Nelson Street

Nelson Street

Even though the eventual hero of Trafalgar owed his life to the ministrations of Cubah Cornwallis, ‘a woman of colour’ (he might well have died in 1780, but for her ), Nelson, in 1805, whilst on board the Victory, declared himself ‘a firm friend’ of the slave owning plantocracy: ‘I was bred … in the good old school and taught to appreciate the value of our West India possessions, and neither in the field, nor in the Senate, shall their rights be infringed, while I have an arm to fight in their defence, or a tongue to launch my voice against the damnable and cruel doctrine of Wilberforce and his hypocritical allies’.

 

I was taught to revere Nelson as a hero; I still have the books. I was brought up to revere Nelson as a hero. It was hard not to. Just look at Trafalgar Square.

 

But what of Cubah (also spelled Cuba, Couba) Cornwallis, ‘The Queen of Kingston’?

 

An internet search suggests that she gained her surname and manumission from Captain Cornwallis, in Jamaica. The Wikipedia entry suggests that her freedom from enslavement possibly came about because ‘there are references suggesting that she and Captain Cornwallis were lovers’. I’m not sure how we can check on that euphemism for what was likely to have been non-consensual sex.

 

But the entry goes on to say that Cubah became Cornwallis’ housekeeper until he left Jamaica. She then settled in Port Royal, treating sailors for ‘various diseases and injuries’ in a ‘small house’ which she bought and ‘converted into a combination of rest home, hotel and hospital’.

That is why Admiral Parker had the emaciated, fever stricken (probably malaria and dysentery) young Horatio Nelson conveyed to Cubah. And her medicines (Obeah? Holistic?) brought him back from death’s door.

Cubah not only treated Nelson; she also restored the future King William the Fourth. She would eventually receive a sumptuous gown from the future queen, which Cubah wore but once: her ‘funerary gown’.

Nelson never forgot the debt he owed Cubah and repeatedly and publicly acknowledged that debt. Not just formally but with warm gratitude. And yet … he was an anti-abolitionist.

King William the Fourth, too.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Rights of Common

Commoners:

Common Right, Enclosure and Social Change in England, 1700-1820

J.M. Neeson

Some gleaning made from this uncommon text,

So as to share knowledge in common:

Timothy Nourse in Campania Felix, or a Discourse of the Benefits and Improvements in Husbandrywrote thus of commoners in 1700:

‘very rough and savage in their Dispositions’ with ‘leveling Principles’ which make them ‘refractory to Government’, ‘insolent and tumultuous’.

Worse than animals, he averred,

commoners had to be chastised

and controlled rather than cultivated.

In 1781, an anonymous observer of squatters and those living on common land in forest, heathland or on ‘waste’ viewed them as ‘more perverse, and more wretched’, living in ‘habitations of squalor, famine and disease’ amounting to ‘most fruitful seminaries of Vice’ where lies ‘sloth the parent of vice and poverty begotten and born of this said right of Common. I saw its progress into the productive fields of lying, swearing, thieving – I saw the seeds of honesty almost eradicated.’

He commented on those living in Hampshire forests on common land; ‘idle, useless and disorderly’, attracted to ‘pilfering and stealing.’ He was similarly minded when in Herefordshire’s Black Mountains:commoners were subject to ‘IDLENESS, the fell ROOT of which VICE always finds it easy to graft her most favourite plants.’

Ah! Protestant self-help thrifty busy virtues,

Where are you when we need you?

You lazy good for nothing commoners.

Go and read Robinson Crusoe,

(Tawney and Weber too for us)

If only you could read.

But don’t follow W.H. Davies:

‘What is this life if full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.’

Stop wasting time.

Gathering fuel on the commons indeed.

Gleaning.

Tending to and milking a cow.

Looking out for rabbits.

Gathering fruits, berries and nuts.

Being satisfied with that you have.

Or exchanging surplus so as to just get by.

Lending or borrowing tools.

Enough is not as good as a feast, I say.

I call that a fast.

We need more of everything – apart from commons,

And shared open fields, of course.

And commoners and squatters, of course.

But:

More enclosure. More arable. More pasture.

Greater efficiency. Higher yields. Higher rents.

Higher profits.

And more labourers working for a wage.

And those labourers will have more children.

And a greater population is needed for the King,

The army, the Empire, and our endless wars against the French.

Neeson wrote that the ‘argument about the legitimacy of ending common right in the eighteenth century was more than a conflict between the moral economy and the self-interested individualism of agrarian capitalism. Increasingly it was also a debate over how best to serve the national interest. Or, more exactly, and crucially, a debate about what sort of society best served that interest …’

And, ‘best served by the industry, independence and patriotism of a flourishing peasantry’ or ‘served best by a multitudinous, fecund, ever-growing proletariat, no matter how poor …’

‘But behind both views was a fundamental concern

with Britain’s economy and political hegemony.’

