With the return of Charles II. in the early years of the Commonwealth, and during the brief campaign succeeding his invasion of England to assert his kingship, which ended so disastrously on “Cromwell’s day,” September 3, 1651, at the battle of Worcester, Warwickshire once more knew the presence of troops within its peaceful confines, and the hurrying to and fro along its lanes and by–ways of fugitive Royalists and armed pursuers.

After the battle Charles, whilst escaping in disguise, in company with Miss Jane Lane, fled into Warwickshire, narrowly escaping capture by some of the Lord Protector’s men near Bearley Cross. It was in the kitchen of a house at Long Marston that the royal fugitive, to render his disguise more effective, took his turn at the kitchen spit! And Packington Old Hall also sheltered him and his companion during their flight.

Warwickshire played no very prominent part in the history of the half century immediately succeeding the Restoration, and although the intervening years between the latter and the Napoleonic Wars saw many changes, the life of the county was on the whole placid and uneventful. Situated far inland, the wars of the closing years of the eighteenth and early years of the nineteenth century made little impression on a county then so agricultural in its interests and pursuits.

During the first quarter of the nineteenth century Warwick grew little, though remaining the county town; and even the anciently renowned city of Coventry had but an uneventful history, and progress chiefly remarkable for its development of the ribbon industry.

Birmingham was as yet almost unthought of as a great industrial centre of population.

The history of Warwickshire during the middle and latter years of the nineteenth century is chiefly industrial, although the period which has seen the rise of Birmingham has not been entirely without an underlying element of romance. The “hardware town” had from early times, as we have already pointed out, attracted many artisans, skilled workmen, and ingenious inventors to itself by reason of its freedom from corporate restrictions. And at the end of the eighteenth century it had commenced to grow and expand, not, of course, at first with the rapidity that was later on to mark its advance; but, nevertheless, with an expansion which was notable and also marked in the character of its industries. The gun and sword trades, which had existed at the time of the Civil War, grew steadily; and to these were added others connected with iron, steel, and brass, and in the days of Edmund Burke the rise of the jewellery trade, and that of other ornaments, had made it what he described as “the toy shop of Europe.”

Indeed, the growth and progress of Birmingham has shed upon Warwickshire almost all the lustre which it has enjoyed for more than a century, and since the passing away of the more stirring days of internecine strife. As was but natural the town, now become a centre of a vast unrepresented population, took an active and prominent part in the agitation which preceded the passing of the great Reform Bill of 1832; and its famous public meetings in support of that measure not only may be said to have represented the county as well as Birmingham itself, but also the Midlands generally.

Defeated in 1831, the measure was reintroduced in the following year, and was read a third time on the 19th of March, and on the 26th of the same month was sent up to the Lords. It passed its second reading, but there were grave fears that it would be thrown out at the third. An enormous gathering of the Birmingham Union on New Hall Hill, at which 200,000 people were stated to be present, took place in support of the Bill. In the petition to the House of Lords, sent by this great gathering, it was prayed that they would not mutilate the Bill, and that they “would not drive to despair a high–minded, a generous, and fearless people.”

The news that the Bill was defeated and that Lord Grey had resigned stirred up the whole population—timid and fearless, enthusiasts and apathetics alike—whose anger and determination to see this measure become law were manifested in no uncertain way. Still treasured in some households are copies of the placards that were exhibited, which bore these words:—

NOTICE.
No Taxes paid here
Until
The Reform Bill is Passed.