Regency Celebrity: Gregor MacGregor, Purveyor of Fictional Poyais Land Schemes

Posted on September 25, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

200px-Gregorio_MacGregor Gregor MacGregor (24 December 1786 – 4 December 1845) was a Scottish soldier, adventurer, land speculator, and colonizer who fought in the South American struggle for independence. Upon his return to England in 1820, he claimed to be cacique of Poyais (also known as Principality of Poyais, Territory of Poyais, Republic of Poyais), a fictional Central American country that MacGregor had invented which, with his help, drew investors and eventually colonists.

Early Life
MacGregor was born in the family house of Glengyle in Stirlingshire, Scotland on Christmas Eve 1786 to Daniel MacGregor, a sea captain with the East India Company, and Ann Austin, a doctor’s daughter. Little is known of MacGregor’s early life, but apparently he had at least one sister.

In 1803, at the age of 16, he joined the British Army and served in an infantry regiment, the 57th Foot. By 1804, he had risen to the rank of lieutenant, an unusually rapid progression in the ranks. He married Maria Bowater, an admiral’s daughter, in June 1805, and they set up house in London while MacGregor spent much of his time in Gibraltar, where the 57th Foot was in training.

In July 1809, MacGregor’s regiment was sent to Portugal, as reinforcements for the Duke of Wellington’s second peninsular campaign to drive the French out of Spain. Accounts of MacGregor’s service in this campaign vary, but it is known that for a time he was seconded to the Portuguese army with the rank of major, and that he sold out of the British Army in May 1810, possibly because of disagreements with his superior officers. MacGregor and his wife then went to Edinburgh, where he assumed the title of “Colonel,” but by 1811, they were in London, and MacGregor was styling himself Sir Gregor MacGregor, while claiming falsely to have succeeded to the chieftainship of the clan MacGregor.

Venezuela and New Granada
In December 1811, his wife Maria died. By this time, MacGregor had heard about the independence movements in South America and the Captaincy General of Venezuela in particular. He sold his small Scottish estate and sailed for South America, arriving in Caracas in the spring of 1812. There he met Josefa Antonia Andrea Aristeguieta y Lovera, the daughter of a prominent local family and a cousin of Simon Bolívar. They were married on 10 June 1812. They eventually had three children, Gregorio (b. ca. 1817), Constantino, (b. ca. 1819) and Josefa Anna Gregoria (b. ca. 1821).

Upon his arrival in Caracas, MacGregor talked General Francisco de Miranda, the Commander in Chief of the new Venezuelan Republic’s army, into appointing him a colonel, and almost immediately became involved in a series of skirmishes that resulted in his promotion to brigadier-general. A month or so later, when General Miranda was captured and handed over to the royalist forces by Simon Bolívar, MacGregor and his wife fled to Curaçao on a British brig.

From Curaçao, MacGregor decided to go to New Granada (present-day Colombia) and join the liberation forces of General Antonio Nariño. For Josefa’s safety, he first took her to the British island of Jamaica and then sailed for Cartagena on the northern coast of New Granada. From there he made his way south to Tunja, where General Nariño put him in command of the military district of Socorro, near the Venezuelan border. During the year or so he spent here, he earned what became a lifelong reputation as an unreliable braggart. One local official wrote of him: “I am sick and tired of this bluffer, or Quixote, or the devil knows what. This man can hardly serve us in New Granada without heaping ten thousand embarrassments upon us.”

In 1814, the Spanish royalist forces routed General Nariño’s army and MacGregor took refuge in Cartagena de Indias, where he played a role in organizing the city’s defenses. In August 1815, the Spanish troops of General Pablo Morillo attacked the city and began a siege that lasted until December, when disease and starvation forced the city to surrender. On the night of 5 December, MacGregor helped to organize a mass escape aboard gunboats that blasted their way through the Spanish blockade and sailed for Jamaica.

In Jamaica, MacGregor was treated as a hero, but by the spring of 1816 he had moved on with Josefa to the neighboring island of Haiti, where Simon Bolívar was raising a new army. In April, MacGregor sailed with Bolívar’s fleet as a brigadier-general to Venezuela, landing on the island of Margarita before crossing to Carupano on the mainland. Both Bolívar and MacGregor ran into trouble after their forces split up, and MacGregor’s troops were eventually forced to retreat towards the town of Barcelona, fighting all the way. This difficult, month-long campaign earned MacGregor deserved acclaim and is probably the high point of his military adventures, which were otherwise marred by varying amounts of error, incompetency, and exaggeration on his part.

Green_Cross_of_Florida_FlagGreen Cross Flag of Republic of the Floridas
MacGregor claimed to be commissioned by representatives of the revolting South American countries to liberate Florida from Spanish rule. Financed by American backers, he led an army of only 150 men, including recruits from Charleston and Savannah, some War of 1812 veterans, and 55 musketeers in an assault on Fort San Carlos at Fernandina on Amelia Island. Through spies within the Spanish garrison, MacGregor had learned that the force there consisted of only 55 regulars and 50 militia men. He spread rumors in the town, which eventually reached the ear of the garrison commander that an army of more than 1,000 men was about to attack.

On 29 June 1817, he advanced on the fort, deploying his men in small groups coming from various directions to give the impression of a larger force. The commander, Francisco Morales, struck the Spanish flag and fled. MacGregor raised his flag, the “Green Cross of Florida”, a green cross on a white ground, over the fort and proclaimed the “Republic of the Floridas.”

Now in possession of the town, and seeing the need to make the appearance of a legitimate government, MacGregor quickly formed a committee to draft a constitution, and appointed Ruggles Hubbard, the former high sheriff of New York City, as unofficial civil governor, and Jared Irwin, an adventurer and former Pennsylvania Congressman, as his treasurer. MacGregor then opened a post office, ordered a printing press to publish a newspaper, and issued currency to pay his troops and to settle government debts. Expecting reinforcements for a raid against the Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine, MacGregor intended to subdue all of Spanish East Florida.

His plan was doomed to fail, however, as President James Monroe was in sensitive negotiations with Spain to acquire all of Florida.

Soon MacGregor’s reserves were depleted, and the Republic needed revenue. He commissioned privateers to seize Spanish ships and set up an admiralty court, which levied a customs duty on their sales. They began selling captured prizes and their cargoes, which often included slaves.

When about 28 August fellow conspirator Ruggles Hubbard sailed into the harbor aboard his own brig Morgiana, flying the flag of Buenos Ayres, but without the needed men, guns, and money, MacGregor announced his departure. On 4 September, faced with the threat of a Spanish reprisal, and still lacking money and adequate reinforcements, he abandoned his plans to conquer Florida and departed Fernandina with most of his officers, leaving a small detachment of men at Fort San Carlos to defend the island.

After his withdrawal, these and a force of American irregulars organized by Hubbard and Irwin repelled the Spanish attempt to reassert authority. The French privateer Luis Aury sailed into the port of Fernandina on 17 September 1817. Following negotiations with Hubbard and Irwin, Amelia Island was dubiously annexed to the Republic of Mexico on 21 September 1817, and its flag raised over Fort San Carlos. Aury surrendered the island to U.S. forces on 23 December 1817.

Cacique of Poyais
MacGregor returned to London in 1820, where he announced that he had been created cacique (highest authority or prince) of the Principality of Poyais, an independent nation on the Bay of Honduras. He claimed that native chieftain King George Frederic Augustus I of the Mosquito Shore and Nation had given him the territory of Poyais, 12,500 miles² (32,400 km²) of fertile land with untapped resources, a small number of settlers of British origin, and cooperative natives eager to please. He painted the picture of a country with a civil service, an army and a democratic government, which needed English settlers and investors.

At the time, British merchants were all too eager to enter the South American market that Spain had denied to them. In the wake of wars for South American independence, the new governments of Colombia, Chile, and Peru had issued bonds in the London Royal Exchange to raise money.

London high society welcomed MacGregor’s colourful figure, and he and his Spanish-American wife received many invitations. The Lord Mayor of London Christopher Magnay even organized an official reception in London Guildhall.

MacGregor claimed descent of clan MacGregor and that Rob Roy MacGregor had been his direct ancestor. MacGregor also claimed that one of his ancestors was a rare survivor of the Darien Scheme, a failed Scottish attempt of colonization in Panama in 1690s. In order to compensate for this, he said, he had decided to draw most of the settlers from Scotland. For this purpose, he established offices in Edinburgh and Glasgow. He also enhanced his allure by embellishing his exploits in the Peninsular War in the service of Francisco de Miranda and Simon Bolivar.