A List of Wars from the 18th Century to the end of the Napoleonic Wars

1. War of the Spanish Succession 1701-14

2. Great Northern War 1717-20

3. War of Austrian Succession 1740

4. Carnatic Wars 1744-63

5. Seven Years War 1756-63

6. Anglo-Mysore Wars 1766-99

7. First Anglo-Maratha War 1775-82

8. American Revolutionary War 1775-83

9. French Revolutionary Wars 1792-1802

10. Napoleonic Wars 1802-15

11. Second Anglo-Maratha War 1802-05

12. War against the USA 1812

13. Anglo-Nepalese War 1813-16

Enclosers, of course, weren’t thinking of all these endless wars

as they took over the common fields …

Neeson again: ‘But this does not mean that “good” agriculture triumphed over “bad”, like some conquering hero in a gothic romance. It means that one mode of agricultural production gave way to another. (“Backward” agriculture is itself an astonishingly narrow concept. It assumes that productivity alone defines the many relationships, social as well as economic, that agriculture represents.) In the end, enclosers enclosed for a number of reasons: chief among them the prospect of higher rents, a belief in the efficiency of larger, consolidated holdings, and an emotional and intellectual commitment to a more individualized production, to private enterprise. The conquering hero is more accurately described as an investing landlord or an enterprising freeholder. But neither the higher rents nor the (arguably) more efficient units of enclosed villages, nor the change in the zeitgeist of the agricultural establishment should be taken to mean that before enclosure agriculture was necessarily badly run, or backward. Communal regulation did not mean inadequate regulation. The system may have been less productive if we define productivity in terms of agricultural production, though we should note that the jury on this is still out.’

It wasn’t just the fuel – wood, turf, furze, bracken,

Or the food or the grazing that gave sustenance,

It was also the community of reciprocity;

The sharing, the mutuality

That fashioned a community,

And the arranged or happenstance meeting

In field, lane, pathway, Holloway, baulk or common,

And the ensuing conversation

And sharing of the time of day

(‘Good morrow, Gossip Joan,

Where have you been a-walking? …’);

And ‘wasting time’ didn’t mean laziness,

It might have been incomprehensible to the elite,

But the lower orders could have an eye for the picturesque too,

You didn’t have to be educated to have an eye for the sublime:

John Clare textualized what many saw and felt:

‘How fond the rustics ear at leisure dwells

On the soft soundings of his village bells

As on a Sunday morning at his ease

He takes his rambles just as fancys please

Down narrow baulks that intersect the fields

Hid in profusion that its produce yields

Long twining peas in faintly misted greens

And wing leafed multitudes of crowding beans

And flighty oatlands of a lighter hue.’

But it’s true to say that the Protestant virtues

Of frugality, economy and thrift

Were also fashioning this way of life.

But the critics of commons could only see

A lazy, indolent absence of ambition –

But if needs were few, then there was time

For recreation and ‘Saint Monday’ traditions;

There was no tyranny of the clock,

No outlook that ‘time was money’ …

But energy was there in abundance,

And to use an anachronism,

‘Time-Management’ too, as in this case study

Of enclosure and the Beautiful Game:

The Northampton Mercury contained an ‘advertisement for a football match’ at the end of July 1765 to take place over two days, August 1stand 2nd: ‘This is to give notice to all Gentlemen, Gamesters and Well-Wishers to the cause now in Hand. That there will be a FOOT-BALL play in the Fields of Haddon … for a Prize of considerable value … All Gentlemen Players are desired to appear in any of the Public Houses in Haddon aforesaid each day between the hours of ten and twelve in the Forenoon, where they will be joyfully received and entertained.’

On Monday 4th August 1765, the Northampton Mercury reported thus:

‘We hear from West Haddon in this County, that on Thursday and Friday last a great Number of People being assembled there in order to play a Foot-Ball Match, soon after meeting formed themselves into a Tumultuous Mob, and pulled up and burnt the Fences designed for the Inclosure of that Field, and did other considerable Damage; many of whom are since taken up by a Party of General Mordaunt’s Dragoons sent from this Town.’

Football matches are just one example

Of a whole repertoire of opposition

To the supporters of enclosure:

Grumbling, counter-petitioning,

Refusal to cooperate with surveyors,

Tearing down hedges and fences,

Writing formal letters of opposition,

Leaving threatening letters of opposition,

Refusal to sign enclosure bills,

Refusal to sign sundry legal documents,

Stealing boundary markers,

Removing indicators of field boundaries,

Writing local landscape poems,

Expressing anger in public,

Expressing feelings of violation,

Ensuring those feelings were shared communally

And transmitted through the generations:

Here is an example – a full generation

After enclosure had hit this particular village:

‘To the Gentlemen of Ashill, Norfolk,

This is to inform you that you have by this time brought us under the heaviest burden and into the hardest Yoke we ever knowed; it is too hard for us to bear … You do as you like, you rob the poor of their Commons right, plough the grass up that God send to grow, that a poor man may feed a Cow, Pig, Horse, nor Ass; lay muck and stones in the road to prevent the grass growing. If a poor man is out of work and wants a day or two’s work you will give him 6d. per week … There is 5 or 6 of you have gotten the whole of the land in this parish in your own hands and you would wish to be rich and starve all the other part of the parish …

Gentlemen, these few lines are to inform you that God Almighty have brought our blood to a proper circulation, that have been in a very bad state a long time, and now without alteration of the foresaid, we mean to circulate your blood with the leave of God.’

And here’s John Clare:

‘Inclosure came and trampled on the grave

Of labours rights and left the poor a slave

And memorys pride ere want to wealth did bow

is both the shadow and the substance now …’

And John Clare again:

‘That good old fame the farmers earnd of yore

That made as equals not as slaves the poor

That good old fame did in two sparks expire

A shooting coxcomb and. hunting Squire

And their old mansions that was dignified

With things far better than the pomp of pride …

Where master son and serving man and clown

Without distinction daily sat them down …

These have all vanished like a dream of good …’

And the folklore passed through the generations:

‘The law locks up the man or woman

Who steals the goose from off the common

But leaves the greater villain loose

Who steals the common off the goose.’

