The evidence on which prisoners were convicted was often of the most shadowy kind. Eight young agricultural labourers, of ages varying from eighteen to twenty-five, were found guilty of riotously assembling in the parish of St. Lawrence Wootten and feloniously stealing £2 from William Lutely Sclater of Tangier Park. ‘We want to get a little satisfaction from you’ was the phrase they used. Two days later another man, named William Farmer, was charged with the same offence. Mr. Sclater thought that Farmer was like the man in the mob who blew a trumpet or horn, but could not swear to his identity. Other witnesses swore that he was with the mob elsewhere, and said, ‘Money wa want and money wa will hae.’ On this evidence he was found guilty, and though Mr. Justice Alderson announced that he felt warranted in recommending that he should not lose his life, ‘yet, it was his duty,’ he continued, ‘to state that he should for this violent and disgraceful outrage be sent out of the country, and separated for life from those friends and connections which were dear to him here: that he should have to employ the rest of his days in labour, at the will and for the profit of another, to show the people of the class to which the prisoner belonged that they cannot with impunity lend their aid to such outrages against the peace and security of person and property.’
We have seen that at the time of the riots it was freely stated that the farmers incited the labourers to make disturbances. Hunt went so far as to say in the House of Commons that in nineteen cases out of twenty the farmers encouraged the labourers to break the threshing machines. The county authorities evidently thought it unwise to prosecute the farmers, although it was proved in evidence that there were several farmers present at the destruction of the Headley Workhouse, and at the demonstration at Mr. Cobbold’s house. Occasionally a farmer, in testifying to a prisoner’s character, would admit that he had been in a mob himself. In such cases the judge administered rebukes, but the prosecution took no action. There was, however, one exception. A small farmer, John Boys, of the parish of Owslebury, had thrown himself heartily into the labourers’ cause. A number of small farmers met and decided that the labourers’ wages ought to be raised. Boys agreed to take a paper round for signature. The paper ran as follows: ‘We the undersigned are willing to give 2s. per day for able-bodied married men, and 9s. per week for single men, on consideration of our rents and tithes being abated in proportion.’ In similar cases, as a rule, the farmers left it to the labourers to collect signatures, and Boys, by undertaking the work himself, made himself a marked man. He had been in a mob which extorted money from Lord Northesk’s steward at Owslebury, and for this he was indicted for felony. But the jury, to the chagrin of the prosecution, acquitted him. What followed is best described in the report of Sergeant Wilde’s speech in the House of Commons (21st July 1831). ‘Boyce was tried and acquitted: but he (Mr. Wilde) being unable to account for the acquittal, considering the evidence to have been clear against him, and feeling that although the jury were most respectable men, they might possibly entertain some sympathy for him in consequence of his situation in life, thought it his duty to send a communication to the Attorney-General, stating that Boyce was deeply responsible for the acts which had taken place: that he thought he should not be allowed to escape, and recommending that he be tried before a different jury in the other Court. The Attorney-General sent to him (Mr. Wilde) to come into the other Court, and the result was that Boyce was then tried and convicted.’ In the other more complaisant Court, Farmer Boys and James Fussell, described as a genteel young man of about twenty, living with his mother, were found guilty of heading a riotous mob for reducing rents and tithes and sentenced to seven years’ transportation.[472]
This was not the only case in which the sympathies of the jury created a difficulty. The Home Office Papers contain a letter from Dr. Quarrier, a Hampshire magistrate, who had been particularly vigorous in suppressing riots, stating that Sir James Parke discharged a jury at the Special Commission ‘under the impression that they were reluctant to convict the Prisoners which was more strongly impressed upon the mind of the Judge, by its being reported to his Lordship that “some of the Gosport Jurors had said, while travelling in the stage coach to Winchester, that they would not convict in cases where the Labourers had been driven to excess by Poverty and low Wages!” It was ascertained that some of those empannelled upon the acquitting Jury were from Gosport, which confirmed the learned Judge in the determination to discharge them.’[473]
An interesting feature of the trials at Winchester was the number of men just above the condition of agricultural labourers who threw in their lot with the poor: the village mechanics, the wheelwrights, carpenters, joiners, smiths, and the bricklayers, shoemakers, shepherds and small holders were often prominent in the disturbances. To the judges this fact was a riddle. The threshing machines had done these men no injury; they had not known the sting of hunger; till the time of the riots their characters had been as a rule irreproachable. Nemo repente turpissimus fuit, and yet apparently these persons had suddenly, without warning, turned into the ‘wicked and turbulent men’ of the archbishop’s prayer. Such culprits deserved, in the opinions of the bench, severer punishment than the labourers, whom their example should have kept in the paths of obedience and peace.[474] Where the law permitted, they were sentenced to transportation for life. One heinous offender of this type, Gregory, a carpenter, was actually earning 18s. a week in the service of Lord Winchester. But the most interesting instances were two brothers, Joseph and Robert Mason, who lived at Bullington. They rented three or four acres, kept a cow, and worked for the neighbouring farmers as well. Joseph, who was thirty-two, had a wife and one child; Robert, who was twenty-four, was unmarried. Between them they supported a widowed mother. Their characters were exemplary, and the most eager malice could detect no blot upon their past. But their opinions were dangerous: they regularly took in Cobbett’s Register and read it aloud to twenty or thirty of the villagers. Further, Joseph had carried on foot a petition for reform to the king at Brighton from a hundred and seventy-seven ‘persons, belonging to the working and labouring classes’ of Wonston, Barton Stacey and Bullington, and was reported to have given some trouble to the king’s porter by an importunate demand for an audience. The recital of these facts gave rise to much merriment at his trial, and was not considered irrelevant by judges who ruled out all allusions to distress.[475] An interesting light is thrown on the history of this petition by a fragment of a letter, written by Robert Mason to a friend, which somehow fell into the hands of a Captain Thompson of Longparish, and was forwarded by him to the Home Office as a valuable piece of evidence.
