History – Page 18 – Radical Stroud

The Gladstones at Gloucester

William Ewart Gladstone,
Late nineteenth century Liberal,
Principled opponent of imperialism,
According to some history books;
Serial chancellor of the exchequer,
Serial prime minister,
Son of John Gladstone
(MP for New Woodstock, Oxfordshire,
Courtesy of the Duke of Marlborough),
Found his father looking well, but tired,
When he visited his father in Gloucester.

John Gladstone’s pseudonym was ‘Mercator’.

William Ewart Gladstone’s maiden speech in parliament,
Would be a defence of the owners of enslaved peoples.

John Gladstone arrived in Gloucester in 1825,
Gradgrind wealthy,
Counting his profits:
Shipping interests in Liverpool,
Sugar plantations in the West Indies;
Counting his enslaved people:
2,508 men, women and children
in Jamaica and Demerara;
Rejoicing that revolt against enslavement
(On his plantations)
Had been viciously suppressed by the Stroud Scarlet army.

John Gladstone’s pseudonym was ‘Mercator’.

William Ewart Gladstone’s maiden speech in parliament,
Would be a defence of the owners of enslaved peoples.

Slave owners liked to take the waters at spas,
Bristol, Bath, Cheltenham …
Oblivious to the Middle Passage across the Atlantic,
And the crimson wake of the slave ships,
As they enjoyed the balm of saline warmth,
And, so it was with John Gladstone.

A dutiful husband and father,
Christian too,
And shrewd with money,
He moved to the Gloucester spa area in 1825,
His wife and daughter (both by name of Anne)
Were in need of healthful waters,
And where better than the chalybeate waters,
There at the Pump Rooms,
‘at the foot of what is now Brunswick Road’;

The teenage William Ewart Gladstone,
Spent his time carving his initials
into the bark of Gloucester trees;
His father invested in a local bank,
The Gloucester & Cheltenham.
He also spent £80,000 on further plantations,
And property in the West Indies and South America.

He was an implacable opponent of abolition.
And kept an eye on Gloucester,
As it ‘might be of use to himself or one of his sons’.

No one received more in compensation,
When slavery was abolished.

The railways of Britain are witness to that.

Remember that when you visit Gloucester.
Walk to the foot of Brunswick Road.
There’s a hidden heritage there.
Not just chalybeate waters.
But a crimson Atlantic archipelago too.

John Gladstone’s pseudonym was ‘Mercator’.
He received more in compensation than anyone else.
Partly because of his son.
That compensation figure came to 40% of GDP.
British taxpayers only ceased paying interest
On the loan required in 2015.
When John Gladstone died,
His estate would be valued at over £70 million,
In today’s values.

Letter in The Guardian Wednesday 24 June 2020
‘Are readers aware of the slave rebellion that took place in 1823 on the Gladstone sugar estate in Demerara county, British Guiana? It was led by African slaves who had to bear the names of their slave owner. They were father and son, Quamina and Jackie Gladstone, and there is a monument to them in present-day Guyana. A British prime minister four times, William Gladstone’s wealth was built on slavery. It is beneath contempt that he gained a reputation for kindness by bringing into his home the child prostitutes of London to have a meal and a rest for one night, while his plantations were run with brutality and the rebellion was put down with the utmost savagery.’

This was written by a descendant of slavery survivors of Guiana.

Jack Zipes

Munich, Arsenal and Frankfurt

Twenty years after Neville Chamberlain
Proclaimed ‘Peace for our time’ at Heston,
On his return from the Munich conference,
The ‘Busby Babes’ played their last ever game
In England, against Arsenal, at Highbury:

The Munich Air Crash would take so many lives and minds,
And leave a city and a nation frozen in grief;
It was a long journey from February to the summer.

