ELY CATHEDRAL.
[After J. M. W. Turner, R.A.]
It was not until after Waterloo had been fought and Bonaparte at last imprisoned, like some bottle-imp, at St. Helena, that the full strain of the past years of war began to be felt in its full severity. It is true that for years past the distress had been great, and that to relieve it, and to pay for Imperial needs, the rates and taxes levied on property had in many places risen to forty and even forty-eight shillings in the pound, but when military glory had faded and peace reigned, internal affairs grew more threatening. Trade was bad, harvests were bad, wheat rose to the unexampled figure of one hundred and three shillings a quarter, and any save paper money was scarce. A golden guinea was handled by many with that curiosity with which one regards some rare and strange object. Everywhere was the one-pound note, issued for the purposes of restricting cash payments and restoring credit; but so many banks issuing one-pound notes failed to meet their obligations that this medium of exchange was regarded with a very just suspicion, still echoed in the old song that says—
"I'd rather have a guinea than a one-pound note."
Everyone at this period of national exhaustion was "hard up," but worse off than any were the unfortunate rural folk—the farm-labourers and their like.
The agricultural labourer is now an object of solicitude, especially at election times. There are, in these happy days, always elections; elections to Parliament, elections to parish and other councils, always someone to be elected to something, and as our friend Hodge has oftentimes a vote to give his best friend, his welfare is greatly desired. But at this unhappy time of which we have been speaking, Hodge had no vote and, by consequence, no friends. His wages, when he could get any work, ranged from seven to nine shillings a week, and the quartern loaf cost one shilling and sixpence. Tea was eight shillings a pound, sugar one shilling, and other necessaries at famine prices. How, then, did Hodge live? It is a difficult question to answer. In many cases the parish made him an allowance in augmentation of wages, but it need scarce be added that this extraordinary system did not help him much. Indeed, the odd idea of financially relieving a man in work tended directly to injure him, for it induced the farmers to screw him down by a corresponding number of shillings. This difficulty of answering the question of how Hodge managed to exist was felt by himself, in the words of a doleful ballad then current—
"Eighteen pence for a quartern loaf,
And a poor man works for a shilling:
'Tis not enough to find him bread,
How can they call it living?"
Observe: Hodge did not ask for anything more than to be allowed to live. It is not a great thing to ask. His demand was for his pay to be raised to the equivalent of a stone of flour a day; eleven shillings a week. He desired nothing to put by; only enough to fill the hungry belly. No one paid the least heed to his modest wants. Rather did events grind him and his kind deeper into the dust. Many rustics in those days, when half the land was common fields, kept geese. Some, a little better off, had a cow. Fine pasturage was found on these commons. But towards the end of the eighteenth century, and well on into the nineteenth, there began, and grew to enormous proportions, a movement for enclosing the commons. Most of them are gone now. Very early in this movement Hodge began to feel the pinch, and, when his free grazing was ended, was provided with a grievance the more bitter because entirely new and unusual.
All over the country there were ugly disturbances, and at last the stolid rustics of the Fens began to seethe and ferment. Still no one cared. If Hodge threatened, why, a troop or so of Yeomanry could overawe him, and were generally glad of the opportunity, for those yeomen were drawn from the squirearchy and the farming classes, who regarded him as their natural slave and chattel. To no one occurred the idea of relieving or removing these grievances.
At last the starving peasantry of these districts broke into revolt. The village of Southery seems to have been the origin of the particular disturbance with which we are concerned. One May day the farm-labourers assembled there to the number of some eight hundred, and marched to Downham Market, nearly seven miles distant, calling at the farms on the way and bringing out the men engaged on them. Arrived at Downham, they numbered fifteen hundred; a very turbulent and unruly mob, ready for any mischief. The first to feel their resentment were the millers and the bakers, who had put up the price of flour and bread. Their mills and shops were sacked and the contents flung into the roadway, so that the streets of the little town were ankle-deep in flour, and loaves were kicked about like footballs. The butchers suffered next, and by degrees the whole shopkeeping fraternity. It is not to be supposed that the inns were let alone. Determined men stormed them and brought out the beer in pails. At one inn—the Crown—the local magistrates were holding their weekly sitting, and with some difficulty escaped from an attack made upon them. Their escape enraged the rioters, who redoubled their energies in wrecking the shops, and were still engaged upon this pastime when the magistrates returned, either at the head, or perhaps (counsels of prudence prevailing) in the rear, of a troop of Yeomanry. The Riot Act was read while the air was thick with stones and brickbats, and then the Yeomanry fell upon the crowds and belaboured them with the flat of their swords. The net results of the day were streets of pillaged shops, and ten men and four women arrested by the special constables who had hastily been sworn in. A renewal of the riot was threatened the next morning, and only stopped by the release of these prisoners and an agreement among employers to advance the rate of wages.