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

Posted on September 10, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Regency Celebrity: John Cartwright, Parliamentary Reformer

Posted on September 6, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Inscription from the Cartwright Gardens statue.

Inscription from the Cartwright Gardens statue.

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

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Regency Happenings: The 1820 Scottish Insurrection

Posted on September 5, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

Stirling Tolbooth and Cross where a plaque commemorates Baird and Hardie

Stirling Tolbooth and Cross where a plaque commemorates Baird and Hardie

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Regency Happenings: The Hampden Clubs, Political Reform Stimuli

Posted on September 4, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

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

Origins

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on September 3, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Thoughts on Self Publishing from Leaders in Romance Market

Posted on August 31, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

This article comes from Publishers Weekly and introduces the reader to views of the self publishing phenomenon from of the best selling authors in the romance market.

At RWA [Romance Writers of America] in Atlanta, one of the hottest author tracts to follow was the Self-Publishing Tract. This group of workshops, geared to authors thinking of publishing on their own, was standing room only. Interest came from authors in all stages of their careers.

This is feedback from several authors (both traditional and Indie published). The tract was developed by #1 NYT bestseller Barbara Freethy and loaded with top speakers.

To read the complete article, please visit http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/beyondherbook/?p=8360

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Regency Celebrity: Captain George William Manby, Author and Inventor

Posted on August 30, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

34493 Captain George William Manby FRS (born November 28, 1765 in Denver, Norfolk; died November 18, 1854 in Great Yarmouth), was an English author and inventor. He designed an apparatus for saving life from shipwrecks and also the first modern form of fire extinguisher.

Life
Manby went to school at Downham Market. Although he claimed to have been a friend there of Horatio Nelson, this is unlikely to be true as Nelson would have left the school (if he ever attended) before Manby started. He volunteered to fight in the American War of Independence, aged 17, but was rejected because of his youth and his small size. Instead, he entered the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich, and then joined the Cambridgeshire Militia, where he gained the rank of captain.

He married in 1793 and inherited his wife’s family’s estates, but left her in 1801 after being shot by her lover and moved to Clifton, Bristol. There, he published several books, including The History and Antiquities of St David’s (1801), Sketches of the History and Natural Beauties of Clifton (1802), and A Guide from Clifton to the Counties of Monmouth, Glamorgan, etc. (1802). In 1803, his pamphlet An Englishman’s Reflexions on the Author of the Present Disturbances, on Napoleon’s plans to invade England, came to the attention of the Secretary of War, Charles Yorke, who was impressed and recommended Manby to be appointed as Barrack-Master at Great Yarmouth.

On 18 February 1807, as a helpless onlooker, he witnessed a Naval ship, the Snipe run aground 60 yards off Great Yarmouth during a storm, with (according to some accounts) a total of 214 people drowned, including French prisoners of war, women, and children. Following this tragedy, Manby experimented with mortars, and so invented the Manby Mortar, later developed into the breeches buoy, that fired a thin rope from shore into the rigging of a ship in distress. A strong rope, attached to the thin one, could be pulled aboard the ship. His successful invention followed an experiment as a youth in 1783, when he shot a mortar carrying a line over Downham church. His invention was officially adopted in 1814, and a series of mortar stations were established around the coast. It was estimated that by the time of his death nearly 1000 persons had been rescued from stranded ships by means of his apparatus.

Manby also built an “unsinkable” ship. The first test indeed proved it to be floating when mostly filled with water; however, the seamen (who disliked Manby) rocked the boat back and forth, so that it eventually turned over. The boatmen depended on the cargo left over from shipwrecks, and may have thought Manby’s mortar a threat to their livelihood.

In 1813 Manby invented the “Extincteur,” the first portable pressurised fire extinguisher. This consisted of a copper vessel of 3 gallons of pearl ash (potassium carbonate) solution contained within compressed air. He also invented a device intended to save people who had fallen through ice.

