In Horsham itself the mob, composed of from seven hundred to a thousand persons, summoned a vestry meeting in the church. Mr. Sanctuary, the High Sheriff for Sussex, described the episode in a letter to the Home Office on the same day (18th November). The labourers, he said, demanded 2s. 6d. a day, and the lowering of rents and tithes: ‘all these complaints were attended to——thought reasonable and complied with,’ and the meeting dispersed quietly. Anticipating, it may be, some censure, he added, ‘I should have found it quite impossible to have prevailed upon any person to serve as special constable——most of the tradespeople and many of the farmers considering the demands of the people but just (and) equitable——indeed many of them advocated (them)——a doctor spoke about the taxes——but no one backed him——that was not the object of the meeting.’ A lady living at Horsham wrote a more vivid account of the day’s work. She described how the mob made everybody come to the church. Mr. Simpson, the vicar, went without more ado, but Mr. Hurst, senior, owner of the great tithes, held out till the mob seized a chariot from the King’s Arms and dragged it to his door. Whilst the chariot was being brought he slipped out, and entered the church with his two sons. All the gentlemen stood up at the altar, while the farmers encouraged the labourers in the body of the church. ‘Mr. Hurst held out so long that it was feared blood would be shed, the Doors were shut till the Demands were granted, no lights were allowed, the Iron railing that surrounds the Monuments torn up, and the sacred boundary between the chancel and Altar overleapt before he would yield.’ Mr. Hurst himself wrote to the Home Office to say that it was only the promise to reduce rents and tithes that had prevented serious riots, but he met with little sympathy at headquarters. ‘I cannot concur,’ wrote Sir Robert Peel, ‘in the opinion of Mr. Hurst that it was expedient or necessary for the Vestry to yield to the demands of the Mob. In every case that I have seen, in which the mob has been firmly and temperately resisted, they have given way without resorting to personal violence.’ A neighbouring magistrate, who shared Sir Robert Peel’s opinion about the affair, went to Horsham a day or two later to swear in special constables. He found that out of sixty-three ‘respectable householders’ four only would take the oath. Meanwhile the difficulties of providing troops increased with the area of disturbances. ‘I have requested that every effort may be made to reinforce the troops in the western part of Sussex,’ wrote Sir Robert Peel to a Horsham magistrate on 18th November, ‘and you may judge of the difficulty of doing so, when I mention to you that the most expeditious mode of effecting this is to bring from Dorchester the only cavalry force that is in the West of England. This, however, shall be done, and 100 men (infantry) shall be brought from the Garrison of Portsmouth.’
Until the middle of November the rising was confined to Kent, Sussex and parts of Surrey, with occasional fires and threatening letters in neighbouring counties. After that time the disturbances became more serious, spreading not only to the West of Sussex, but to Berkshire, Hampshire, and Wiltshire. On 22nd November the Duke of Buckingham wrote from Avington in Hampshire to the Duke of Wellington: ‘Nothing can be worse than the state of this neighbourhood. I may say that this part of the country is wholly in the hands of the rebels ... 1500 rioters are to assemble to-morrow morning, and will attack any farmhouses where there are threshing machines. They go about levying contributions on every gentleman’s house. There are very few magistrates; and what there are are completely cowed. In short, something decisive must instantly be done.’
The risings in these counties differed in some respects from the rising in Kent and Sussex. The disturbances were not so much like the firing of a train of discontent, they were rather a sudden and spontaneous explosion. They lasted only about a week, and were well described in a report of Colonel Brotherton, one of the two military experts sent by Lord Melbourne to Wiltshire to advise the magistrates. He wrote on 28th November: ‘The insurrectionary movement seems to be directed by no plan or system, but merely actuated by the spontaneous feeling of the peasantry and quite at random.’ The labourers went about in larger numbers, combining with the destruction of threshing machines and the demand for higher wages a claim for ‘satisfaction’ as they called it in the form of ready money. It was their practice to charge £2 for breaking a threshing machine, but in some cases the mobs were satisfied with a few coppers. The demand for ready money was not a new feature, for many correspondents of the Home Office note in their letters that the mobs levied money in Kent and Sussex, but hitherto this ‘sturdy begging,’ as Cobbett called it, had been regarded by the magistrates as unimportant. The wages demanded in these counties were 2s. a day, whereas the demands in Kent and usually in Sussex had been for 2s. 6d. or 2s. 3d. Wages had fallen to a lower level in Hampshire, Berkshire and Wiltshire. The current rate in Wiltshire was 7s., and Colonel Mair, the second officer sent down by the Home Office, reported that wages were sometimes as low as 6s. It is therefore not surprising to learn that in two parishes the labourers instead of asking for 2s. a day, asked only for 8s. or 9s. a week. In Berkshire wages varied from 7s. to 9s., and in Hampshire the usual rate seems to have been 8s.
