My father, and the old constable, Davis, and myself, now returned home, not a little elated with the success of our exertions in dispersing these deluded and desperate men. But my father observed, that it would not do to let the matter rest there, that the persons whom he had seen use great personal violence to me, who was acting as a peace officer, must be taught that they were not to violate the laws in such a daring manner with impunity; and he urged the propriety of my obtaining a warrant to take them before a magistrate, to answer for the breach of the peace which they had committed by assaulting me in the execution of a warrant. My father added, that their leaving their work, their assembling at the public house, and even obtaining beer almost by force, might have been overlooked, particularly as no serious mischief had followed; but the forcible and violent rescue and resistance to the execution of the warrant of a magistrate could not be overlooked; for, if we were disposed to do so, it would be an insult to Mr. Webb, the magistrate who had granted it; and if we treated him, who was the only real efficient magistrate in the district, with disrespect, we could not expect that he would be disposed in future to attend so promptly to our representations. I therefore took my horse the next morning, and rode to Milton before breakfast; and, having made the necessary depositions, he granted me a warrant for the apprehension of Truman and four others, who had been particularly prominent in the rescue, namely, Hurcot, Hale, Sheppard, and Rawlings, all of whom had either struck or laid violent hands upon me.
I had returned and taken my breakfast by ten o'clock, and had just got the old constable, Davis, and was about to proceed with him to apprehend the said persons, when four of the gentlemen of the yeomanry cavalry of the Everly troop, rode boldly into the yard, and up to the door, like brave troopers, saying that they had heard of my having a warrant for apprehending some of the rioters, and that they were sent by Capt. Astley to aid and assist in the execution of the warrant, adding, that they were provided with ball cartridges, &c., and some to spare for me, if I chose to saddle my charger and take my holsters. I could not avoid asking the heroes, with rather a sarcastic smile, where they had kept themselves over night, and why Captain Astley had not either come or sent some of the troop when there was some real danger, and not waited till all the parties were separated, and when there was little difficulty in securing the most desperate of the rioters? I added, that as I had not made any military show, by dressing myself up in my regimentals, when there was a real riot, I should at all events trust to the constable's staff now it was all peaceable; and I begged them to return to their officers with that message. I however requested one of them, Richard Pocock, of Enford farm, who now lives near Warminster, and whom I knew to be a tything man, to doff his regimentals, and then I would admit him to aid and assist in his civil, but I would not accept of him in his military capacity. This he immediately complied with, and we took the five persons before the magistrate, Mr. Webb, of Milton, who insisted upon committing them all to prison the same night for want of bail, though they begged very hard for mercy, in which petition I most heartily joined; but the worthy magistrate would not listen to any such thing, it wanting only a month to the Autumn Assizes, and I was therefore bound over to prosecute them, very much against my inclination, as I thereby lost at least three valuable servants during the harvest; and, as they appeared sensible of their error, I, for my own part, was contented to let them depart to their homes, but the magistrate was inexorable, declaring it to be too serious an offence to be pardoned, without the interposition of a jury.
A true bill was found against them by the grand jury at the assizes, and they were put to the bar. I appeared against them, but employed no counsel; they had engaged Mr, Jekyl, at that period one of the most eminent counsel upon the western circuit. After the court had heard the evidence of myself and Mr. Davis, Mr. Jekyl made a most eloquent appeal to the jury, a common not a SPECIAL jury: he called some witnesses to their character, but no one appearing, I offered myself to give three of them, who had been my father's servants, a character for sobriety and industry, with which the court and counsel appeared much pleased. Their case went to the jury, who instantly found them all guilty of the rescue and assault, upon which I addressed the Court as the prosecutor, and petitioned that they might be restored to their afflicted families, and I promised to take them back immediately into the situations which they had before occupied in my father's service. The humane judge, who participated in my feelings, after having given them a suitable admonition, and called their attention to my disinterested kindness, telling them they were entirely indebted to my humanity for the lenity he should shew them, and having paid me a most gratifying compliment, dismissed them with the punishment of a fine of a shilling each, which I immediately paid for them. The whole court were loud in their praises of my behaviour upon the occasion; but I felt ten thousand times more satisfaction in doing a generous act than I did in all the compliments which were bestowed upon me. I took the men into my father's service directly, and I can safely say that I never for one moment since had any reason to repent the exertion I made to save them from punishment. Some of them lived many years in my service, and Truman remained with me as long as I was in the farming business, and actually was one of those who followed me out of Wiltshire into Sussex, when I went to reside there, a distance of a hundred and twenty miles. Four out of the five men are still alive, and I would cheerfully trust my life in either of their hands, if it were necessary; and I sincerely believe there is not one of them but would willingly risk his life to serve me.
