58 Ibid., pp. 230–1.
59 Ibid., p. 238.
60 Ibid., p. 53. Very similar sentiments are expressed later in Godwin, Political Justice, p. 426.
61 Ibid., p. 438.
62 See M. Philp, ‘William Godwin’, ODNB.
63 Marshall, Godwin, pp. 123–4.
64 Godwin, Enquiry, ed. Philp and Gee, p. 453.
65 Ibid., p. 454.
66 Ibid., p. 50.
67 Quoted in Marshall, Godwin, p. 2.
68 Ibid., p. 49.
69 Godwin, Enquiry, ed. Philp and Gee, p. 456. Malthus himself later moved closer to arguing that ‘moral restraint’ might offer a means of averting catastrophe.
70 Marshall, Godwin, pp. 22–3.
71 Emsley, Britain and the French Revolution, p. 33 See also T. C. F. Stunt, ‘Richard Brothers’, ODNB. Blake’s debt to the radical ‘fringe’ of Protestantism was at the core of E. P. Thompson’s Witness against the Beast (London, 1993), but he almost certainly exaggerated Blake’s connections with the Swedenborgians.
72 Marshall, Godwin, p. 112.
73 Ibid., p. 117.
74 Ibid., p. 118.
75 Ibid.
76 Godwin, Political Justice, p. 3.
77 Quoted in Marshall, Godwin, pp. 141–2.
CHAPTER 10
1 R. E. Schofield. The Enlightened Joseph Priestley: A Study of His Life and Work from 1773 to 1804 (Pennsylvania, 2004), pp. 284–9.
2 Quoted in F. W. Gibbs, Joseph Priestley (London, 1965), p. 204. See also Emsley, Britain and the French Revolution, pp. 40–1.
3 W. Hutton, The Life of William Hutton, Introduction by Carl Chinn (Studley, 1998), p. 105.
4 Emsley, Britain and the French Revolution, pp. 18, 42.
5 F. O’Gorman, ‘The Paine burnings of 1792–3’, Past and Present, 193 (2006), 111–55, at 139–40.
6 Ibid., 145.
7 Quoted in Emsley, Britain and French Revolution, p. 95.
8 This point is forcefully made by O’Gorman, ‘Paine burnings’, 155.
9 Emsley, Britain and the French Revolution, p. 18.
10 G. Claeys, ‘Republicanism versus commercial society: Paine, Burke, and the French Revolution debate’, Proceedings of the Consortium on Revolutionary Europe 1750–1850 (1989), 3–24.
11 Buff, or a Dissertation on Nakedness (1792), p. 9.
12 Ibid., pp. 10–11.
13 Claeys, ‘Republicanism’, p. 15.
14 Todd, Wollstonecraft, p. 185
15 Susan Pederson, ‘Hannah More meets Simple Simon: tracts, chapbooks, and popular culture in late eighteenth-century England’, Journal of British Studies, 25 (1986), 84–113.
16 Emsley, Britain and the French Revolution, p. 69. Wilberforce supported the Combination Acts and the suspensions of Habeas Corpus.
17 Godwin, Enquiry, ed. Philp and Gee, p. 466.
18 Thale, ed., Selections, p. 106.
19 Bewley and Bewley, Gentleman Radical, p. 161.
20 M. T. Davis, ‘John Horne Tooke’, ODNB.
21 Ibid.
22 Emsley, Britain and the French Revolution, p. 34.
23 For good discussions of the novel see E. F. Knapp, ‘William Godwin’s Caleb Williams and the origins of revolution’, Proceedings of the Consortium on Revolutionary Europe 1750–1850 (1989), 189–200; G. Kelly, The English Jacobin Novel, 1780–1805 (Oxford, 1976).
24 W. Godwin, Caleb Williams, or Things as They Are (4th edn, London, 1831), p. xx.
25 Ibid., pp. 211–12.
26 Godwin, Enquiry, ed. Philp and Gee, p. 403.
27 Though Godwin disagreed with Howard’s suggested remedy of solitary confinement as the answer to the evils of prison. Ibid., p. 404.
