King was at best only a reluctant supporter of reform. Unlike most politicians, he seems to have genuinely preferred a private life; colleagues remarked caustically that he threatened to resign at every setback. In 1834 Grey retired from public life, leaving Lord Melbourne as his successor.

Grey returned to Howick, but kept a close eye on the policies of the new cabinet under Melbourne, whom he, and especially his family, regarded as a mere understudy until he began to act in ways of which they disapproved. Grey became more critical as the decade went on, being particularly inclined to see the hand of Daniel O’Connell behind the scenes and blaming Melbourne for subservience to the radicals with whom he identified the Irish patriot. He made no allowances for Melbourne’s need to keep the radicals on his side to preserve his shrinking majority in the Commons, and in particular he resented any slight on his own great achievement, the Reform Act, which he saw as a final solution of the question for the foreseeable future. He continually stressed its conservative nature. As he declared in his last great public speech, at the Grey Festival organized in his honour at Edinburgh in September 1834, its purpose was to strengthen and preserve the established constitution, to make it more acceptable to the people at large, and especially the middle classes, who had been the principal beneficiaries of the Reform Act, and to establish the principle that future changes would be gradual, “according to the increased intelligence of the people, and the necessities of the times.” It was the speech of a conservative statesman.

Retirement
Grey spent his last years in contented, if sometimes fretful, retirement at Howick, with his books, his family, and his dogs. He became physically feeble in his last years and died quietly in his bed on 17 July 1845, forty-four years to the day since going to live at Howick. He was buried in the church there on the 26th in the presence of his family, close friends, and the labourers on his estate.

Commemoration
Earl Grey tea, a blend which uses bergamot oil to flavour the beverage, is named after Grey. He is commemorated by Grey’s Monument in the centre of Newcastle upon Tyne, which consists of a statue of Lord Grey standing atop a 41 m (135 ft) high column. The monument was once struck by lightning and Earl Grey’s head was seen lying in the gutter in Grey Street. The monument lends its name to Monument Metro station on the Tyne and Wear Metro located directly underneath. Grey Street in Newcastle upon Tyne and Grey College, Durham are also named after Grey.

Personal Life
Grey married Mary Elizabeth Ponsonby (1776 – 1861), only daughter of William Ponsonby, 1st Baron Ponsonby and Hon. Louisa Molesworth in 1794. The marriage was a fruitful one; between 1796 and 1819 the couple had ten sons and six daughters:
[a dau.] Grey (stillborn, 1796)
Lady Louisa Elizabeth Grey (7 April 1797 – 26 November 1841); married John Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham
Lady Elizabeth Grey (10 July 1798 – 8 November 1880); married John Crocker Bulteel (d. 10 September 1843). Their daughter, Louisa Emily Charlotte Bulteel, is one of the great-great-great-grandmothers of Diana, Princess of Wales
Lady Caroline Grey (30 August 1799 – 28 April 1875); married Capt. The Hon. George Barrington
Lady Georgiana Grey (17 February 1801 – 1900); never married
Henry George Grey, 3rd Earl Grey (28 December 1802 – 9 October 1894), eldest son, who became a politician like his father
General Sir Charles Grey (15 March 1804 – 31 March 1870), father of Albert Grey, 4th Earl Grey
Admiral Sir Frederick William Grey (23 August 1805 – 2 May 1878)
Lady Mary Grey ( 2 May 1807 – 6 July 1884); married Charles Wood, 1st Viscount Halifax
Hon. William Grey (13 May 1808 – 11 Feb 1815)
Admiral The Hon. George Grey (16 May 1809 – 3 October 1891)
Hon. Thomas Grey (29 Dec 1810 – 8 Jul 1826)
Rev. Hon. John Grey ( 2 March 1812 – 11 November 1895)
Rev. Hon. Sir Francis Richard Grey (31 March 1813 – 22 March 1890) married Lady Elizabeth Howard (1816–1891), daughter of George Howard, 6th Earl of Carlisle and Georgiana Cavendish (daughter of Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire).
Hon. Henry Cavendish Grey (16 October 1814 – 5 September 1880)
Hon. William George Grey (15 February 1819 – 19 December 1865)

Mary was frequently pregnant and during his absences in London or elsewhere Grey had a series of affairs with other women. The first, most notorious, and most significant, which antedated his engagement to his future wife, was with Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, whom he met at Devonshire House – the centre of Whig society in London in the 1780s and 1790s – shortly after his arrival in the capital as a young recruit to the House of Commons.

Impetuous and headstrong, Grey pursued Georgiana with persistence until she gave in to his attentions. She became pregnant by Grey in 1791, but she refused to leave her husband the duke, and live with Grey, when the duke threatened that if she did so she would never see their children again. She went abroad with Elizabeth Foster, and on 20 February 1792 at Aix-en-Provence, gave birth to a daughter who was given the name Eliza Courtney. After their return to England in September 1793 the child was taken to Fallodon and brought up by Grey’s parents as though she were his sister. This affair was a significant step in the process by which he became a member of the Whig party, led by Charles James Fox.

Lord Grey’s Ministry, November 1830 – July 1834
Lord Grey — First Lord of the Treasury and Leader of the House of Lords
Lord Brougham — Lord Chancellor
Lord Lansdowne — Lord President of the Council
Lord Durham — Lord Privy Seal
Lord Melbourne — Secretary of State for the Home Department
Lord Palmerston — Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
Lord Goderich — Secretary of State for War and the Colonies
Sir James Graham — First Lord of the Admiralty
Lord Althorp — Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons
Charles Grant — President of the Board of Control
Lord Holland — Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
The Duke of Richmond — Postmaster-General
Lord Carlisle — Minister without Portfolio
Changes
June, 1831 — Lord John Russell, the Paymaster of the Forces, and Edward Smith-Stanley, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, join the Cabinet.
April, 1833 — Lord Goderich, now Lord Ripon, succeeds Lord Durham as Lord Privy Seal. Edward Smith-Stanley succeeds Ripon as Secretary of State for War and the Colonies. His successor as Chief Secretary for Ireland is not in the Cabinet. Edward Ellice, the Secretary at War, joins the Cabinet.
June, 1834 — Thomas Spring Rice succeeds Stanley as Colonial Secretary. Lord Carlisle succeeds Ripon as Lord Privy Seal. Lord Auckland succeeds Graham as First Lord of the Admiralty. The Duke of Richmond leaves the Cabinet. His successor as Postmaster-General is not in the Cabinet. Charles Poulett Thomson, the President of the Board of Trade, and James Abercrombie, the Master of the Mint, join the Cabinet.

In Popular Culture
Charles Grey is portrayed by Dominic Cooper in the 2008 film The Duchess, directed by Saul Dibb and starring Ralph Fiennes and Keira Knightley. The film is based on Amanda Foreman’s biography of Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire.
He is also a secondary character in Emma Donoghue’s 2004 book Life Mask.