And when we look at the opposition to enclosure,

And the repertoire of dissent,

We must remember that not only

Are the textual records incomplete

(You have to keep secrets, don’t you?),

But that the repertoire of dissent’s

Oral opposition within an oral culture

Is, of course, impossible to recapture:

The hatred, bitterness, sense of violation,

Feelings of robbery, jobbery, misery and theft,

The loss of gleaning rights and rights of estover,

The loss of pasture and right to roam:

All, of course, the intangible history

Of all those villagers and commoners

’Condemned to the enormous condescension of posterity’.

In conclusion, john Clare again:

The Lament of Swordy Well:

In Swordy Well a piece of land

That fell upon the town

Who worked me till I couldn’t stand

&crush me now Im down

There was a time my bit of ground

Made freeman of the slave

The ass no pindard dare to pound

When I his supper gave

The gypseys camp was not afraid

I made his dwelling free

Till vile enclosure came & made

A parish slave of me

Alas dependence thou’rt a brute

Want only understands

His feelings wither branch & root

That falls in parish hands

Addendum

What of letter writing & formality,

Using the goose and common trope?

A case study:

A letter sent to the Marquess of Anglesey:

‘Where is now the degree of virtue which can withstand interest? …

Should a poor man take one of Your sheep from the common, his life would be forfeited by law. But should You take the common from a hundred poor mens sheep, the law gives no redress. The poor man is liable to be hung from taking from You what would supply You with a meal & You would do nothing illegal by depriving him of his subsistence; nor is Your family supplied for a day by a subtraction which distresses his for life! … Yet the causers of crimes are more guilty than the perpetrators. What must be the inference of the poor? when they see those who should be their patterns defy morality for gain, especially when, if wealth could give contentment, they had enough wherewith to be satisfied. And when the laws ae not accessible to the injured poor and Government gives them no redress.’

The Marquis replied thus:

‘Excepting as the mere fact of the Inclosure, the forming of which no one has a right to contest, All your statements are without foundation & as your language is studiously Offensive I must decline any further communication with you.’

‘The law locks up the man or woman

Who steals the goose from off the common

But leaves the greater villain loose

Who steals the common off the goose.

The law demands that we atone

When we take things we do not own

But leaves the lords and ladies fine

Who take things that are yours and mine.’

For anyone for whom John Clare is a new discovery:

and

 

The Lonely Tree

With thanks to Bob Fry

Edited letter from Henry Burgh, Justice of the Peace,

to the Home Secretary, Lord John Russell, M.P. for Stroud:

‘Rodborough, March 29th, 1839, 6p.m.

My Lord I acknowledge receipt of Your Lordship’s Directions this morning.

I have taken measures to have them put into Execution.

Some of the Chartists came to Stroud yesterday Evening,

and today about quarter past two about 500 marched

up Rodborough Hill by my house with 9 Flags

and a strange Band of Musick…

I have stopped the Beer Shops and Publick Houses…

There are several policemen placed…’

‘Did you see any of that, Beech Tree?

Did you hear any of that, Beech Tree?

Did you hear the huzzahs for the Chartists?

And the catcalls for Lord John Russell?

Did you hear the Chartists’ Six Points,

And the declamation of the People’s Charter?

Did you see those famous national Chartist leaders:

The charismatic Henry Vincent

And the Botany Bay bound John Frost,

Up there on the horse drawn wagon,

That served as hustings for the disenfranchised?’

‘I came into this world on March 29th, 1839,

Stirred into life about two o’clock in the afternoon

By that march of hundreds of Chartists

Campaigning for the vote for working people.

It wasn’t just the light that summoned me

From my sheltered subterranean home,

It was curiosity and affinity too.

And here I have stood since then,

Offering shelter and succour and shade

To one and all,

Regardless of birth, origins, status,

Identity, orientation, gender, race or ability;

A tree that stood on a common,

That sprang to life one early Victorian spring,

Called from the earth by the tramp of hundreds,

And a sympathy for their aspirations,

Growing stronger through the centuries,

Springtide sap rising with democracy.

But don’t call me the Lonely Tree.

For just like the sycamore of the Tolpuddle Martyrs,

I am a tree of the commons and the commoners.

I am anything but a Lonely Tree.

Only those without a knowledge of this history

Could call me a Lonely Lonesome Tree.

I am a tree of the People.

I am the tree of the Commons.

I am the Commoners’ Tree.’

Randwick 1832 Experiment: Part Two

Early May 1784: ‘a gentleman was riding through Randwick and noticed “a crowd of people assembled around a horsepond”, where he saw ‘a man seated upon a chair.’ He thought this was a ‘ducking … for some transgression of local custom or morality.’ But this was Randwick Wap, ‘held every year on the second Monday after Easter in “Hocktide” – ‘a Whitsun festival, sometimes coinciding with May Day, a form of carnival’ with a “mock-mayoral election.”

Randwick Experiment Part Two

Notes taken from David Rollison’s

The Local origins of Modern Society Gloucestershire 1500-1800

 

Estimated Population of Gloucestershire 1550-1801

1550 approx. 75,000

1600 approx. 95,000

1712 approx. 128,000

1779 approx. 161,000

1801 Census 210, 267

 

                   Population of some Stroudwater Parishes 1551-1831

                                   1551        1603      1779      1801    1831

Eastington.                391           401        769        908     1,770

Stonehouse               468            474        759      1,412    2,469

Kings Stanley           234            728      1,257     1,434    2,438

Leonard Stanley.      439            417        512         590       942

Woodchester            200            217        792         870       885

Minchinhampton      835          1,002    4,000     3,419    5,114

Rodborough             401            259       1,481     1,658    2,141

Horsley.                   312            668       2,000      2.971   3,690

Painswick.               601           1,033    3,300.     3,150    4,099

Bisley.                     668           1,503    4,905.     4,227.   5,896

Randwick.              167             372      650.          856    1,031

Pitchcombe               43.            134        90            216       187

Stroud.                    969            1,508     4,000      5,422.   8,607

 

1756 Stroudwater Riots

 

‘Industrial rioting did not break out in Stroudwater until 1756 … The population data are remarkably consistent with what we know of the markets for Stroudwater cloth. When the markets collapsed, local populations were double what they had been fifty years earlier; and we may surmise that it was a younger population as a consequence of such rapid growth. James Wolfe’s comments in a letter from Stroudwater in 1756, that he expected to leave with many recruits from the unemployed young of the district, complements this impression of an extraordinary spurt of growth, followed by depression, followed by riots, followed by a renewal of overseas war.’