But the World Cup followed the end of the season –
Pele amazed the world with his precocity –
Before close season training at Highbury,
With eyes upon the coming fixture list;
When Jack Zipes, an American student,
Would leave Coleridge, Wordsworth, Thelwall et al

Munich, Arsenal and Frankfurt

The Munich Air Crash would take so many lives and minds,
And leave a city and a nation frozen in grief;
It was a long journey from February to the summer.

On the metaphorical touchline,
To join the star players of the Gunners:
‘Yank to save Arsenal’ proclaimed the headline,
In a theatrical echo of Cold War politics;
‘All I have to do is dream’ sang the Everley Brothers,

Number One that summer.

And so it was that Jack Zipes began his journey,
Along the metaphorical left wing,

From the Arsenal to the Frankfurt School;
From Tommy Docherty – ‘The Doc’ – to a doctorate;
From Ode to Melancholy to Herbert Marcuse;
From the Lyrical Ballads to Critical Theory;
And so to radical deconstructions of fairy tales.

Let’s make dreams reality,
For the many not the few,
All I have to is dream
And just bloody vote Labour.

‘Fairy tales, including reinvented ones, seek to foster a sense of social justice.’
‘It is up to us as readers to realise the dreams and fantasies of these tales.’

Medieval Monarchy and a Radical View

Edward the Second

Kings and Queens, Princesses and Princes,
Fairy Stories for children and for grown-ups,
But this is no fairy tale,
This is the story of a reign gone wrong:
King Edward the Second, most foul murdered,
So-say, on our Berkeley Castle doorstep,
Screams, they say, heard for twenty miles,
His cortege stopping at Standish en route
For a regal entombment at Gloucester …
This Gothick tale is not made for the Age of Enlightenment –
Oh, go away, Tom Paine with your Reason:

‘When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary. Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are easily poisoned by importance, and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions’ …

Let’s keep the fairy tale going if we can –
Oh, but how much do you loathe and detest
Tales like The Princess and the Pea and their ilk?
And by all The Rights of Man and Woman,
A simple question to ask of pomp and circumstance:
Why do monarchs wear crowns upon their heads?
Anthropologically speaking,
I suppose head-dresses, wreaths, crowns and the like
Signify ‘otherness’, legitimacy, immortality,
And yet, let’s be honest with ourselves,
People look slightly strange in a crown –
We wear paper hats at Christmas Dinner,
And laugh at ourselves in an echo
Of the World Turned Upside Down,
And the Twelfth Night’s Lord of Misrule,
But we also laugh at ourselves because we look comic:
You look weird in a crown, be it paper
Or heavy with gold and wrought with jewels …

But on to Edward the Second at Gloucester,
And a popular history paperback,
Edward the Second The Unconventional King
(Kathryn Warner) –
The foreword by Ian Mortimer
Offers some interesting observations
About monarchy, but not, perhaps,
In the way that the writer intended,
But what do you make of all of this?

Edward the Second

…
‘Primogeniture was a cruel method of selecting a king’ …

‘Edward is … a member of a … select group: a king whose failings were more important than his successes in the history of the realm … William the Second, whose tyranny … paved the way for Henry the First’s charter of liberties – the first time a King of England was formally bound to the law. There is the even more notable example of King John, without whose ineptitude there would have been no Magna Carta. The divisive rule of his son, Henry the Third, led to the establishment of the English parliament. And it was the reign of Edward the Second that brought to the fore the radical notion that Englishmen owed their loyalty to the Crown itself, not the wearer. Even more importantly, Edward the Second’s enforced abdication demonstrated that there were limits to the inviolable status of an anointed hereditary monarch. From 1327, if a King of England broke his coronation oaths, he could be dethroned by his subjects acting in parliament …’

How do you parse or deconstruct that?
Or …

‘When government was vested in a single individual, its failings were almost entirely personal … Edward the Second’s short temper, his overbearing pride, and his refusal to compromise … he was always trying to have things both ways: to have the dignity and power of a King and yet at the same time the freedom of the common man – to dig ditches, go swimming [ and thatching, rowing boats and driving carts] and to give lavish gifts to his friends, if he felt like doing so. The result was the almost inevitable alienation of the nobility, who expected a man to be one thing or the other; either a properly regal King or a plain commoner …’

“I greatly lament that I have so utterly failed my people,
but I could not be other than I am.”