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Regency Celebrity: 1st Baron William Wyndhan Grenville, Prime Minister

Posted on September 12, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

245px-1st_Baron_Grenville William Wyndham Grenville, 1st Baron Grenville PC, PC (Ire) (25 October 1759 – 12 January 1834) was a British Whig statesman. He served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1806 to 1807 as head of the Ministry of All the Talents.

Background
Grenville was the son of Whig Prime Minister George Grenville. His mother Elizabeth was daughter of the Tory statesman Sir William Wyndham Bart. He had two elder brothers Thomas and George – he was thus uncle to the 1st Duke of Buckingham and Chandos.

He was also related to the Pitt family by marriage; William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham had married his father’s sister Hester, and thus the younger Grenville was the first cousin of William Pitt the Younger.

Grenville was educated at Eton, Christ Church, Oxford, and Lincoln’s Inn.

Political Career
Grenville entered the House of Commons in 1782. He soon became a close ally of the Prime Minister, his cousin William Pitt the Younger, and served in the government as Paymaster of the Forces from 1784 to 1789. In 1789, he served briefly as Speaker of the House of Commons before he entered the cabinet as Home Secretary.

He became Leader of the House of Lords when he was raised to the peerage the next year as Baron Grenville, of Wotton under Bernewood in the County of Buckingham. The next year, in 1791, he succeeded the Duke of Leeds as Foreign Secretary.

Grenville’s decade as Foreign Secretary was a dramatic one, seeing the Wars of the French Revolution. During the war, Grenville was the leader of the party that focused on the fighting on the continent as the key to victory, opposing the faction of Henry Dundas, which favoured war at sea and in the colonies. Grenville left office with Pitt in 1801 over the issue of Catholic Emancipation.

In his years out of office, Grenville became close to the opposition Whig leader Charles James Fox, and when Pitt returned to office in 1804, Grenville did not take part. Following Pitt’s death in 1806, Grenville became the head of the “Ministry of All the Talents,” a coalition between Grenville’s supporters, the Foxite Whigs, and the supporters of former Prime Minister Lord Sidmouth, with Grenville as First Lord of the Treasury and Fox as Foreign Secretary as joint leaders.

Grenville’s cousin William Windham served as Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, and his younger brother, Thomas Grenville, served briefly as First Lord of the Admiralty. The Ministry ultimately accomplished little, failing either to make peace with France or to accomplish Catholic emancipation (the later attempt resulting in the ministry’s dismissal in March, 1807). It did have one significant achievement, however, in the abolition of the slave trade in 1807.

In the years after the fall of the ministry, Grenville continued in opposition, maintaining his alliance with Lord Grey and the Whigs, criticising the Peninsular War and, with Grey, refusing to join Lord Liverpool’s government in 1812. In the post-war years, Grenville gradually moved back closer to the Tories, but never again returned to the cabinet. His political career was ended by a stroke in 1823. Grenville also served as Chancellor of the University of Oxford from 1810 until his death in 1834.

exterior_350x250_4054 Dropmore House
Dropmore House was built in the 1790s for Lord Grenville. The architects were Samuel Wyatt and Charles Tatham. Grenville knew the spot from rambles during his time at Eton College, and prized its distant views of his old school and of Windsor Castle. On his first day in occupation, he planted two cedar trees. At least another 2,500 trees were planted. By the time Grenville died, his pinetum contained the biggest collection of conifer species in Britain. Part of the post-millennium restoration is to use what survives as the basis for a collection of some 200 species.

Personal Life
Lord Grenville married the Honourable Anne, daughter of Thomas Pitt, 1st Baron Camelford, in 1792. The marriage was childless. He died in January 1834, aged 74, when the barony became extinct. Lady Grenville died in June 1863.

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“London, 1802” by William Wordsworth, a Call to Overthrow the Political Order of the Regency

Posted on September 11, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

“London, 1802” is a sonnet by the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth. In the poem Wordsworth castigates the English people as stagnant and selfish, and eulogizes seventeenth-century poet John Milton.

Composed in 1802, “London, 1802” was published for the first time in Poems, in Two Volumes (1807).

Structure and Synopsis
Wordsworth begins the poem by wishing that Milton were still alive, for “England hath need of thee.” This is because England has stagnated, its people selfish and unhappy, its splendor and power lost. But Milton could change all that. Milton could “raise us up, return to us again; / And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.”

In the six subsequent lines (the sestet) following the first eight lines (the octave), Wordsworth explains why Milton could improve the English condition. Milton’s soul, he explains, was as bright and noble as a star and “dwelt apart” from the crowd, not feeling the urge to conform to norms. Milton’s voice resembled “the sea,” “pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free.” Furthermore, Milton never disdained the ordinary nature of life, but instead “travel[ed] on life’s common way,” remaining happy, pure (cheerful godliness), and humble (taking the “lowliest duties” on himself).

“London, 1802” reveals both Wordsworth’s moralism and his growing conservatism. Wordsworth frequently sought to “communicate natural morality to his readers” through his poetry. In this sonnet, he urges morality and selflessness to his readers, criticizing the English for being stagnant and selfish, for lacking “manners, virtue, [and] freedom.” But he also refers to “inward happiness” as a natural English right, or “dower,” and asks Milton to bestow “power” as well as virtue on the English. These are among Wordsworth’s “few explicitly nationalistic verses–shades, perhaps, of the conservatism that took hold in his old age.”

While it is common, and perhaps correct, to equate nationalism with conservatism in the modern era, it is hard to suggest that nationalism functioned that way in the Romantic context. The kind of nationalism Wordsworth proposed in the poem had something of a revolutionary nature to it. Wordsworth himself implies in a footnote to the poem that it could be read in such a manner, “written immediately after my return from France to London, when I could not but be struck, as here described, with the vanity and parade of our own country…as contrasted with the quiet, and I may say the desolation, that the revolution had produced in France.” The moralism and nationalism of the poem occur simultaneously with and perhaps are the occasion for a call to overthrow the current social and political order, as had recently been done in France. Whether or not Wordsworth wanted the poem to be interpreted in such a way can and is called into question later in his note.Themes include morality, humanity, nature/the natural environment. then tells Milton that his “soul was like a Star,” because he was different even from his contemporaries in terms of the virtues listed above. The speaker tells Milton that his voice was like the sea and the sky, a part of nature and therefore natural: “majestic, free.” The speaker also compliments Milton’s ability to embody “cheerful godliness” even while doing the “lowliest duties.” As stated above the speaker on several instances refers to Milton as a celestial being.

Analysis
“London, 1802” is a sonnet with a rhyme scheme of abbaabbacddece. The poem is written in the second person and addresses the late poet John Milton, who lived from 1608–1674 and is most famous for having written Paradise Lost.