 

Randwick 1832 Revisited: Introduction

http://radicalstroud.co.uk/randwick-1832-experiment/

 

There are two chapters in this book about Randwick with interesting implications for the 1832 Randwick experiment as we shall see later…. But for the moment, a brief introduction:

 

Eric Wolf in Europe and the People without History wrote thus of Stroudwater: ‘one of the first areas in which English weavers lost their autonomy and became hired factory hands’ with ‘the onset of the industrial revolution in the valley of the Stroud’, while as regards Randwick, in particular, Rollison also pointed out how enclosure came relatively late to the village: ‘it retained arable strips and commons up to the early 19th century.’ So, we already note two reasons (one, industrial, and one, agricultural) for the notable levels of poverty in Randwick – and the consequent appearance of the Randwick experiment (as outlined in Utopia Britannica). There is a third reason to add here: the population peaked in Randwick in 1831 …

The World Turned Upside Down?

It’s interesting to see how Rollison, at times, as it were, appears to personify Randwick: ‘Randwick was a living symbol of the depths of unrespectability. It challenged pretension and it challenged prejudice. It looked at the respectable folk and found them wanting and it had an ingrained scepticism as to the legitimacy of cherished social conventions. It nurtured tricks and stratagems for bringing the mighty and would-be mighty down to earth … It included (and gave birth to) the radical side of contemporary popular culture voiced most commonly as a humorous scepticism towards all pretensions based on prescribed hierarchy, genealogy and tradition or wealth … It belongs to a universal type, authentic (as against appropriated and contrived) carnivalesque humour.’

 

The passage above can be readily placed alongside the Wikipedia entry describing Randwick Wap:

The Wap is an annual series of events during spring which culminates in a traditional procession and festival dating back to the Middle Ages. Various theories exist on how it began, although most villagers believe it was a celebration that followed the completion of building Randwick’s parish church.

The Wap was traditionally held on Low Sunday and Monday, the first Sunday and Monday after Easter. On the Sunday, the bells of the village church would be rung, a special service was held and a collection taken. On the Mon evening, a ‘Mayor’ was elected and he would be carried by chair to an ancient pool where he was immersed. Hordes would gather from far and wide including fiddle-playing and fortune-telling gipsies.[3] By the late 19th century, however, the Wap was becoming better known for its drunken revelry rather than as an ancient spectacle and it was evident that something had to be done.[4] In 1892, the church officials refused to ring the bells or hold a special collection to mark ‘Wap Sunday’ and although a mayor was elected, the Wap in its then form had run its course.[5]

The Randwick Wap was eventually revived in 1971 by the vicar Rev Niall Morrison (son of William Morrison, 1st Viscount Dunrossil) and now the festivities take place in the month of May.[6]

References[edit]

  1. ^“Parish population 2011”. Retrieved 29 March 2015.
  2. ^“Randwick,Whiteshill and Randwick ward 2011”. Retrieved 30 March 2015.
  3. ^“A Respected Randwickian Writes”. Stroud News & Gloucestershire Advertiser. 11 April 1890. p. 4.
  4. ^“Wap”. Stroud News & Gloucestershire Advertiser. 2 May 1868. p. 2.
  5. ^“Randwick”. Stroud News & Gloucestershire Advertiser. 29 April 1892. p. 6.
  6. ^“It’s Roll Out the Cheeses”. Western Daily Press. 5 May 1975. p. 1.

 

Back to Rollison: he says that he ‘shall … show that Randwick was generally regarded as the poorest village in Gloucestershire, and that this perception was accurate’. He also looks at sexual behaviour in the village via ‘The case of the indiscreet landlord’ with the ‘depositions associated with a bawdy-court case in 1713 to explore and evoke the quality of social relations in this notoriously poverty-stricken clothworking village’; it is the only archival ‘clue’ he finds ‘to the kind of social irregularity associated with Randwick’s poverty’ but says this clue can be ‘confirmed as representative by similar cases in other Stroudwater parishes.’

The author then tells us about “The Lord Mayors of Randwick” – ‘a curious, calendrical festival or “revel”’ held ‘in the second week after Easter … a carnivalesque occasion …  usually seen as “reversal” of class and gender relations.’ Rollison suggests, ‘in the light of the material in the case of the indiscreet landlord, that what went on was probably more in the line of a celebration of the sorts of things that went on at Randwick all the time. It “turned the world upside down” in the sense that the celebration was insistent and public, claimed as a rightful custom against the desire of the magistrates, who tried to suppress it. But in truth it advertised only what was normal.

The next section ‘analyses “The Lord Mayor of Randwick’s Story”, which, according to a detailed account of the revels published in 1784, was used every year to usher in a week of “misrule”. Rollison comments: ‘I show that this song unmistakably embodied an historico-mythical explanation of Randwick’s poverty and expressed an ideal of egalitarian communitas – the reason for misrule and this provides us with insight into the collective political consciousness of a community … a moment … that lay on the border between older, preliterate … labour conditions and the directions taken by these traditions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.’

