The headquarters of Oliver, the spy, were at the turbulent and disaffected town of Nottingham, whence he travelled here and there into the surrounding districts, posing as a leader of London malcontents, and making inflammatory speeches. At the “Blackmoor’s Head” and the “Three Salmons” in Nottingham, he addressed the sullen working-men, and spoke of a “provisional Government” being formed, and of 70,000 men in London, ready to rise. Monday, June 9th, 1817, was fixed by him and his dupes in Derbyshire for a march upon Nottingham, where he declared they would be met by numerous hands of insurgents from the south, and together would seize the Castle. The soldiers, he declared, were with them, to a man.
JEREMIAH BRANDRETH
Chief among the ardent spirits ready to fall into the snare set by Oliver was Jeremiah Brandreth, a young man of about twenty-five years of age, of a dark, bold, and determined character; the very picture, in appearance and in fiery energy, of a popular leader. His parentage and place of birth are uncertain. Under the leadership of Brandreth, called by his followers “the Nottingham Captain,” and afterwards described as “otherwise John Coke,” a large number of men (according to one account five hundred) assembled, in the words of the subsequent indictment, “with force and arms,” “a great multitude of false traitors,” in the parish of South Wingfield. Among them were agricultural labourers, weavers, and quarrymen of Wingfield, Pentridge, and neighbouring parishes, styling themselves “the Regenerators.” Between June 9th and 15th they hovered between these villages, armed with hedge-stakes and rude pikes, calling at houses and farmsteads to seize any firearms that could be found, and endeavouring to enlist men. Brandreth became possessed of a pair of pistols, which he struck in a belt formed of an apron twisted round his waist. With one of these pistols he shot dead a farm servant named Robert Walters, during an altercation at Pentridge. Meanwhile, hearing no tidings of the supposed insurgents who were to meet them, the undisciplined band grew nervous and disheartened, and their numbers were rapidly thinned by desertions. At length, when they entered the county of Nottingham at Eastwood, there were but forty left. In the interval, the magistrates and the police, probably informed by Oliver, discovered that something of an unusual nature was afoot, and the 95th Regiment of Foot, the Yeomanry, and the 15th Hussars, all ready to hand, were warned to hold themselves prepared for eventualities. By the 15th of June these tremendous preparations were seen to be too ridiculously imposing for the purpose of dealing with a mere dwindling mob; and a mere party of eighteen Hussars was despatched to capture them. Brandreth and his men, standing despondent upon a hill at Eastwood, saw them cantering along, and thought them to be some of the long-expected revolutionaries. They were soon undeceived, and then fled in panic, throwing away their weapons, such as they were. The Hussars captured some thirty of them, between Kimberley and Longley Mill, and lodged them in Nottingham Gaol. Brandreth himself escaped, and lay in hiding for awhile, but was betrayed by “a friend,” for sake of the £50 reward offered.
STAGE-COACH TRAVELLING, 1828 (DERBY AND SHEFFIELD).
[After J. Pollard.
END OF THE TRAITORS
The chief figures in this affair were, to the number of twenty-three, arraigned before a special Assize held at Derby on October 15th, with the result that Brandreth, William Turner, and Isaac Ludlam, senior, were condemned to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. Eleven others were “pardoned,” as the quaint phrase ran, “upon condition of being transported for life”; three were similarly “pardoned” by being awarded fourteen years’ transportation; while one had two years’, two a term of one year, and three a mere six months’.
The three principal offenders were executed at Nuns Green, on November 7th, and were hanged, having merely their heads cut off afterwards; the Prince Regent “graciously remitting the rest of their sentence.” How kind!
The unfortunate men took affecting leave of one another, anticipating being presently in heaven. The hangman, duly masked—he was said to be one of the Denby colliers—then performed his office, and afterwards cut off the heads: making so ill a job over Brandreth that his assistant was fain to complete the work with knives. Thereupon, the executioner, in the gory old formula, held up the head before the huge assembled crowd, and, turning right and left, exclaimed, “Behold the head of the traitor, Jeremiah Brandreth!”