I am writing this account in my dungeon, at eleven o'clock at night, on the 20th of September, 1820, and it is impossible for any one who reads it not to draw a comparison between my conduct and that of my persecutors. I would not part with the sweet delightful reflection which the remembrance of this ONE act of my life conveys to my mind, for all the wealth in the possession of those who have been concerned in consigning me to be incarcerated without mercy in this dungeon for TWO YEARS and SIX MONTHS; according to common calculation full one quarter of the remaining part of my natural life. Let the reader only consider the spirit in which I acted towards those who had violated the laws of their country, by resisting with force the warrant of a magistrate, and who had violently assaulted the peace officer in his duty in executing that warrant, and then contrast it with the vindictive proceedings against me, for having attended a public meeting, legally and constitutionally assembled, to remonstrate with the throne against the cruel privations and sufferings of the people, where no breach of the peace was committed, where not even the slightest resistance was made or even premeditated against the civil power. "Look at this picture, and look at that." I have had the consolation of being repeatedly thanked in the most earnest manner by these poor fellows, for my humanity in interposing with the court to spare them from punishment; but I have felt still a much higher pleasure when they have offered up their thanks to me for having ventured my life "to snatch them from the jaws of the gallows," when they were incautiously about to rush into them, by pulling down mills, and burning wheat ricks. These might well have been called poor deluded creatures. These men were literally deluded, and those who urged them on were deluded by what was then called the liberal part of the press. In fact, almost the whole daily press of that period united in a conspiracy to delude the people, by railing at and exciting the multitude against BUTCHERS, BAKERS, and FARMERS, to whom not only the fools, but the knaves of the daily press attributed the high price of provisions.
The liberal part of the press was so ignorant and so besotted as to vomit forth its daily denunciations against the avariciousness of millers, butchers, bakers, and farmers, and to endeavour to inflame the suffering people, by teaching them that these persons conspired together to keep up the price of provisions to an unnatural height, solely to put money in their own pockets. The ministerial press of that day, under the controul of Pitt, (and he was cunning enough to contrive to bribe almost all the talent belonging to the press,) chimed in ding dong with their less cunning opponents; for they knew that it was Pitt's policy to draw the public attention from the real cause of the distress, from the real cause of the high price of provisions, which they were well aware was the enormous increase of the taxes; and by the joint efforts of the Whig and Tory press, (for there was no other at that time,) they contrived to delude the poor people, the lower orders, to such a degree, that there was seldom half a year passed away without a considerable number of persons being consigned to an untimely end, for having been concerned in wreaking their vengeance upon some miller, farmer, butcher, or baker, or other dealer in human food. These poor fellows might truly be stiled the deluded multitude; and the deluders, the conductors of the public press, were but too successful in their efforts to continue them in ignorance. Let any sober-minded, rational, sensible man only look back to the columns of the public press, in the years 1795, and 96—the Times for instance; let him take a file of the Times of that day, and for many many years after that, even up to 1815 and 1816, and compare the language, the stile, and the tenor of their articles with the language of the present day in the same papers. How many riots, how many hangings, how many special commissions we can trace back, all proceeding from the delusions of the public press! How many persons have lost their lives for plundering, pulling down, and burning the property of millers, butchers, and bakers; how much blood has been spilt, every drop of which blood may be fairly placed at the door of those who urged these poor fellows on, and instigated them to acts of violence against those classes of persons, by falsely accusing them of being the cause of the high price of provisions.
There is as much difference between the Times of 1795 and the Times of 1820 as there is between a drunken riotous Church-and-King-mob of 1791 to 96, pulling down and burning the property of Dr. Priestley at Birmingham, poor Campbell of Bath, burning mills, wheat ricks, destroying machinery, &c. &c., and the peaceable, sober, rational, constitutional, assemblies of the people in 1816, 1817, 1818, and 1819, deliberately petitioning the legislature to remove the burthens of the people, by abolishing sinecure places, and unnecessary pensions, and praying for a constitutional reform in the Commons' House of Parliament. My readers will excuse the digression I have made; this subject cannot be too often dwelt upon, but, as I shall have repeated opportunities of calling the attention of my fellow countrymen to this particular point, I will now proceed to the more immediate object of these memoirs.