What evidence, you are thinking, does the author provide to justify his assertion about Randwick’s notable poverty? Well, here we go:

‘Randwick was the poorest village in the region. In 1671-2 exceptions from the Hearth Tax averaged 40 per cent in the Stroudwater valleys. At Randwick, with a population of about 450, the figure was nearer 70 per cent. In 1677 the parish was said to be unable to maintain its poor and a rate was ordered to be levied on other parishes in the Hundred to which it was attached. In 1712, Sir Robert Atkyns wrote that Randwick was “the highest charged to the Poor Rate of any parish” in Gloucestershire and ‘He also noted that more people were buried there each year than were baptised.’

By the end of the 18th century 110 families out of 206 in Randwick were dependent on weekly parish relief (the Stroudwater average was 40%; Randwick’s was 55%). ‘The Minister for Randwick reported that “The Working Classes in his parish [were] generally depressed for scarcity of employment, low wages, and payment in truck”’ … in consequence, he regretted the existence of “some insubordinate feelings fostered with association at the beershops, and by reading of inflammatory publications.”’

Now for THE CASE OF THE INDISCREET LANDLORD

Rollison comments: ‘The archives don’t generally provide much information on the social consequences of Randwick’s exemplary poverty, but glimpses are provided by a scandal which erupted in 1713.’ Mary Bennett and Lizzie Robbins of that parish visited Edward Field, ‘a magistrate near Stroud’, to inform him of a shocking event they had witnessed “on the day after Candlemas.”

They told Field that the chamber of their house “adjoyneth to a house belonging to Stephen Mills” and that Robbins saw Mills “beckon with his hand to Martha Thomas who went with him into his house.” Robbins was able to see through “the mudd wall” because of “a slitt or chink” but “turned from the said chink” for obvious reasons. Bennett took over and heard Mills command Thomas to “Lye down”. “I will not.” “Thou shalt.” More detail followed and ‘On this evidence Field considered that there was a case to answer …’ Rollison goes on to say that there was nothing unusual in this case with its ‘sexual irregularity, slander and gossipy defamation’ – this was the stuff of bawdy-courts – but what made this case unusual and exceptional was not just that it divided the village (‘high versus low’: the three women were all tenants of Mills), but also ‘ that the court officials clearly found it impossible to find a single unambiguously respectable witness … The poorest village in Gloucestershire was also its most “immoral” village.’ The author adds, ‘Randwick people almost certainly knew of their reputation with outsiders, and every year at Hocktide they celebrated their infamy.’

HOCKTIDE

Early May 1784: ‘a gentleman was riding through Randwick and noticed “a crowd of people assembled around a horsepond”, where he saw ‘a man seated upon a chair.’ He thought this was a ‘ducking … for some transgression of local custom or morality.’ But this was Randwick Wap, ‘held every year on the second Monday after Easter in “Hocktide” – ‘a Whitsun festival, sometimes coinciding with May Day, a form of carnival’ with a “mock-mayoral election.”

‘The gentleman described proceedings thus in the Gentleman’s Magazine: “One of the parish is, it seems … elected mock-mayor. He is carried with great state, colours flying, drums beating, men, women and children shouting, to a particular horse-pond, in which his worship is placed, seated in an armchair; a song is then given out line-by-line by the clerk and sung with great gravity by the surrounding crowd … the instant it is finished, the mayor breaks the peace by throwing water in the faces of his attendants. Upon which, much confusion ensues; his worship’s person is, however, considered as sacred, and he is generally the only man who escapes being thoroughly souced.”

“The rest of the day, and often the week is devoted to riot and drunkenness.”

When did this ceremony of turning ‘the world upside down’ commence? The earliest textual reference is 1703; but Samuel Rudder made these observations in his magisterial A New History of Gloucestershire in 1779: “At this place an annual revel is kept on the Monday after Low Sunday, probably the wake of the church, attended with much irregularity and intemperance, with many ridiculous circumstances in the choice of a Mayor, who is yearly elected on that day, from amongst the meanest of the people. They plead the prescriptive right of antient custom for the licence of the day, and the authority of the magistrate is not able to suppress it.

The whole parish is not estimated at more than 500l. per ann. but is very populous, chiefly inhabited by poor people employ’d in the woollen manufacture …”

Rollison points out that the 1703 reference ‘assumed’ that the ‘calendrical festival’ had medieval origins. He says that although this is ‘conjectural’, the assumption ‘is supported by’ festivals elsewhere defined by Easter’s date, and subsequent May Day, Hock Monday and Hock Tuesday revelries. Rollison goes on to say that ‘The context at Randwick, an industrial village in one of the districts where we have documentary evidence of early trade union activity, also established a plausible link between medieval carnivalesque festivals and a date that was to become the great annual festival of the Labour Movement.’

But now we move from class to gender: Hock Monday asserted patriarchy but Hock Tuesday saw gender relations turned upside down, and Rollison adds that this “survived to be the more enduring of the customs. According to the locality, it was customary for the wives – as a group – to bind or weave into the air those husbands who could be caught, and to release them only on payment of a ransom … Criticism of marital mistreatment or impropriety were formally and noisily expressed.”

So, it seems that Randwick was a transgressive sort of place … and as Rollison concluded, ‘Carnival was always in part “political”, and as such contained an implicit threat to the status quo. To take this further we shall now consider the Lord Mayor of Randwick’s Song, or “psalm”.’

