13-27 April.—A series of letters and other papers about meetings of weavers, coalheavers, &c. A printed handbill, calling them together, was first dispersed in Spitalfields on the 12th April. Next day notice of it was given to Lord Rochford by Sir John Fielding. The handbill to the weavers is signed “Ten Thousand,” and exhorts them “to stand up and carry the truth to the King.” “Let us rise up as one man and wait humbly upon the King at St. James’ every day. He will then grant the humble petition of the worthy Lord Mayor and liverymen of London, who have begged him to have pity upon the poor, and to remove those evil ministers who will not lower the price of provisions to relieve us, and who will take no care of our trade. Let us go daily and repeat our prayer to the King, and he will at length hearken to us, and remove his evil counsellors. Then shall we and our poor families be able to gain an honest and comfortable livelihood by a reasonable industry; if not, our trade will be lost for ever. We all remember that some years ago more than 20,000 of our trade waited on the King for several days together, and he was convinced of their distress. N.B.—Do not be guilty of any disorder; only show yourselves to the King, that he may see your distress every day.”
The magistrates in Bethnal Green granted a privy search-warrant, to “set aside all tumults and riots which might happen,” and next day reported that everything had been quiet the night before.
On the 16th April it was reported that printed handbills, verbatim the same as those to the weavers, except the address [and the signature, “One of Two Thousand”] had been distributed among the coalheavers in Shadwell. Everything was quiet, but (say the justices) “we greatly fear some evil agents are abroad sowing sedition.”
On the 17th April Mr. Justice Wilmot acquainted Lord Suffolk that everything was quiet among the Spitalfields weavers, but that he was afraid the City Marshal was making himself “too busy” among them. Their intention then was to rise in a body on the 26th and proceed to the House of Commons. The sworn information of a victualler in Bethnal Green states that the City Marshal came to his house to inquire into the grievances of the weavers, that it was agreed that eight or ten men should meet at the informant’s house to present a petition to the Lord Mayor; but on his objecting to this proposal, the City Marshal desired them to meet at any place they thought proper, or come into the city, and he would protect them, and assured them my Lord Mayor would serve them so long as they kept peace and good order. The Lord Mayor’s account is that he sent the City Marshal with the Sheriffs into Spitalfields, and that the former got himself introduced the same evening to about 50 weavers, when, the handbill distributed the day before becoming the subject of conversation, he expostulated with them on the imprudence and danger of such a proceeding, and convinced them it must have been some enemy to their well-being who had suggested it. The City Marshal’s account convinced the Lord Mayor that the intention of assembling did not originate with the weavers. The Lord Mayor encloses a letter from “A Citizen,” in a disguised hand, in which the hope is expressed that his Lordship, now that the people had become the “messengers of their own distress,” would not use his authority to interpose “any unnecessary obstruction to the miserable people,” the success of his own endeavours for the service of his country not having proved equal to the “honourable part” he had acted, and the “late remonstrance” having been “treated with a contempt which nothing but a persuasion of its falsity could justify.” In order to discover the origin of the hand-bills, Sir John Fielding suggested that they should be shown to printers who might learn something from the type, he himself having once been very successful in discovering the forgery of a banknote by an application to the copper-plate printers, who detected it to have been done by a gun engraver. He also advised the offer of a reward from the justices at Hicks’ Hall.
On the 23rd April Mr. Justice Wilmot wrote from the Globe Tavern in Moorfields that he had just received the handbill which he enclosed, in consequence of which he had come to Moorfields. He found 300 or 400 weavers gathered, “and by their coming in it’s likely there will be thousands.” The body of the handbill is in the same terms as those already referred to, but addressed in this case to the “poor watermen, porters, and carmen, and their families, &c.,” and signed “Two Thousand.” There is the same postscript deprecating disorder. A similar handbill was also distributed, addressed to the weavers as before. On this occasion the Lord Mayor, being applied to, quitted his chair at the Old Bailey, took a hackney coach, and went to the scene to disperse the mob. Before he reached the spot, however, the “three or four hundred weavers” who had assembled had quietly dispersed. It was Mr. Justice Sherwood who succeeded in getting the crowd to disperse on this occasion. He went alone to Moorfields. The weavers could not tell him what they had come together for. Their only complaint was that they had a bill before the House of Commons which they were afraid would not pass. He promised to convey any application they had to make to the King or the Ministry, a promise which they cheerfully accepted, and then immediately dispersed.
The night before Mr. Alderman Oliver had received a letter in a large feigned hand from “A Citizen,” intimating that nothing was intended but that the poor people should go in large bodies to convey that conviction which every gentler method had been so repeatedly yet so vainly tried to produce, and asking him “if a body of starving people” should be found assembling in Moorfields, in order to be under the protection of the city magistrates to consult how to make their sorrows known to their Sovereign, not to let them be hunted by the ill-timed zeal of the neighbouring justices who might apply for his assistance in suppressing a disturbance when the only design was to excite the emotions of humanity in favour of the wretched. For the discovery of the writer of this letter and of the one to the Lord Mayor, already referred to, a reward of 100l. was offered, with a pardon to an accomplice.
On the same day (23rd April) Mr. Robert Pell, chairman of the Tower Sessions, wrote that after diligent secret inquiry after the printed handbills said to have been distributed among the coalheavers in the Tower division, he had been induced to believe that their distribution, if real, had not been general. He had within the last few days, however, noticed a person (for some time in the commission of the peace for the county, but whose name had been struck out on account of certain transactions with the riotous coalheavers) in better plight as to garb and outward appearances than he had been seen in since his disgrace, and in close familiar conference with labouring people in the streets of the neighbourhood. Upon this man he said he had set a watch. In this letter is a printed petition signed by several persons, whose places of residence are also given, addressed “To the nobility, gentry, &c. who are real lovers of the King and country’s prosperity,” attributing the distresses of the silkweavers to the great encouragement given to the importation and wearing of foreign wrought silks, and imploring their assistance to discountenance such “impolitic and unnatural” practices by refusing to wear or purchase such goods.
On 24th April Sir John Fielding proposed that the magistrates of each division should sit for a week every morning from 8 till 11, having the high constable and all the petty constables stationed near them with proper messengers to reconnoitre and inquire. He thought that nothing else would counteract the endeavours which were being made to disturb the public peace by inviting ignorant and illiterate bodies to assemble. He mentioned the plan to “avoid different opinions in the magistrates, and that the whole might be uniform and the force united.” Monday, Thursday, and Friday were the particular days of apprehension. As the general constables were men of business, and must necessarily lose much time in the execution of this plan, he suggested that Sir John Hawkins should be authorised to make them amends.
The weavers were summoned to meet again on Monday, 26th April, when they were promised they should “absolutely see a petition to be delivered to His Majesty’s person by the hands of people who have no reason to be ashamed or afraid to appear in behalf of such distress.” Mr. Wilmot, Mr. Sherwood, and Mr. Pell proceeded to Moorfields, the place of meeting. After a conference with a posse of about 200 weavers they succeeded in getting possession of the proposed petition, which was “artfully drawn up,” and then retired to a public-house while the weavers elected a committee of six or eight to meet them. These made certain proposals to the magistrates, who gave an answer next day which thoroughly satisfied the committee, who sincerely promised on behalf of their body to have no more irregular meetings on the magistrates’ engaging to consider of some mode of subjecting their wages to the decision of the magistrates in their quarter sessions.