The poem has two main purposes, one of which is to pay homage to Milton by saying that he can save the entirety of England with his nobility and virtue. The other purpose of the poem is to draw attention to what Wordsworth feels are the problems with English society.

According to Wordsworth, England was once a great place of happiness, religion, chivalry, art, and literature, but at the present moment those virtues have been lost. Wordsworth can only describe modern England as a swampland, where people are selfish and must be taught about things like “manners, virtue, freedom, power.”

Notice that Wordsworth compliments Milton by comparing him to things found in nature, such as the stars, the sea, and “the heavens.” For Wordsworth, being likened to nature is the highest compliment possible.

London, 1802
MILTON! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
O raise us up, return to us again,
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power!
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart;
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life’s common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

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“England in 1819” by Percy Bysshe Shelley, a Political Sonnet Following the Peterloo Massacre

Posted on September 10, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

“England in 1819” is a political sonnet by the English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and reflects his liberal ideals. Composed in 1819, it was not published until 1839 in the four-volume The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (London: Edward Moxon) edited by Mary Shelley. Like all sonnets, “England in 1819” has fourteen lines and is written in iambic pentameter; however, its rhyming scheme (a-b-a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, c-c-d-d) differs from that of the traditional English sonnet (a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g).

The sonnet describes a very forlorn reality. The poem passionately attacks England’s, as the poet sees it, decadent, oppressive ruling class. King George III is referred to by “old, mad, blind, despised, and dying.” The “leech-like” nobility (“princes”) metaphorically suck the blood from the people, who are, in the sonnet, oppressed, hungry, and hopeless, their fields untilled. Meanwhile, the army is corrupt and dangerous to liberty, the laws are harsh and useless, religion has lost its morality, and Parliament (the “Senate”) is a relic. In addition, the civil rights of the Catholic minority are non existent “Time’s worst statute unrepealed.” In a startling burst of optimism, the last two lines express the hope that a “glorious Phantom” may spring forth from this decay and “illumine our tempestuous day.”

This poem was written as a response to the brutal Peterloo Massacre in August 1819.

Summary
The state of England in 1819 is described. The king is “old, mad, blind, despised, and dying”. The princes are “the dregs of their dull race”, and flow through public scorn like mud, unable to see, feel for, or know their people, clinging like leeches to their country until they “drop, blind in blood, without a blow.” The English populace are “starved and stabbed” in untilled fields; the army is corrupted by “liberticide and prey”; the laws “tempt and slay”; religion is Christless and Godless, “a book sealed”; and the English Senate is like “Time’s worst statute unrepealed.” Each of these things is like a grave from which “a glorious Phantom” may burst to illuminate “our tempestuous day.”

Form
“England in 1819” is a sonnet, a fourteen-line poem metered in iambic pentameter. Like many of Shelley’s sonnets, it does not fit the rhyming patterns one might expect from a nineteenth-century sonnet; instead, the traditional Petrarchan division between the first eight lines and the final six lines is disregarded, so that certain rhymes appear in both sections: ABABABCDCDCCDD. In fact, the rhyme scheme of this sonnet turns an accepted Petrarchan form upside-down, as does the thematic structure, at least to a certain extent: the first six lines deal with England’s rulers, the king and the princes, and the final eight deal with everyone else. The sonnet’s structure is out of joint, just as the sonnet proclaims England to be.

Analysis
Although an idealistic poet, Shelley was concerned with the real world: He denounced and attacked oppression, tyranny, and the abuse of political power as a passionate advocate for liberty. The result of his political commitment was a series of critical political poems condemning the arrogance of power, including “Ozymandias” and “England in 1819.”

Like William Wordsworth’s “London, 1802,” “England in 1819” lists the flaws in England’s social fabric:The furious, violent metaphors Shelley employs throughout (nobles as leeches in muddy water, the army as a two-edged sword, religion as a sealed book, Parliament as an unjust law) leave no doubt about his feelings on the state of his nation. Then, surprisingly, the final couplet concludes with a note of passionate Shelleyean optimism: from these “graves” a “glorious Phantom” may “burst to illumine our tempestuous day.” What this Phantom might be is not specified in the poem, but it hints simultaneously at the Spirit of the “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” and at the possibility of liberty won through revolution, as it was won in France.

ENGLAND IN 1819
An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,–
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn, mud from a muddy spring,–
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,–
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,–
An army which liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield,–
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless, a book sealed,–
A Senate—Time’s worst statute unrepealed,–
Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst to illumine our tempestuous day.

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Regency Celebrity: Edmund Cartwright, English Clergyman and Inventor of the Power Loom

Posted on September 9, 2013 by Regina Jeffers
A loom from the 1890s with a dobby head. Illustration from the Textile Mercury.

A loom from the 1890s with a dobby head. Illustration from the Textile Mercury.

Edward (Edmund) Cartwright (24 April 1743 – 30 October 1823) was an English clergyman and inventor of the power loom.

Life and Work
He was the brother of Major John Cartwright, a political reformer and radical, and George Cartwright, explorer of Labrador.

Cartwright was taught at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Wakefield, and University College, Oxford, and became a clergyman of the Church of England. Cartwright began his career as a clergyman, becoming, in 1779, rector of Goadby Marwood, Leicestershire; in 1783 he was a prebendary in Lincoln (Lincolnshire) cathedral.

Power Loom
He addressed the problem of mechanical weaving. Mechanical spinning and the factory system were already in place. He designed his first power loom in 1784 and patented it in 1785, but it proved to be valueless. In 1789, he patented another loom which served as the model for later inventors to work upon. For a mechanically driven loom to become a commercial success, either one person would have to attend one machine, or each machine must have a greater productive capacity than one manually controlled. An old man named Zach Dijkhoff assisted him in his work with creating this contraption.

478px-Edmund_Cartwright_2 He added parts to his loom, namely a positive let-off motion, warp and weft stop motions, and sizing the warp while the loom was in action. He commenced to manufacture fabrics in Doncaster using these looms, and discovered many of their shortcomings. He attempted to remedy these by: introducing a crank and eccentric wheels to actuate its batten differentially; by improving its dicking mechanism; by a device for stopping the loom when a shuttle failed to enter a shuttle box; by preventing a shuttle from rebounding when in a box; and by stretching the cloth with temples that acted automatically. His mill was repossessed by creditors in 1793.

In 1792 Dr Cartwright obtained his last patent for weaving machinery; this provided is loom with multiple shuttle boxes for weaving checks and cross stripes. But all his efforts were unavailing; it became apparent that no mechanism, however perfect, could succeed so long as warps continued to be sized while a loom was stationary. His plans for sizing them while a loom was in operation, and before being placed in a loom, failed. These were resolved in 1803, by William Radcliffe, and his assistant Thomas Johnson, by their inventions of the beam warper, and his dressing sizing machine.