28 Godwin, Caleb Williams, p. 249.
29 Ibid., p. 281.
30 Ibid., p. 430. On the original ending of the novel see Kelly, English Jacobin Novel, pp. 184–5.
31 Godwin, Caleb Williams, p. 452.
32 Quoted in Emsley, Britain and the French Revolution, p. 37.
33 Godwin singled out the Black Act as an example of legal tyranny in Caleb Williams, pp. 101–2. The classic study of the act remains E. P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters: The Origins of the Black Act (London, 1975). For alternative perspectives see E. Cruikshanks and H. Erskine-Hill, ‘The Waltham Black Act and Jacobitism’, Journal of British Studies, 24 (1985), 358–65.
34 This point is well made by Kesselring, Mercy and Authority, p. 37; C. Emsley, Crime and Society in England, 1750–1900 (3rd edn, Harlow, 2005), pp. 256–63, gives a good summary of the controversy between historians.
35 Emsley, Crime, p. 256, summarising the arguments of V. Gattrel, The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People, 1770–1868 (Oxford, 1994).
36 Quoted in D. Hay et al., Albion’s Fatal Tree (Harmondsworth, 1977), p. 37.
37 Godwin, Enquiry, ed. Philp and Gee, p. 420.
38 Quoted in Emsley, Crime, 291n. For a contemporary example of a death sentence for a trivial crime against property, see the case of Sophia Jones, convicted of shoplifting a roll of muslin on 24 April 1790: http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/oldbailey/html_units/1790s/t17900424-4.html, accessed on 4 August 2008.
39 Vincent, ed., Testaments of Radicalism, p. 75n.
40 Goodwin, Friends of Liberty, p. 372.
41 On this see J. Barrell, Imagining the King’s Death: Figurative Treason, Fantasies of Regicide, 1793–1796 (Oxford, 2000).
42 In Emsley, Britain and the French Revolution, p. 105.
43 Ibid., pp. 103–4.
44 For contrasting opinions on the Despard conspiracy see M. Elliott, ‘The Despard conspiracy reconsidered’, Past and Present, 75 (1977), 46–61; R. Wells, Insurrection: The British Experience, 1795–1803 (Gloucester, 1983).
45 C. Nelson, Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Reason, and the Birth of Modern Nations (London, 2006), p. 306.
46 See ibid., ch. 12; P. Collins, The Trouble with Tom: The Strange Afterlife and Times of Thomas Paine (London, 2006), pp. 53–83.
47 Franklin, Wollstonecraft, p. 173.
48 Ibid., p. 175.
49 Ibid., p. 176.
50 Ibid., p. 196.
51 Clark, Scandal, pp. 137–40.
52 http://www.thomaspainefriends.org/stprocs.htm, accessed on 4 March 2008. H. J. Kaye’s Tom Paine and the Promise of America (New York, 2005), an attempt to reclaim Paine for the left in the USA, shows how far Paine has been assimilated into the canon of conservative heroes.
PART FIVE: THE MASK OF ANARCHY
1 Quoted in M. L. Bush, The Casualties of Peterloo (Lancaster, 2005), p. 27.
CHAPTER 11
1 See F. O’Gorman, Voters, Patrons and Parties: The Unreformed Electoral System of Hanoverian England 1734–1832 (Oxford, 1989), p. 179.
2 For the Middlesex election see J. Ann Hone, For the Cause of Truth: Radicalism in London 1796–1821 (Oxford, 1982), pp. 133–46.
3 On the rather uneasy relationship between Whiggery and popular radicals see L. G. Mitchell, ‘The Whigs, the people and reform’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 100 (1999), 25–41; B. Hilton, A Mad, Bad and Dangerous People? England 1783–1846 (Oxford, 2006), pp. 49–50. On radical uses of history see R. Poole, ‘French Revolution or Peasants’ Revolt? The Rebellions of 1817 and the Rise of the Mass Platform’, paper delivered on Chartism Day, June 2007, Sheffield, pp. 7–8. I thank Robert Poole for giving me a pre-publication copy of his paper.