MacGregor was also introduced to Major William John Richardson and by the winter of 1821, he had made Richardson legate of Poyais. He moved to Oak Hall in Richardson’s estate in Essex, as befitted his station as a prince.

An office for the Legation of the Territory of Poyais was opened at Dowgate Hill in London. MacGregor threw elaborate banquets in Oak Hall and invited dignitaries, foreign ambassadors, government ministers and senior military officers.

In Edinburgh in 1822, MacGregor began to sell land rights for 3 shillings and 3 pence per acre (a worker’s weekly wage at the time was about 1 shilling). The price steadily rose to 4 shillings. Many people willing to help colonize the new land signed on with their families. By October 23, 1822, MacGregor had secured a £200,000 loan on behalf of the Poyais government, in the form of 2,000 bearer bonds worth £100 each.

That same year, “Sketch of the Mosquito Shore,” including the Territory of Poyais, supposedly written by Captain Thomas Strangeways, was published. It described the Poyais in glowing terms and boasted of the profit one could gain from the country’s ample resources. Poyais was described as a very anglophilic region with existing infrastructure, untapped gold and silver mines, and large amounts of fertile soil ready to be settled. The region was even free of tropical diseases. The book also claimed that British settlers had founded “St. Joseph,” the capital of Poyais, in the 1730s.

Eager Settlers
The Legation of Poyais chartered a ship called the Honduras Packet, and London merchants provisioned the ship with food and ammunition. Its cargo also included a chest full of Poyaisian currency that MacGregor had printed in Scotland. Many of the settlers changed their pounds to Poyais dollars.

On 10 September 1822, the Honduras Packet departed from the Port of London with 70 would-be-settlers, including doctors, lawyers, and bankers who had been promised positions in the Poyais civil service. Some had also purchased officer commissions in the Poyaisian army.

On 22 January 1823 another ship, the Kennersley Castle, similarly left Scotland for Poyais with 200 would-be-settlers and enough provisions for a year. When it arrived in the Bay of Honduras on March 20, it spent two days looking for a port. Eventually the Scottish newcomers encountered the settlers on the Honduras Packet.

The settlers found only an untouched jungle, and a few American hermits who had made their homes there. The capital of “St. Joseph” consisted only of ruins of a previous attempt at settlements abandoned in the previous century. The Honduras Packet was eventually swept away by a storm.

While some of the labourers began to build rudimentary shelter for themselves, the officers and civil servants decided to try to find a way out. Lieutenant-Colonel Hector Hall, would-be-governor of Poyais, left to look for another ship to take them back to Britain. The would-be-settlers began to argue, and the Kennersley Castle sailed away. Tropical diseases also began to take their toll. One settler, having used his life savings to gain passage, committed suicide.

In April, the Mexican Eagle, an official ship from British Honduras with the chief magistrate on board, accidentally found the settlers. Chief Magistrate Bennet told them that there was no such place as Poyais, and agreed to take them to British Honduras. By the time they arrived in British Honduras, the settlers were weakened, and many later died. All told, 180 of the 240 would-be settlers eventually perished during the ordeal.

Edward Codd, Superintendent for Belize, sent a warning to London, sending back any ships of would-be-settlers that were headed for Poyais. Those survivors who did not decide to remain in the Americas departed for London on August 1, 1823. More people died during that journey, and fewer than 50 came back alive to Britain. When they returned, city papers published the whole story.

Astonishingly, some survivors refused to label MacGregor as a culprit. One of them, James Hastie, who had lost two of his children to tropical diseases, published a book, Narrative of a Voyage in the Ship Kennersley Castle from Leith Roads to Poyais, in which he blamed Sir Gregor’s advisers and publicists for spreading false information. A group of survivors signed a declaration of their belief that had Sir Gregor gone with them, things would have turned out differently. Major Richardson sued the papers for libel and defended MacGregor against the charges of fraud. MacGregor, however, had left for Paris in October 1823.

Poyaisian Scheme in France
In France, MacGregor contacted the trading organization “Compagnie de la Nouvelle Neustrie” and commissioned it to solicit more Poyaisian settlers and investors in France.

In March 1825, MacGregor summoned Gustavus Butler Hippisley, an acquaintance from the army, and appointed him a representative of Poyais in Colombia. Hippisley was asked to write about the Poyais affair in France in “Acts of Oppression Committed under the Administration of m. de Villele, Prime minister of Charles X,” from 1825 to 1826. MacGregor told Hippisley that he needed the help of the French government to obtain a formal renunciation of any (in reality nonexistent) claims Spain might have to Poyais and that he had met with French Prime Minister Jean-Baptiste de Villele. MacGregor and la Nouvelle Noustrie already had plans to send French emigrants to Poyais. Hippisley wrote back to London, castigating the journalists who had called MacGregor a “penniless adventurer.”

In August, MacGregor published a new constitution of Poyais; he had changed it into a republic with himself as the head of state. On August 18, 1825, he issued a 300,000 loan with 2.5% interest, through the London bank of Thomas Jenkins & Company. The bond was probably never issued. At the same time, la Nouvelle Noustrie recruited settlers to buy FFr100 worth of shares each.

When French officials noticed that a number of people had obtained passports in order to voyage to a country they had never heard of, they seized the la Nouvelle Noustrie vessel in Le Havre. The would-be-emigrants demanded an investigation; Hippisley was arrested, but MacGregor was nowhere to be found.

Hippisley and MacGregor’s secretary Thomas Irving were held in custody in La Force prison pending an investigation. Lehuby, one of the directors of la Nouvelle Neustrie, fled to Belgium. MacGregor went into hiding until he was apprehended on December 7, 1825. In January 1826, he made a proclamation to Central American states, written in French. The accused were later moved to Bicetre prison.

The trial began on 6 April 1826. MacGregor, Hippisley, Irving and Lehuby (in absentia) were accused of fraud based on the Poyais emigration program. The prosecutor was willing to drop the charges if the men were deported from France. Initially the court agreed, but changed its mind when Belgium agreed to extradite Lehuby.

The new trial began on July 10, 1826, and lasted for four days. MacGregor’s lawyer eloquently put the blame on anybody else but MacGregor. MacGregor was acquitted, and Hippisley and Irving were released. Lehuby was sentenced to 13 months for making false promises.

Lesser Poyais Schemes
In 1826, MacGregor returned to London, where the furor over his affairs had died down. He continued peddling modified, watered-down versions of his old schemes: this time he claimed that natives had elected him as the head of state and became just “Cacigue of the Republic of Poyais” and opened an office at 23 Threadneedle Street, without any diplomatic trappings. In the summer of 1827, he issued a loan worth £800,000 as 20-year bonds with Thomas Jenkins & Company as brokers. However, an anonymous handbill was circulated that warned against investing in “Poyais humbug.” MacGregor had to pass most of the unsold certificates to a consortium of speculators for a small sum.

Other Poyais schemes were equally unsuccessful. In 1828, MacGregor tried to sell Poyaisian land for 5 shillings per acre, but Robert Charles Frederic, the brother of King George Frederic, began to sell those same territories to lumber companies, with certificates that competed with MacGregor’s. When original investors demanded their long-overdue interest, he could only pay with more certificates. Soon other charlatans began to use the same trick – opening rival “Poyaisian offices,” which offered land debentures for sale.

By 1834, MacGregor was living in Scotland and had to issue a new series of land certificates as payment for unredeemed securities. In 1836 he wrote a new constitution for the Poyaisian Republic. The last record of any Poyais scheme is in 1837, when he tried to sell some land certificates.

In 1839, Gregor MacGregor moved to Venezuela where he received Venezuelan citizenship, and a pension as a general who had fought for independence. He died in Caracas on 4 December 1845.

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Regency Celebrity: William Cobbett and The Political Register

Posted on September 24, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

220px-William_Cobbett William Cobbett (9 March 1763 – 18 June 1835) was an English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist, who was born in Farnham, Surrey. He believed that reforming Parliament and abolishing the rotten boroughs would help to end the poverty of farm labourers, and he attacked the borough-mongers, sinecurists and “tax-eaters” relentlessly. He was also against the Corn Laws, a tax on imported grain. Early in his career, he was a loyalist supporter of King and Country: but later he joined and successfully publicised the radical movement, which led to the Reform Bill of 1832, and to his winning the Parliamentary seat of Oldham. Although he was not a Catholic, he became a fiery advocate of Catholic Emancipation in Britain. Through the seeming contradictions in Cobbett’s life, his opposition to authority stayed constant. He wrote many polemics, on subjects from political reform to religion, but is best known for his book from 1830, Rural Rides, which is still in print today.