“He forsook the company of Lords, and fraternized with harlots, singers, actors, carters, ditchers, oarsmen, sailors and others who practice the mechanical arts”; And as regards Piers Gaveston – this example of how Edward “run to Piers among them, giving him kisses and repeated embraces; he was adored with a singular familiarity, already known to the magnates, furnished fuel to their jealousy” gives a flavour.

But then, in the words of Kathryn Warner:

‘The men who had heaved a sigh of relief at the death of Piers Gaveston now realized, to their horror, that Edward had replaced him with a man who was far worse and far more dangerous. Scalacronica says, “the great men had ill will against him [Edward] for his cruelty and the debauched life which he led, and on account of the said Hugh, whom at that time he loved and entirely trusted.”’ When Hugh Despenser was eventually hanged, drawn and quartered, his genitals were cut off too, “because,” Froissart said, “he was a heretic and a sodomite, even, it was said, with the King, and this was why the King had driven away the Queen.”

In conclusion, parse these words of Kathryn Warner:

‘He was not an evil man or one who set out to make anyone suffer; it was his misfortune and his kingdom’s that he was born into a hereditary monarchy and had no other choice than to succeed his father.’

And the tale of his murder?
Apocryphal or a poker-full?
And the tale of his escape from Berkeley,
Some other man murdered and placed in the coffin,
An impostor entombed at Gloucester,
Apocryphal or a poker-full?

Anno Domini 1327
Anus Horribilis?

Radical Cirencester

Cirencester seems like a typical
High-Tory Cotswold sort of town,
Men in yellow and red cord trousers –
Profuse pocket kerchiefs, tweed jackets,
Highly polished shiny brown brogue shoes,
Conservative ladies who take luncheon,
Just one silent beggar in a shop doorway,
Just one busking troubadour in the streets
To remind us of medieval days of yore …
But when I sit down by the weathered cross,
Down there by the church in mid-winter,
With a cheese and onion pasty,
And a warming cardboard cup of tea,
I wander through the fourth wall to read
The 1381 Poll Tax and its hated demands:
574 Cirencester subjects over the age of fifteen,
To pay the hated iniquitous tax,
No matter how indigent they might be,
A peasantry taxed to pay for a ruling class war,

Over the sea in France;
I glimpse, too, the Feudal Lord, the Abbott,
Studying his imposingly long list of tenant duties:
Thresh corn, plough fields, scythe hay,
Mow the fields, hedge and ditch;
Tenant’s corn to be ground in the Abbot’s mill,
Pay for the privilege, ditto at market;
If you grind corn on your own mill-stones,
The bailiff will take or break your mill-stones …

Pasture and turbary,
Estovers and piscary;
Pannage and housebote,
Shack and ploughbote.

Opposition and complaint was endemic
In the fourteenth century,
Imprisonment, too,
‘Until they made very grievous fines’;
And even though conflict climaxed with the
Peasants’ Revolt and consequent defeat,
Matters did not end there: four years later
The abbey was attacked by townspeople:
‘Divers of the king’s lieges of Cirencester … assembled
And gone to the abbey … done unheard-of things
To the abbot and convent and threatened
to do all the damage they could’;
Fifteen years later they beheaded
The Earl of Salisbury and the Earl of Kent,
Just there, where the red and yellow trousers,
Walk briskly by their wives, at their luncheon,
Where I eat my pasty and drink my tea,
Down by the beggar and he busker,
In the modern medieval market place,
Where I dream like some modern day Piers Plowman:

‘The rebels petitioned the king that all preserves of water, parks, and
woods should be made common to all: so that throughout the kingdom the poor
as well as the rich should be free to take game in water, fish ponds, woods and
forests as well as to hunt hares in the fields – and to do these and many other
things without impediment.’