4 G. D. H. Cole and R. Postgate, The British Common People, 1746–1946 (London, 1961), p. 182.
5 Hone, Radicalism in London, p. 161.
6 For Hunt see J. Belchem, ‘Orator’ Hunt: Henry Hunt and English Working-Class Radicalism (Oxford, 1985).
7 On this shift in Cartwright’s tactics see R. Eckersley, ‘Of radical design: John Cartwright and the redesign of the reform campaign c. 1800–1811’, History, 89 (2004), 560–80, at 567.
8 Hone, Radicalism in London, p. 166.
9 Ibid., p. 176.
10 N. C. Miller, ‘John Cartwright and radical parliamen
tary reform, 1808–1819’, English Historical Review, 83, no. 329 (1968), 705–28, at 714.
11 M. Baer, ‘Burdett, Sir Francis’, ODNB.
12 Hone, Radicalism in London, p. 188.
13 Eckersley, ‘Of radical design’, 579.
14 Miller, ‘Cartwright and radical parliamentary reform’, 715.
15 Eckersley, ‘Of radical design’, 577.
16 J. R. Dinwiddy, From Luddism to the First Reform Bill: Reform in England 1810–1832 (Oxford, 1986), pp. 5–6.
17 Hone, Radicalism in London, pp. 195–6.
18 Ibid., pp. 197–200.
19 Ibid., p. 203.
20 Ibid., p. 207.
21 On the formation of these clubs, once attributed solely to Cartwright, see N. C. Miller, ‘Major John Cartwright and the founding of the Hampden Club’, Historical Journal, 17 (1974), 615–19.
22 O. Smith, The Politics of Language, 1791–1819 (Oxford, 1984), p. 34, and see pp. 30–4 for petitioning in general.
23 House of Commons Information Office, ‘Public Petitions’, at http://www.parliament.uk/documents/upload/p07.pdf, accessed on 9 May 2008.
24 E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (rev. edn, London, 1968), p. 595. Hereafter TMEWC.
25 Cole and Postgate, British Common People, pp. 174, 189.
26 Dinwiddy, From Luddism to the First Reform Bill, p. 25.
27 Thompson, TMEWC, p. 666.
28 Miller, ‘Cartwright and radical parliamentary reform’, 719.
29 Thompson, TMEWC, p. 667.
30 Ibid., p. 668.
CHAPTER 12
1 K. Binfield, ed., Writings of the Luddites (London, 2004), p. 94.
2 Quoted in Thompson, TMEWC, p. 623.
3 K. Navickas, ‘The search for “General Ludd”: the mythology of Luddism’, Social History, 30 (2005), 281–95, at 292. Bellingham’s grudge against the government was personal, not political. He viewed the authorities as culpable for failing to act in his favour when imprisoned for debt in the Russian port of Archangel.
4 Binfield, Writings of the Luddites, p. 28.
5 Ibid., p. xiv; B. Bailey, The Luddite Rebellion (Stroud, 1998), pp. x–xi, suggests an alternative origin for the term in the name of the ancient British king Ludd.
6 See for example Bailey, Luddite Rebellion, passim, for an account that largely dismisses the political aspects to machine-breaking. Thompson, TMEWC, pp. 647–8 is scathing in his attack on the lack of attention given to the Luddites in ‘New Liberal’ and Fabian accounts of the ‘rise of Labour’.
7 Binfield, Writings of the Luddites, pp. 14–15.
8 J. Horn, ‘Understanding crowd action: machine breaking in England and France, 1789–1817’, Proceedings of the Western Society for French History, 31 (2003), 138–52, at 150.