‘P.S.—Since I wrote the above I have saw and talked with two persons who say “Bullington Barton and Sutton has sent a petition and why not Longparish Hursborne and Wherwell send another.” I think as much, to be sure if we had all signed one, one journey and expense would have served but what is expence? Why I would engage to carry a Petition and deliver it at St. James for 30 shillings, and to a place like Longparish what is that? If you do send one pray do not let Church property escape your notice. There is the Church which cost Longparish I should think nearly £1500 yearly: yes and there is an old established Chaple which I will be bound does not cost £25 annually. For God sake....’ (illegible).
The first charge brought against the Masons was that of robbing Sir Thomas Baring’s steward of £10 at East Stretton. The money had been taken by one of the mobs; the Masons were acquitted. They were next put on their trial together with William Winkworth, a cobbler and a fellow reader of Cobbett, and ten others, for a similar offence. This time they were accused of demanding £2 or £5 from Mr. W. Dowden of Micheldever. The Attorney-General, in opening the case, drew attention to the circumstances of the Masons and Winkworth, saying that the offence with which they were charged was of a deeper dye, because they were men of superior education and intelligence. A humane clergyman, Mr. Cockerton, curate of Stoke Cheriton, gave evidence to the effect that if the men had been met in a conciliatory temper in the morning they would have dispersed. Joseph Mason and William Winkworth were found guilty, and sentenced, in the words of the judge, to ‘be cut off from all communion with society’ for the rest of their lives. Robert Mason was still unconvicted, but he was not allowed to escape. The next charge against him was that of going with a mob which extorted five shillings from the Rev. J. Joliffe at Barton Stacey. He admitted that he had accompanied the mob, partly because the labourers had urged him to do so, partly because he hoped that Mr. Joliffe, being accustomed to public speaking, would be able to persuade the labourers to disperse before any harm was done. There was no evidence to show that he had anything to do with the demand for money. He was found guilty and sentenced to transportation for life. When asked what he had to say for himself, he replied, ‘If the learned Counsel, who has so painted my conduct to you, was present at that place and wore a smock frock instead of a gown, and a straw hat instead of a wig, he would now be standing in this dock instead of being seated where he is.’
Six men were reserved for execution, and told that they must expect no mercy on this side of the grave: Cooper, the leader in the Fordingbridge riots; Holdaway, who had headed the attack on Headley Workhouse; Gilmore, who had entered the justices’ room in Andover ‘in rather a violent manner’ and parleyed with the justices, and afterwards, in spite of their remonstrances, been a ringleader in the destruction of a foundry in the parish of Upper Clatford; Eldridge, who had taken part in the Fordingbridge riot and also ‘invaded the sanctuary’ of Mr. Eyre Coote’s home; James Aunalls, a lad of nineteen, who had extorted money at night with threats of a fire, from a person whom he bade look over the hills, where a fire was subsequently seen, and Henry Cook. Cook was a ploughboy of nineteen, who could neither read nor write. For most of his life, since the age of ten, he had been a farm hand. For six months before the riots he had been employed at sawing, at 10s. a week, but at the time of the rising he was out of work. After the riots he got work as a ploughboy at about 5s. a week till his arrest. Like the other lads of the neighbourhood he had gone round with a mob, and he was found guilty, with Joseph Mason, of extorting money from William Dowden. For this he might have got off with transportation for life, but another charge was preferred against him. Mr. William Bingham Baring, J.P., tried, with the help of some of his servants, to quell a riot at Northingdon Down Farm. Silcock, who seemed the leader of the rioters, declared that they would break every machine. Bingham Baring made Silcock repeat these words several times and then seized him. Cook then aimed a blow at Bingham Baring with a sledge-hammer and struck his hat. So far there was no dispute as to what had happened. One servant of the Barings gave evidence to the effect that he had saved his master’s life by preventing Cook from striking again; another afterwards put in a sworn deposition to the effect that Cook never attempted to strike a second blow. All witnesses agreed that Bingham Baring’s hat had suffered severely: some of them said that he himself had been felled to the ground. Whatever his injuries may have been, he was seen out a few hours later, apparently in perfect health; next day he was walking the streets of Winchester; two days later he was presented at Court, and within a week he was strong enough to administer a sharp blow himself with his stick to a handcuffed and unconvicted prisoner, a display of zeal for which he had to pay £50. Cook did not put up any defence. He was sentenced to death.