The rising in Hampshire was marked by a considerable destruction of property. At Fordingbridge, the mob under the leadership of a man called Cooper, broke up the machinery both at a sacking manufactory and at a manufactory of threshing machines. Cooper was soon clothed in innumerable legends: he was a gipsy, a mysterious gentleman, possibly the renowned ‘Swing’ himself. At the Fordingbridge riots he rode on horseback and assumed the title of Captain Hunt. His followers addressed him bareheaded. In point of fact he was an agricultural labourer of good character, a native of East Grimstead in Wilts, who had served in the artillery in the French War. Some two months before the riots his wife had robbed him, and then eloped with a paramour. This unhinged his self-control; he gave himself up to drink and despair, and tried to forget his misery in reckless rioting. Near Andover again a foundry was destroyed by a mob, after the ringleader, Gilmore, had entered the justices’ room at Andover, where the justices were sitting, and treated with them on behalf of the mob. Gilmore also was a labourer; he was twenty-five years old and had been a soldier.
The most interesting event in the Hampshire rising was the destruction of the workhouses at Selborne and Headley. Little is reported of the demolition of the poorhouse at Selborne. The indictment of the persons accused of taking part in it fell through on technical grounds, and as the defendants were also the persons charged with destroying the Headley workhouse, the prosecution in the Selborne case was abandoned. The mob first went to Mr. Cobbold, Vicar of Selborne, and demanded that he should reduce his tithes, telling him with some bluntness ‘we must have a touch of your tithes: we think £300 a year quite enough for you ... £4 a week is quite enough.’ Mr. Cobbold was thoroughly alarmed, and consented to sign a paper promising to reduce his tithes, which amounted to something over £600, by half that sum. The mob were accompanied by a good many farmers who had agreed to raise wages if the labourers would undertake to obtain a reduction of tithes, and these farmers signed the paper also. After Mr. Cobbold’s surrender the mob went on to the workhouse at Headley, which served the parishes of Bramshott, Headley and Kingsley. Their leader was a certain Robert Holdaway, a wheelwright, who had been for a short time a publican. He was a widower, with eight small children, described by the witnesses at his trial as a man of excellent character, quiet, industrious, and inoffensive. The master of the workhouse greeted Holdaway with ‘What, Holdy, are you here?’ ‘Yes, but I mean you no harm nor your wife nor your goods: so get them out as soon as you can, for the house must come down.’ The master warned him that there were old people and sick children in the house. Holdaway promised that they should be protected, asked where they were, and said the window would be marked. What followed is described in the evidence given by the master of the workhouse: ‘There was not a room left entire, except that in which the sick children were. These were removed into the yard on two beds, and covered over, and kept from harm all the time. This was done by the mob. They were left there because there was no room for them in the sick ward. The sick ward was full of infirm old paupers. It was not touched, but of all the rest of the place not a room was left entire.’ The farmers looked on whilst the destruction proceeded, and one at least of the labourers in the mob declared afterwards that his master had forced him to join.