‘You wretches, detestable on land and sea; you who seek equality with lords are unworthy to live. Give this message to your colleagues. Rustics you were and rustics you are still: you will remain in bondage not as before but incomparably harsher. For as long as we live we will strive to suppress you, and your misery will be an example in the eyes of posterity. However, we will spare your lives if you remain faithful. Choose now which you want to follow.’

Common People

The lexicon of popular history,

With its ridge and furrowed semantic fields and stories,
Opens doors of childhood perception,
To fields of knowledge, imagination,
Wonderment and enchantment –
But, I think, especially enchantment.

Take, for example, an Anglo-Saxon tale,
The tale of Alfred the Great and the burnt cakes:
The moral of the tale presented to me in childhood books
Was all about the humility of a king
(A king in a common kitchen, indeed!),
And the curtness of the woman in the kitchen,
When discovering that the stranger –
Preoccupied with Vikings rather than griddles –

Had ruined the cakes.

But could a different moral have been presented to my boyhood self?

Where’s the next meal going to come from?
The woman in the kitchen has so many things to do.
Cooking cakes is, in fact, a difficult and highly skilled task.

Popular histories for grown-ups carry on this approach,
Textually rather than through pictures perhaps,
But the effect is the same.
Take the phrase ‘ordinary people’, for example:
The word ‘ordinary’ is, I think, used almost as a pejorative,
Rather than as a synonym for majority;
And what synonyms do we find for ‘ordinary’?
Ordinary, as in ‘not distinctive’ …
Common, everyday, humdrum, run of the mill …

The lexicon of popular history,

With its ridge and furrowed semantic fields and stories,
Opens doors of childhood perception,
To fields of knowledge, imagination,
Wonderment and enchantment –
But, I think, especially enchantment.

Had ruined the cakes.

But could a different moral have been presented to my boyhood self?

Where’s the next meal going to come from?
The woman in the kitchen has so many things to do.
Cooking cakes is, in fact, a difficult and highly skilled task.

And what synonyms do we find for ‘common’?

Routine, simple, trivial, daily, plain, banal, homely, mediocre, prosaic, monotonous, stale …

The coarse, common people:

Coarse: not fine, rude, rough, unrefined, inelegant, low, lowbred, uncouth, vulgar,
As opposed to courteous, gentle, patrician, highborn, wellborn …
This is a vocabulary permeated by class, hierarchy and property
(And where did that property come from?),
And so any search for the provenance,
First cause derivation and origin
Of pure, unadulterated meaning of these words
Is a search for etymological fool’s gold,
Unless you visit ancient Rome, perhaps,
And its lexicon of class-based language,
Patrician: Good; Pleb: Bad; Vulgar: Bad.

And with conventional History’s
Fetishization of textual evidence,
Conventional History can so easily become
An endless story of kings and queens and nobles,
Heritage … Blue Plaque Heritage …
With the unlettered majority – the ordinary –
Consigned to the dustbin of history.

Now, as is fairly obvious,
I’m no expert in sociolinguistics,
Linguistic anthropology or cultural hegemony,
But at the very least, I think we might question
The assumptions and implications that lie
Beneath much of this vocabulary,
The hidden labelling that lies beneath the surface
Of our lexicon, our language, our discourse,

Of our ridge and furrowed semantic fields:
‘The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose off the common,
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from 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.’

And that includes language and meaning too,

Literal and figurative,
Which is why we have this watchword;
‘Beyond the Empirical,
Beyond the Documented:
Counter-Heritage!’

Francis Haverfield in The Romanization of Britain 1912
‘The rustic poor of a county seldom affect the trend of its history.’