 

THE WEAVERS’ SONG

When Archelus began to spin,

And ‘Pollo wrought upon a loom,

Our Trade to flourish did begin,

Tho’ conscience went to selling broom.

When princes’ sons kept sheep in field,

And queens made cakes with oaten flour,

And men to lucre did not yield,

Which brought good cheer to ev’ry bower.

But when the giants, huge and high,

Did fight with spears like weavers’ beams,

And men in iron beds did lie,

Which brought the poor to hard extremes.

When cedar trees were grown so rife,

And pretty birds did sing on high,

Then weavers liv’d more void of strife,

Than princes of great dignity.

Then David with his sling and stone,

Not fearing great Goliath’s strength,

He pierc’d his brains, and broke his bones,

Tho’ he was nine feet and a span in length.

Chorus:

Let love and friendship still agree

To hold the bonds of amity.

 

The gentleman wrote it down, btw.

 

Conclusion

Now, gentle reader, for all I know, you may think Rollison has over egged the Randwick Wap pudding. But here’s a description of his book:

 

‘Through a series of sharply focused studies spanning three centuries, David Rollison explores the rise of capitalist manufacturing in the English countryside and the revolution in consciousness that accompanied it. Combining the empiricism of English historiography with the rationalism of Annales, and drawing on ideas from a wide range of disciplines, he argues that the explosive implications of the rise of rural industry created new social formations and altered the communal, cultural and social contexts of peoples’ lives. Using localized case studies of families and individuals the book starts with significant detail and moves out to build up a subtle and innovative view of English cultural identities in the early modern period.’

 

Here is a link to the book for anyone who wishes to research further:

https://epdf.tips/the-local-origins-of-modern-society-gloucestershire-1500-1800.html

Heritage and the GWR

What is ‘Heritage’?

We all sort of know what heritage means,

Don’t we, in a way …

Something handed down from the past,

A tradition, an inheritance,

Be it cultural, tangible,

Physical, natural,

intangible, oral, folkloric

And so on … and so on …

You know, that sort of thing;

Or as Michael Heseltine put it

When English Heritage was formed,

English Heritage will tell ‘the story of England’.

And therein lies the rub, of course:

Who tells the story?

Who makes up the story?

How reliable is the narrator?

How omniscient is the listener?

Let’s think about Isambard Kingdom Brunel:

A case study in Swindon and heritage

If ever there was one:

The half-mythologised story

Of Brunel choosing Swindon as the site

For his locomotive works,

With the tossing of a ham sandwich,

And where it fell, Swindon grew …

The subsequent lionisation

And heroization of Brunel,

The statue, the shopping centre,

A man for all seasons it would seem.

He was also a man of Bristol, of course,

Bristol: the source of so much of the capital

That financed the Great Western Railway;

He was also a man of London,

Almost losing his life in the construction

Of the Thames Tunnel when it flooded,

So, Brunel is almost a personification

Of the eventual GWR coat of arms,

With the crests of London and Bristol.

But what of its heraldic motto,

‘Domine Dirige Nos: Virtute et Industria’?

‘Lord Guide Us’: ‘Virtue and Industry’ …

The Enslaved and the Great Western Railway

Friends, railwaymen and women,

I come not to bury the Great Western Railway

But to tell you of its provenance;

To tell you how the compensation

Given to owners of the enslaved,

Led to their railway investments

From that twenty-million pounds

So generously given in 1834,

Nearly half the national budget for that year,

Billions and billions in today’s values.

The GWR:

God’s Wonderful Railway:

I do not come to bury you,

But to tell the following tale of everyday Bristol folk:

Thomas Daniel whose £70,000 + compensation

For the very partial freedom gained

By over 2,500 enslaved on his estates,

(That’s £86 million in today’s values)

Came in right handy,

For a line from London to Bristol;

Richard Bright – only £14 million

In today’s values, I know,

For his 640 enslaved,

But every little helps you become

The deputy chairman of the GWR;

George Gibbs, only £1million in today’s values

(47 enslaved),

But a future director of the Great Western Railway;

Then there’s Henry Bush (114 enslaved),

Whose £3 million in the hand,

Helped finance the Bristol to Gloucester line;

And, penultimately, let’s remember John Cave,

Another railway Master of the Society of Merchant Venturers,

But, also, Sheriff and Mayor –

But I choose to conclude with Christopher Claxton,

Zealous defender of the West Indian plantocracy,

Vigorous defender of enslavement and its triangles,

Keen to fight a duel with an opponent of enslavement,

A surname that lives on in St Kitts and Nevis,

Close confiding colleague of Isambard Kingdom Brunel,

Out there, regarding the Clifton Suspension Bridge

And Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s giant steamships,

For he became the managing director

Of the Great Western Steamship Company …

‘Friends, Swindonians, countrymen, lend me your ears:

‘Domine Dirige Nos: Virtute et Industria’

‘Lord Guide Us’: ‘Virtue and Industry’ …

Written after reading From Wulfstan to Colston –

Severing the sinews of slavery in Bristol

Mark Steeds and Roger Ball Bristol Radical History Group

This piece indicates how local history and global history are so often intertwined. The term that has been coined for this fusion of approach is ‘Glocal History’. The link below takes you to my previous research on those who gained from compensation in 1834 in Bristol, Gloucestershire and Bath. Further research would be needed from the UCL slavery database to update the list, and research how many others invested in railways in general and the GWR in particular.

http://radicalstroud.co.uk/slave-owners-in-gloucestershire-and/

Reimagining how the Railway Lies

I live in Stroud,

Home of the arch commemorating the abolition of slavery,

An arch from 1834,

Standing near a comprehensive school,

By a busy main road to Gloucester;

We are rightly and justly proud of this in Stroud –

But, of course, quite a few owners of enslaved peoples

Lived around this town,

Not to mention Gloucester, Cheltenham,

Bath, Bristol and the rural south-west.