In Wiltshire also the destruction of property was not confined to threshing machines. At Wilton, the mob, under the leadership of a certain John Jennings, aged eighteen,[436] who declared that he ‘was going to break the machinery to make more work for the poor people,’ did £500 worth of damage in a woollen mill. Another cloth factory at Quidhampton was also injured; in this affair an active part was taken by a boy even younger than Jennings, John Ford, who was only seventeen years old.[437]
The riot which attracted most attention of all the disturbances in Wiltshire took place at Pyt House, the seat of Mr. John Benett, M.P. for the county. Mr. Benett was a well-known local figure, and had given evidence before several Committees on Poor Laws. The depth of his sympathy with the labourers may be gauged by the threat that he uttered before the Committee of 1817 to pull down his cottages if Parliament should make length of residence a legal method of gaining a settlement. Some member of the Committee suggested that if there were no cottages there would be no labourers, but Mr. Benett replied cheerfully enough that it did not matter to a labourer how far he walked to his work: ‘I have many labourers coming three miles to my farm every morning during the winter’ (the hours were six to six) ‘and they are the most punctual persons we have.’ At the time he gave this evidence, he stated that about three-quarters of the labouring population in his parish of Tisbury received relief from the poor rates in aid of wages, and he declared that it was useless to let them small parcels of land. The condition of the poor had not improved in Mr. Benett’s parish between 1817 and 1830, and Lord Arundel, who lived in it, described it as ‘a Parish in which the Poor have been more oppressed and are in greater misery as a whole than any Parish in the Kingdom.’[438] It is not surprising that when the news of what had been achieved in Kent and Sussex spread west to Wiltshire, the labourers of Tisbury rose to demand 2s. a day, and to destroy the threshing machines. A mob of five hundred persons collected, and their first act was to destroy a threshing machine, with the sanction of the owner, Mr. Turner, who sat by on horseback, watching them. They afterwards proceeded to the Pyt House estate. Mr. Benett met them, parleyed and rode with them for some way; they behaved politely but firmly, telling him their intentions. One incident throws a light on the minds of the actors in these scenes. ‘I then,’ said Mr. Benett afterwards, ‘pointed out to them that they could not trust each other, for any man, I said, by informing against ten of you will obtain at once £500.’ It was an adroit speech, but as it happened the Wiltshire labourers, half starved, degraded and brutalised, as they might be, had a different standard of honour from that imagined by this magistrate and member of Parliament, and the devilish temptation he set before them was rejected. The mob destroyed various threshing machines on Mr. Benett’s farms, and refused to disperse; at last, after a good deal of sharp language from Mr. Benett, they threw stones at him. At the same time a troop of yeomanry from Hindon came up and received orders to fire blank cartridges above the heads of the mob. This only produced laughter; the yeomanry then began to charge; the mob took shelter in the plantations round Pyt House and stoned the yeomanry, who replied by a fierce onslaught, shooting one man dead on the spot,[439] wounding six by cutting off fingers and opening skulls, and taking a great number of prisoners. At the inquest at Tisbury on the man John Harding, who was killed, the jury returned a verdict of justifiable homicide, and the coroner refused to grant a warrant for burial, saying that the man’s action was equivalent to felo de se. Hunt stated in the House of Commons that the foreman of the jury was the father of one of the yeomen.
We have seen that in these counties the magistrates took a very grave view of the crime of levying money from householders. This was often done by casual bands of men and boys, who had little connection with the organised rising. An examination of the cases described before the Special Commissions gives the impression that in point of fact there was very little danger to person or property. A farmer’s wife at Aston Tirrold in Berkshire described her own experience to the Abingdon Special Commission. A mob came to her house and demanded beer. Her husband was out and she went to the door. ‘Bennett was spokesman. He said “Now a little of your beer if you please.” I answered “Not a drop.” He asked “Why?” and I said “I cannot give beer to encourage riot.” Bennett said “Why you don’t call this rioting do you?” I said “I don’t know what you call it, but it is a number of people assembled together to alarm others: but don’t think I’m afraid or daunted at it.” Bennett said “Suppose your premises should be set on fire?” I said “Then I certainly should be alarmed but I don’t suppose either of you intends doing that.” Bennett said “No, we do not intend any such thing, I don’t wish to alarm you and we are not come with the intention of mischief.”’ The result of the dialogue was that Bennett and his party went home without beer and without giving trouble.
It was natural that when mob-begging of this kind became fashionable, unpopular individuals should be singled out for rough and threatening visits. Sometimes the assistant overseers were the objects of special hatred, sometimes the parson. It is worth while to give the facts of a case at St. Mary Bourne in Hampshire, because stress was laid upon it in the subsequent prosecutions as an instance of extraordinary violence. The clergyman, Mr. Easton, was not a favourite in his parish, and he preached what the poor regarded as a harsh and a hostile sermon. When the parish rose, a mob of two hundred forced their way into the vicarage and demanded money, some of them repeating, ‘Money or blood.’ Mrs. Easton, who was rather an invalid, Miss Lucy Easton, and Master Easton were downstairs, and Mrs. Easton was so much alarmed that she sent Lucy upstairs to fetch 10s. Meanwhile Mr. Easton had come down, and was listening to some extremely unsympathetic criticisms of his performances in the pulpit. ‘Damn you,’ said Daniel Simms,[440] ‘where will your text be next Sunday?’ William Simms was equally blunt and uncompromising. Meanwhile Lucy had brought down the half-sovereign, and Mrs. Easton gave it to William Simms,[441] who thereupon cried ‘All out,’ and the mob left the Eastons at peace.