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

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;

Some more civilized than the Celtic others.
The serendipitous way chance finds
Both pleased the Church of England,
And the new school of Social Darwinists;
The way the lauding of Roman civilization
Elided bestial bloodshed;
Slavery; hedonistic sexuality;
The way the contemporary class structure
Was equated with the Roman Conquest:
Vulgar plebs and cultured patricians;
Uncouth Britons, barbaric Celts,
A dangerous working class,

An English ruling class that knew its Classics,
And knew how to educate the masses;
And an exception that glorified the rule:
The Westminster statue of Boudicca,
Queen Victoria in all but name,
And more Roman than Briton or Iceni,
For every age rewrites history,
Particularly when the sun
Never set on the British Empire.
UNROMAN BRITAIN
And so,

What have historians enchanted by the study of Romano-British

history ever bequeathed to us?
And why have they been enchanted?

Black People here before the English
He, an Egyptian, an auxiliary;
She, secret- keeper for the Dobunni,
Had arranged to meet by the sacred oak,
Sheltered and hidden from keen Roman eyes
By dense, dark woods of smooth barked beech.
He, a skilled boatman from the River Nile,

And now, deserter from the garrison
At Kingsholm; beaten, whipped, lashed and abused

By officers for drunken amusement,
Found silent sympathy, trust and love
From this mute young woman at the wine shop;
She, like him, violated just for fun
And entertainment – forced to play the fool,
Was also a skilled, rehearsed dissembler,
For inside that apparently dumbstruck
Mind was mysterious Druidic lore,
Hidden safe within a tribal dreamscape.
She, beyond Roman suspicion and law,
Led him by the hand, as the red sun’s rays
Sank behind the high shrine to Mercury;
She, night-navigator of marshland paths,
She, sure-footed through the night-rustling forest;
They, sheltered and sleeping through the daylight hours,
They, slipping unseen past messenger posts,
Up the eastern scarp, then down to the river.
He, Nile-native, expert boatman, stared west
Across the Severn to the Silures –
Their boat eased its way with gentle paddle
Across that broad swathe of dangerous water,
Until exhausted, they breathed freedom.
Three centuries later, loyal-subjects,
Their children’s lineage, dark-skinned Britons,
Were destined to fight for Rome and Glevum
Against Anglo-Saxon invading migrants,
Who steadily renamed the landscape –

But that’s another story.

Woodchester Roman Villa

Per Ardua ad Furniture

The Paris Situationists might have cried:
‘Underneath the pavements, the beach!’,
But the Radical Stroud Situationists
See the pavements rather differently:
‘Underneath the furniture shop floor,

Not just Glevum’s Roman wall,
But also the bastion tower!’

When you walk past the Gloucester Furniture Exhibition Centre,
At the junction of Parliament and Southgate Streets,
Pluck up the courage to ask permission for a viewing,
Or even better, spend some money there,
And remember that, ‘All roads lead to Rome!’
For some nine feet down below ground level,
Beneath the medieval rebuild,
Lies the structure that stretched from the wall
Now displayed outside Boots on Eastgate Street:

Part of the Roman Colonia wall,
From circa AD 97.

It’s a shame that Boots isn’t named Sandals,
But, on the other hand, altera parte,
Perhaps our cry might be,
‘Underneath our Boots, the wall!’
‘Underneath the drawing room furniture,

The drawbridge!’

Prehistory: Why is it so entrancing?

Circles without Class Ceilings

Why can prehistory be so entrancing?

Why do some people find prehistory so entrancing?
Why do they become so spellbound
When walking by, let’s say, a long barrow?
How do they become so transported in time and space?
What’s it all about?

Is it because a standing stone, a circle,
A tumulus, barrow, or whatever,
Demonstrates the fragility of knowledge,
The equivocal nature of understanding,
In a sense, the ‘negative capability’ of John Keats:
Being conscious, simultaneously,
Of knowing and yet not knowing?
The recognition that sometimes any presumption
Of understanding the meaning of an edifice,
Can only be speculative
(Despite the accumulation of evidence and artefacts,
Despite measurement, mensuration and comparison,
Despite a commitment to the rigours of empiricism),
And a reflection of who we are in the here and now –
Or can Homo sapiens merely develop
A restricted trope of meanings, recognizable
And familiar, across time and space …
So some speculations are bound to be valid …
Or is signification, itself, a trope of modernity?
Nature and Nurture:
How circumscribed are we by time and space?
And how universal are we across the same?
What do these structures reveal and indicate
About what is quintessentially human?

