The Dorsetshire labourers had unfortunately arrived at the precipitate conclusion that a spirit of prudence would not transform 7s. a week into a reasonable livelihood. They used no violence beyond breaking up the threshing machines. ‘We don’t intend to hurt the farmer,’ they told the owner of one machine, ‘but we are determined that the land shall come down, and the tithes, and we will have more wages.’ When money was taken it seems to have been demanded and received in an amicable spirit. The sums asked for were often very small. Sentence of death was pronounced on two men, Joseph Sheppard and George Legg, for taking 2s. from Farmer Christopher Morey at Buckland Newton. The mob asked for money, and the farmer offered them 1s.: they replied that they wanted 1s. 6d., and the farmer gave them 2s. Sheppard’s character was very good, and it came out that he and the prosecutor had had a dispute about money some years before. He was transported, but not for life. Legg was declared by the prosecutor to have been ‘saucy and impudent,’ and to have ‘talked rough and bobbish.’ His character, however, was stated by many witnesses, including the clergyman, to be exemplary. He had five children whom he supported without parish help on 7s. a week: a cottage was given him but no fuel. Baron Vaughan was so much impressed by this evidence that he declared that he had never heard better testimony to character, and that he would recommend a less severe penalty than transportation. But Legg showed a lamentable want of discretion, for he interrupted the judge with these words: ‘I would rather that your Lordship would put twenty-one years’ transportation upon me than be placed in the condition of the prosecutor. I never said a word to him, that I declare.’ Baron Vaughan sardonically remarked that he had not benefited himself by this observation.
The tendency to give less severe punishment, noticed in the closing trials at Salisbury, was more marked at Dorchester. Nine men were let off on recognisances and ten were not proceeded against: in the case of six of these ten the prosecutor, one Robert Bullen, who had been robbed of 4s. and 2s. 6d., refused to come forward. But enough sharp sentences were given to keep the labourers in submission for the future. One man was transported for life and eleven for seven years: fifteen were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment; seven were acquitted. It was not surprising that the special correspondent of the Times complained that such meagre results scarcely justified the pomp and expense of a Special Commission. In the neighbouring county of Gloucester, where the country gentlemen carried out the work of retribution without help from headquarters, seven men were transported for fourteen years, twenty for seven years, and twenty-five were sentenced to terms of imprisonment ranging from six months to three years. All of these sentences were for breaking threshing machines.
The disturbances in Berks and Bucks had been considered serious enough to demand a Special Commission, and Sir James Alan Park, Sir William Bolland and Sir John Patteson were the judges appointed. The first of the two Berkshire Commissions opened at Reading on 27th December. The Earl of Abingdon, Lord-Lieutenant of the County, and Mr. Charles Dundas were the two local commissioners. Mr. Dundas has figured already in these pages as chairman of the meeting at Speenhamland. One hundred and thirty-eight prisoners were awaiting trial at Reading: they were most of them young, only eighteen being forty or over. The rest, with few exceptions, varied from seventeen to thirty-five in age, and must have lived all their lives under the Speenhamland system.
It is impossible to compare the accounts of the Special Commissions in Berks and Bucks with those in Hampshire and Wiltshire without noticing a difference in the treatment of the rioters. The risings had been almost simultaneous, the offences were of the same character, and the Commissions sat at the same time. The difference was apparent from the first, and on 1st January the Times published a leading article pleading for uniformity, and pointing out that the Berkshire Commission was ‘a merciful contrast’ to that at Winchester. The cause is probably to be found in the dispositions and characters of the authorities responsible in the two cases. The country gentlemen of Berkshire, represented by a man like Mr. Dundas, were more humane than the country gentlemen of Hampshire, represented by men like the Duke of Wellington and the Barings; Mr. Gurney, the public prosecutor at Reading, was more lenient than Sir Thomas Denman, and the Reading judges were more kindly and considerate than the judges at Winchester. Further, there had been in Berkshire little of the wild panic that swept over the country houses in Hampshire and Wiltshire. The judges at Reading occasionally interjected questions on the prisoners’ behalf, and in many cases they did not conceal their satisfaction at an acquittal. Further, they had a more delicate sense for the proprieties. Contrary to custom, they asked neither the Grand Jury nor the magistrates to dinner on the first day, being anxious, we are told, to free the administration of justice ‘from the slightest appearance of partiality in the eyes of the lower classes.’ The Lord Chancellor and Lord Melbourne had been consulted and had approved.