Early Life and Military Career: 1763–1791
William Cobbett was born in Farnham, Surrey, on 9 March 1763, the third son of George Cobbett (a farmer and publican) and Anne Vincent. He was taught to read and write by his father and first worked as a farm labourer at Farnham Castle. He also worked briefly as a gardener at Kew in the King’s garden.

On 6 May 1783, on an impulse he took the stagecoach to London and spent eight or nine months as a clerk in the employ of a Mr Holland at Gray’s Inn. He joined the 54th (West Norfolk) Regiment of Foot in 1783 and made good use of the soldier’s copious spare time to educate himself, particularly in English grammar. Between 1785 and 1791 Cobbett was stationed with his regiment in New Brunswick, and he sailed from Gravesend to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Cobbett was in Saint John, Fredericton, and elsewhere in the province until September 1791, rising through the ranks to become Sergeant Major, the most senior rank of NCO.

He returned to England with his regiment, landing at Portsmouth 3 November 1791, and obtained discharge from the army on 19 December 1791. In Woolwich in February 1792, he married Anne Reid, whom he had met while stationed at Fort Howe in Saint John. He had courted her by Jenny’s Spring near Fort Howe.

France and the United States: 1792–1800
Cobbett had developed an animosity towards some corrupt officers, and he gathered evidence on the issue while in New Brunswick, but his charges against them were sidetracked. He wrote The Soldier’s Friend (1792) protesting against the low pay and harsh treatment of enlisted men in the British army. Sensing that he was about to be indicted in retribution he fled to France in March 1792 to avoid imprisonment. Cobbett had intended to stay a year to learn the French language but he found the French Revolution in full swing and the French Revolutionary Wars in progress, so he sailed for the United States in September 1792.

He was first at Wilmington, then Philadelphia by the Spring of 1793. Cobbett initially prospered by teaching English to Frenchmen and translating texts from French to English. He became a controversial political writer and pamphleteer, writing from a pro-British stance under the pseudonym Peter Porcupine.

Cobbett also campaigned against the eminent physician and abolitionist Dr. Benjamin Rush, whose advocacy of bleeding during the yellow fever epidemic may have caused many deaths. Rush won a libel lawsuit against Cobbett, who never fully paid the $8,000 judgment, but instead fled to New York and back to England in 1800, via Halifax, Nova Scotia to Falmouth in Cornwall.

Political Register
The government of William Pitt the Younger offered Cobbett the editorship of a government newspaper but he declined as he preferred to remain independent. His newspaper The Porcupine bore the motto “Fear God, Honour the King” first started on 30 October 1800 but it was not a success and he sold his interest in it in 1801.

Less than a month later, however, he started his Political Register, a weekly newspaper that appeared almost every week from January 1802 until 1835, the year of Cobbett’s death. Although initially staunchly anti-Jacobin, by 1804, Cobbett was questioning the policies of the Pitt government, especially the immense national debt and the profligate use of sinecures that Cobbett believed was ruining the country and increasing class antagonism. By 1807 he supported reformers such as Francis Burdett and John Cartwright.

Cobbett opposed attempts in the House of Commons to bring in Bills against boxing and bull-baiting, writing to William Windham on 2 May 1804 that the Bill “goes to the rearing of puritanism into a system.”

Cobbett published the Complete Collection of State Trials in between 1804 and 1812 and amassed accounts of Parliamentary debates from 1066 onwards, but he sold his shares in this to T. C. Hansard in 1812 due to financial difficulties. This unofficial record of Parliamentary proceedings later became officially known as Hansard.

Cobbett intended to stand for Parliament in Honiton in 1806, but was persuaded by Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald to let him stand in his stead. Both men campaigned together but were unsuccessful, for they refused to bribe the voters by ‘buying’ votes; it also encouraged him in his opposition to rotten boroughs and the very urgent need for parliamentary reform.

Prison: 1810–1812
Cobbett was found guilty of treasonous libel on 15 June 1810 after objecting in The Register to the flogging at Ely of local militiamen by Hanoverians. He was sentenced to two years imprisonment in infamous Newgate Prison. While in prison he wrote the pamphlet Paper against Gold, warning of the dangers of paper money, as well as many Essays and Letters. On his release a dinner in London, attended by 600 people, was given in his honour, presided over by Sir Francis Burdett who, like Cobbett, was a strong voice for parliamentary reform.

‘Two-Penny Trash’: 1812–1817
By 1815 the tax on newspapers had reached 4d. per copy. As few people could afford to pay 6d. or 7d. for a daily newspaper, the tax restricted the circulation of most of these journals to people with fairly high incomes. Cobbett was able to sell only just over a thousand copies a week. Nonetheless, he began criticizing William Wilberforce for his support of the Corn laws, as well as his personal wealth, opposition to bull- and bear-baiting, and particularly for his support of “the fat and lazy and laughing and singing negroes.”

The following year Cobbett began publishing the Political Register as a pamphlet. Cobbett now sold the Political Register for only 2d. and it soon had a circulation of 40,000. Critics called it ‘two-penny trash,’ a label Cobbett adopted.

Cobbett’s journal was the main newspaper read by the working class. This made Cobbett a dangerous man, and in 1817 he learned that the government was planning to arrest him for sedition.

United States: 1817–1819
Following the passage of the Power of Imprisonment Bill in 1817, and fearing arrest for his arguably seditious writings, he fled to the United States. On Wednesday 27 March 1817, at Liverpool, he embarked on board the ship Importer, D. Ogden master, bound for New York, accompanied by his two eldest sons, William and John.

For two years, Cobbett lived on a farm in Long Island where he wrote Grammar of the English Language and with the help of William Benbow, a friend in London, continued to publish the Political Register. He also wrote The American Gardener (1821), which was one of the earliest books on horticulture published in the United States.

Cobbett also closely observed drinking habits in the United States. In 1819, he stated “Americans preserve their gravity and quietness and good-humour even in their drink.” He believed it “far better for them to be as noisy and quarrelsome as the English drunkards; for then the odiousness of the vice would be more visible, and the vice itself might become less frequent.”

A plan to return to England with the remains of the British radical pamphleteer and revolutionary Thomas Paine (died 1809) for a proper burial led to the ultimate loss of Paine’s remains. The plan was to remove Paine’s remains from his New Rochelle, New York farm and give Paine a heroic reburial on his native soil, but the bones were still among Cobbett’s effects when he died over 20 years later. There is no confirmed story about what happened to them after that, although down the years various people have claimed to own parts of Paine’s remains such as his skull and right hand.

Cobbett arrived back at Liverpool by ship in November 1819.

England: 1819–1835

Cobbett arrived back in England soon after the Peterloo Massacre. He joined with other Radicals in his attacks on the government and three times during the next couple of years was charged with libel.

In 1820, he stood for Parliament in Coventry, but finished bottom of the poll. That year he also established a plant nursery at Kensington, where he grew many North American trees, such as the black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) and a variety of maize, which he called ‘Cobbett’s corn.’ Cobbett and his son tried a dwarf strain of maize they had found growing in a French cottage garden and found it grew well in England’s shorter summer. To help sell this variety, Corbett published a book titled, A Treatise on Cobbett’s Corn (1828).

Meanwhile, he also wrote the popular book Cottage Economy (1822), which taught the cottager some of the skills necessary to be self-sufficient, such as instructions on how to make bread, brew beer, and keep livestock.

Cobbett was not content to let newspaper stories come to him, he went out like a modern reporter and dug them up, especially the story that he returned to time and time again in the course of his writings, the plight of the rural Englishman. He took to riding around the country on horseback making observations of what was happening in the towns and villages. Rural Rides, a work for which Cobbett is still known today, first appeared in serial form in the Political Register running from 1822 to 1826. It was published in book form in 1830. While writing Rural Rides, Cobbett also published The Woodlands (1825), a book on silviculture that reflected his interest in trees.

