[483] See Hudson, Ibid.
[484] See Annual Register and local papers.
[485] He was sent to Van Diemen’s Land. It is only fair to Lord Sheffield to say that he applied in vain to Lord Melbourne for a mitigation of the life sentence. See Criminal Entry-Book, H. O. Papers.
[486] Correspondence on Secondary Punishment, March 1834, p. 23.
[487] See a remarkable letter from Lord Dudley. ‘He has already been enough on the Continent for any reasonable end, either of curiosity or instruction, and his availing himself so immediately of this opportunity to go to a foreign country again looks a little too much like distaste for his own.’—Letters to Ivy from the first Earl of Dudley, October 1808.
[488] See on this subject a very interesting article by Mr. L. March Phillipps in the Contemporary Review, August 1911.
[489] Helpstone was enclosed by an Act of 1809. Clare was then sixteen years old. His association with the old village life had been intimate, for he had tended geese and sheep on the common, and he had learnt the old country songs from the last village cowherd. His poem on Helpstone was published in 1820.
[490] Referred to below as ‘A’.
[491] Referred to below as ‘B’.
[492] Note that the compensation to the Lords of the Manor added together comes to less than one ninety-first part of the soil.