I was now incessant in my application to every branch of the farming business, and, as I have before intimated, I performed prodigies of labour upon various occasions. My father had now taken another very large adjoining farm of nearly a thousand acres, Chisenbury farm, and was therefore become one of the largest farmers in England, yet we managed this business with the greatest ease; and what others called very severe labour, I practised as a relaxation from business, such as learning the cavalry exercise, in which I had now become a considerable adept; in fact, I bore the character of being one of the most active, and at the same time one of the most powerful, young men in the county; and my feats of activity and strength were proverbial. I would mix in the frolicks of a country wake, or revel, as they were called in Wiltshire, and contend, generally successfully, with the first proficients of the day, in wrestling jumping in sacks, backsword, or single stick playing, and have borne off many a prize. I once went to a Whitsuntide revel, with my friend and partner, Jesse Caster of Upavon, and I believe we bore off every prize—the gold-laced hat, the wrestling prize; the gold-laced hat, the backsword prize; a pair of buckskin breeches, the prize for jumping or running in sacks; the old cheese, the bowling prize; and eleven half-crowns, the prize played for at cricket in the morning: indeed I and Caster obtained every prize; and, as I gained the majority, of course I had the choice of the fairest damsel in the village at the dance in the evening. There was no exercise, no exertion, no labour that ever fatigued me. I could and did often work all day and dance all night; and this, at particular festive seasons of the year, I have followed for a week or ten days together without ever taking off my clothes to go to bed. There was no excess of labour, heat or cold, winter or summer, that ever hurt me. I remember once going up stairs, about ten o'clock, with the rest of my father's family, but, instead of going to bed, I dressed myself, descended the window by a ladder, mounted my horse and rode to Upper Collingborn, where I had been invited to a dance, a distance of ten miles, and having danced till three o'clock in the morning I returned home, mounted the ladder into the window, and had just changed my best for my working clothes when my father called me, as the clock struck four, to get up, upon which I was out the first of the family, time enough to remove the ladder before any one saw it, so that the circumstance was never known to any one.
The young parson of the parish was generally my companion on these occasions, but as he was his own master, he went to and returned from the dance at his leisure, in fact, he generally got too top heavy before the evening was over to return home, and therefore usually slept out. I could tell some of the most ridiculous stories and curious adventures that happened to my young friend, when he was under the influence of Bacchus, but as I shall have occasion to say a great deal of this personage hereafter, I will pass it over for the present. But as, from my having lived a very great part of my life in country places, I have spent a considerable portion of my days in the society of clergymen, and as it is one of my principal objects in giving a faithful history of my life, to be particular in shewing my readers the sort of society that I kept, as well as how I was enabled to form my opinion of mankind, I shall faithfully delineate these characters, to the best of my judgment, always taking care to lean on the charitable side, and to draw occasionally a veil over the infirmities of human nature, as they were exemplified in the clergy of the church of England. I understand that some of my readers have already attributed to me a desire to lower the character of the clergymen of the established church, and they instance my description of the character of the Rev. T. Griffiths, the master of the free grammar school at Andover. But, as a proof that I have not done him any injustice, I have had confirmed, by the living testimony of many of my school-fellows, the truth as well as the lenient description that I gave of his character. Mr. Cotton of Edgerly, my tenant, and steward of my manor of Glastonbury, has been to see me since be read the account, and he says it is a most faithful picture as far as it goes; but he called to my recollection the tyrant pedagogue having pulled off the ear of two boys, one in his presence, and one in mine. John Butcher, whose father then lived at Westcombe, was one of them, and he[11] has reminded me also of Griffiths having taken a very thick heavy slate, and with both hands broken it over the head of Dr. now Sir —— Gibbs, of Bath, physician to the late Queen, who very fortunately had a thicker scull than boys in general, or he would in all probability have fractured it. It will therefore be seen that I did in no way exceed the truth, and, so far from wishing to degrade the clergy, I shall only reprobate those acts in which they degrade themselves. I have known many excellent clergymen, Mr. Carrington to wit, and I know many most worthy clergymen now; and I have also known some of the most abandoned of human beings, who have been a disgrace to that holy office. In due course I shall shortly detail the moral character of two clergymen of this diocese, as a specimen of human depravity, both of them living under the nose of the bishop.
