While the Vestry deliberated the labourers remained quietly in the yard of the poorhouse. One of them, a veteran from the Peninsular War who had lost a limb, contrasted his situation on 9d. a day with that of the Duke of Wellington whose ‘skin was whole’ and whose pension was £60,000 a year. After they had waited some time, they were informed that their demands were granted, and they dispersed to their homes with huzzas and tears of joy, and as a sign of the new and auspicious era they broke up the parish grindstone, a memory of the evil past.[429]
An important feature of the proceedings in Kent and Sussex was the sympathy of other classes with the demands of the labourers. The success of the movement in Kent and Sussex, and especially of the rising that began at Brede, was due partly, no doubt, to the fact that smuggling was still a common practice in those counties, and that the agricultural labourers thus found their natural leaders among men who had learnt audacity, resourcefulness, and a habit of common action in that school of danger. But the movement could not have made such headway without any serious attempt to suppress it if the other classes had been hostile. There was a general sense that the risings were due to the neglect of the Government. Mr. Hodges, one of the Members for Kent, declared in the House of Commons on 10th December that if the Duke of Wellington had attended to a petition received from the entire Grand Jury of Kent there would have been no disturbances.[430]
The same spirit is displayed in a letter written by a magistrate at Battle, named Collingwood. ‘I have seen three or four of our parochial insurrections, and been with the People for hours alone and discussing their matters with them which they do with a temper and respectful behaviour and an intelligence which must interest everyone in their favor. The poor in the Parishes in the South of England, and in Sussex and Kent greatly, have been ground to the dust in many instances by the Poor Laws. Instead of happy peasants they are made miserable and sour tempered paupers. Every Parish has its own peculiar system, directed more strictly, and executed with more or less severity or harshness. A principal tradesman in Salehurst (Sussex) in one part of which, Robertsbridge, we had our row the other night, said to me these words “You attended our meeting the other day and voted with me against the two principal Rate payers in this parish, two Millers, paying the people in two gallons of bad flour instead of money. You heard how saucy they were to their betters, can you wonder if they are more violent to their inferiors? They never call a man Tom, Dick etc. but you d——d rascal etc., at every word, and force them to take their flour. Should you wonder that they are dissatisfied?” These words he used to me a week before our Robertsbridge Row. Each of these Parochial Rows differs in character as the man whom they select as leader differs in impudence or courage or audacity or whatever you may call it. If they are opposed at the moment, their resistance shows itself in more or less violent outrages; personally I witnessed but one, that of Robertsbridge putting Mr. Johnson into the cart, and that was half an accident. I was a stranger to them, went among them and was told by hundreds after that most unjustifiable assault that I was safe among them as in my bed, and I never thought otherwise. One or two desperate characters, and such there are, may at any moment make the contest of Parish A differ from that of Parish B, but their spirit, as far as regards loyalty and love for the King and Laws, is, I believe, on my conscience, sound. I feel convinced that all the cavalry in the world, if sent into Sussex, and all the spirited acts of Sir Godfrey Webster, who, however, is invaluable here will (not?) stop this spirit from running through Hampshire, Wiltshire, Somersetshire, where Mr. Hobhouse, your predecessor, told me the other day that they have got the wages for single men down to 6s. per week (on which they cannot live) through many other counties. In a week you will have demands for cavalry from Hampshire under the same feeling of alarm as I and all here entertained: the next week from Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, and all the counties in which the poor Rates have been raised for the payment of the poor up to Essex and the very neighbourhood of London, where Mr. Geo. Palmer, a magistrate, told me lately that the poor single man is got down to 6s. I shall be over to-morrow probably at Benenden where they are resolved not to let either Mr. Hodges’s taxes, the tithes or the King’s taxes be paid. So I hear, and so I dare say two or three carter boys may have said. I shall go to-morrow and if I see occasion will arrest some man, and break his head with my staff. But do you suppose that that (though a show of vigor is not without avail) will prevent Somersetshire men from crying out, when the train has got to them, we will not live on 6s. per week, for living it is not, but a long starving, and we will have tithes and taxes, and I know not what else done away with. The only way to stop them is to run before the evil. Let the Hampshire Magistrates and Vestries raise the wages before the Row gets to their County, and you will stop the thing from spreading, otherwise you will not, I am satisfied. In saying all this, I know that I differ with many able and excellent Magistrates, and my opinion may be wrong, but I state it to you.’
