Ben o' Bill's, the Luddite: A Yorkshire Tale

by D. F. E. Sykes; George Henry Walker

“Done, and done to it,” cried Mr. Varley, and all the company exclaimed that so rare a bargain the miller never made in his life before and for an hour after that I saw Mr. Varley was doing sums in his head, and chuckling feebly to himself but in time he ceased to laugh, and his brow wrinkled and his eye was anxious, and he was seen to add figures secretly in his bulky pocket–book, and ever as he worked he grew sadder; till at length he cried that not all the corn that grew that year in Yorkshire could pay his wager, and he was fain to fill our measures round with best ale to be quit of his bargain. And all that went away sober that night told their wives how the schoolmaster had bested the miller, and were the more resolved their lads should mind their books and be good at figuring. And I was very glad that my old master had come off with so great credit, for Mr. Varley, by reason of being the lord’s agent, was something prone to give himself an air.

But Mr. Webster was not too pleased that Mr. Varley should have jested of the comet. It had exercised him sore in the searching of the Scriptures, and oftentimes had he pointed to its presence in the heavens, and many a restless night had he given to my mother.

Mr. Webster would have it that the comet did foretell the coming of the Son of Man in a cloud with power and great glory, and the good man rejoiced thereat, seeing nought to cause us grief, but rather joy, that there were “great earthquakes in divers places, and famines and pestilences, and fearful sights and great signs from heaven.” And he would exultingly call us to witness the fulfilment of prophesy for that there were signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars, and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; men’s hearts failing them for fear and for looking after those things which were coming on earth. But my mother lived to laugh at her fears, and even to wear a dress that became the fashion, of which the body was of pale red silk, a star of gold thread standing for the comet’s head, and a fan shaped tail of silver spangles spreading out in likeness of the comet’s tail.

It was my great honour after the dinner, and whilst the company sat over their cups, to be invited to the head of the table by Mr. Joseph Scott, of Woodsome, who was then lately become a magistrate, a handsome man of some forty years. He asked most kindly after the health of my father and mother, and bade the tapster who waited on the upper end of the table charge me a bumper of the wine of Oporto, which did fill my heart with a great warmth. Then when I would have returned to my seat by the schoolmaster he bade me remain, and I listened with all my ears to the talk of my betters. I noticed that Mr. Scott spoke mostly with Mr. William Horsfall, of Marsden. I knew Mr. Horsfall well by sight, having seen him often on the road as he went to or returned from market, a man in his prime, with a keen, resolute look; not easily turned from his purpose, I warrant you. Impatient of opposition, I judged him even then, brusque, and a little petulant, but not unkindly of heart as I had heard, for those that worked for him had ever a good name for him—but a masterful man.

The talk between these two was much of the coolness there then was between America and England. Mr. Horsfall was very bitter about this. “It is all the fault of those accursed Orders in Council,” he said. “Before our benighted Government issued the Orders in Council, America took twelve million pounds worth of our manufactures—now not one penny–worth. Withdraw the Orders and you conciliate America; you bind her to us by the closest tie of all, the tie of self–interest. So long as these Orders remain in force it is futile to talk of negotiations. It is beating the air. We are alienating our own flesh and blood, we are running grave risk of having another enemy on our hands, and that of our own household, our cousins if not our brothers. Here are we pulling our own nose to spite Napoleon’s face. It is suicidal, it is criminal!”—and I know not how many other hard names Mr. Horsfall hurled at the poor Government whilst Mr. Scott, with the ink scarce dry on his commission, fidgetted in his seat and was, I thought, hard put to it to defend the Government. At last when Mr. Horsfall grew more vehement in his denunciation of ministers, Mr. Scott bade him remember that it was the Whigs who in January, 1807, issued the first counterblast to Napoleon’s Berlin Decree; and then did these two Englishmen, the one a Whig and the other a Tory, get so warm about Whiggery and Toryism that I had much to do to get to the truth of the matter. In a lull of the storm I did so far presume upon the great condescension that Mr. Scott had shewn to me, for my father’s sake, as to ask him what these same Orders in Council might be, and how they bore upon us humble folk in Slaithwaite, for save that every one did speak of them as the cause of much of our bad trade and sore distress, I knew little for certain about them. “You must know then,” explained Mr. Scott, “that in 1806 Napoleon issued from Berlin a proclamation, addressed to all the world, declaring the island of Great Britain in a state of blockade, all British subjects, wherever found, prisoners of war, and all British goods, wherever taken, lawful prize, and excluding from all the ports of France every vessel which had touched at any British port, no matter to what nation such vessel might belong.”——

“But surely, sir,” I said timidly, for I knew little of such great matters, “surely, that was to declare war on all the countries of the world.”

“‘Rem acu tetigisti’—thou hast touched the point with a pin,” cried Mr. Mellor, who had drawn near, whereat I blushed mightily, for I knew a little of the Latin, thank to much persistence of my good dominie, and by this time all the company had ceased their jesting and coffing and idle gossip, and all ears were cocked to hear what Mr. Scott and our neighbour Horsfall were so hot about.

“Then did the Whig Government,” continued Mr. Scott, triumphantly, “issue an Order in Council, declaring that England was authorized by the Berlin Decree to blockade the whole seaboard of France; to prohibit all vessels which had touched at a French port from entering our harbours, and making their cargoes fair prize. It was that Order which estranged America, and has made it so that all our foreign trade has been cut off as with a knife.”

“Nay but,” said Mr. Horsfall, “you should not forget to say that Mr. Percival, your Tory minister, has not only continued the Order but extended it; that the Whigs have admitted the error of their policy, that petition after petition has gone from the manufacturers of Yorkshire, praying for a Repeal of the Order’s, and that Mr. Brougham is never weary striving for that good end. But we know how it is—the war may ruin us manufacturers, but it pays the landowner. It keeps up the price of corn and stock, it finds pay and promotion for the young bloods of the aristocracy, it distracts the minds of the people at home from domestic reforms, it keeps up the hideous system of privilege, by which peer and prelate batten on the spoils of a people oppressed to the limits of endurance, and it is mighty convenient to keep Napoleon as a bogy man to frighten the people withal when they cry for reform.” And then did these two good men at it again hammer and tongs, and others joined in, and the ale and the wine talked louder than sense and knowledge, and you could make neither head nor tail of all the talk. But presently they simmered down, and Mr. Horsfall was drinking to the health of Mrs. Scott, whom he vowed he knew when she was the beauty of Storthes Hall, as if nothing had come between them to raise a dust, and all the more that, as good chance would have it, they hit on a subject on which they had little variance.

“I hear,” said Mr. Scott, “that you are trying these new finishing frames of the Taylor’s, at Ottiwell’s.”