In 1790 Robert Grimshaw, of Gorton Manchester, erected a weaving factory at Knott Mill, which he was to fill with 500 of Cartwright’s power looms, but with only 30 in place, the factory was burnt down probably as an act of arson inspired by the fears of hand loom weavers. The prospect of success was not sufficiently promising to induce its re-erection.

In 1809 Cartwright obtained a grant of £10,000 from Parliament for his invention. In May 1821 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Wool Combing Machine
He also patented a wool combing machine in 1789 and a cordelier (machine for making rope) in 1792. He also designed a steam engine that used alcohol instead of water.

Family
He died in Hastings, Sussex and was buried at Battle.

His daughter Elizabeth (1780–1837) married the Reverend John Penrose and wrote books under the pseudonym of Mrs Markham.

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Regency Celebrity: John Cartwright, Parliamentary Reformer

Posted on September 6, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

Cartwrightjohn John Cartwright (17 September 1740 – 23 September 1824) was an English naval officer, Nottinghamshire militia major and prominent campaigner for parliamentary reform. He subsequently became known as the Father of Reform. His younger brother Edmund Cartwright became famous as the inventor of the steam power loom.

Early Life and Naval Career
He was born at Marnham in Nottinghamshire, being the elder brother of Edmund Cartwright, inventor of the power loom and the younger brother of George Cartwright, trader and explorer of Labrador. He was educated at Newark-on-Trent grammar school and Heath Academy in Yorkshire, and at the age of eighteen entered the Royal Navy.

He was present, in his first year of service, at the capture of Cherbourg, and served in the following year in the Battle of Quiberon Bay between Sir Edward Hawke and Admiral Hubert de Brienne. Engaged afterwards under Sir Hugh Palliser and Admiral John Byron on the Newfoundland station, he was appointed to act as chief magistrate of the settlement. He served in the post for five years (1765–1770).

From 1763 to 14 May 1766, Cartwright was commander of HM Cutter Sherborne. His brother George, when at loose ends, went with him on a cruise out of Plymouth to chase smugglers in Sherborne.

Ill-health necessitated Cartwright’s retirement from active service for a time in 1771.

When the disputes with the American colonies began, he believed that the colonists had right on their side, warmly supported their cause and, at the outbreak of the ensuing American War of Independence, refused an appointment as first lieutenant to the Duke of Cumberland. Thus he gave up a path to certain promotion, since he did not wish to fight against the cause which he felt to be just. In 1774 he published his first plea on behalf of the colonists, entitled “American Independence the Glory and Interest of Great Britain.”

Nottinghamshire Militia and Reform
In 1775, when the Nottinghamshire Militia was first raised, he was appointed major, and in this capacity he served for seventeen years. He was at last illegally superseded, because of his political opinions.

In 1776 appeared his first work on reform in parliament, which, with the exception of Earl Stanhope’s pamphlets (1774), appears to have been the earliest publication on the subject. It was entitled, Take your Choice, a second edition appearing under the new title of The Legislative Rights of the Commonalty Vindicated, and advocated annual Parliaments, the secret ballot and manhood suffrage.

The task of his life was thenceforth chiefly the attainment of universal suffrage and annual parliaments. In 1778 he conceived the project of a political association, which took shape in 1780 as the Society for Constitutional Information, including among its members some of the most distinguished men of the day. From this society sprang the more famous London Corresponding Society. Major Cartwright worked unweariedly for the promotion of reform. He was one of the witnesses on the trial of his friends, John Horne Tooke, John Thelwall and Thomas Hardy, in 1794.

He left his large estate in Lincolnshire in 1803 or 1805 to move to Enfield, Middlesex, where he made friends with other leading Radicals including Sir Francis Burdett, 5th Baronet, William Cobbett and Francis Place.

In 1812, he initiated the Hampden Clubs, named after John Hampden, an English Civil War Parliamentary leader, aiming to bring together middle class moderates and lower class radicals in the reform cause. To promote the idea, he toured northwest England later in 1812, in 1813 (getting arrested in Huddersfield) and in 1815. He recruited John Knight who founded the first Hampden Club in Lancashire. In 1818, Knight, John Saxton and James Wroe formed the reformist and popularist newspaper the Manchester Observer. In 1819, the same team formed the Patriotic Union Society, which invited Henry “Orator” Hunt and Major Cartwright to speak at a reformist public rally in Manchester, but the elderly Cartwright was unable to attend what became the Peterloo Massacre. Later in 1819, Cartwright was arrested for speaking at a parliamentary reform meeting in Birmingham, indicted for conspiracy and was condemned to pay a fine of £100.

Cartwright then wrote The English Constitution, which outlined his ideas including government by the people and legal equality which he considered could only be achieved by universal suffrage, the secret ballot and equal electoral districts. He became the main patron of the Radical publisher Thomas Jonathan Wooler, best known for his satirical journal The Black Dwarf, who actively supported Cartwright’s campaigning.

Cartwright had sent a copy of The English Constitution to former President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson wrote to Cartwright in July:

“Your age of eighty-four, and mine of eighty-one years, ensure us a speedy meeting. We may then commune at leisure, and more fully, on the good and evil, which in the course of our long lives, we have both witnessed; and in the mean time, I pray you to accept assurances of my high veneration and esteem for your person and character.”

He died in London on 23 September 1824 and was buried at St Mary’s Church Finchley. He had married in 1780 but had no children. In 1831, a monument from a design by Macdowell was erected to him in Burton Crescent, WC1H, London, where he had lived. Burton Crescent was later renamed Cartwright Gardens in his honour.
The Life and Correspondence of Major Cartwright, edited by his niece F. D. Cartwright, was published in 1826. This and other correspondence is currently being transcribed onto the internet by Brussels-based political analyst Gary Cartwright.

Industry
In 1788, Major Cartwight sold his heavily mortgaged estates at Marnham, buying others at Brothertoft, Lincolnshire. The same year with 18 others, he erected a large mill at East Retford, called the Revolution Mill in celebration of the centenary of the Glorious Revolution. He hoped to weave cloth using the weaving patents of his brother Edmund Cartwright. He also began the mechanical spinning of wool, or rather worsted. This business did not prove to be a success. The mill stood idle within a few years and was advertised to sale in 1798 and 1805.

Legacy
Captain George Vancouver named Cartwright Sound, on the west coast of Graham Island in the Queen Charlotte Islands of British Columbia, Canada, in his honour in relation to his Royal Navy service under Admiral Howe.

Inscription from the Cartwright Gardens statue.

Inscription from the Cartwright Gardens statue.

John Cartwright House built in 1976 on the Mansford Estate in Bethnal Green was named in his honour. The estate was built by Tower Hamlets Council and a number of the blocks were named after social and political reformers. The Estate transferred to Tower Hamlets Community Housing, a local Housing Association in January 2006.