In 1821, he sailed to Greenland with William Scoresby, for the purpose of testing a new type of harpoon for whaling, based on the same principles as his mortar. However, his device was sabotaged by the whalers. He published his account as Journal of a Voyage to Greenland, containing observations on the flora and fauna of the Arctic regions, as well as the practice of whale hunting.

He was the first to advocate a national fire brigade, and is considered by some to be a true founder of the RNLI. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1831 in recognition of his many accomplishments.

In later life Manby became obsessed with Nelson, turning his house into a Nelson museum filled with memorabilia and living in the basement.

Manby also became one of the godfathers of Augustus Onslow Manby Gibbes (1828–1897), the youngest son of the Collector of Customs for Great Yarmouth from 1827 to 1833, Colonel John George Nathaniel Gibbes (1787-1873).

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Regency Justice: The Pillory

Posted on August 29, 2013 by Regina Jeffers
1808 pillory at Charing Cross, London

1808 pillory at Charing Cross, London

The pillory was a device made of a wooden or metal framework erected on a post, with holes for securing the head and hands, formerly used for punishment by public humiliation and often further physical abuse, sometimes lethal. The pillory is related to the stocks.

The word is documented in English since 1274 (attested in Anglo-Latin from c. 1189), and stems from Old French pellori (1168; modern French pilori, see below), itself from medieval Latin pilloria, of uncertain origin, perhaps a diminutive of Latin pila “pillar, stone barrier.”

Description
Rather like the lesser punishment called the stocks, the pillory consisted of hinged wooden boards forming holes through which the head and/or various limbs were inserted; then the boards were locked together to secure the captive. Pillories were set up to hold petty criminals in marketplaces, crossroads, and other public places. They were often placed on platforms to increase public visibility of the offender. Often a placard detailing the crime was placed nearby; these punishments generally lasted only a few hours.

images-1 In being forced to bend forward and stick their head and hands out in front, offenders in the pillory would have been extremely uncomfortable during their punishment. However, the main purpose in putting criminals in the pillory was to publicly humiliate them. On discovering the pillory was occupied, people would excitedly gather in the marketplace to taunt, tease, and laugh at the offender on display.

Those who gathered to watch the punishment typically wanted to make the offender’s experience as unpleasant as possible. In addition to being jeered and mocked, those in the pillory might be pelted with rotten food, mud, offal, dead animals, and animal excrement. As a result, criminals were often very dirty by the end of their punishment, their faces and hair begrimed with the smelly refuse with which they had been pelted. Sometimes people were killed or maimed in the pillory because crowds could get too violent and pelt the offender with stones, bricks and other dangerous objects. However, when Daniel Defoe was sentenced to the pillory in 1703 for Seditious libel, he was regarded as a hero by the crowd and was pelted with flowers.

images-1 The criminal could also be sentenced to further punishments while in the pillory: humiliation by shaving off some or all hair or regular corporal punishment(s), notably flagellation (the pillory serving as the “whipping post”) or even permanent mutilation such as branding or having an ear cut off (cropping), as in the case of John Bastwick.

Uses
After 1816, use of the pillory was restricted in England to punishment for perjury or subornation. The pillory was formally abolished as a form of punishment in England and Wales in 1837, but the stocks remained in use, though extremely infrequently, until 1872. The last person to be pilloried in England was Peter James Bossy, who was convicted of “wilful and corrupt perjury” in 1830. He was offered the choice of seven years’ penal transportation or one hour in the pillory, and chose the latter.

In France, time in the “pilori” was usually limited to two hours. It was replaced in 1789 by “exposition,” and abolished in 1832. Two types of devices were used:

The poteau (another French term) was a simple post, often with a board around only the neck, and was synonymous with the mode of punishment. This was the same as the schandpaal (“shamepole”) in Dutch. The carcan, an iron ring around the neck to tie a prisoner to such a post, was the name of a similar punishment that was abolished in 1832. A criminal convicted to serve time in a prison or galleys would, prior to his incarceration, be attached for two to six hours (depending on whether he was convicted to prison or the galleys) to the carcan, with his name, crime and sentence written on a board over his head.