So, prehistoric structures,
In an a priori, apostrophizing, manner,
The manner of an innocent wonderer,
As yet unread on the subject,
I question your meaning:
What were you for?

Circles without Class Ceilings

Why can prehistory be so entrancing?

So, prehistoric structures,
In an a priori, apostrophizing, manner,
The manner of an innocent wonderer,
As yet unread on the subject,
I question your meaning:
What were you for?

Do you indicate liminality:
A corridor to another world:
A sacred, spiritual, site of worship?
Cotswold barrows:
Were you positioned high on the Wolds
So as to be close to the sun, stars, planets and moon?
Or merely because the soil was thin up there,
And high above the flood plains;
Or were you territorial markers,
Boundary-points, socio-political in meaning;
Or were you topographical in intent,
Adding meaning to a landscape;
Were you part of a network and fretwork
Of communication channels, made visible?

How did the practice of stone circle structure spread?
And why?
Was stone seen as sentient?
It warmed with the sun,
It cried with a thaw,
It spread patterns with lichen and moss,
It could be scented,
It could groan and cry out in anguish –

Or small stone and flints for tools,
Giant stones for thanks and worship,
The Gods of the Earth united with the Gods of the Sky
In calendrical geometry …
Or to demonstrate power over stone
In a belief-system’s symbolic display,
So as to ensure the continued production
Of rather more prosaic, but necessary, tools
That guaranteed survival and prosperity?

Now for a sort of social-psychological perspective,
Or is it anthropological …
Did everyone regard these structures,
And, indeed, the labour involved in their construction,
In a unified and collective way?
Were there, as it were, renegades,
Left field outliers, individualists,
Eccentrics and so on who questioned it all?
Commonality and cohesion are always assumed,
It seems to me on initial reading memory …
How was hierarchy, assuming it existed, revealed?
Doesn’t the assumption of hierarchy,
As both consequent cause and consequence
Of specialization- warriors and priests and rulers –
Merely reflect the assumptions
Of Western post-Enlightenment Capitalism …
Couldn’t those deposits –
Both human and artefact –
Symbolize the collective,
And be both part and representative of all?

The past might just be a different country,
After all,
And a prehistoric past might yet be a signpost
To a more sharing, caring future,
A collective rather than individualist one,
One that rejects hierarchy,
One that rejects celebrity,
One that embraces caring and sharing:
Circles without Class Ceilings …

Party like it’s 2500BC: Stonehenge building secrets unearthed

The process of building Stonehenge – and having a party at the same time – may have been more important than the finished monument, English Heritage has said.

Experts believe that choosing the stones, moving them and setting them up on Salisbury Plain, may have been a way of bringing people together to socialise and celebrate.

Over this weekend visitors, people who live close to the monument in Wiltshire and schoolchildren are being invited to try to move and set up a four-tonne stone similar in size and shape to the sarsen lintels at the famous stone circle.

The idea is not to puzzle out in a scientific way engineering aspects of moving and setting up the stones, but to bring people together to enjoy a communal experience.

English Heritage’s senior historian, Susan Greaney, said: “In contemporary western culture, we are always striving to make things as easy and quick as possible, but we believe that for the builders of Stonehenge this may not have been the case.

“Drawing a large number of people from far and wide to take part in the process of building was potentially a powerful tool in demonstrating the strength of the community to outsiders.

“Being able to welcome and reward these people who had travelled far, perhaps as a kind of pilgrimage, with ceremonial feasts, could be a further expression of the power and position of the community.”