While not a Catholic, Cobbett at this time also took up the cause of Catholic Emancipation. Between 1824 and 1826, he published his History of the Protestant Reformation, a broadside against the traditional Protestant historical narrative of the British reformation, stressing the lengthy and often bloody persecutions of Catholics in Britain and Ireland. At this time, Catholics were still forbidden to enter certain professions or to become Members of Parliament. Although the law was no longer enforced, it was officially still a crime to attend Mass or build a Catholic church. Although Wilberforce also worked and spoke against discrimination against Catholics, Cobbett resumed his strident and racist opposition to the noted reformer, particularly after Wilberforce in 1823 published his Appeal in Behalf of the Negro Slaves in the West Indies. Wilberforce, long suffering from ill health, retired the following year.

In 1829, Cobbett published Advice to Young Men in which he heavily criticised An Essay on the Principle of Population published by the Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus. That year, he also published The English Gardener, which he later updated and expanded. This book has been compared with other contemporary garden tomes, such as John Claudius Loudon’s Encyclopædia of Gardening.

Cobbett continued to publish controversial material in the Political Register and in July 1831 was charged with seditious libel after writing a pamphlet entitled Rural War in support of the Captain Swing Riots, which applauded those who were smashing farm machinery and burning haystacks. Cobbett conducted his own defence and he was so successful that the jury failed to convict him.

Cobbett still wanted to be elected to the House of Commons. He was defeated in Preston in 1826 and Manchester in 1832, but after the passing of the 1832 Reform Act, Cobbett was able to win the Parliamentary seat of Oldham. In Parliament, Cobbett concentrated his energies on attacking corruption in government and the 1834 Poor Law. In his later life, however, Macaulay, a fellow MP, remarked that Cobbett’s faculties were impaired by age; indeed that his paranoia had developed to the point of insanity.

From 1831 until his death, he farmed at Normandy, a village in Surrey a few miles from his birthplace at Farnham. As of early 2013, the expanded and modernized farmhouse, Grade II listed, was for sale at a price of £1,975,000. Cobbett died there after a short illness in June 1835 and was buried in the churchyard of St Andrew’s Parish Church, Farnham.

Parliamentary Career
In his lifetime Cobbett stood for Parliament five times, four of which attempts were unsuccessful:
1806 Honiton
1820 Coventry
1826 Preston
1832 Manchester
In 1832 he was successful and elected as Member of Parliament for Oldham.

Legacy
Cobbett is considered to have begun as an inherently conservative journalist who, angered by the corrupt British political establishment, became increasingly radical and sympathetic to anti-government and democratic ideals. He provides an alternative view of rural England in the age of an Industrial Revolution with which he was not in sympathy. Cobbett wished England would return to the rural England of the 1760s to which he was born. Unlike fellow radical Thomas Paine, Cobbett was not an internationalist cosmopolitan and did not support a republican Britain. He boasted that he was not a “citizen of world…. It is quite enough for me to think about what is best for England, Scotland and Ireland.” Possessing a firm national identity, he often criticised rival countries and warned them that they should not “swagger about and be saucy to England. He said his identification with the Church of England was due in part because it “bears the name of my country.” Ian Dyck claimed that Cobbett supported “the eighteenth-century Country Party platform”. Edward Tangye Lean described him as “an archaic English Tory.”

Cobbett has been praised by many thinkers of various political persuasions, such as Matthew Arnold, Karl Marx, G. K. Chesterton, A. J. P. Taylor, Raymond Williams, E. P. Thompson and Michael Foot.

Cobbett’s birthplace, a public house in Farnham named “The Jolly Farmer,” has now been renamed “The William Cobbett.”

The Brooklyn-based history band Piñataland has performed a song about William Cobbett’s quest to rebury Thomas Paine entitled “An American Man.”

A story by Cobbett in 1807 led to the use of red herring to mean a distraction from the important issue.

An equestrian statue of Cobbett is planned for a site in Farnham.

William Cobbett Junior school in Farnham was named in his honour, whose logo is a porcupine.

Cobbett’s sons were trained as solicitors and founded a law firm in Manchester, still called Cobbetts in his honour.

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Regency Happenings: The Swing Riots

Posted on September 23, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

The Swing Riots were a widespread uprising by agricultural workers; it began with the destruction of threshing machines in the Elham Valley area of East Kent in the summer of 1830, and by early December had spread throughout the whole of southern England and East Anglia.

As well as the attacks on the popularly hated, labour-displacing, threshing machines the protesters reinforced their demands with wage and tithe riots and by the destruction of objects of perceived oppression, such as workhouses and tithe barns, and also with the more surreptitious rick-burning, and cattle-maiming. The first threshing machine was destroyed on Saturday night, 28 August 1830, and by the third week of October more than 100 threshing machines had been destroyed in East Kent.

The anger of the rioters was directed at three targets that were seen as the prime source of their misery: the tithe system, the Poor Law guardians, and the rich tenant farmers who had been progressively lowering wages while introducing agricultural machinery. If caught, the protesters faced charges of arson,riot, robbery, machine breaking, and assault. Those convicted faced imprisonment, transportation, and ultimately execution.

The Swing Riots had many immediate causes, but were overwhelmingly the result of the progressive impoverishment and dispossession of the English agricultural workforce over the previous fifty years, leading up to 1830. In Parliament, Lord Carnarvon had said that the English labourer was reduced to a plight more abject than that of any race in Europe, with their employers no longer able to feed and employ them.

The name “Swing Riots” was derived from the name that was often appended to the threatening letters sent to farmers, magistrates, parsons, and others, the fictitious Captain Swing, who was regarded as the mythical figurehead of the movement. The Swing letters were first mentioned by The Times newspaper on 21 October 1830.

Background
Early nineteenth-century England was virtually unique among major nations in having no class of landed smallholding peasantry. Probably one of the main reasons for the Swing Riots were the Enclosure Acts of rural England. Between 1770 and 1830 about 6 million acres (24,000 km2) of common land were enclosed. The common land had been used for centuries by the poor of the countryside to graze their animals and grow their own produce. This land was now divided up among the large local landowners, leaving the landless farmworkers solely dependent upon working for their richer neighbours for a cash wage. Whilst this may have offered a tolerable living during the boom years of the Napoleonic Wars, when labour had been in short supply and corn prices high, the return of peace in 1815 brought with it plummeting grain prices and an oversupply of labour. According to social historians John and Barbara Hammond, enclosure was fatal to three classes: the small farmer, the cottager and the squatter. Before enclosure the cottager was a labourer with land; after enclosure he was a labourer without land.

In the 1780s, workers would be employed at annual hiring fairs (or mops), to serve for the whole year. During this period the worker would receive payment in kind and in cash from his employer, would often work at his side, and would commonly share meals at the employer’s table. As time passed the gulf between farmer and employee widened. Workers were hired on stricter cash-only contracts, which ran for increasing shorter periods. First monthly terms became the norm; later contracts were offered for as little as a week. Between 1750 and 1850 the farm labourer faced the loss of his land, the transformation of his contract and the sharp deterioration of his economic situation; by the time of the 1830 riots, he had retained very little of his former status except the right to parish relief, under the Old Poor Law system.

Historically, the monasteries had taken responsibility for the impotent poor, but after their dissolution in 1536-9, it passed to the parishes. The Act of Settlement in 1662, had confined relief strictly to those who were natives of the parish. The poor law system charged a Parish Rate to landowners and tenants, which was used to provide relief payments to settled residents of the parish who were ill or out of work. These payments were minimal, and at times degrading conditions were required for their receipt. As more and more people became dependent on parish relief, ratepayers rebelled ever more loudly against the costs, and a lower and lower level of relief was offered. Three and a half “one gallon” bread loaves were considered necessary for a man in Berkshire in 1795. However provision had fallen to just two similar-sized loaves being provided in 1817 Wiltshire. The way in which poor law funds were disbursed led to a further reduction in agricultural wages, since farmers would pay their workers as little as possible, knowing that the parish fund would top up wages to a basic subsistence level.

To this mixture was added the burden of the church tithe. Originally this had been the church’s right to a tenth of the parish harvest. However the earlier collection of goods in kind had been replaced by a cash levy that was payable to the Church of England Parson and went to pay his (often considerable) wages.

The cash levy was generally rigorously enforced, whether the resident was a Church member or not, and the sum demanded was often far higher than a poor person could afford. Calls for a large reduction in the tithe payment were prominent among the demands of the rioters.

The final straw was the introduction of horse-powered threshing machines, which could do the work of many men. They spread swiftly among the farming community, threatening the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of farmworkers. Following the terrible harvests of 1828 and 1829, farm labourers faced the approaching winter of 1830 with dread.