A permanent small tower, the upper floor of which had a ring made of wood or iron with holes for the victim’s head and arms, which was often on a turntable to expose the condemned to all parts of the crowd.

Like other permanent apparatus for physical punishment, the pillory was often placed prominently and constructed more elaborately than necessary. It served as a symbol of the power of the judicial authorities, and its continual presence was seen as a deterrent, like permanent gallows for authorities endowed with high justice.

In Portugal, it is called Pelourinho, and there are monuments of great importance because they are known since the Roman times. Usually, they are located on the main square of the town, and/or in front of a major church or a palace. They are made of stone with a column and the top carved. Pelourinhos are considered major local monuments, several clearly bearing the coat of arms of a king or queen. The same is true of its former colonies, notably in Brazil (in its former capital, Salvador, the whole old quarter is known as Pelourinho) and Africa (e.g. Cape Verde’s old capital, Cidade Velha), always as symbols of royal power.

In Spain it was called picota.

The pillory was also in common use in other western countries and colonies, and similar devices were used in other, non-Western cultures. According to one source, the pillory was abolished as a form of punishment in the United States in 1839, but this cannot be entirely true because it was clearly in use in Delaware as recently as 1901. Punishment by whipping-post remained on the books in Delaware until 1972, when it became the last state to abolish it.

Similar Humiliation Devices
There was a variant (rather of the stocks type), called a barrel pillory, or Spanish mantle, used to punish drunks, which is reported in England and among its troops. It fitted over the entire body, with the head sticking out from a hole in the top. The criminal is put in either an enclosed barrel, forcing him to kneel in his own filth, or an open barrel, also known as “barrel shirt” or “drunkards collar” after the punishable crime, leaving him to roam about town or military camp and be ridiculed and scorned.

Although a pillory, by its physical nature, was a perfect choice to double as a whipping post to tie a criminal down for public flagellation (as used to be the case in many German sentences to staupenschlag), the two as such are separate punishments: the pillory is a sentence to public humiliation, whipping an essentially painful corporal punishment that could be administered anywhere, (semi-)publicly or not, often in prison; if a pole or more elaborate construction is erected, temporary or permanent, often on a scaffolding, for lashings, as in a few southern US prisons until the 1960s, the correct term is whipping post—however, sometimes a construction combines the two.

When permanently present in sight of prisoners, it was thought to act as a deterrent against bad behaviour, especially when each prisoner had been subjected to a “welcome beating” on arrival, as in 18th-century Waldheim in Saxony (12, 18 or 24 whip lashes on the bare posterior tied to a pole in the castle courtyard, or by birch rod over the “bock,” a bench in the corner).

Still a different penal use of such constructions is to tie the criminal down, possibly after a beating, to expose him for a long time to the elements, usually without food and drink, even to the point of starvation.

This information comes from Wikipedia.

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Regency Celebrity: William Smith, Abolitionist (and Florence Nightingale’s Grandfather)

Posted on August 28, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

William Smith (1756 – 1835) was a leading independent British politician, sitting as Member of Parliament (MP) for more than one constituency. He was an English Dissenter and was instrumental in bringing political rights to that religious minority. He was a friend and close associate of William Wilberforce and a member of the Clapham Sect of social reformers, and was in the forefront of many of their campaigns for social justice, prison reform, and philanthropic endeavour, most notably the abolition of slavery. He was the maternal grandfather of pioneer nurse and statistician Florence Nightingale.

Early Life
William Smith was born on 22 September 1756 at Clapham (then a village to the south of London), the son of Samuel Smith. Brought up by parents who worshipped at an Independent chapel, he was educated at the dissenting academy at Daventry until 1772, where he began to come under the influence of Unitarians. He went into the family grocery business, and by 1777 had become a partner. Smith had a long career as a social and political reformer, joining the Society for Constitutional Information in 1782.