Research showcased at Stonehenge reveals that prehistoric people brought animals to the site from as far afield as north-east Scotland, more than 500 miles away, to take part in lavish midwinter feasts.

Scientists examined some of the 38,000 bones and teeth (90% of them pig; 10% cattle) discovered at the site of a neolithic village called Durrington Walls, which lies about a mile and a half north-east of the main stone ring.

Durrington Walls was only settled for between 50 and 100 years but it is believed to have housed the circle’s builders and the first visitors after the sarsen stones were put in place.

Experts examined elements including strontium in the pig teeth found at Durrington Walls. Because isotopes of strontium differ chemically according to the geology of the place where the young animal fed, it is possible to discover where individual creatures came from.

They concluded cows and pigs were herded hundreds of miles along ancient byways and may even have been brought by boat to southern England. It suggested that in 2500BC Stonehenge was known across Britain as a place of pilgrimage and celebration.

Stonehenge experts have also been studying evidence from societies who more recently have practised moving huge stones – such as communities on the islands of Sumba and Nias in Indonesia, and in north-eastern parts of India.

Greaney said: “There are amazing photos from societies in Indonesia and parts of India within the last 100 years or so of people practising stone moving and raising. They show people in ceremonial dress, amazing feasts happening, hundreds of people coming together and having a good time.

“As soon as you abandon modern preconceptions that assume neolithic people would have sought the most efficient way of building Stonehenge, questions like why the bluestones were brought from so far away – the Preseli Hills of south Wales – don’t seem quite so perplexing.”

Over the weekend groups of about 40 people will use rollers and ropes to move a hunk of limestone (prosaically brought from a local quarry on the back of a lorry) before helping to erect it into a pre-dug hole. Visitors can simply turn up and join in.

Prehistory and Wormholes of Time

As the traffic rumbles past on Cotswold roads,
It’s hard to hear the chip of stone on flint,
Or the croak of corvids with their blood-drip beaks,
Or the breaking of the bones of a skeleton,
Or smell the rotting flesh on the capstone,
Or taste the ashes of the dead on the nightfall wind,
Or see the blood red sunset behind the silver river
Or the standing stone’s silhouette,
But try hard on a winter’s afternoon,
And you might just slip down a wormhole of time,
To rituals of death and memory,
And recognize the prehistoric past
For what it is and was:
Not something primitive and alien,
But something shared.

Peterloo and Revolution

REVOLUTION 1819-2019

This was the time when the age of Marx replaced that of Burke,
The time when the ‘swinish multitude’ and ‘the mob’ became a working class,
When there was not just the economic revolution of school textbooks,
But also a presence of a possible political one,
A time when Tom Paine’s The Rights of Man (sic),
Viewed as seditious and libellous
By the nation’s rulers,
Could sell 200,000 copies in a year,
When the population was only around ten million,
And so many could not read – but they listened,
And learned and remembered,
Despite the patriotic cavalcades
And violent contrived disruption of ‘Jacobin’ meetings,
Despite the show trials and government spies,
The arrest of booksellers, the banning of political meetings,
The censorship and illegalisation of criticism of government or monarchy.
This was our land in the 1790s:
Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Women,
Pitt’s repression at home and war abroad,
Food riots all around our five valleys
(‘We might as well be hanged as starved’),