It must not be supposed that Mr. Justice Park’s theories of life and social relationships differed from those of his brothers at Winchester. In his address to the Grand Jury he repudiated with indignation the ‘impudent and base slander ... that the upper ranks of society care little for the wants and privations of the poor. I deny this positively, upon a very extensive means of knowledge upon subjects of this nature. But every man can deny it who looks about him and sees the vast institutions in every part of the kingdom for the relief of the young and the old, the deaf and the lame, the blind, the widow, the orphan——and every child of wretchedness and woe. There is not a calamity or distress incident to humanity, either of body or of mind, that is not humbly endeavoured to be mitigated or relieved, by the powerful and the affluent, either of high or middling rank, in this our happy land, which for its benevolence, charity, and boundless humanity, has been the admiration of the world.’ The theory that the rich kept the poor in a state of starvation and that this was the cause of the disturbances, he declared later to be entirely disproved by the conduct of one of the mobs in destroying a threshing machine belonging to William Mount, Esq., at Wasing, ‘Mr. Mount having given away £100 no longer ago than last winter to assist the lower orders during that inclement season.’
A feature of the Reading Commission was the difficulty of finding jurymen. All farmers were challenged on behalf of the prisoners, and matters were at a deadlock until the judges ordered the bystanders to be impannelled.
The earlier cases were connected with the riots in Hungerford. Property in an iron foundry had been destroyed, and fifteen men were found guilty on this capital charge. One of the fifteen was William Oakley, who now paid the penalty for his £5 and strong language. But when the first cases were over, Mr. Gurney began to drop the capital charge, and to content himself, as a rule, with convictions for breaking threshing machines. One case revealed serious perjury on one side or the other. Thomas Goodfellow and Cornelius Bennett were charged with breaking a threshing machine at Matthew Batten’s farm. The prisoners produced four witnesses, two labourers, a woman whose husband was in prison for the riots, and John Gaiter, who described himself as ‘not quite a master bricklayer,’ to prove that Matthew Batten had encouraged the riots. The first three witnesses declared that Batten had asked the rioters to come and break his machine in order to serve out his landlord and Mr. Ward, and had promised them victuals and £1. Batten and his son, on the other hand, swore that these statements were false. The prisoners were found guilty, with a recommendation to mercy which was disregarded. Goodfellow, who was found guilty of breaking other machines as well, was sentenced to fourteen, and Cornelius Bennett to seven years’ transportation. The judge spoke of their scandalous attempt to blacken the character of a respectable farmer: ‘it pleased God however that the atrocious attempt had failed.’ It would be interesting to know what were the relations between Matthew Batten and his landlord.
On the last day of the trials Mr. Gurney announced that there would be no more prosecutions for felony, as enough had been done in the way of making examples. Some interesting cases of riot were tried. The most important riot had taken place as early as 19th November, and the hero of the proceedings was the Rev. Edward Cove, the venerable Vicar of Brimpton, one of the many parson magistrates. A mob had assembled in order to demand an increase of wages, and it was met by Mr. Cove and his posse of special constables. On occasions like this, Mr. Gurney remarked, we become sensible of the great advantages of our social order. Mr. Cove without more ado read the Riot Act; the mob refused to disperse; his special constables thereupon attacked them, and a general mêlée followed in which hard blows were given and taken. No one attempted to strike Mr. Cove himself, but one of his companions received from a rioter, whom he identified, a blow rivalling that given to Mr. Bingham Baring, which beat the crown of his hat in and drove the rim over his eyes: it was followed by other and more serious blows on his head and body. The counsel for the defence tried to show that it was distress that had caused the rioters to assemble, and he quoted a remark of the Chairman of Quarter Sessions that the poor were starved almost into insurrection; but all evidence about wages was ruled out. The court were deeply impressed by this riot, and Mr. Justice Park announced that it had alarmed him and his fellow judges more ‘than anything that had hitherto transpired in these proceedings.’ ‘Had one life been lost,’ he continued, ‘the lives of every individual of the mob would have been forfeited, and the law must have been carried into effect against those convicted.’ As it was, nobody was condemned to death for his share in the affray, though the more violent, such as George Williams, alias ‘Staffordshire Jack,’ a ‘desperate character,’ received heavier penalties for machine-breaking in consequence.
Three men were reserved for execution: William Oakley, who was told that as a carpenter he had no business to mix himself up in these transactions; Alfred Darling, a blacksmith by trade, who had been found guilty on several charges of demanding money; and Winterbourne, who had taken part in the Hungerford affair in the magistrates’ room, and had also acted as leader in some cases when a mob asked for money. In one instance the mob had been content with £1 instead of the £2 for which it had asked for breaking a threshing machine, Winterbourne remarking, ‘we will take half price because he has stood like a man.’
Public opinion in Berkshire was horrified at the prospect of taking life. Petitions for mercy poured in from Reading, including one from ladies to the queen, from Newbury, from Hungerford, from Henley, and from other places. Two country gentlemen, Mr. J. B. Monck and Mr. Wheble, made every exertion to save the condemned men. They waited with petitions on Lord Melbourne, who heard them patiently for an hour. They obtained a reprieve for Oakley and for Darling, who were transported for life; Winterbourne they could not save: he was hung on 11th January, praying to the last that his wife, who was dangerously ill of typhus, might die before she knew of his fate.