Rioting
Starting in the southeastern county of Kent, the Swing Rioters smashed the threshing machines and threatened farmers who had them. The riots spread rapidly through the southern counties of Surrey, Sussex, Middlesex and Hampshire, before spreading north into the Home Counties, the Midlands and East Anglia, moving on as far as Lincolnshire, Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire.

Originally the disturbances were thought to be mainly a southern and East Anglian phenomenon, but subsequent research has revealed just how widespread Swing riots really were, with virtually every county south of the Scottish border involved. In all sixty per cent of the disturbances were concentrated in (Berkshire 165, Hampshire 208, Kent 154, Sussex 145, Wiltshire 208); whereas East Anglia had fewer incidents (Cambridge 17, Norfolk 88, Suffolk 40), while the southwest, the midlands and the north were only marginally affected.

The tactics varied from county to county but typically, threatening letters, often signed by Captain Swing, would be sent to magistrates, parsons, wealthy farmers or Poor Law guardians in the area. The letters would call for a rise in wages, a cut in the tithe payments and for the destruction of threshing machines, otherwise people would take matters into their own hands. If the warnings were not heeded local farmworkers would gather, often in groups of 200 –400, and would threaten the local oligarchs with dire consequences if their demands were not met. Threshing machines would be broken, workhouses and tithe barns would be attacked, and then the rioters would disperse or move on to the next village. The buildings containing the engines that powered the threshing machines were also a target of the rioters and many gin gangs, also known as horse engine houses or wheelhouses, were destroyed, particularly in southeast England.

Other actions included incendiary attacks on farms, barns and hayricks in the dead of night, as it was easier then to avoid detection. Although a lot of the actions of the rioters, such as arson, were conducted in secret at night, meetings with farmers and overseers about the grievances were conducted in daylight.

Despite the prevalence of the slogan “Bread or Blood,” only one person is recorded as having been killed during the riots, and that was one of the rioters by the action of a soldier or farmer. The rioters only intent being to damage property. Similar patterns of disturbances, and their rapid spread across the country, were often blamed on agitators or on “agents” sent from France, where the revolution of July 1830 had broken out a month before the Swing Riots began in Kent.

Despite all of the different tactics used by the agricultural workers during the unrest, their principle aims were simply to attain a minimum living wage and to end rural unemployment.

Aftermath

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl of Grey

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl of Grey

Eventually the farmers agreed to raise wages, and the parsons and some landlords reduced the tithes and rents. But many farmers reneged on the agreements and the unrest increased. Many people advocated political reform as the only solution to the unrest. This included Earl Grey, who speaking in a debate in the House of Lords in November, who suggested the best way to reduce the violence was to introduce reform of the House of Commons. The Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington, replied the existing constitution was so perfect that he could not imagine any possible alternative that would be an improvement. When that was reported, a mob attacked Wellington’s home in London. The unrest had been confined to Kent, but during the following two weeks of November it escalated massively, crossing East and West Sussex into Hampshire, with Swing letters appearing in other nearby counties.

On 15 November 1830 Wellington’s government was defeated in a vote in the House of Commons. Two days later, Earl Grey was asked to form a Whig government. Grey assigned a cabinet committee to produce a plan for Parliamentary reform. Lord Melbourne became Home Secretary in the new government.

Melbourne

Melbourne

During the disturbances of 1830–32, Melbourne acted vigorously and sensitively, and it was for this that his reforming brethren thanked him heartily. Melbourne blamed local magistrates for being too lenient and the government appointed a Special Commission of three judges to try rioters in the counties of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Dorset, Wiltshire and Hampshire.

The landowning class in England felt severely threatened by the riots, and responded with harsh punitive measures. Nearly 2000 protesters were brought to trial in 1830–1831; 252 were sentenced to death (though only 19 were actually hanged), 644 were imprisoned, and 481 were transported to penal colonies in Australia. Not all the rioters were necessarily farm workers, the list of those punished included rural artisans, shoemakers, carpenters, wheelrights, blacksmiths, and cobblers.

William Cobbett

William Cobbett

The authorities had received many requests to prosecute radical politician and writer William Cobbett for the speeches he had made in defense of the rural labourer; however it was for his articles in the Political Register that he was eventually charged with seditious libel. He wrote an article entitled The Rural War that was about the Swing Riots. He blamed those in society who lived off unearned income at the expense of hard-working agricultural labourers; his solution was Parliamentary reform. At his trial in July 1831 at the Guildhall, he subpoenaed six members of the cabinet, including the Prime Minister. Cobbett defended himself by going on the attack. He tried to ask the government ministers awkward questions supporting his case, but they were disallowed by the Lord Chief Justice. However, he was able to discredit the prosecution’s case, and at great embarrassment to the government, he was acquitted.

The ‘Swing’ riots were a major influence on the Whig Government. They added to the strong social, political and agricultural unrest throughout Britain in the 1830s, encouraging a wider demand for political reform, culminating in the introduction of the Reform Act 1832; and also to the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 ending “outdoor relief” in cash or kind, and setting up a chain of workhouses across the country, to which the poor had to go if they wanted help.

Rioting[edit source | editbeta]

Typical ‘Swing’ letter
Starting in the south-eastern county of Kent, the Swing Rioters smashed the threshing machines and threatened farmers who had them.[22] The riots spread rapidly through the southern counties of Surrey, Sussex, Middlesex and Hampshire, before spreading north into the Home Counties, the Midlands and East Anglia.[4] Moving on as far as Lincolnshire, Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire.[4] Originally the disturbances were thought to be mainly a southern and East Anglian phenomenon, but subsequent research has revealed just how widespread Swing riots really were, with virtually every county south of the Scottish border involved.[23] In all sixty per cent of the disturbances were concentrated in (Berkshire 165, Hampshire 208, Kent 154, Sussex 145, Wiltshire 208); whereas East Anglia had fewer incidents (Cambridge 17, Norfolk 88, Suffolk 40), while the south‐west, the midlands and the north were only marginally affected.[24]
The tactics varied from county to county but typically, threatening letters, often signed by Captain Swing, would be sent to magistrates, parsons, wealthy farmers or Poor Law guardians in the area.[25] The letters would call for a rise in wages, a cut in the tithe payments and for the destruction of threshing machines, otherwise people would take matters into their own hands.[25] If the warnings were not heeded local farmworkers would gather, often in groups of 200 – 400, and would threaten the local oligarchs with dire consequences if their demands were not met.[25] Threshing machines would be broken, workhouses and tithe barns would be attacked and then the rioters would disperse or move on to the next village.[25] The buildings containing the engines that powered the threshing machines were also a target of the rioters and many gin gangs, also known as horse engine houses or wheelhouses, were destroyed, particularly in south−east England.[26] Other actions included incendiary attacks on farms, barns and hayricks in the dead of night, as it was easier then to avoid detection.[25] Although a lot of the actions of the rioters, such as arson, were conducted in secret at night, meetings with farmers and overseers about the grievances were conducted in daylight.[1]
Despite the prevalence of the slogan “Bread or Blood”, only one person is recorded as having been killed during the riots, and that was one of the rioters by the action of a soldier or farmer.[1] The rioters only intent being to damage property.[25] Similar patterns of disturbances, and their rapid spread across the country, were often blamed on agitators or on “agents” sent from France, where the revolution of July 1830 had broken out a month before the Swing Riots began in Kent.[27]
Despite all of the different tactics used by the agricultural workers during the unrest, their principle aims were simply to attain a minimum living wage and to end rural unemployment.[25]
Aftermath[edit source | editbeta]

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey
Eventually the farmers agreed to raise wages, and the parsons and some landlords reduced the tithes and rents.[3] But many farmers reneged on the agreements and the unrest increased.[3] Many people advocated political reform as the only solution to the unrest. [3] This included Earl Grey, who speaking in a debate in the House of Lords in November suggested the best way to reduce the violence was to introduce reform of the House of Commons.[28] The Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington, replied the existing constitution was so perfect that he could not imagine any possible alternative that would be an improvement.[29] When that was reported, a mob attacked Wellington’s home in London.[30] The unrest had been confined to Kent, but during the following two weeks of November it escalated massively, crossing East and West Sussex into Hampshire, with Swing letters appearing in other nearby counties.[31]