On 12 September 1781, he married Frances Coape (1758 – 1840), daughter of John and Hannah Coape, both Dissenters. Their daughter, Frances Smith, married William Nightingale and was the mother of Florence Nightingale. According to Cambridge University Library records, William and Frances had four other daughters: Joanna Maria (1791–1884), Julia, Anne and Patty. According to the Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, they also had five sons. One of them was Benjamin Smith, the Whig politician who fathered Barbara Bodichon, founder of Girton College, and the explorer Benjamin Leigh Smith.
The Smiths continued to live near the family business and moved into Eagle House on Clapham Common.

Election as M.P.
William Smith was elected in 1784 as Member of Parliament for Sudbury in Suffolk. He was active in his support for the Whigs while in opposition. In 1790, he lost his seat at Sudbury, and in the following January, he was elected as M.P. for Camelford. In 1796, he was once again returned for Sudbury, but in 1802 accepted the invitation of radicals to stand for Norwich, although he was defeated in the election of 1806, which was fought on a local issue. The Whig party were, however, elected and formed the next government under Lord Grenville. Smith was returned again in 1807 and 1812 and became a popular and outspoken radical Member of Parliament for Norwich, which was known for being a gathering place for dissenters and radicals of all kinds.

Unitarianism
William Smith held strong dissenting Christian convictions – he was a Unitarian, and was thus prevented from attaining the Great Offices of State. (The doctrine of Unitarians was to deny the truth of the Trinity, a central tenet of the Church of England.) [See yesterday’s post on the Doctrine of the Trinity Act for more details on the unitarians.] He nevertheless played a leading role in most of the great contemporary Parliamentary issues, including the Dissenters’ demands for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts (for the first time since the 1730s).

Although the campaigners were unsuccessful in 1787, they tried again in 1789. When Charles Fox introduced a bill for the relief of Nontrinitarianism in May 1792, Smith supported the Unitarian Society, publicly declaring his commitment to the Unitarian cause. The same year he became one of the founding members of the Friends of the People Society. In 1813, Smith challenged the established church, and was responsible for championing the Doctrine of the Trinity Act 1813, known as ‘Mr William Smith’s Bill,’ which, for the first time, made it legal to practice Unitarianism. He was a member of the Essex Street Chapel.

Abolitionism
In June 1787, Smith was one of the first to campaign for the abolition of the slave trade, becoming a vocal advocate for the cause. In 1790, he supported William Wilberforce in the slave trade debate in April. While he had been out of Parliament, he had given his support to Abolitionism by writing a pamphlet entitled A Letter to William Wilberforce (1807), in which he cogently and convincingly summarized the abolitionists’ arguments.

Once the trade had been halted, he turned his attention to freeing those who were already slaves. In 1823, with Zachary Macaulay, he helped found the London Society for the Abolition of Slavery in our Colonies, thereby launching the next phase of the campaign to eradicate slavery.

French Revolution
In the beginning, at least, William Smith was sympathetic to the revolutionary movement in France. He visited Paris in 1790, where he attended the 14 July celebrations, and later recorded his reactions to the momentous events he witnessed. In April 1791, he publicly supported the aims and principles of the newly formed Unitarian Society, including support for the recently won liberty of the French. Smith was swiftly gaining a reputation as a radical, even a Jacobin. Because he had business contacts and friends in Paris, he was more than once asked to act as a go-between for the government. In 1792, he arranged several meetings between William Pitt and Maret, Napoleon’s foreign minister, in a desperate attempt to avoid war.

Later Life
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1806 as “a Gentleman well versed in various branches of Natural Knowledge.”

Smith’s final major contribution to British politics was to finally successfully see through Parliament the repeal of the Test Acts in 1828. He died on 31 May 1835 in London.

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