CHAPTER VII
CHARTIST RISING IN MONMOUTHSHIRE IN 1839

The remembrance of the Chartist[[23]] rising in Monmouthshire of November, 1839, must have long faded away, except from the minds of the few survivors who were concerned in its suppression, and those of the younger generation who remember it from the anxiety it caused throughout the district. I came among the latter number. My father was an acting magistrate, and at the time alterations were going on in his house at Sedbury Park. I can well remember the surly, disobedient, and generally insubordinate behaviour of the local workmen in the week preceding Sunday, the 3rd of November. With the return of the workmen, in the course of the following week, the face of affairs had however changed. The rising had taken place, and had been thoroughly crushed. Receiving a reverse, they were there and then seized with panic, and fled. Their chief leaders—by name John Frost, Zephaniah Williams, and William Jones, and others not so deeply implicated—were captured, and to us the result was exceedingly satisfactory. The men when they returned were patterns of obedience and as meek as mice. They did not in the least desire the distinction of being known, in a magistrate’s house, to have taken part in an outbreak which had totally failed. They had thought that by Monday or Tuesday the house would be in their hands and our relative positions reversed, and, indeed, it would have been hard to find a house more indefensible against a disciplined mob than ours. Along two sides of the house (plate [I].), ran a broad colonnade of Bath stone, supported by pillars so wide and so placed that in many cases men ascending by ladders put against them, would have been greatly or entirely protected from the discharge of fire-arms from the windows; and the broad flat surface of the top of the colonnade, 10 feet in width, by about 120 feet in length, would have made an admirable mustering ground for scores of men, from which to carry on their unpleasant attacks in conjunction with their allies below. This however we were spared.

The trial of Frost and the other leaders followed speedily by special Commission at Monmouth. It began in the following December and ended in January (1840), with a verdict of guilty of High Treason; and sentence of death according to the treason penalties of the time was pronounced by Lord Chief Justice Tindal as follows:—“That you, John Frost, and you, Zephaniah Williams, and you, William Jones, be taken hence to the place from which you came, and be thence drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution, and that each of you be there hanged by the neck until you be dead, and that afterwards the head of each of you shall be severed from his body, and the body of each, divided into four quarters, shall be disposed of as Her Majesty shall think fit, and may Almighty God have mercy on your souls.” A recommendation to mercy, which was mercifully attended to, was added on behalf of the five least guilty men. The possibility of the horrors of the details of the treason penalties (though much mitigated from those of former days on account of their being carried out on the dead body of the offender) created consternation through the district, and the remembrance has remained with me to this day. However, the capital sentence on Frost and his two special associates was commuted to transportation for life, an act of grace coincident with those extended on the marriage of our late Queen of glorious memory.

Only the above disjointed reminiscences of trouble have remained in my mind through the sixty years which have since elapsed, but the rising was so planned that, if it had succeeded, it would have proved a match to light the smouldering Chartism of the Midlands and the North of England, and even under the circumstances the case was described in the Attorney-General’s address to the Jury at the commencement of the Monmouth trial as follows:

“There has recently been in this County an armed insurrection, the law has been set at defiance; there has been an attempt to take forcible possession of the town of Newport, there has been a conflict between the insurgents and the Queen’s troops; there has been bloodshed, and the loss of many lives. The intelligence of these outrages has caused alarm and dismay throughout the kingdom.”[[24]]

When divested of the repetitions and technicalities of the reports of the sworn witnesses, and also of the addresses of the Lord Chief Justice and legal authorities, the story of the rising possesses much interest as an account in many of its details of what could not happen in the present day. The mountainous nature of the insurgent locality, the extraordinarily stormy weather which threw the undisciplined thousands out in their calculations, and the short, but (for the time occupied) bloody climax would have formed under such a pen as Sir Walter Scott’s, a narrative of interest almost equal to some of those of the Covenanting troubles.

The part of the County in which the disturbances took place—was what is called the “hill district” of Monmouthshire (plate [XV].), which has been described as an area of triangular form, having for its apex to the south, Risca, a town five miles W.N.W of Newport. The base of the triangle was at a distance of from fifteen to twenty miles in a northerly direction, with the great Beaufort and Nant-y-glo iron works to the west, on the edge of Brecknockshire, and to the east Blaenavon on the Usk in its hilly, or it might be said mountainous, neighbourhood. The area of this hill district is varied with hill and dale, intersected in parts by deep glens, and also by mountain streams, of no inconsiderable force after heavy rains. Picturesquely considered the country is of great beauty, but beneath the surface are rich supplies of coal and iron. For some years before 1839, the mines had been much worked, and the country, instead of being merely inhabited by a small and scattered population, was at the time of the outbreak estimated to contain above 40,000 inhabitants, often, as it was stated, displaying “an extent of ignorance very much to be deplored” and consequently easily led away by the agents of seditious societies and formed into affiliated bodies ready for outbreak when called on.

PLATE XV.
Map showing the District of the Chartist Rising in Monmouth.
Newport near the low right-hand corner above the bend
of the River Usk.