80 THE BLANKET MEETING AT MANCHESTER. [1817. the last of the four gave to the executive power the fearful right of imprisonment without trial. In common parlance, the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, under "An Act to empower his Majesty to secure and detain such persons as his Majesty shall suspect are conspiring against his person and government." The suspension was, however, in this instance, limited to the ensuing 1st of July. The Habeas Corpus Suspension Act was passed on the 3rd of March; the Bill for restraining Seditious Meetings did not become law till the 29th of March. Within a week after the passing of the Act for imprisonment without trial, and before the magistrates had received any accession to their powers as to the dispersion of tumultuous assemblies, an occurrence took place at Manchester, which was at once evidence of the agitated condition of distressed multitudes in the manufacturing districts, and of the extreme weakness of their purpose. This was the famous march of the Blanketeers. The Blanket Meeting, which took place in St. Peter's Field at Manchester, was so called because many of the vast body of workmen who attended were observed to have blankets, rugs, or large coats, rolled up and tied knapsacklike, on their backs. Some carried bundles under their arms; some had papers, supposed to be petitions, rolled up; and some had stout walkingsticks. The magistrates came upon the field and read the Riot Act; the meeting was dispersed by the military and constables; three hundred commenced a straggling march, followed by a body of yeomanry, and a hundred and eighty reached Macclesfield at nine o'clock at night. Some were apprehended, some lay in the fields. The next morning the numbers had almost melted away. The avowed Reform-leaders-delegates and HampdenClub men-were now under perpetual terror. Some wandered from their homes in dread of imprisonment; others were seized in the bosoms of their families. Public meetings were at an end. The fears and passions of large bodies of men had no safety valve. "Open meetings thus being suspended, secret ones ensued; they were originated at Manchester, and assembled under various pretexts. . . . . . Their real purpose, divulged only to the initiated, was to carry into effect a night attack on Manchester, the attempt at which had before failed for want of arrangement and co-operation."* This scheme was noticed in the Second Report of the Lords' Secret Committee: "It is stated to have been proposed that Manchester should be made a Moscow, for the purpose of strengthening their cause, by throwing numbers of people out of employment." A little while after this "Moscow" proposal, a co-delegate came to Bamford, to propose the assassination of all the ministers. We know that this scheme smouldered for several years. "The fact was," says Bamford, "this unfortunate person, in the confidence of an unsuspecting mind, as I believe, had, during one of his visits to London, formed a connection with Oliver, the spy; which connection, during several succeeding months, gave a new impulse to secret meetings and plots in various parts of Lancashire, Yorkshire, and Derbyshire, and ended in the tragedy of Brandreth, Ludlow, and Turner, at Derby." This tragedy is the only one of the insurrectionary movements of the manufacturing districts in 1817 that has left any traces of judicial investigation, with the exception of *Bamford, vol. i. p. 45. + Hansard, vol. xxxvi. col. 952. ..... 1817.] OLIVER, THE SPY. 81 proceedings at York, at which all the state prisoners were discharged by the Grand Jury, or acquitted upon trial. All the persons connected with the Blanket expedition, and the expected risings at Manchester, were discharged before trial. The Midland Counties of Nottingham, Leicester, and Derby, had been in a disturbed state for several years. The habit of daring outrage was familiar to large numbers of the manufacturing population. The course of ignorant and brutal violence, known as Luddism, had revived in redoubled fury. At the Leicester assizes, on the 1st of April, eight men were tried and convicted of the most daring outrages at Loughborough, and six of these offenders were executed on the 17th of the same month. There was not the slightest attempt at this trial to connect the crimes of these men with any political opinions. But amongst a population that for four years had witnessed the night attacks of armed men upon machinery, and with whom some of the leaders of such organized attacks were in habitual intercourse, it is manifest that the materials for political insurrection were abundantly accumulated. It was not the part of a wise and humane government to permit the feeblest spark of excitement from without to approach these inflammable materials. The secret operations of "the Spy System" in the manufacturing districts were first brought to light by the sagacious energy of the late Mr. Baines of Leeds. The circumstances of this discovery are briefly told by his son, to the effect, that Mr. Baines having learnt that a government emissary, named Oliver, had been attempting to entrap Mr. James Willan, a printer, of Dewsbury, to attend a meeting where ten persons had been arrested, thought it his duty to investigate the facts by personal inquiry. Mr. Willan proved that Oliver, who represented himself as a delegate from the Radicals of London, had several times, for the space of two months, endeavoured to seduce him into acts of violence and situations of danger, and that he had especially urged him to attend a meeting of "delegates" at Thornhill-Lees on the previous Friday, at which meeting ten men were arrested by a party of military, under the command of major-general sir John Byng. Willan, who was a conscientious man, and a professor of the principles of the Society of Friends, indignantly repelled every invitation to violence, and refused to attend the meeting. The ten prisoners had been conveyed, with Oliver himself, to Wakefield, for examination by the magistrates; but at that town Oliver was seen at liberty, and in communication with the servant of general Byng. It was further learnt that Oliver had been at general Byng's house at Campsall, a few days before.