It is not surprising that magistrates holding these opinions acted rather less vigorously than the central Government wished, and that Lord Camden’s appeals to them not to let their political feelings and ‘fanciful Crotchets’[431] interfere with their activity were unsuccessful. But even had all the magistrates been united and eager to crush the risings they could not act without support from classes that were reluctant to give it. The first thought of the big landed proprietors was to re-establish the yeomanry, but they found an unexpected obstacle in the temper of the farmers. The High Sheriff, after consultation with the Home Secretary, convened a meeting for this purpose at Canterbury on 1st November, but proceedings took an unexpected turn, the farmers recommending as a preferable alternative that public salaries should be reduced, and the meeting adjourned without result. There were similar surprises at other meetings summoned with this object, and landlords who expected to find the farmers rallying to their support were met with awkward resolutions calling for reductions in rent and tithes. The Kent Herald went so far as to say that only the dependents of great landowners will join the yeomanry, ‘this most unpopular corps.’ The magistrates found it equally difficult to enlist special constables, the farmers and tradesmen definitely refusing to act in this capacity at Maidstone, at Cranbrook, at Tonbridge, and at Tonbridge Wells,[432] as well as in the smaller villages. The chairman of the Battle magistrates wrote to the Home Office to say that he intended to reduce his rents in the hope that the farmers would then consent to serve.
Even the Coast Blockade Service was not considered trustworthy. ‘It is the last force,’ wrote one magistrate, ‘I should resort to, on account of the feeling which exists between them and the people hereabouts.’[433] In the absence of local help, the magistrates had to rely on military aid to quell a mob, or to execute a warrant. Demands for troops from different quarters were incessant, and sometimes querulous. ‘If you cannot send a military force,’ wrote one indignant country gentleman from Heathfield on 14th November, ‘for God’s sake, say so, without delay, in order that we may remove our families to a place of safety from a district which want of support renders us totally unable longer to defend.’[434] Troops were despatched to Cranbrook, but when the Battle magistrates sent thither for help they were told to their great annoyance that no soldiers could be spared. The Government indeed found it impossible to supply enough troops. ‘My dear Lord Liverpool,’ wrote Sir Robert Peel on 15th November, ‘since I last saw you I have made arrangements for sending every disposable cavalry soldier into Kent and the east part of Sussex. General Dalbiac will take the command. He will be at Battel to-day to confer with the Magistracy and to attempt to establish some effectual plan of operations against the rioters.’
The 7th Dragoon Guards at Canterbury were to provide for East Kent; the 2nd Dragoon Guards at Maidstone were to provide for Mid-Kent; and the 5th Dragoon Guards at Tunbridge Wells for the whole of East Sussex. Sir Robert Peel meanwhile thought that the magistrates should themselves play a more active part, and he continually expressed the hope that they would ‘meet and concert some effectual mode of resisting the illegal demands.’[435] He deprecated strongly the action of certain magistrates in yielding to the mobs. Mr. Collingwood, who has been mentioned already, received a severe reproof for his behaviour at Goudhurst, where he had adopted a conciliatory policy and let off the rioters on their own recognisances. ‘We did not think the case a very strong one,’ he wrote on 18th November, ‘or see any very urgent necessity for the apprehension of Eaves, nor after Captain King’s statement that he had not felt a blow, could we consider the assault of a magistrate proved. The whole parish unanimously begged them off, and said that their being discharged on their own recognisances would probably contribute to the peace of the parish.’
The same weakness, or sympathy, was displayed by magistrates in the western part of Sussex, where the rising spread after the middle of November. In the Arundel district the magistrates anticipated disturbances by holding a meeting of the inhabitants to fix the scale of wages. The wages agreed on were ‘2s. a day wet and dry and 1s. 6d. a week for every child (above 2) under 4,’ during the winter: from Lady Day to Michaelmas 14s. a week, wet and dry, with the same allowance for children. A scale was also drawn up for lads and young men. The mobs were demanding 14s. a week all the year round, but they seem to have acquiesced in the Arundel scale, and to have given no further trouble. At Horsham, the labourers adopted more violent measures and met with almost universal sympathy. There was a strong Radical party in that town, and one magistrate described it later as ‘a hot Bed of Sedition.’ Attempts were made, without success, to show that the Radicals were at the bottom of the disturbances. The district round Horsham was in an agitated state. Among others who received threatening letters was Sir Timothy Shelley of Field Place. The letter was couched in the general spirit of Shelley’s song to the men of England:—
‘Men of England, wherefore plough,
For the lords who lay ye low,’
which his father may, or may not, have read. The writer urged him, ‘if you wish to escape the impending danger in this world and in that which is to come,’ to go round to the miserable beings from whom he exacted tithes, ‘and enquire and hear from there own lips what disstres there in.’ Like many of these letters, it contained at the end a rough picture of a knife, with ‘Beware of the fatel daggar’ inscribed on it.