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Regency Happenings: The 1820 Scottish Insurrection

Posted on September 5, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

Stirling Tolbooth and Cross where a plaque commemorates Baird and Hardie

Stirling Tolbooth and Cross where a plaque commemorates Baird and Hardie

The Radical War, also known as the Scottish Insurrection of 1820, was a week of strikes and unrest, a culmination of Radical demands for reform in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, which had become prominent in the early years of the French Revolution, but had then been repressed during the long Napoleonic Wars.

An economic downturn after the wars ended brought increasing unrest. Artisan workers, particularly weavers in Scotland, sought action to reform an uncaring government, gentry fearing revolutionary horrors recruited militia, and the government deployed an apparatus of spies, informers and agents provocateurs to stamp out the movement.

A Committee of Organisation for Forming a Provisional Government put placards around the streets of Glasgow late on Saturday 1 April, calling for an immediate national strike. On Monday 3 April work stopped in a wide area of central Scotland and in a swirl of disorderly events a small group marched towards the Carron Company ironworks to seize weapons, but while stopped at Bonnymuir, they were attacked by Hussars.

Another small group from Strathaven marched to meet a rumoured larger force, but were warned of an ambush and dispersed. Militia taking prisoners to Greenock jail were attacked by local people, and the prisoners released. James Wilson of Strathaven was singled out as a leader of the march there, and at Glasgow was executed by hanging, then decapitated. Of those seized by the British army at Bonnymuir, John Baird and Andrew Hardie were similarly executed at Stirling after making short defiant speeches. Twenty other Radicals were sentenced to penal transportation.

It became evident that government agents had actively fomented the unrest to bring radicals into the open. The insurrection was largely forgotten as attention focused on better publicized Radical events in England. Two years later, enthusiasm for the visit of King George IV to Scotland successfully boosted loyalist sentiment, ushering in a new-found Scottish national identity.

Background
In the 18th century, artisans such as handloom weavers, shoemakers, smiths and wrights worked to commission and so could set their own hours of work, which often left them time to read and debate what they had read with friends. The national Presbyterian Church of Scotland was founded on egalitarian attitudes and rights of the individual to make principled judgements, and so encouraged disputatious habits and preoccupation with “rights” as well as continuing the Scottish education tradition, which achieved more widespread literacy at that time than other countries. In Scotland only 1 in 250 people had the right to vote and these artisans were ready to join the Radical movement in welcoming the American Revolution and the French Revolution, and be influenced by Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man.

The Scottish Friends of the People society held a series of “Conventions” in 1792 and 1793. The government reacted harshly, sentencing successive leaders to penal transportation, and in 1793 Dundee Unitarian minister Thomas Fysshe Palmer was also given 7 years transportation for helping to prepare and distribute reform tracts. Dissent went underground with the United Scotsmen whose activities were curbed with the trial of George Mealmaker in 1798.

Between 1800 and 1808 the earnings of weavers were halved, and in 1812 they petitioned for an increase, which was granted by the magistrates, but the employers refused to pay, and so the weavers called a strike, which lasted for nine weeks with the support of a “National Committee of Scottish Union Societies,” organized in a similar way to the United Scotsmen (“Unions” being area related, not Trade Unions). The authorities were further alarmed and set up spies and informers to forestall any further reformist activity. Between then and 1815 Major John Cartwright made visits to establish radical Hampden Clubs across Scotland.

Post War Unrest
The end of the Napoleonic Wars brought economic depression. In 1816, some 40,000 people attended a meeting on Glasgow Green to demand more representative government and an end to the Corn laws, which kept food prices high. The Industrial Revolution affected handloom weavers in particular, and unrest grew despite attempts by the authorities to employ the workless and open relief centres to relieve hardship. Government agents brought conspiracy trials to court in 1816 and 1817.

The Peterloo massacre of August 1819 sparked protest demonstrations across Britain. In Scotland, a memorial rally in Paisley on 11 September led to a week of rioting, and the cavalry were used to control around 5,000 “Radicals.” Protest meetings were held in Stirling, Airdrie, Renfrewshire, Ayrshire and Fife, mainly in weaving areas. On 13 December the “Radical Laird” Kinloch was arrested for addressing a mass meeting on Magdalen Green in Dundee, but he escaped and fled abroad.

The gentry feared that the kind of revolutionary turmoil that had been seen in France and Ireland could take place in Britain, and there was a great recruiting of volunteer regiments through the Scottish lowlands and Scottish Borders. Walter Scott urged his Borders neighbours to “appeal at this crisis to the good sense and loyalty of the lower orders… All you have to do is sound the men, and mark down those who seem zealous. They will perhaps have to fight with the pitmen and colliers of Northumbria for defence of their firesides, for those literal blackguards are got beyond the management of their own people.”

The “Radical War”
As 1820 began the government, frightened by the “Cato Street Conspiracy” in London, acted to suppress reform agitation and drew on its apparatus of spies and agents provocateurs in Scotland. A 28 man Radical Committee for organizing a Provisional Government elected by delegates of local “unions” elected officers and decided to arrange military training for its supporters, giving some responsibility for the training programme to a Condorrat weaver with army experience, John Baird. On 18 March Mitchell of the Glasgow police notified the Home Secretary that “a meeting of the organising committee of the rabble.. . is due in this vicinity in a few days hence.”

On 21 March the Committee met in a Glasgow tavern. The weaver John King left the meeting early, shortly before a raid in which the Committee was secretly arrested. Mitchell reported on 25 March that those arrested had “confessed their audacious plot to sever the Kingdom of Scotland from that of England and restore the ancient Scottish Parliament… If some plan were conceived by which the disaffected could be lured out of their lairs – being made to think that the day of “liberty” had come – we could catch them abroad and undefended… few know of the apprehension of the leaders. . . so no suspicion would attach itself to the plan at all. Our informants have infiltrated the disaffected’s committees and organisation, and in a few days you shall judge the results.” King, Craig, Turner and Lees would now be repeatedly involved in organiZing agitation.

At a meeting on 22 March, the 15 to 20 people present included the weavers John King and John Craig, the tin-smith Duncan Turner, and “an Englishman” called Lees. John King told them that a rising was imminent and all present should hold themselves in enthusiastic readiness for the call to arms. The next day some of them met on Glasgow Green, then moved on to Rutherglen where Turner revealed plans to establish a Provisional Government, got those present to resolve to “act accordingly,” then gave over a copy of a draft Proclamation to be delivered to a printer. Lees, King and Turner went round encouraging supporters to make pikes for the battles. On Saturday 1 April, Craig and Lees collected the prints, which Lees had paid for the previous day. By the morning of Sunday 2 April, copies of the Proclamation were displayed throughout Glasgow.

Proclamation
The Proclamation, signed “By order of the Committee of Organisation for forming a Provisional Government. Glasgow April 1st. 1820,” included references to the English Magna Carta and the English Bill of Rights.