Lord Melbourne
On 15 November 1830 Wellington’s government was defeated in a vote in the House of Commons. Two days later, Earl Grey was asked to form a Whig government.[30][32] Grey assigned a cabinet committee to produce a plan for parliamentary reform.[32] Lord Melbourne became Home Secretary in the new government.
During the disturbances of 1830–32, Melbourne acted vigorously and sensitively, and it was for this that his reforming brethren thanked him heartily.[32] Melbourne blamed local magistrates for being too lenient and the government appointed a Special Commission of three judges to try rioters in the counties of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Dorset, Wiltshire and Hampshire.[8]
The landowning class in England felt severely threatened by the riots, and responded with harsh punitive measures.[1] Nearly 2000 protesters were brought to trial in 1830–1831;[1] 252 were sentenced to death (though only 19 were actually hanged), 644 were imprisoned, and 481 were transported to penal colonies in Australia.[1][33] Not all the rioters were necessarily farm workers, the list of those punished included rural artisans, shoemakers, carpenters, wheelrights, blacksmiths and cobblers.[1]
The authorities had received many requests to prosecute radical politician and writer William Cobbett for the speeches he had made in defence of the rural labourer; however it was for his articles in the Political Register that he was eventually charged with seditious libel.[4][34]He wrote an article entitled The Rural War that was about the Swing Riots. He blamed those in society who lived off unearned income at the expense of hard-working agricultural labourers; his solution was parliamentary reform.[35][36] At his trial in July 1831 at the Guildhall, he subpoena’d six members of the cabinet, including the prime minister.[4] Cobbett defended himself by going on the attack. He tried to ask the government ministers awkward questions supporting his case, but they were disallowed by the Lord Chief Justice. However, he was able to discredit the prosecution’s case, and at great embarrassment to the government he was acquitted.

The ‘Swing’ riots were a major influence on the Whig Government. They added to the strong social, political and agricultural unrest throughout Britain in the 1830s, encouraging a wider demand for political reform, culminating in the introduction of the Reform Act 1832; and also to the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 ending “outdoor relief” in cash or kind, and setting up a chain of workhouses across the country, to which the poor had to go if they wanted help.

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Regency Happenings: Felling Mining Disasters, 1812, 1813, 1821, and 1847

Posted on September 20, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

The Felling Colliery (also known as Brandling Main) in Britain, suffered four disasters: 1812, 1813, 1821 and 1847. By far the worst of the four was the 1812 disaster, which claimed 92 lives on 25 May 1812. The loss of life in 1812 disaster was one of the motivators for the development of the miners’ safety lamp.

Colliery Description
Felling, Tyne and Wear is now part of Gateshead, but at the time of the disasters was a separate manor in what used to be County Durham.. Mining of the upper seams had continued throughout the 18th century. Following borings starting in 1758, the main pit was opened in 1779. The first seam to be worked was the High Main, which ceased production in 1811. Shortly before the High Main was exhausted, the pit was deepened to reach the Low Main, which came into production in May 1811, just a year before the disaster. The Low Main lies 94 fathoms (560 ft; 172 m) below the surface and is 3 feet (0.91 m) thick. Subsequently two other seams, the Bensham (or Maudlin) and the Hutton were won.

To ensure adequate ventilation two shafts were dug, John Pit and William Pit. John Pit was the main access shaft and was the down-cast shaft where fresh air was drawn into the pit. A steam engine was provided for winding gear, and in 1812 there was a standby horse-whim for when the steam engine was out of use.

William Pit was the up-cast or furnace pit and had a fire burning at its base. The rising hot air drew air though the mine from the down-cast pit. Above each of the two pits were pulleys, those over John Pit were 6 feet (1.8 m) in diameter. The pulleys for the horse-whim were mounted on a crane and kept out of the way, being swung over the pit mouth when required. This arrangement proved fortuitous in the aftermath of the disaster.

From the base of the pits a number of headings were first driven. Between the headings were driven stentings. An excavated area was called a board, broken up by walls. To ensure the air circulated throughout the mine some boards were blocked off with stoppings either of brick or timber. Openings in some of the stoppings allowed the movement of men and materiel. When not being used the openings were closed by traps.

In an era before the invention of the safety lamp, the only practical source of light was a candle. Where explosive gas was suspected, a Spedding mill was used. A steel cylinder was revolved at high speed against a flint and the resulting shower of sparks gave some light. Although safer than candles, the Wallsend colliery explosion of 1785 had shown that mills could cause explosions.

1812 Disaster
At 11:30 on Monday, 25 May 1812 the first explosion occurred. For half a mile around the earth shook and the noise was heard up to four miles away. Large clouds of dust and small coals were thrown up from both William Pit and John Pit. As well as the small particles, the coal baskets and pieces of wood were blown out of the pits and landed nearby. The dust fell like a shower for up to a mile and a half downwind. The pit-heads or shaft-frames carrying the pulleys at both pits were blown off, set on fire and the pulleys broken. At William Pit the up-cast fed to a horizontal flue on the surface which led to a stack. Coal dust was distributed three inches thick within this flue which then burnt to a “light cinder.”

The pulleys for the horse-whim at John Pit were mounted in a crane kept swung away from the shaft. As a result they were undamaged and could be swung over the shaft. Men on the surface applied themselves in place of the horses and brought 33 survivors and two corpses out of the colliery. Three of the survivors subsequently died. 87 men and boys were left below ground.

45 minutes after the initial explosion, at 12:15, a rescue team descended the shaft. Because of the firedamp they used Spedding mills to light their way. It was noted that the sparks fell “like dark drops of blood” due to the foul air. Having attempted two directions and being forced back by difficulty breathing they retreated to the pit bottom. The party ascended, but while two were still below and two were in the shaft a second explosion occurred. Haswell and H. Anderson were the two left below and they hung onto a pit prop whilst the blast lifted them and turned them.

The rescue team all agreed that there was no possibility of the men left below ground being alive. Two explosions, blackdamp (locally called choak-damp [sic]), fire and the lethal afterdamp made any rescue attempt impossible. The suggestion was made that the pit be stopped up to extinguish the fire. However local recollections of three men who had survived for 40 days in a pit near Byker led to shouts of “Murder” and obstruction.

Closure
On the following day, Tuesday, a crowd gathered around John Pit and accusations of cowardice were thrown around. Eventually the leaders of the crowd were won around. The owners offered “no expense should be spared” in executing and scheme of rescue but they refused to offer a reward since “they would be accessary to no man’s death by persuation or a bribe.” William pit was closed over with planks.

On the Wednesday Mr Straker and William Haswell (the viewer and the overman) desended John Pit. The sparks from the Spedding mill were extinguished by the blackdamp and Haswell began staggering within 7 yards (6.4 m) due to the effects of the gas. Straker helped him to the shaft where it was still difficult to breathe even in the current of air. Two further men descended but could not move more than a few yards from the base of the shaft and their clothes had the smell of stinkdamp upon them. Smoke was seen ascending from John Pit, a sure sign of the fire below and so the base of John Pit was sealed with clay and planks laid over the mouth. Two days later William Pit was further sealed with clay.

Reopening and Recovery
The pit was cautiously reopened on 4 July. The issuing gas was collected in bladders and tested. At first it exploded when released near a candle flame but by the 8 July it was diluted enough not to do so. The pits were then opened fully on the seventh and allowed to vent. In the morning of the eighth, Straker, Anderson, Haswell and six others descended William shaft and found the air cool and wholesome.

Work on recovering the victims and securing the mine then started. All work was performed using Spedding mills for light. As the workers moved through the mine all the various stoppings and traps had to be repaired to force the air current to fully ventilate it.

The parish priest for Jarrow and Heworth was the Reverend John Hodgson (1779-1845). As well giving comfort to the bereaved, he was instrumental in persuading them to accept a common, speedy burial. The bodies had lain for seven weeks in the pit while the fires were extinguished and were badly decayed. Dr. Ramsay gave his opinion that if the bodies were returned to their homes for a normal wake and burial “putrid fever” might spread throughout the neighbourhood.

Between 8 July and 19 September the business of recovering the dead and repairing the mine continued. Hodgson details the decayed and putrid state of some of the corpses. The recovery teams placed the bodies in coffins in the mine, there was a fear that the bodies might fall apart.

Identification was a problem. Mothers and widows failed to identify most of the bodies “they were too much mangled and scorched to retain any of their features.” Most were identified by clothes, tobacco-boxes, shoes and other items.

Finally on Sunday 20 September, 117 days after the explosion, the pit was inspected by candle light. The furnace below William Pit was relighted and the whole mine brought back into production. One body has never been found.