9 Binfield, Writings of the Luddites, p. 15
10 Bailey, Luddite Rebellion, p. 35.
11 Binfield, Writings of the Luddites, pp. 22–3.
12 Ibid., p. 130.
13 Navickas, ‘The search for “General Ludd”’, 285
14 M. Taylor, ‘Ned Ludd’, ODNB.
15 Navickas, ‘The search for “General Ludd”’, 287.
16 Binfield, Writings of the Luddites, p. 23.
17 Ibid., p. 45.
18 Thompson, TMEWC, pp. 652–9; J. Belchem, ‘Brandreth, Jeremiah’, ODNB, suggests that the insurrectionist Brandreth’s silence at his trial was a result of his unwillingness to uncover the radical underground that supported the 1817 Pentrich rising and linked ‘Luddism’ to out-and-out revolutionary movements.
19 Thompson, TMEWC, p. 597.
20 Quoted in Cole and Postgate, British Common People, p. 186. ‘Jeffreys’ was a reference to James II’s Lord Chancellor, infamous for his role in the ‘Bloody Assizes’ which followed Monmouth’s rebellion.
21 M. Kelsall, ‘Byron’s Politics’, in D. Bone, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Byron (Cambridge, 2004), ch. 3, pp. 47–9.
22 Cole and Postgate, British Common People, pp. 188–9.
23 Horn, ‘Understanding crowd action’, 151.
24 Thompson, TMEWC, p. 614. At Booth’s funeral the minister, Jonathan Saville, was stoned by mourners for delivering a service in which he called Booth an ‘infidel’. Ibid., p. 641.
25 Ibid., p. 659.
26 Stockport weavers in June 1819 presented parliamentary reform as their last resort: ‘The fate of their … petitions and memorials to Parliament is so well known as not to require description. By those [from] whom the weavers sought protection they have been rewarded with punishment.’ Quoted in Dinwiddy, From Luddism to the First Reform Bill, p. 27.
27 On this ‘ultra-radical’ subculture see Iain Macalman, ‘Ultra-radicalism and convivial debating clubs in London, 1795–1838’, English Historical Review, 102 (1987), 309–33; for Hunt and the Spenceans, see Belchem, ‘Orator’ Hunt, pp. 54–8.
28 See Macalman, ‘Ultra-radicalism’, 325.
29 Quoted in Hone, Radicalism in London, p. 263.
30 Ibid., p. 262.
31 Quoted in Thompson, TMEWC, p. 661; Belchem, ‘Orator’ Hunt, p. 61.
32 Thompson, TMEWC, p. 685. See also Belchem, ‘Orator’ Hunt, p. 60.
33 Belchem, ‘Orator Hunt’, p. 62.
34 Hone, Radicalism in London, p. 264.
35 Belchem, ‘Orator’ Hunt, p. 70.
36 Quoted in Hone, Radicalism in London, p. 266.
37 J. Stevens, England’s Last Revolution, Pentrich 1817 (Stoke, 1977), p. 16.
38 Miller, ‘Cartwright and radical parliamentary reform’, 724.
39 S. Bamford, Passages in the Life of a Radical (Oxford, 1984), p. 31. On radical petitions to the monarchy see S. Poole, The Politics of Regicide in England, 1760–1850 (Manchester, 2000), ch. 2.
40 J. A. Epstein, Radical Expression: Political Language, Ritual and Symbol in England, 1790–1850 (Oxford, 1994), p. 15
41 Poole, ‘French Revolution or Peasants’ Revolt?’, p. 6. See also for these connections I. Prothero, Artisans and Politics in Early Nineteenth-Century London (Folkestone, 1979), ch. 6.
42 Quoted in Epstein, Radical Expression, p. 16. Brougham’s flirtation with reform was almost completely opportunistic. He once described the members of the LCS as ignorant savages ‘fit only for being tools’.
43 See B. Wilson, The Laughter of Triumph: William Hone and the Fight for the Free Press (London, 2005), p. 196. Wilson, though, as Jason McElligott demonstrates in ‘William Hone, Print Culture, and the Nature of Radicalism’, overestimates both Hone’s and Wooler’s political moderation.
44 Thompson, TMEWC, pp. 792–3.
45 J. McElligott, ‘William Hone’, p. 12. I thank Jason McElligott for letting me see a pre-publication copy of his paper.