Slave owners received the equivalent in today’s values,

Of £17 billion;

Fully forty per cent of GDP in 1834;

A great deal of this ‘compensation’

Went into railway investment and development

In the 1830s and 1840s:

The Gladstone family in the north, for example …

And, nearer to home,

Bristol merchants in the GWR,

Samuel Baker at Lypiatt, near Stroud,

I could go on and on and on …

But what is chastening to reflect upon, I think,

Is the Keynesian multiplier effect …

The consequential impact in a series of links and chains,

Tendrils and tentacles,

And Victorian Venn diagrams

Upon our ancestors …

How many of our family forebears

(Six generations of mine)

Ended up working on the revered railways

Or ran the homes and kitchen

Because of that initial injection of capital?

It’s a sobering thought,

As we reflect upon those tentacles

And tendrils of racial capitalism.

Before I move on:

Out of the £695,000 raised by subscription for the construction of the railway from Swindon through Stroud to Cheltenham, £212,000 came from the spa town of Cheltenham, home to so many beneficiaries from the abolition of enslavement.

Reimagining how the Railway Lies

The Iron Road, the Permanent Way:

Lines of steel stretch to vanishing point,

Where pale-skinned navvies with pick and shovel,

Work their way through the nineteenth century.

But wait until the steam clouds dissipate,

See how that express train changes shape –

A slave ship on the Middle Passage,

Sharks following in its crimson wake.

The station now a sugar plantation,

Manacles and shackles in the waiting room,

Signal gantries now high gallows –

For the bounty paid to enslavers,

When slavery was abolished in 1834,

Helped fuel the Railway Mania;

Like Samuel Baker up at Lypiatt,

Investing in railways in the Forest of Dean,

Or the Gladstone dynasty up in Liverpool,

Or the gentry of Bath and Bristol in the west;

Or, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire.

The Iron Road, the Permanent Way:

Lines of steal stretch to revelation point:

A colonial landscape all along the line,

That is how the railway lies.

So, what of Swindon and the surrounding villages and enslavement?
I carried out a quick and perfunctory search
Of the UCL (oh, alma mater!) enslavement data base,
To see what would turn up,
And here we are:

George Kibblewhite
Lydiard Millicent

William Kibblewhite
Lucy Sadler (nee Kibblewhite)
BENEFICIARY
Jamaica St Mary 94 (Weyhill)
£1949 7s 0d [114 enslaved]

Edmund Kibblewhite
High Street Wootton Bassett
AWARDEE [TRUSTEE]
Jamaica St Mary 94 (Weyhill)
£1949 7s 0d [114 enslaved]

Joseph Christopher Ewart
Broasleas Devizes
Antigua 86 [Long Lane Delap’s]
£2790 8s 8d [213 enslaved]

Charlotte Peach (nee Philpot)v Sarum Devizes
UNSUCCESSFUL CLAIMANT [LEGATEE]
Antigua 324 [Vernon’s]
£4906 5s 5d [329 enslaved]

Joshua Smith
Erlestoke Devizes

Anna Susanna Watson Taylor
OTHER ASSOCIATION
Jamaica Hanover 21 [Haughton Grove]
£2512 0s 3d [138 enslaved]
OTHER ASSOCIATION
Jamaica Hanover 577 [Haughton Court Estate]
£5343 19s 1d [273 enslaved]

OTHER ASSOCIATION
Jamaica St Mary 247 [Llanrumney Estate]
£5649 0s 7d [331 enslaved]

OTHER ASSOCIATION
Jamaica St Mary 26 [Montrose and Flint River Pens]
£5343 5s 6d [296 enslaved]

George Watson Taylor (nee Watson)
BENEFICIARY
Jamaica Hanover 577 [Haughton Court Estate]
£5343 19s 1d [273 enslaved]
OTHER ASSOCIATION
Jamaica St Mary 247 [Llanrumney Estate]
£5649 0s 7d [331 enslaved]

OTHER ASSOCIATION
Jamaica St Mary 26 [Montrose and Flint River Pens]
£5343 5s 6d [296 enslaved]

OTHER ASSOCIATION
Jamaica St Mary 247 [Llanrumney Estate]
£5649 0s 7d [331 enslaved]

OTHER ASSOCIATION
Jamaica St Thomas-in-the-East, Surry 457 [Burrowfield Pen]
£1711 10s 6d [99 enslaved]

Further research: if you were to type in this link for the search page on the UCL database

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/search/  and then type in Wiltshire into the county box, you would see the records of some nearly 100 individuals. Future and further research would allow us to see if any of these people invested in railways in general and the GWR in particular.