Perhaps it was felt that this victim to justice was in some respects ill chosen, for reasons for severity were soon invented. He was a heavy, stolid, unattractive boy, and his appearance was taken to indicate a brutal and vicious disposition. Stories of his cruelties to animals were spread abroad. ‘The fate of Henry Cook,’ said the Times correspondent (3rd January 1831), ‘excites no commiseration. From everything I have heard of him, justice has seldom met with a more appropriate sacrifice. He shed some tears shortly after hearing his doom, but has since relapsed into a brutal insensibility to his fate.’ His age was raised to thirty, his wages to 30s. a week. Denman described him in the House of Commons, after his execution, as a carpenter earning 30s. a week, who had struck down one of the family of his benefactor, and had only been prevented from killing his victim by the interposition of a more faithful individual. This is the epitaph written on this obscure ploughboy of nineteen by the upper classes. His own fellows, who probably knew him at least as well as a Denman or a Baring, regarded his punishment as murder. Cobbett tells us that the labourers of Micheldever subscribed their pennies to get Denman’s misstatements about Cook taken out of the newspapers. When his body was brought home after execution, the whole parish went out to meet it, and he was buried in Micheldever churchyard in solemn silence.
Bingham Baring himself, as has been mentioned, happened to offend against the law by an act of violence at this time. He was not like Cook, a starving boy, but the son of a man who was reputed to have made seven millions of money, and was called by Erskine the first merchant in Europe. He did not strike his victim in a riot, but in cold blood. His victim could not defend himself, for he was handcuffed, being taken to prison on a charge on which he was subsequently acquitted. The man struck was a Mr. Deacle, a small farmer who had had his own threshing machine broken, and was afterwards arrested with his wife, by Bingham Baring and a posse of magistrates, on suspicion of encouraging the rioters. Deacle’s story was that Baring and the other magistrates concerned in the arrest treated his wife with great insolence in the cart in which they drove the Deacles to prison, and that Bingham Baring further struck him with a stick. For this Deacle got £50 damages in an action he brought against Baring. ‘This verdict,’ said the Morning Herald, ‘seemed to excite the greatest astonishment; for most of the Bar and almost every one in Court said, if on the jury, they would have given at least £5000 for so gross and wanton an insult and unfeeling conduct towards those who had not offered the least resistance; the defendants not addressing the slightest evidence in palliation or attempting to justify it.’ The judge, in summing up, ‘could not help remarking that the handcuffing was, to say the least of it, a very harsh proceeding towards a lady and gentleman who had been perfectly civil and quiet.’ Meanwhile the case of the magistrates against the Deacles had collapsed in the most inglorious manner. Though they had handcuffed these two unresisting people, they had thought it wiser not to proceed against them. Deacle, however, insisted on being tried, and by threatening the magistrates with an action, he obliged them to prosecute. He was tried at the Assizes, and, as we have seen, the trial came to an abrupt conclusion under circumstances that threw the gravest suspicion on the methods of the authorities.[476] Meanwhile the treatment these two persons had received (and we can imagine from their story how innocent poor people, without friends or position, were handled) had excited great indignation, and the newspapers were full of it. There were petitions sent up to Parliament for a Committee of Inquiry. Now the class to which Cook was unlucky enough to belong had never sent a single member to Parliament, but the Baring family had five Members in the House of Commons at this very moment, one of whom had taken part with Bingham Baring in the violent arrest of the Deacles. The five, moreover, were very happily distributed, one of them being Junior Lord of the Treasury in Grey’s Government and husband of Grey’s niece, and another an important member of the Opposition and afterwards Chancellor of the Exchequer under Peel. The Barings therefore were in less danger of misrepresentation or misunderstanding; the motion for a Committee was rejected by a great majority on the advice of Althorp and Peel; the leader of the House of Commons came forward to testify that the Barings were friends of his, and the discussion ended in a chorus of praise for the family that had been judged so harshly outside the walls of Parliament.