A MISCELLLANY OF HISTORY
A TEXTUAL WEAVING OF A CABINET OF CURIOSITIES
A TEXTUAL SAMPLER
Chapter Three
‘I like to think of your tapestry as a piece of woven cloth – the weft weaving through the warp – with all these occupations being carried out at different times. As Stroud and its surrounding parishes grew and developed, the different generations of my family seem to blend into the pattern of the ever-changing history of the Five Valleys.
“History makes people and people make history”
What will Chapter 3 be?’
Shortwood and Montego Bay
At first glance, it might seem an improbable leap
From Newgate Prison, and William Pitt’s spies,
From the febrile atmosphere of London
In the early years of the French Revolution
(‘No War! No Pitt! No King!’),
And the year of the naval mutinies
On the Nore and Spithead in 1797
(‘The Floating Republic’),
To Shortwood Baptist Church, and Nailsworth,
And thence to Montego Bay, Jamaica.
But let’s give this leap a second glance,
And so, reveal a hidden radical landscape,
And a hidden colonial one, too.
The minister there in the early nineteenth century,
One William Winterbotham,
Had done time in Newgate between 1793 and 97,
Incarcerated after sermons deemed near seditious:
‘First of all, government originates with the people.
Secondly, The people have the right
to cashier their governors for misconduct.
Thirdly, The people have a right to change the form of their government if they think it proper to do so.’
‘The people make the laws and the laws were made for kings.’
William Winterbotham was well known in London,
After his transportation from Plymouth,
And consequent imprisonment:
William Godwin would visit Newgate,
Tom Paine would reference William’s writings,
While outside in the streets, Thomas Spence,
And his revolutionary Spencean comrades,
Would take Paine’s political radicalism much further,
With their slogans all over London’s walls and pavements:
‘No Landlords, you Fools!’
And where ‘that Jacobin fox’, John Thelwall
‘The most dangerous man in Britain’,
Would entrance audiences with his oratory.
William became minister at Shortwood in 1804,
Perhaps attracted by the area’s artisanal radicalism,
Perhaps attracted by the area’s nonconformist conscience,
Perhaps entranced by Citizen John Thelwall’s visit
To the area in the summer of 1797,
And consequent lyricism:
‘…For I must leave ye, pleasant haunts! brakes, bourns,
And populous hill, and dale, and pendant woods;
And you, meandering streams, and you, ye cots
And hamlets, that, with many a whiten’d front,
Sprinkle the woody steep; or lowlier stoop,
Thronging, gregarious, round the rustic spire …’
William would be pastor here for twenty-five years.
He was buried in the churchyard in his sixty-sixth year,
After a ministry that not only looked to the heavens,
But also asserted the need for free trade,
Rather than corn laws that kept food prices high,
And inflated aristocratic landlord profits;
After a ministry that asserted the need
for an extension of the vote,
Rather than the Prince Regent’s approval
of the JP’s actions at Peterloo in 1819;
After a ministry that asserted the need
For the abolition of slavery
Rather than merely the abolition of the slave trade.
Attendance at Shortwood Baptist Church grew and grew:
A Pilgrim’s Progress up the hill to the Celestial City.
And there, in the burgeoning congregation,
One Thomas Burchell,
Just five years old when William arrived.
But so inspired by the developing and enveloping Word,
That his Pilgrim’s Progress would take him
Across the Black Atlantic archipelago
And thence to Montego Bay, Jamaica;
A Baptist missionary, but, abolitionist, too,
Not just promoting chapels and schools
And free villages for the enslaved,
But also campaigning for abolition,
And while Lord John Russell contemplated the vote,
As the United Kingdom tottered on the edge of revolution
In ‘The Days of May’ in 1832,
Thomas Burchell’s Baptist colleague,
Samuel Sharpe, would face execution
In a summary wave of judicialized racialised hangings,
And worse,
After the so-called ‘Baptist War’.
No white Baptists were executed.
You can find Samuel’s image on a Jamaican bank note;
You can find a memorial to Thomas in Nailsworth,
At Christ Church,
And at Abney Park Cemetery in Stoke Newington.
Perhaps we should take that bank note,
On a journey from Shortwood to Stoke Newington.
Walks from Kemble Railway Station from the Black Ark Media Group from the Gloucestershire Black History Map: Ewen
The quaint village of Ewen, birth place of Allen Davenport (1775-1846) a shoe maker, poet, socialist and advocate of women’s rights. As a Chartist and Spencean, Davenport supported the working-class movement for political reform and advocated the common ownership of all land alongside his close confidant Robert Wedderburn, a British-African-Caribbean revolutionary and son of a Scottish slave master and plantation owner, he provoked sympathy for his 1824 publication, The Horrors of Slavery’, influencing the Abolitionist movement.
But let’s take a walk down the High Street in Stroud in 1820 taking in the sights. It may not be chocolate box Quality Street but it has a homespun warmth, does good old Stroud High Street.
William Addis joiner
Richard Barrett victualler Crown
CW Bailey hat maker and straw manufacturer
James Bishop patten maker
JP Brisley printer, book seller and sub-distributor of stamps
Betsy Brown huckster
James Butt ironmonger
Richard Camm watchmaker
Jonathon Coleman currier and leather seller
- Darke M.D.
Thomas English glover
Isaac Gardner tailor and draper
Joseph Gardner boot and shoe maker
Samuel Gurner farmer
Sarah Hambridge milliner and dress maker
Henry Hawkins attorney
Leonard Hawkins grocer
Peter Hawker attorney
William Hiles watch and clock maker
John L.B. Hill chemist and druggist
Joseph Hinksman butcher
William Hodges victualler Marlborough Head
Joshua Holder tailor
Ann Howell brass founder and tin-plate worker
- T. Howell baker
John Hudd eating-house
James Knowles Swan Inn and Excise Office
Martin, Mills & Wilson bankers
Ambrose May ironmonger
J.B. Millard auctioneer
Jasper Millard pastry cook
John Mills & Son grocers and tea dealers; soap and candle manufacturers
Thomas Mills mercer
William Moody coachman
James Morgan linen draper and haberdasher
Thomas Mozley tailor
George Mynett victualler Crown & Anchor and Sheriff’s Officer
Mynett & Pugh cabinet makers and upholsterers
Charles Newman attorney
Thomas Nicholls basket maker
Thomas Osbourne linen and woollen draper
Richard Packer attorney
John Parry hat manufacturer
John Pegler butcher
Charles Ranger ironmonger
Hannah Shatford dress-maker
John Sims hop merchant and brewer
Sims & Sutton linen and woollen drapers
Richard Sims spirit merchant
Stephen Saley china and glass warehouse
John Vick watch and clock maker
Francis Vigurs printer, bookseller, stationer & agent to the Imperial Fire offices
Samuel Webb boot and shoe maker and leather cutter
John Welshman linen draper
John Whippy near the Swan tailor
Richard White linen draper and haberdasher
William Wilson banker
From the 1820 Trade Directory
(With grateful thanks to John & Marion Hearfield)