 

Radical Road Trip

Radical Antiquarians on Tour
The Antiquarians’ Road Trip
Plus ca change

Look! There’s Mr Jingle and Mr Pickwick in Stamford,
A town astride the Great North Road,
All tortuous turnpikes and honey stone,
Coaching inns and listed buildings:
‘GOOD STABLING AND LOOSE BOXES’;

And beyond Stamford, heading east?
There’s John Clare revenants walking the roadside,
And channels and rivulets and watercourses,
With high embankments above the roads,
And a cloud filled sky that meets the fields
In a cumulonimbus towering clasp
Across a dark shadowed numinous dreamscape;

But there, leaping out of the flat lands’ fastness,
The vaporous tower of Ely cathedral,
And all around, the oozing of the fens:
Tick Fen; Langwood Fen, Great Fen, ChatterisFen,
Ouse Fen, Mildenhall Fen, Burnt Fen …
And all around, the waters of rivers and dykes,

And a boatyard down below the cathedral,
Constant trains rattling across the freight line rails,
As twilight softness gathers around the streets,
And swifts soar high above the Maltings,
And high above the roof of Oliver Cromwell’s house,
Just as their seventeenth century ancestors did,
When Cromwell strode forth with his righteous bible,
Imagining a New Model Army
That would vanquish Charles Stuart’s Royalists,
While swifts screeched and eavesdropped high above,
And a parliament of rooks observed and noted.

Radical Antiquarians on Tour
The Antiquarians’ Road Trip
Plus ca change

Look! There’s Mr Jingle and Mr Pickwick in Stamford,
A town astride the Great North Road,
All tortuous turnpikes and honey stone,
Coaching inns and listed buildings:
‘GOOD STABLING AND LOOSE BOXES’;

And beyond Stamford, heading east?
There’s John Clare revenants walking the roadside,
And channels and rivulets and watercourses,
With high embankments above the roads,
And a cloud filled sky that meets the fields
In a cumulonimbus towering clasp
Across a dark shadowed numinous dreamscape;

But there, leaping out of the flat lands’ fastness,
The vaporous tower of Ely cathedral,
And all around, the oozing of the fens:
Tick Fen; Langwood Fen, Great Fen, ChatterisFen,
Ouse Fen, Mildenhall Fen, Burnt Fen …
And all around, the waters of rivers and dykes,

And a boatyard down below the cathedral,
Constant trains rattling across the freight line rails,
As twilight softness gathers around the streets,
And swifts soar high above the Maltings,
And high above the roof of Oliver Cromwell’s house,
Just as their seventeenth century ancestors did,
When Cromwell strode forth with his righteous bible,
Imagining a New Model Army
That would vanquish Charles Stuart’s Royalists,
While swifts screeched and eavesdropped high above,
And a parliament of rooks observed and noted.

read more

Fake Views

Trigonometry Points or Trickonometry Points?
The clue is in the name of course:
Ordnance Survey: Ordnance: artillery;
Survey: examine and record an area of land;

The clue is in the time as well as space:
The 18th and 19th centuries:
The formation of the United Kingdom,
When English and Hanoverian imperialism
Mapped the new Union Jack with redcoat ruler,
And with muskets and new names and mathematics,
With charts and furlongs and charters,
Enclosing common and custom
With a new and ruthless toponymy.

Trigonometry Points or Trickonometry Points?
The clue is in the name of course:
Ordnance Survey: Ordnance: artillery;
Survey: examine and record an area of land;

The clue is in the time as well as space:
The 18th and 19th centuries:
The formation of the United Kingdom,
When English and Hanoverian imperialism
Mapped the new Union Jack with redcoat ruler,
And with muskets and new names and mathematics,
With charts and furlongs and charters,
Enclosing common and custom
With a new and ruthless toponymy. read more

What have Historians enchanted by Roman Britain ever bequeathed to us?

What have historians enchanted by the study of Romano-British

history ever bequeathed to us?
And why have they been enchanted?
I suppose it could be the Stockholm Syndrome,
The affection felt by the captive for the captor sort of thing,
Or perhaps we should call it the St Albans Syndrome,

Or the Verulamium Syndrome …
But there’s so much more, I know,

(Or is there?)

Deference, perhaps, or ‘Borrowed status’,
As the sociologists put it,

The cult of the classics in grammar schools,
The dominance of the English public school;
The cult of the nineteenth century amateur,
Antiquarian and archaeologist,
Often a country curate;

The simultaneous growth of the British Empire,
Parallels drawn with Pax Romana,
And the civilizing mission
Of ‘The White Man’s Burden’;
The tantalizing nature of the evidence
Of the Romano-British centuries:
Tangible yet numinous;

Chance finds as the country was industrialised,
New roads, new footings, foundations and factories,
Those rural curates on new railway lines,
The Ozymandian nature of it all:
‘Look on my works, ye Mighty and despair.’
The M.R. James winter ghost story trope,
The feeling that those twilight Celtic gods
Lie just beyond the veil of imagination.
The way that the history fitted in
With a British jigsaw of stereotypes:
England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland,

What have historians enchanted by the study of Romano-British

history ever bequeathed to us?
And why have they been enchanted?
I suppose it could be the Stockholm Syndrome,
The affection felt by the captive for the captor sort of thing,
Or perhaps we should call it the St Albans Syndrome,

Or the Verulamium Syndrome …
But there’s so much more, I know,

(Or is there?)

Deference, perhaps, or ‘Borrowed status’,
As the sociologists put it,

The cult of the classics in grammar schools,
The dominance of the English public school;
The cult of the nineteenth century amateur,
Antiquarian and archaeologist,
Often a country curate;

The simultaneous growth of the British Empire,
Parallels drawn with Pax Romana,
And the civilizing mission
Of ‘The White Man’s Burden’;
The tantalizing nature of the evidence
Of the Romano-British centuries:
Tangible yet numinous;

Chance finds as the country was industrialised,
New roads, new footings, foundations and factories,
Those rural curates on new railway lines,
The Ozymandian nature of it all:
‘Look on my works, ye Mighty and despair.’
The M.R. James winter ghost story trope,
The feeling that those twilight Celtic gods
Lie just beyond the veil of imagination.
The way that the history fitted in
With a British jigsaw of stereotypes:
England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland,

read more