* Mr. Baines having published a statement of these circumstances in his paper, The Leeds Mercury,' the transaction formed the subject of a violent debate in the House of Commons on the 16th of June. In the 'Life of Lord Sidmouth,' this affair has been minutely gone into, for the purpose of justifying the Secretary of State for the Home Department against the imputations which arose out of the employment of such persons as Oliver. "None of them," says the author of the Life, "were employed in the first instance by lord Sidmouth; but themselves sought him out; and if, which is not probable, they, in any instances, instigated the conspirators to crime in order to betray VOL. VIII. * "Life of Edward Baines," by his son, Edward Baines, pp. 92, 93. G 82 THE DERBYSHIRE INSURRECTION. [1817. them, the treacherous act must have been entirely their own, as nothing would have excited more his lordship's indignation than the bare idea of so base a proceeding." This opinion is supported by a letter of lord Strafford (formerly sir John Byng), written in 1846. Sir John Byng himself was perfectly incapable, as was acknowledged on all hands, of turning the spy into a tempter. On Sunday, the 8th of June, there was a remarkable assemblage at Pentridge, a village situated some two miles from the Ambergate station on the present North Midland Railway. The village is in the hilly and thinly peopled district to the west of the river Derwent. In the neighbourhood of Pentridge there are several other scattered villages,-all not far removed from a direct road to Nottingham. About a mile from Pentridge, at Butterley, was a large iron foundry. Two men in the employ of the proprietors of this foundry went out into the White Horse public-house at Pentridge, on the morning of the 8th of June, and found a good many persons in the parlour there, "talking about this revolution." There was one amongst them they called "The Captain." He had a map in his hand, and the people came in, and kept asking him questions; and he said, there would be no good to be done except a complete overthrow of the Government. All the country was to rise, all at one time. Many talked thus. They made no secret. They spoke it openly. They did not mind who heard them. They said they had plenty of pikes; and they would go and take Nottingham wholly to themselves; and when they got to Nottingham, every man would have a hundred guineas, and plenty of rum, and it would be nothing but a journey of pleasure. This extraordinary assembly lasted six or seven hours. The two men from the iron works were special constables; but they were afraid to say anything about it. Having agreed to meet on the night of the 9th after dark, the people separated. The Captain with the map in his hand was Jeremiah Brandreth, a frame-work knitter, whose family had received parochial relief. Mr. Denman (who was counsel for the prisoners), after Brandreth had been convicted, compared this man with The Corsair' of lord. Byron. In spite of Mr. Denman's rhetorical description of the mastery of this leader over his weak followers, we must be content to believe, from the evidence of Brandreth's acts, that he was a frantic enthusiast, goaded to violence by great poverty, by imaginary oppression, and, what is more, by the grossest delusions as to his own power and the strength of his cause. We do not think that he was the less dangerous from his real character and the real circumstances around him; but, we believe, as Mr. Denman came to the conclusion, that, in spite of his influence and command, " he was most clearly himself an instrument wielded by other hands." On Saturday night, the 7th of June, Oliver goes to a meeting at Nottingham, with instructions from sir John Byng "not to conceal anything as to the Yorkshire meeting by which these people could be deceived." On Sunday morning, the Nottingham Captain is heard saying, "All the country is to rise, all at one time." On Monday night he passes the door of a labouring man at South Wingfield, about three miles from Pentridge, in his way to an old barn up in the fields; and he urges the man to come with him, saying that "the countries, England, Ireland, and France, were to rise that night at ten o'clock," and that "the "Life of Lord Sidmouth," vol. iii. p. 187. 1817.] THE DERBYSHIRE INSURRECTION. 83 northern clouds, men from the north, would come down and sweep all before them." It is difficult not to regard the language of Brandreth as pure insanity, especially when we contrast it with the sober sense of some around him. "There was an old woman standing by," says the South Wingfield man," and she tapped him on the shoulder, and said, 'My lad, we have got a magistrate here"";-and the labourer himself "thought he must be drunk or mad to think of such things." But on the madman went. In the old barn at South Wingfield he assembled twenty men, who had pikes and guns, and they went forward, stopping at solitary houses, and demanding guns, and dragging unwilling men out of their beds and hiding-places, and compelling them to march with them. At the farm-house of a widow, who behaved with unflinching courage, Brandreth fired in at a window, and killed one of her servants, upon arms being refused to him. His followers said he should not have shot that poor innocent man; and he replied, it was his duty to do it. Onwards they marched the volunteers and the conscripts; and the Captain, when they halted at some low dwellings, and met