History

by Stuart Butler | 15th September 2024 | Counter-Heritage, History | 0 Comments

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...