“Friends and Countrymen! Rouse from that torpid state in which we have sunk for so many years, we are at length compelled from the extremity of our sufferings, and the contempt heaped upon our petitions for redress, to assert our rights at the hazard of our lives.” by “taking up arms for the redress of our common grievances”. “Equality of rights (not of property)… Liberty or Death is our motto, and we have sworn to return home in triumph – or return no more…. we earnestly request all to desist from their labour from and after this day, the first of April [until] in possession of those rights…” It called for a rising “To show the world that we are not that lawless, sanguinary rabble which our oppressors would persuade the higher circles we are but a brave and generous people determined to be free.”

A footnote added: “Britons – God – Justice – the wish of all good men, are with us. Join together and make it one good cause, and the nations of the earth shall hail the day when the Standard of Liberty shall be raised on its native soil.”

Strike and Unrest
On Monday 3 April work stopped, particularly in weaving communities, over a wide area of central Scotland including Stirlingshire, Dunbartonshire, Renfrewshire, Lanarkshire and Ayrshire, with an estimated total of around 60,000 stopping work.
Reports came in that men were carrying out military drill at points round Glasgow, foundries and forges had been raided, and iron files and dyer’s poles taken to make pikes. In Kilbarchan soldiers found men making pikes, in Stewarton around 60 strikers was dispersed, in Balfron around 200 men had assembled for some sort of action. Pikes, gunpowder and weapons called “wasps” (a sort of javelin) and “clegs” (a barbed shuttlecock to throw at horses) were offered for sale.

Rumours spread that England was in arms for the cause of reform and that an army was mustering at Campsie commanded by Marshal MacDonald, a Marshal of France and son of a Jacobite refugee family, to join forces with 50,000 French soldiers at Cathkin Braes under Kinloch, the fugitive “Radical laird” from Dundee.

In Paisley the local reformers’ committee met under command of their drill instructor, but scattered when Paisley was put under curfew.

Government troops were ready in Glasgow, including the Rifle Brigade, the 83rd Regiment of Foot, the 7th and 10th Hussars and Samuel Hunter’s Glasgow Sharpshooters. In the evening 300 radicals briefly skirmished with a party “of cavalry,” but no one came to harm that day.

March on Carron
In Glasgow John Craig led around 30 men to make for the Carron Company ironworks in Falkirk, Stirlingshire, telling them that weapons would be there for the taking, but the group scattered when intercepted by a police patrol. By coincidence a detachment of Hussars was waiting in ambush with the intention of catching men marching off from Glasgow to Carron, but was disappointed. Craig was caught, brought before a magistrate and fined, but the magistrate paid his fine for him.

On the next day, Tuesday 4 April, Duncan Turner assembled around 60 men to march to Carron, while he carried out organising work elsewhere. Half the group dropped out, the rest accepted his assurances that they would pick up supporters along the way. Their leader Andrew Hardie was given a torn half card to be matched with the other half in the possession of a supporter in Condorrat, on the way to Carron. There, John Baird was visited around 11 P.M. by John King, who gave him the other half card.

At around 5 A.M. on 5 April, Hardie arrived with 25 men, soaked through. Baird had expected a small army, but King urged them on, saying he would go on ahead to rally supporters. One of the men named Kean went with him, and Baird and Hardie set off with a total of 30 men. On the way they twice came across travellers, but let them go. The travellers passed the information on to authorities at Kilsyth and Stirling Castle. King arrived again, though Kean was not with him. and told them that he had instructions that he had to go quickly to find supporters at Camelon, while Baird and Hardie were to leave the road and wait at Bonnymuir.

Sixteen Hussars and sixteen Yeomanry troopers had been ordered on 4 April to leave Perth and go to protect Carron. They left the road at Bonnybridge early on 5 April and made straight for the slopes of Bonnymuir. As the newspapers subsequently reported, “On observing this force the radicals cheered and advanced to a wall over which they commenced firing at the military. Some shots were then fired by the soldiers in return, and after some time the cavalry got through an opening in the wall and attacked the party who resisted till overpowered by the troops who succeeded in taking nineteen of them prisoners, who are lodged in Stirling Castle. Four of the radicals were wounded.” The Glasgow Herald sniggered at the small number of radicals encountered, but worried that “the conspiracy appears to be more extensive than almost anyone imagined… radical principles are too widely spread and too deeply rooted to vanish without some explosion and the sooner it takes place the better.”

During 5 April, more regiments arrived in Glasgow, causing considerable excitement. Some signs of resistance being organised were reported and the army stood on the alert well into the night, but no radical attack materialised. In Duntocher, Paisley and Camelon people thought to be drilling or making pikes were arrested.

The March from Strathaven
On the afternoon of 5 April, before news of the Bonnymuir fighting got out, “the Englishman” Lees sent a message asking the radicals of Strathaven to meet up with the “Radical laird” Kinloch’s large force at Cathkin, and next morning a small force of 25 men followed the instructions and left at 7 A.M. to march there. The experienced elderly Radical James Wilson is claimed to have had a banner reading “Scotland Free or a Desart” [sic]. At East Kilbride they were warned of an army ambush, and Wilson, suspecting treachery, returned to Strathaven. The others bypassed the ambush and reached Cathkin, but as there was no sign of the promised army they dispersed. Ten of them were identified and caught, and by nightfall on 7 April they were jailed at Hamilton.

Other Radical disturbances occurred at weaver villages around the central lowlands and the west central Scotland, with less obvious activity in some east coast towns.

Prisoners to Greenock
On Saturday 8 April, prisoners from Paisley were being escorted by the Port Glasgow Militia to Greenock jail when the militia were attacked by local people who fought the them in the streets and from the windows and doorways of their houses. The escort managed to get through and lodge the prisoners in the jail by 5 P.M., but then had to fight their way out again. In reaction to insults and stone throwing they opened fire, killing eight including an 8 year old boy and wounding ten others. The militiamen escaped, then angry Greenockians stormed the jail and freed the prisoners.

Trials and Executions
In various towns a total of 88 men were charged with treason. At both Glasgow and Stirling a special Royal commission Court of Oyer and Terminer was set up to prosecute.

James Wilson was arrested and on 20 July was put on trial at Glasgow charged with four counts of treason The jury found him Not Guilty on three counts, Guilty of “compassing to levy war against the King in order to compel him to change his measures” and recommended mercy, but he was sentenced to death.

Five of his colleagues were found Not Guilty, another was discharged. On 1 August a jury ignored the abrasive judge and refused to convict two weavers.

At Stirling on 4 August the judge advised “To you Andrew Hardie and John Baird I can hold out little or no hope of mercy” since “as you were the leaders, I am afraid that example must be given by you.”

