The poor rate in Royston was very heavy during the previous twenty years, averaging about six or seven shilling rates in a year. In the old Parish Books are preserved all the rates made, and the months in which they were made, for Royston, Herts., and from these entries it is possible to trace the effect of the scarcity for each year. In 1796 there were ten shilling rates made, in 1797 nine, in 1798 (a more favourable year than the others) eight, after which it went up with bounds. In 1799 the rates rose to eleven, and in 1800 to eleven 1s. rates and three of 2s. each, or 16s. in the pound. In 1801 the demands became so pressing that to have collected the requisite amount in shilling rates would have necessitated the making of a fresh rate almost every fortnight all through the year! The Overseers therefore made out the rates in 2s. at a time, and for that memorable year of scarcity eleven 2s. rates were necessary for the relief of the poor, or a rate of 22s. in the pound! A shilling rate produced about L42 for Royston, Herts., at that time (now it is about L200), and the total amount of rate required for that single year was L944 15s. 2d., or more than three times the average of even the scarce years of the two previous decades! The Overseers for these memorable years were Thomas Wortham and E. K. Fordham for 1800, and Joseph Beldam and John Phillips for 1801.
In some places in Essex the rate was as high as 48s. in the pound for the year 1801, or more than twice the amount of the rent of the property rated!
The highway rates, levied upon the land to make up the tolls sufficient to repair the turnpike road from Royston to Caxton, were in arrear for 1801 and the whole of the next year!
To understand the effect of the misery upon the whole of the people, War had brought Napoleon to the front in a manner which caused many in England to take a gloomy view of the future, and to express the opinion that "the sun of England's glory is set"! While British ships were upholding British heroism in the Mediterranean, the hungry mass of the people at home were paying more attention to the sun in the heavens and the promise of harvest. Happily the season promised well, and in Royston the religious bodies held special meetings in July and August for prayer and thanksgiving for the encouraging signs of a bountiful harvest, which was shortly afterwards gathered. Then to add to the sense of relief their came the joyful tidings "Peace with France," on printed bills pasted on the sides of stage coaches passing through our old town, by which means the glad tidings passed through the country like a gleam of sunlight into many a home, and brought about a sudden and extraordinary reaction from despair to hope! In a very short time corn went down to a comparatively low rate, and the poor rate for Royston, Herts., went down to L355 18s. 3d., or little more than one-third of the previous year!
Though, as we shall see, the shadow of Napoleon was shortly to settle again over even the local life of England with a new terror, yet that short-lived burst of joy, if it did not quite close, gave a brighter turn to a bitter crisis in which the people of this country were pressed down by want and war, and may be said to have subsisted upon barley bread and glory!
The memorable re-action from the scarcity and suffering already described, in the peace rejoicing of 1802, had scarcely died away in our streets before, in 1803, the action of Napoleon aroused suspicion, and our old Volunteers (to be referred to presently) found themselves called upon in earnest, for "the magnanimous First Consul," suddenly changed into the "Corsican Ogre" with a vengeance!
The firmament breaks up. In black eclipse
Light after light goes out. One evil star
Luridly glaring through the smoke of War,
As in the dream of the Apocalypse,
Drags others down!
War broke out and Napoleon formed a great camp at Boulogne for invading England. This aroused a remarkable outburst of patriotism, and led to the enrolment of an army of three hundred thousand Volunteers. We, who sometimes discuss, merely as a theory, the possibility of an invasion of England, can form a very inadequate idea of how terribly real was the Napoleonic bogie to our great-grandfathers! They knew that "Boney" was a character who would stop at nothing in carrying out his designs, and so it came about that the shadow of that collossal stride of the Corsican adventurer, darkened the homes in every town, village, and hamlet in this land, and you cannot even to this day turn over the pages of old parish records, or stir the placid waters of old men's memories, without finding traces of this old ghost which Wellington wrestled with so terribly on the fields of Waterloo!
There was, in Napoleon's work, an over-mastering will to accomplish, at whatever cost, the purpose he set himself, and our great-grand-fathers, with all their contempt for the French, had the sense to recognise something of what Wellington afterwards so well expressed of the man, Napoleon Buonaparte,—"I used to say of him that his presence on the field made a difference of forty thousand men."
Of more interest even than the enrolment of the Volunteers were the measurers taken for local defence and for the protection of the civil population and property—the women and children and livestock. This was taken up as a complete organization, county by county, hundred by hundred, town by town, and village by village. In the month of July, 1803, we find the Deputy-Lieutenants of Cambridgeshire, thirty-four in number, meeting at Cambridge, and adopting an address to the King, expressing determination to support him in the war with France. Sir Edward Nightingale, Bart., of Kneesworth House, presided. It was resolved to adopt the measures indicated for establishing a system of communications throughout each county, and also for rendering the body of the people instrumental for the general defence in case of an invasion. Also that the several hundreds in the county be formed into divisions with a lieutenant over each, to report to, and act in concert with the County Lieutenancy, that the lieutenant for each division appoint an inspector for each hundred, and that the inspector for each hundred appoint a superintendent for each parish. For the division of the county formed by the union of the hundreds of Armingford (Royston district), Longstowe, Wetherby and Thriplow, Hale Wortham, Esq., was the responsible lieutenant.