with any one who refused to march, had his ready exhortation, that "a great cloud out of the north would sweep all before them," with the more particular information that "it would not be necessary to go farther than Nottingham, for London would be taken by the time they got there." Some of the pressed men ran away in the darkness; one refused to march in rank, and upon Brandreth swearing he would shoot him in a moment, the bold fellow stepped up to him with his knife, and the Captain turned off from him. During all this march the rain was incessant. By the time they reached the Butterley Iron-works, their numbers amounted to about a hundred. Brandreth was boldly met by Mr. Goodwin, the manager of the works, and, when he demanded men, was told, "You shall not have one of them. You are too many already, unless you were going for a better purpose; disperse! depend upon it, the laws will be too strong for you; you are going with halters about your necks." Three men took shelter in the office of the works; one man, Isaac Ludlam, who was afterwards convicted and executed, was exhorted by Mr. Goodwin not to go on; but he answered, much agitated, "I am as bad as I can be; I cannot go back." After a short pause, Brandreth gave the command "March.” Soon after, this main body was followed by about fifty other men. On the morning of the 10th of June, Mr. Rolleston, a magistrate, went from Nottingham on the road towards Eastwood, about six miles from Nottingham, and meeting there a considerable body of men armed with pikes, he returned to Nottingham, and procured some troops from the barracks, eighteen privates, commanded by a captain and a subaltern. Upon hearing that the soldiers were coming, the insurgents fled. The captain in command of the Hussars deposed that the military were kept on the alert during the night. He was ordered out with a party, on the road towards Derbyshire, about six in the morning, and approached about sixty men, who fled across the fields. A man in the road tried to form them, but they paid no attention to him. A number of prisoners were taken, and about forty guns and other arms were collected together. Thus ended "the Derbyshire insurrection." For these offences, three men were executed; eleven were transported for life; four were transported for fourteen years; and five were imprisoned for various terms. 84 LORD SIDMOUTH'S CIRCULAR LETTER. [1817. The acquittal of Watson, for high treason, appears to have had no influence on the measures of Government. The second suspension of the Habeas Corpus was passed by large majorities in both Houses; and the Prince Regent, in his Speech closing this Session on the 12th of July, averred, that "a favourable change was happily taking place in the internal situation of the country, which was to be mainly ascribed to the salutary measures which Parliament had adopted for preserving the public tranquillity." The private records of lord Sidmouth's life show that he had no great confidence in the "favourable change." At the end of July, lord Sidmouth established his family at Malvern, intending to remain there a short time himself, "and then back," as he said, "to sedition, and treason again," his under-secretary being left in charge during the interim. Before his lordship's departure, however, as he informed his brother on the 20th, he "revised all the cases of persons committed and detained under the Suspension Act; and the result, he trusted, would be the release of some upon their own recognizance, and increased indulgence to those who could not be released."* On moving the second reading of the Habeas Corpus Suspension Bill, lord Sidmouth made the following statement:-" Some noble lords had complained, that prosecutions had not been instituted against the authors, printers, or publishers, of infamous libels; but it was but justice to Government to state, that they had not neglected their duty with regard to these publications. As soon as they reached the hands of ministers, they were transmitted to the law officers of the Crown, who felt that these publications were drawn up with so much dexterity, the authors had so profited by former lessons of experience, that greater difficulties to conviction presented themselves than at any former time." Within a month from this declaration, lord Sidmouth entrusted the administration of the law of libel to less scrupulous hands than the law officers of the Crown. On the 27th of March the Secretary of State addressed his famous Circular Letter to the LordsLieutenants of Counties, in which, urging the importance of preventing the circulation of blasphemous and seditious pamphlets, he stated that he had obtained the opinion of the law officers, that a justice of the peace may issue a warrant to apprehend a person charged before him upon oath, with the publication of libels of the nature in question, and compel him to give bail to answer the charge." He called, therefore, upon the lords-lieutenants to communicate this opinion at the ensuing quarter sessions, so that all magistrates might act thereupon. Such a proceeding as this, was, perhaps, the most daring invasion of public liberty that had been attempted since the time of the Stuarts. It called forth from lord Grey, on the 12th of May, one of the most luminous speeches which that statesman ever delivered. By the libel bill of Mr. Fox, he said, it was at last established, that in prosecutions for libel, both the law and the fact were within the province of the jury, and to be determined by them. "But, my lords, what avails this just and beneficent statute,-what security is there either for the freedom of the press, or the liberty of the subject,-if, whilst you have imposed this salutary restraint upon the judges in trials for libels, you give to them, and to justices 66 Lord Sidmouth's "Life," vol. iii. p. 196. |