James Wilson was hanged and beheaded on 30 August watched by some 20,000 people, first remarking to the executioner “Did you ever see such a crowd, Thomas?”
On 8 September Hardie and Baird were executed in Stirling, watched by a crowd of 2,000. The Sheriff of Stirling, Ranald MacDonald, required that they make no political speech from the gallows, but agreed that they could speak upon the bible. Baird concluded his brief speech by saying “Although this day we die an ignominious death by unjust laws our blood, which in a very few minutes shall flow on this scaffold, will cry to heaven for vengeance, and may it be the means of our afflicted Countrymen’s speedy redemption.” Hardie then spoke of “our blood [being] shed on this scaffold… for no other sin but seeking the legitimate rights of our ill used and down trodden beloved Countrymen”, then when the Sheriff angrily intervened he concluded by asking those present to “go quietly home and read your Bibles, and remember the fate of Hardie and Baird.” They were hanged and then beheaded.

Thomas McCulloch, John Barr, William Smith, Benjamin Moir, Allan Murchie, Alexander Latimer, Andrew White, David Thomson, James Wright, William Clackson, Thomas Pike, Robert Gray, John Clelland, Alexander Hart, Thomas McFarlane, John Anderson, Andrew Dawson, William Crawford and the 15 year old Alexander Johnstone were in due course transported to the penal colonies in New South Wales or Tasmania. Peter Mackenzie, a Glasgow journalist, campaigned unsuccessfully to have them pardoned, and published a small book: The Spy System, including the exploits of Mr Alex. Richmond, the notorious Government Spy of Sidmouth and Castlereagh.
Eventually, on the 10th August 1835 an absolute pardon was granted.

Outcome
The effect of the crushing of this staged insurrection was to effectively discourage serious Radical unrest in Scotland for some time. Lord Melville, the right hand man in Scotland of Lord Liverpool’s government, saw the suggested Visit of King George IV to Scotland as a political need, to engage the feelings of the common people and weaken the Radical movement. The event, largely organised by Sir Walter Scott, succeeded brilliantly and brought a new-found Scottish national identity creating widespread enthusiasm for the tartan “plaided pageantry” that Sheriff Ranald MacDonald of Stirling was already enthusiastically engaged in as a Clan chieftain at Ulva and member of various “Highland societies.”

At the suggestion of Walter Scott, unemployed weavers from the west of Scotland were put to work on paving a track round Salisbury Crags in Holyrood Park adjoining Arthur’s Seat, Edinburgh. The path is still known as the Radical Road.

The cause of electoral reform continued, and with the Scottish Reform Act 1832 Glasgow was given its own Member of Parliament for the first time. The event was largely overshadowed by English Radical events and forgotten by school history, but in the 20th century the Scottish National Party historian J. Halliday brought the event back into the curriculum. At an anniversary debate in the Scottish Parliament members of the various parties each found lessons for their different causes in the “Radical War.”

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Regency Happenings: The Hampden Clubs, Political Reform Stimuli

Posted on September 4, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

The Hampden Clubs were political campaigning and debating societies formed in England in the early 19th century. They were particularly concentrated in the Midlands and the northern counties, and were closely associated with the popular movements for social and political reform that arose in the years following the end of the Napoleonic wars. They were forced underground, and eventually disbanded, in the face of legislation and pressure from the authorities.

Origins

John Cartwright is usually regarded as the founder of the Hampden Clubs

John Cartwright is usually regarded as the founder of the Hampden Clubs

The original Hampden Club was formed in London in 1812. John Cartwright is generally regarded as the originator and founder, although evidence has been offered that Cartwright’s friend Thomas Northmore actually initiated the clubs. Edward Blount (MP) was another founder member. Cartwright certainly dominated the movement from 1813 onwards. A former naval and militia officer with a long record of political activism, he toured northwest England to promote the idea of a forum for political debate among ordinary people. There had been no similar institutions since the London Corresponding Society, which had disbanded in 1794. The clubs were intended to bring together middle class moderates and lower class radicals in the reform cause, and were named for John Hampden, an English Civil War Parliamentary leader.

In 1813 Cartwright was arrested in Huddersfield while promoting the Clubs. He made a further promotional tour in 1815.

The first Hampden Club outside London was formed in 1816 by William Fitton at Royden. Other clubs in the north-west soon followed; in Middleton the radical weaver-poet Samuel Bamford started one. Other clubs were formed in Oldham, Manchester, Rochdale, Ashton-under-Lyne and Stockport.

Activities
Club members paid a penny per week subscription, and usually met weekly for political discussion and debate. Radical pamphlets were read, and newspaper articles by prominent reformers like William Cobbett were shared. Samuel Bamford describes the activities of club members in positive terms, emphasizing them as a peaceful alternative to riot and destruction of property.

Hampden clubs were now established in many of our large towns, and the villages and districts around them. Cobbett’s books were printed in a cheap form; the labourers read them, and thenceforward became deliberate and systematic in their proceedings. Nor were there wanting men of their own class, to encourage and direct the new converts.

The Sunday Schools of the preceding thirty years had produced many working men of sufficient talent to become readers, writers, and speakers in the village meetings for Parliamentary reform. Some also were found to possess a rude poetic talent, which rendered their effusions popular, and bestowed an additional charm on their assemblages; and by such various means, anxious listeners at first, and then zealous proselytes, were drawn from the cottages of quiet nooks and dingles, to the weekly readings and discussions of the Hampden clubs.

In January 1817 many regional Hampden Clubs and similar political debating societies sent delegates to a large meeting at the Crown & Anchor tavern in Strand, London, well known as a meeting-place of radicals, to discuss proposals for a bill for Parliamentary reform. The assembly had been called by Cartwright and Jones Burdett, brother of Sir Francis Burdett. The wording proposed by the Hampden Clubs’ leadership included votes for all householders, electoral boundary reform and annual elections. However, the moderates were outvoted by those who favoured more radical reforms, and there were angry words from those who felt the Clubs’ plans had been hijacked by others. The final resolutions of the meeting carried no reference to the Hampden Clubs. Reports of the meeting in The Times criticized both the meeting and its outcome, and accused the delegates of attempting to overthrow the Constitution.

Suppression and Dissolution
The clubs were regarded with suspicion by the authorities, which saw them as breeding grounds for the growing radicalism of the times. On 9 February 1817, a secret Parliamentary Committee report concluded that the real object of the Hampden Clubs and similar institutions was to foment “an insurrection, so formidable from numbers, as by dint of physical strength to overpower all resistance.”

The government began to introduce legislation, such as the Seditious Meetings Act 1817, and it became more difficult for political clubs to meet. For example, the Birmingham Hampden Club, founded in September 1816 and boasting 300 regular attendees by the following January, had a moderate ethos and publicly condemned violence after a local riot, but struggled to find venues as publicans were pressured not to permit club meetings on their premises. Private rooms were found, but by April 1817, in an atmosphere of suspicion and with the government spy and agent provocateur Oliver active in the city, regular club meetings were suspended.