Analysis
The cause of the first explosion is not known for certain. The most probable cause was firedamp, there being no evidence of large amounts of coal dust in the air, the other significant risk.
After the first explosion the trap doors used for ventilation and the internal wall in the vicinity of the underground crane were observed to be in a good state by the men who escaped. Indeed, even the lamp at the crane was still burning. When the mine was reopened the area was found to damaged: “the stoppings and trap-doors were blown down, the roof fallen and as great marks of destruction as in any other part of the mine.” The area was near John Pit, the down-cast shaft where fresh air was entering the mine at its greatest velocity. Hodgson realised that this was significant and supposed that “the atmospheric current … intercepted the progress of the first explosion, and prevented it from igniting the fire damp here.”

Hodgson then proceeds to assume that the “choak-damp”, perhaps here thinking of afterdamp rather than blackdamp, pressing upwards from the seat of the explosion forced a pocket of firedamp to where the coal was burning and set off the second explosion. However two paragraphs down he observes that the dust in the barrow-ways was burnt to a cinder. That coal dust raised by an initial explosion could be the cause of a further explosion was only starting to be understood in this period.

Aftermath
The tragedy inspired Hodgson to raise public concern about the hazards of mining. Public interest was fed by a short (16 page) pamphlet written by him and published prior to the second disaster in late 1813. Hodgson wrote for an interested public, not for practical miners, and as such explains mining terms and procedures. His description and analysis of the two explosions was historically significant as one of the first to attempt a scientific analysis of such events.

On the 1 October 1812 the Sunderland Society was set up consisting of clergymen, doctors, owners and mine managers.  One of the doctors was W.R. Clanny (1776 – 1850) who had already produced a first, impractial, safety lamp. Also present was George Stephenson who at that time was enginewright for the collieries at Killingworth. The society aimed for:

greater publicity for accidents and their causes
the scientific study of ventilation
the development of safety lamps.

Stephenson designed a safety lamp, known as the Geordie lamp, with air fed through narrow tubes, down which a flame could not move. It also led Sir Humphry Davy to devise another safety lamp, the Davy lamp, in which the flame was surrounded by iron gauze. The gauze had to have small spaces so that a flame could not pass through, but could admit methane, which then burned harmlessly inside the lamp. The height of the luminous cone above the flame gave a measure of the methane concentration in the atmosphere.

1813 Disaster
On 24 December 1813 at 01:30 the colliery again exploded, this time with the loss of 9 men and 13 boys along with 12 horses. All the dead were in the headways by William Pit (the upcast pit). Those in the boards away from William Pit were saved. The (Newcastle Courant 1813) reported the supposition that “the hydrogen [sic] took fire at the crane lamp, in the south headways.”

The southern boards were crossed by several fissures (dykes) from which periodic discharges of gas came through apertures called blowers. The blowers could make “the coals on the floor dance round their orifices, like gravel in a strong spring.” The discharges were deal with by the strong current of air, strong enough to extinguish candles.

None of the mine was found to be damaged by fire so after retrieval of the bodies and inspection of the mine it was reopened. On the 30 December workmen found fire in part of the waste and as a result the mouths of the shafts were stopped up for a while.

1847 Disaster
On Tuesday 22 June 1847, shortly after 21:00, another explosion occurred at Felling Colliery. Six miners were killed, four outright and two died of their injuries over the following two days. The surgeon employed by the mine owners tried, unsuccessfully, to treat the injured. Two of the dead were killed immediately by a fall of rock from the roof, the other two by afterdamp. As well as the human cost, eighteen horses were killed either by the explosion or by the afterdamp.

One of the survivors, Peter Gibbon, saw from his safety lamp that the air quality had changed. He commented to the man he was working with, George Chapman, “Do ye mind what a current of air there was!” Chapman had not noticed anything, but being at that time in charge of the pit he went off to investigate. Chapman was subsequently rescued, but died the following day. After an hour Gibbon tried to escape but broke his lamp and in the darkness was blocked by a roof fall. He was eventually rescued. That, although significant damage was done, some of the men neither heard nor felt and shock was commented upon in newspaper reports.

The viewer, Mr Foster, stated to the Newcastle Guardian that Davy lamps were employed throughout the colliery and that all the men were given written instructions in their use. The old areas of the colliery released a lot of foul air, but there was “not a better ventilated colliery on the Tyne.” Foster reported that 60,000 cubic feet (1,700 m3) per minute was drawn down the shaft, a fact confirmed at the coroner’s inquest by Mr Foster, the viewer.

The colliery overman, John Greener, told the coroner that he had gone down the pit after the explosion and “found the separation stoppings blown down, and the stables on fire.” He penetrated up to 600 yards (550 m) from the shaft before being overcome by foul air and forced to retreat and go home.

On the Thursday evening, two days later a coroner’s inquest was opened and adjourned until a full inspection could take place. The inquest reopened on the following Wednesday. The principal witness was the viewer, Mr Thomas Forster. He confirmed much that had earlier been reported; the pit was well ventilated and Davy lamps were in use.

The seat of the explosion was found by Mr Foster to be an underground engine used to haul coals to the pit base. The engineman had added fresh coal to the fire and closed the damper before going off shift at 16:00. The damper should have remained slightly open to allow burnt gas from the fire to escape up the chimney. It was supposed that the damper had been closed fully and partial combustion had occurred effectively generating town gas (“acting as a retort”). The gas eventually escaped and the resultant explosion caused major damage to the boiler and flue.

Four viewers from other pits all corroborated Foster’s conclusions. The engineman, George Hope, said that he put on around 3½ pecks of small coals and “left the damper open about an inch and three-quarters I always leave my fire this way.” The coroner’s jury returned a verdict of “Accidental Death.” The jury recommended that a pin was placed in the damper so stop it closing to less than four inches (100 mm).

The Memorial to 1812
A memorial to the 91 victims was placed in St Mary’s Churchyard where most of the coffins were placed in a common grave. The monument has a square base with a square pyramid above. On each of the four faces is a brass plaque:

In Memory of the 91 Persons Killed in Felling Colliery 25 May 1812

PHILLIP ALLAN……. AGED 17.
JACOB ALLAN……………14.
ANDREW ALLAN…………..11.
JOS: ANDERSON………….23.
THO: BAINBRIDGE………..53.
MATT: BAINBRIDGE……….19.
THO: BAINBRIDGE………..17.
GEO: BAINBRIDGE………..10.
THOMAS BEARS…………..48.
GEORGE BELL……………14.
EDWARD BELL……………12.
JOHN BOUTLAND………….46.
WILL: BOUTLAND…………19.
MATT: BROWN……………28.
JOHN BURNITT…………..21.
JAMES COMBY……………28.
JAMES CRAIGS…………..13.
THOMAS CRAGGS………….36.
THOMAS CRAGGS…………..9.
CHRIS: CULLY…………. 20.
GEORGE CULLY…………..14.
WILLIAM DIXON………….35.
WILLIAM DIXON………….10.
JOHN A.DOBSON………….13.
ROBERT DOBSON………….13.
PAUL FLETCHER………….22.
WILL GALLEY……………22.
GREG GALLEY……………10.
MICH GARDINER………….45.
WILL GARDINER………….10.
ROBERT GORDON………….40.
JOSEPH GORDON………….10.
THOMAS GORDON…………..8.
ISAAC GREENER………….65.
ISAAC GREENER………….24.
JOHN GREENER…………..21.
RALPH HALL…………….18.
ROBERT HALL……………15.
RA HARRISON……………39.
ROB HARRISON…………..14.
JOHN HARRISON………….12.
ROB HASWELL……………42.
JOHN HASWELL…………..22.
EDW HASWELL……………20.
BEN HASWELL……………18.
WILL HUNTER……………35.
JOHN HUNTER……………21.
MICH HUNTER……………18.
ROB HUTCHINSON…………11.
WILL JACQUES…………..23.
JOHN JACQUES…………..14.
JAMES KAY……………..18.
GEORGE KAY…………….16.
JOHN KNOX……………..11.
GEO LAWTON…………….14.
ROB C LECK…………….16.
CHRIS MASON……………34.
GEO MITCHESON………….18.
JOHN PEARSON…………..64.
JOHN PEARSON…………..38.
GEO PEARSON……………26.
EDW PEARSON……………14.
ROB PEARSON……………10.
MATT PRINGLE…………..18.
JOS PRINGLE……………16.
GEORGE REAY…………….9.
EDW RICHARDSON…………39.
WILL RICHARDSON………..19.
THO RICHARDSON…………17.
THOMAS RIDLEY………….13.
GEORGE RIDLEY………….11.
THOMAS ROBSON………….18.
GEORGE ROBSON………….15.
WILL SANDERSON…………43.
MATT SANDERSON…………33.
JOHN SURTEES…………..12.
JOHN THOMPSON………….36.
BENJ THOMPSON………….17.
JERE TURNBULL………….43.
JOHN TURNBULL………….27.
NICK URWIN…………….58.
JOHN WILKINSON…………35.
JOHN WILSON……………52.
JOHN WILSON……………30.
JOS WILSON…………….23.
CHAR WILSON……………20.
JOSEPH WOOD……………39.
JOHN WOOD……………..27.
JOSEPH YOUNG…………..30.
THOMAS YOUNG…………..34.