46 Quoted in Epstein, Radical Expression, p. 53.
47 Quoted in A. J. Bunting, ‘The Pentrich Rising of 1817’, unpublished dissertation, p. 14, reproduced at www.pentrich.org.uk/documents/a.j.bunting.pentrich.pdf, accessed on 14 May 2008.
CHAPTER 13
1 Bunting, ‘The Pentrich Rising’, p. 29.
2 Ibid., p. 17. See also Poole, ‘French Revolution or Peasants’ Revolt’, p. 6.
3 Quoted in Stevens, Pentrich, p. 17; see also Bamford, Passages, pp. 64–8.
4 Stevens, Pentrich, p. 18.
5 Ibid., p. 60.
6 Ibid., p. 66.
7 Belchem, ‘Orator’ Hunt, pp. 76–7.
8 Hone, Radicalism in London, pp. 274–5, notes that metropolitan radicals generally ignored the plight of the Pentrich men until the role of Oliver was fully revealed.
9 Quoted in Bunting, ‘Pentrich’, p. 21.
10 Shelley’s address is at http://www.pentrich.org.uk/html/an.address2.html, accessed on 14 May 2008.
11 The argument of Thompson, TMEWC, p. 735.
12 Miller, ‘Cartwright and radical parliamentary reform’, 727; R. Poole, ‘The march to Peterloo: politics and festivity in late Georgian England’, Past and Present, 192 (2006), 109–55, at 115; Belchem, ‘
Orator’ Hunt, pp. 60, 99–102.
13 On this see Poole, ‘March to Peterloo’, passim.
14 Ibid., 147–8. Quoting Bamford, Passages, p. 132. The term ‘military array’ was used in the treason trial of Hunt, Bamford and the other leading Peterloo protesters. Ibid., p. 189.
15 Bamford, Passages, pp. 141–2; for narratives of the day see R. Poole, ‘“By Law and the Sword”: Peterloo revisited’, History, 94 (2006), 254–76; J. Marlow, ‘The day of Peterloo’, Manchester Region History Review, 3 (1989), 3–8.
16 M. L. Bush, ‘The women at Peterloo: the impact of female reform on the Manchester meeting of August 16 1819’, History, 89 (2004), 209–32, at 212.
17 Ibid., 214, 217. A. Clark, The Struggle for the Breeches: Gender and the Making of the British Working Class (Berkeley, 1995), p. 159, notes that women’s friendly societies came under increasing surveillance during the 1810s.
18 Bush, ‘Women at Peterloo’, 215. Bush implausibly suggests that women did not speak at public meetings because their voices were too weak to be heard above such large crowds. Ibid., 218.
19 Bamford, Passages, pp. 143–5.
20 Bush, Casualties of Peterloo, p. 94; the casualty lists inspected by Bush give this child as only being injured; E. and R. Frow, Radical Salford (Manchester, 1984), p. 8, give it as being killed.
21 Bamford, Passages, p. 152.
22 Bush, Casualties of Peterloo, p. 96. The Observer reported that she was so badly beaten that when she appeared in the dock to answer the charges against her she looked pale, emaciated and almost fainting for weakness in consequence of the wounds which she had received at the meeting and her subsequent solitary confinement. Ibid., p. 97.
23 See Manchester Times, 14 August 1830, reprinted at http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRhunt.htm.
24 Marlow, ‘The day of Peterloo’; Bush, Casualties of Peterloo, p. 134.
25 Bamford, Passages, p. 153.
26 Bush, Casualties of Peterloo, p. 2.
27 Ibid., p. 44.
28 Ibid., p. 126.
29 Ibid., p. 12.
30 See the cases of Margaret Downs and William Evans, in ibid., pp. 90, 92.
31 Ibid., p. 139; see also Bamford, Passages, p. 164.
32 Bush, Casualties of Peterloo, p. 31.
33 Ibid., p. 93.
34 Ibid., pp. 103–4.
35 Ibid., p. 105.
36 Clark, Struggle for the Breeches, p. 161.
A Radical History Of Britain Page 59