In Manchester the movement’s leaders were targeted by the city’s deputy constable, Joseph Nadin, who arrested many of them, including Samuel Bamford, after the unrest of March 1817 and sent them to London in irons, where some spent months in prison before their release without charge. With the Hampden clubs stifled, the Lancashire leadership formed the Patriotic Union Society, and it was this body that called the 1819 public meeting for political reform that became the Peterloo Massacre.

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Georgian Celebrity: Charlotte Lennox, Author of “The Female Quixote”

Posted on September 3, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

Charlotte_Ramsay_Lennox Charlotte Lennox, née Ramsay (c. 1730 – 4 January 1804) was an English author and poet. She is most famous now as the author of The Female Quixote and for her association with Samuel Johnson, Joshua Reynolds, and Samuel Richardson, but she had a long career and wrote poetry, prose, and drama.

Life
Charlotte Lennox was born in Gibraltar. Her father, James Ramsay, was a Scottish captain in the Royal Navy, and her mother was Scottish and Irish. She was baptized Barbara Ramsay. Very little direct evidence for her pre-public life is available, and biographers have extrapolated from her first novel elements that seem semi-autobiographical. Charlotte and her family moved to New York in 1738; where her father was lieutenant-governor – he died in 1742, but she and her mother remained in New York for a few years. At the age of fifteen, she accepted a position as a companion to the widow Mary Luckyn in London, but upon her arrival, she discovered her future employer had apparently become “deranged” following the death of her son. As the position was no longer available, Charlotte then became a companion to Lady Isabella Finch.

Her first volume of poetry was entitled Poems on Several Occasions, dedicated to Lady Isabella in 1747. She was preparing herself for a position at court, but such a future was rendered moot by her marriage to Alexander Lennox, “an indigenous and shiftless Scot.” His only known employment was in the customs office from 1773–1782, and this was reported to be as a benefice of the Duke of Newcastle as a reward for his wife. He also claimed to be the proper heir to the Earl of Lennox in 1768, but the House of Lords rejected his claims on the basis of bastardry, or his “Birth misfortunes” as Charlotte tactfully described them.

After her marriage, Charlotte turned her attention to becoming an actress, but without much success. Horace Walpole described her performance at Richmond in 1748 as “deplorable.” She did though receive a benefit night at the Haymarket Theatre in a production of The Mourning Bride in 1750. That year she also published her most successful poem, The Art of Coquetry in Gentleman’s Magazine. She met Samuel Johnson around this time, and he held her in very high regard. When her first novel, The Life of Harriot Stuart, Written by Herself, appeared, Johnson threw a lavish party for Lennox, with a laurel wreath and an apple pie that contained bay leaf. Johnson thought her superior to his other female literary friends, Elizabeth Carter, Hannah More, and Frances Burney. He ensured that Lennox was introduced to important members of the London literary scene.

The women of Johnson’s circle were not fond of Lennox. Hester Thrale, Elizabeth Carter, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu all faulted her, either for her housekeeping, her unpleasant personality, or her temper. They regarded her specifically as unladylike and incendiary.

However, Samuel Richardson and Samuel Johnson both reviewed and helped out with Lennox’s second and most successful novel, The Female Quixote, or, The Adventures of Arabella, and Henry Fielding praised the novel in his Covent Garden Journal. The Female Quixote was quite popular. It was reprinted and packaged in a series of great novels in 1783, 1799, and 1810. It was translated into German in 1754, French in 1773 and 1801, and Spanish in 1808. The novel formally inverts Don Quixote: as the don mistakes himself for the knightly hero of a Romance, so Arabella mistakes herself for the maiden love of a Romance. While the don thinks it his duty to praise the Platonically pure damsels he meets (such as the farm girl he loves), so Arabella believes it is in her power to kill with a look, and it is the duty of her lovers to suffer ordeals on her behalf.

The Female Quixote was officially anonymous and technically unrecognized until after Lennox’s death. The anonymity was an open secret, though, as her other works were advertised as, by “the author of The Female Quixote“, but no published version of The Female Quixote bore her name during her life. The translator-censor of the Spanish version, Lieutenant Colonel Don Bernardo María de Calzada, appropriated the text, saying “written in English by unknown author and in Spanish by D. Bernardo,” even though de Calzada, who was not fluent in English, only translated to Spanish the previous French translation, which was already censored. In the preface, de Calzada also warns the reader of the questionable quality of the text, as good British texts were only written by “Fyelding” [sic] and Richardson, the two authors with international fame (in contrast to the often mechanical “romances” produced by various names for shops like Edmund Curll’s or the satirical romances appearing under one-off pseudonyms that were not, first and foremost, novels).

Joseph Baretti taught Lennox Italian, and several helped her translate The Greek Theatre of Father Brumoy, the most influential French study of Greek tragedy at mid-18th century. Learning several languages, Charlotte Lennox took an interest in the sources for Shakespeare’s plays. In 1753, she wrote Shakespear Illustrated, which discussed Shakespeare’s sources extensively. She preferred originals to their adaptations, and so her work ended up being critical of Shakespeare. She did not discuss any of the beauties of Shakespeare’s poetry or the power of his personifications, and so Garrick and Johnson both regarded her work as being more of a case of Shakespeare exposed than Shakespeare illustrated.

In 1755 she translated Memoirs of Maximilian de Bethune, Duke of Sully, which sold well.
Her third novel, Henrietta, appeared in 1758 and sold well, but it did not bring her any money. From 1760 to 1761, she wrote for the periodical The Lady’s Museum, which contained material which would eventually comprise her 1762 novel Sophia. David Garrick produced her Old City Manners at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 1775 (an adaptation of Ben Jonson’s Eastward Ho). Finally, in 1790, she published Euphemia, her last novel, with little success, as the public’s interest in novels of romance seemed to have waned.

She had two children who survived infancy, Harriot Holles Lennox (1765–1802/4) and George Lewis Lennox (b. 1771). She was estranged from her husband for many years, and the couple finally separated for good in 1793. Charlotte subsequently lived in “solitary penury” for the rest of her life, entirely reliant on the support of the Literary Fund. She died on 4 January 1804 in London and was buried in an unmarked grave at Broad Court Cemetery.

During the nineteenth century, The Female Quixote remained moderately popular. In the twentieth century, feminist scholars such as Janet Todd, Jane Spencer, and Nancy Armstrong have praised Lennox’s skill and inventiveness.

Works
Poetry
Poems on Several Occasions (1747)
The Art of Coquetry (1750)

Novels
The Life of Harriot Stuart (1751)
The Female Quixote (1752)
Henrietta (1758)
Sophia (1762)
Euphemia (1790)
Hermione (1791)

Plays
The Sister (1762)
Old City Manners (1775)

Posted in British history, Georgian Era, Living in the Regency, real life tales, Regency era, Regency personalities, writing | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Georgian Celebrity: Charlotte Lennox, Author of “The Female Quixote”