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Regency Celebrity: William Waldegrave, 1st Baron Radstock

Posted on September 19, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

220px-Admiral_William_Waldegrave,_1st_Baron_Radstock_(1753-1825)_by_James_Northcote William Waldegrave, 1st Baron Radstock GCB (9 July 1753 – 20 August 1825) was the Governor of Newfoundland and an Admiral in the Royal Navy.

Waldegrave was the second son of John Waldegrave, 3rd Earl Waldegrave and Elizabeth (née Gower). Joining the navy at age 13 in 1766, Waldegrave rose rapidly through the ranks, receiving his own command, the Zephyr in 1775, and being promoted to Vice-Admiral in 1795. He was the third in command on the British side at the Battle of Cape St. Vincent in February 1797, and was offered a baronetcy for the role he played in the battle. Waldegrave declined the offer (on the grounds that as a son of an earl, he already held a higher station), and was appointed the Governor of Newfoundland, Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, on 16 May 1797.

During Waldegrave’s time as Governor, he was chiefly concerned with military matters, as a French squadron had burned Bay Bulls just a year prior, and Newfoundland was still quite exposed. Another key problem was desertion, as soldiers deserting to Newfoundland were generally sheltered by the island’s inhabitants. A naval mutiny occurred shortly after Waldegrave’s appointment and had to be stopped; Waldegrave also took steps to ensure that soldiers garrisoned in St. John’s did not try anything similar. In military matters, he was often at odds with his commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Skinner.

Waldegrave made several attempts to restrict the power of the merchants on Newfoundland, and also to bring law and order to the island. Although his efforts against the merchants were largely ineffective, Waldegrave was successful in having a chief justice appointed who would reside year round. Waldegrave also undertook various humanitarian projects, especially to help the poor. He established a “Committee for the Relief of the Poor,” and contributed generously to the fund. Between 1797 and 1798, nearly 300 people received assistance from this fund.

Waldegrave finished his term as governor in 1800 and was created an Irish peer as Baron Radstock. In 1802, upon his retirement Waldegrave was promoted to full admiral. In 1815 he was appointed a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath.

Waldegrave was married in 1785 to Cornelia Jacoba van Lennep. They had three sons and six daughters:
**V-Adm. Granville George Waldegrave, 2nd Baron Radstock (1786–1857), married Esther Paget and had issue
**Hon. Emily Susanna Laura Waldegrave (5 November 1787 – 12 April 1870), married Nicholas Westby
**Maria Waldegrave (26 December 1788 – 1791)
**Hon. Isabella Elizabeth Waldegrave (18 August 1792 – 21 October 1866)
**Hon. Harriet Ann Frances Waldegrave (20 October 1793 – 26 July 1880), unmarried
**Capt. Hon. William Waldegrave (7 June 1796 – 29 December 1838), married Amelia Allport
**Hon. Caroline Waldegrave (4 October 1798 – 7 January 1878), married Rev. Carew Anthony St John-Mildmay and had issue
**Hon. Augustus Waldegrave (4 February 1803 – November 1825), killed in a hunting accident near Mexico City
**Elizabeth Frances (24 November 1799 – August 1800)

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Regency Celebrity: Henry Addington, 1st Viscount Sidmouth

Posted on September 17, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

245px-John_Singleton_Copley_-_Henry_Addington,_First_Viscount_SidmouthHenry Addington, 1st Viscount Sidmouth, PC (30 May 1757 – 15 February 1844) was a British statesman, and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1801 to 1804.
Henry Addington was the son of Anthony Addington, Pitt’s physician, and Mary Addington, the daughter of the Rev. Haviland John Hiley, headmaster of Reading School. As a consequence of his father’s position, Addington was a childhood friend of William Pitt the Younger. Addington studied at Winchester and Brasenose College, Oxford, and then studied law at Lincoln’s Inn.

Political Career
He was elected to the House of Commons in 1784 as Member of Parliament (MP) for Devizes, and became Speaker of the House of Commons in 1789. In March 1801, William Pitt the Younger resigned from office, ostensibly over the refusal of King George III to remove some of the existing political restrictions on Roman Catholics in Ireland (Catholic Emancipation), but poor health, failure in war, economic collapse, alarming levels of social unrest due to famine, and irreconcilable divisions within the Cabinet also played a role. Both Pitt and the King insisted that Addington take over as Prime Minister, despite his own objections, and his failed attempts to reconcile the King and Pitt.

Prime Minister
Addington’s period as Prime Minister was most notable for his reforms that doubled the efficiency of the Income tax and for the negotiation of the Treaty of Amiens, in 1802. While the terms of the Treaty were the bare minimum that the British government could accept, Napoleon Bonaparte would not have agreed to any terms more favorable to the British, and the British government had reached a state of financial collapse, owing to war expenditure, the loss of Continental markets for British goods, and two successive failed harvests that had led to widespread famine and social unrest, rendering peace a necessity.

By early 1803 the United Kingdom’s financial and diplomatic positions had recovered sufficiently to allow Addington to declare war on France, when it became clear the French would not allow a settlement for the defenses of Malta that would have been secure enough to fend off a French invasion that appeared imminent. Addington’s management of the war was characterized by the cultivating of better relations with Russia, Austria, and Prussia, that later culminated in the Third Coalition shortly after he left office. Addington also strengthened British defenses against a French invasion through the building of Martello towers on the south coast and the raising of more than 600,000 men at arms.

Loss of Office
Addington was driven from office in May 1804 by an alliance of Pitt, Charles James Fox and William Wyndham Grenville, 1st Baron Grenville, who decided that they wanted Cabinet offices for themselves. Addington’s greatest failing was his inability to manage a parliamentary majority, by cultivating the loyal support of MPs beyond his own circle and the friends of the King. This combined with his mediocre speaking ability, left him vulnerable to Pitt’s mastery of Parliamentary management and his unparalleled oratory skills. Pitt’s Parliamentary assault against Addington in March 1804 led to the slimming of his Parliamentary majority to the point where defeat in the House of Commons was imminent.

Addington remained an important political figure, however, and the next year he was created Viscount Sidmouth. He served in Pitt’s final Cabinet as Lord President of the Council to 1806, and in the Ministry of All the Talents as Lord Privy Seal and again Lord President to 1807.

Home Secretary
He returned to government again as Lord President in March, 1812, and, in June of the same year, became Home Secretary. As Home Secretary, Sidmouth countered revolutionary opposition, being responsible for the temporary suspension of habeas corpus in 1817 and the passage of the Six Acts in 1819. His tenure also saw the Peterloo Massacre of 1819. Sidmouth left office in 1822, succeeded as Home Secretary by Sir Robert Peel, but remained in the Cabinet as Minister without Portfolio for the next two years, fruitlessly opposing British recognition of the South American republics. He remained active in the House of Lords for the next few years, making his final speech in opposition to Catholic Emancipation in 1829 and casting his final vote against the Reform Act 1832.

Foundling Hospital
As Prime Minister, in 1802, Addington accepted an honorary position as vice president for life on the Court of Governors of London’s Foundling Hospital for abandoned babies.

Residences and Land

Addington maintained homes at Up Ottery, Devon and Bulmershe Court, in what is now the Reading suburb of Woodley, but moved to the White Lodge in Richmond Park when he became Prime Minister. However he maintained links with Woodley and the Reading area, as commander of the Woodley Yeomanry Cavalry and High Steward of Reading. He also donated to the town of Reading the four acres (16,000 m²) of land that is today the Royal Berkshire Hospital, and his name is commemorated in the town’s Sidmouth Street and Addington Road as well as in Sidmouth street in Devizes.

Death
Henry Addington died in London on 15 February 1844 at the age of 86, and was buried in the churchyard at St Mary the Virgin Mortlake, Greater London.

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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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