I will now proceed with my narrative. The price of corn was by this time considerably enhanced, and in consequence of a new duty, malt had risen from 2s. 6d. to 7s. 6d. a bushel. Labourers three years before could purchase with a week's wages, two bushels of malt and a pound of hops, enough to make a nice little cask of good wholesome beer, for them to carry with them into the field, in grass mowing and harvest. That quantity was now nearly doubled also in price. Three years before they could purchase with their week's wages twelve quartern loaves; they could now only purchase with their week's wages six quartern loaves instead of twelve, the quartern loaf having now risen to one shilling. The labourers that used before to be very well off, and consequently very well satisfied, complained loudly of these hardships, and demanded higher wages; the answer of the farmer was, "it is very true that we sell our corn for a much higher price than we did, but we cannot afford to raise the wages of the labourers, for we pay all the increase of price away in taxes, and the increase in our rents, as well as in every other necessary of life, our tea, salt, iron, leather, &c.; you must, therefore, have patience, and wait for better times. Our rulers, and Mr. Pitt particularly, says we may look forward with a confident hope that we shall soon have better times for us all." Thus the poor man, from the very first year of the war, began to feel the cruel effects of high prices, and he was made to suffer this for many years without any rise in his wages. Almost all the common necessaries of life were doubled, while he was told to wait with patience from day to day, from week to week, from month to month, and from year to year, still buoyed up with the false hope of better times, which were eternally promised with matchless impudence by the prime minister, who constantly boasted of the wealth and power of the nation, which he was wasting, and which he lavished with an unsparing hand, to carry on an unjust, an unnecessary, cruel, and vindictive war against the people of France, because they had made a hold, a manly, and a successful effort to throw off the galling yoke of one of the most infamous and detestable tyrannies that ever disgraced the character of an enlightened people. It was very true the landholders grew rich from the great advance in the price of land, and the farmer grew rich from the advance in the price of grain; but, alas! the labourer began to suffer, and has continued to suffer; his privations have increased in the exact proportion to the increase of taxation, from that day to this.
In the beginning of this year, (5th of April, 95,) the Prince of Wales was married to his first cousin the Princess Caroline of Brunswick, a match which was very much approved by John Bull, as she was young and beautiful, possessing all those attractions which were likely to render the marriage state happy; although there was something that John grumbled a little about, as he had not only to pay the piper, by an additional yearly salary for his Royal Highness, which was raised by the parliament to ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE THOUSAND POUNDS PER ANNUM, but he was likewise called upon to pay the Prince's debts, which amounted to SIX HUNDRED AND NINETEEN THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY POUNDS;—DEBTS on securities, THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND, and tradesmen's bills, THREE HUNDRED AND NINETEEN THOUSAND POUNDS, was the amount of the account laid before parliament. John, however, was then in comparative prosperity, and the money was paid with great good humour, in the hope that this wild prince would, now he was married to an amiable and a lovely woman, become more rational, and less debauched and extravagant. At this time also the trial of Mr. Hastings was brought to a conclusion; this had been going on seven years before the House of Lords, and he was now acquitted. There were considerable riots and disturbances in various parts of the country, in consequence of the high price of corn; wheat having now, for the first time in the eighteenth century, risen as high as ten shillings a bushel. The wages of the labourer in the parish of Enford still remained at six shillings a week, which caused much grumbling and many complaints, as they were become now tired of "waiting with patience for better times." The country was considerably agitated too, by a report of a mutiny in the Oxford Militia, who were quartered at Newhaven, in the neighbourhood of Brighton. This also arose in consequence of the high price of provisions. The privates of this regiment had seized a quantity of flour, and sold it to their comrades and others, at a reasonable price. I remember that this caused great alarm amongst the farmers, as they knew that without the aid of the soldiers they would not be able to keep up the price of their grain. The riot, however, was soon quelled, and those concerned in it were tried by a court martial, many of them were severely flogged, and, to the great joy of the yeomanry, two of them, COOK and PARISH, were shot. In the carrying of this sentence into execution there were great doubts entertained, by many of the officers, whether the other regiments of militia and fencibles, which were in camp there, would not join the Oxford regiment, and rescue their comrades. The greatest precautions were therefore taken. The Prince's regiment, the 10th dragoons, was marched from Hounslow and Windsor, where it was stationed to perform king's duty. The men had ball cartridges served out to them, and they were drawn up in the rear of the militia regiments, which were all flanked by the artillery with lighted matches, ready to rake them if they made the least movement; and the 10th light dragoons were supported by the Lancashire and Cinque Port fencibles. But the sentence was executed without any resistance on the 1st of June; the riot having occurred on the 17th of May.