https://radicalstroud.co.uk/the-1766-food-riots-and-the-hangmans-noose/

The Naval Mutinies of 1797
(“An attempt was made to give to the ships
in mutiny the name of ‘The Floating Republic’.”)
‘Secret Jacobin springs’ were rumoured:
‘Jacobin emissaries and the Corresponding Society …
Jacobin management and influence is at the bottom of this evil’;
The Red Flag was hoisted;
Richard Parker was elected President by the mutinous delegates:
‘… We are not rebels to our country, our country are rebels to us.’
‘I and my brother delegates are all united, and acting in the cause of humanity;
and while life animates the heart of Dick Parker, he will be true to the cause.’
Anything else to rock the ship of state?
Riots against the Militia Act in Scotland,
Wolfe Tone and rebellion in Ireland –
When more people were killed by the army
Than in the ‘Reign of Terror’ in Paris …
Pamphlets such as King Killing;
The Happy Reign of King George the Last;
100, 000 people meeting at Copenhagen Fields, Islington;
The King’s carriage attacked:
‘No War! No King! No Pitt!’
This sung to the tune of ‘God Save the King’ at Drury Lane Theatre:
‘And when George’s Poll
Shall in the basket roll,
Let mercy then control
The Guillotine.’

REVOLUTION 1819-2019

https://radicalstroud.co.uk/the-1766-food-riots-and-the-hangmans-noose/

Anything else?
The Combination Acts of 1799-1800,
Illegalising trade unions,
Colonel Despard and the United Englishmen:
‘Aristocrats to the lamp posts… we’ll hang them … we’ll break them …
We shall have no more nobles and priests.’
The colonel, married to a woman of colour,
Meeting at Furnival’s Inn, Holborn, and in Soho Square,
With the idea of a coup d’etat:
With the provinces to follow the following action:
Attacks on the Tower of London, Woolwich Arsenal,
The Royal Mint, the Bank of England …
But here come the Bow Street Runners,
Arresting the conspirators in the Oakley Arms, Lambeth:
‘You have been separately indicted for conspiracy against his Majesty’s person,
his crown and government, for the purposes of subverting the same
and changing the government of this realm’;
‘Each of you … are to be drawn on hurdles to the place of execution,
where you are to be hanged, but not until you are dead;
for while you are still living, your bodies are to be taken down,
your bowels torn out and burned before your faces,
your heads cut off and your bodies to be divided into quarters
and your heads and quarters to be then at the King’s disposal
and may Almighty God have mercy on your souls.’
(The disembowelling and burning were later rescinded.)
John McNamara whispered to Despard on the scaffold:
‘I am afraid, Colonel, we have got ourselves into a bad situation.’
Despard: ‘There are many better and some worse.’
He then addressed the crowds with a democratic greeting:
‘Fellow citizens’ –
And then coolly informed them that he was about to be executed
Because:
‘He has been a friend to the truth, to liberty and to justice,
because he has been a friend to the poor and oppressed.’
Let’s jump on a few years …
And we have the Luddite action in the north
(More troops stationed there than used against Napoleon),
Report of the Secret Committee of the House of Lords
on the Disturbed State of Certain Counties, 1812:
‘All the societies in the country are directed … by a Secret Committee … these societies are governed by their respective secret committees … delegates are continually dispatched from one place to another, for the purpose of concerting their plans’,

On top of that,
There were bread riots in Leeds, Sheffield, Barnsley, Carlisle and Bristol;
The Prime Minister, Spencer Perceval, was assassinated;
In Stoke, it was reported that,
‘A man came running down the street, waving his hat round his head
And shouting with frantic joy:
“Perceval is shot, hurrah!”
There were parties in the street,
Drum beats and flags unfurled in Nottingham,
While, locally, we could look at Uley and all around the five valleys:

https://radicalstroud.co.uk/class-conflict-in-uley-1795/

https://radicalstroud.co.uk/before-the-luddites/

While back in William Cobbett’s ‘Great Wen’?
Thomas Spence with his plans for agrarian communism,
To end, as he put it:
‘the poor man’s poverty and the rich man’s gout’;
He and his followers, such as William Davison, a man ‘of colour’,
Chalked their egalitarian plans and messages
All over London walls and pavements;
Spence issued medallions with circumferential revolutionary slogans;
Their anthem ended with these lines:
‘From landlords, once set free,
The bells shall ring, we’ll dance and sing
On Spence’s Jubilee’,
Thomas, selling his journal from a baker’s cart:
Pig’s Meat: or Lessons for the Swinish Multitude,
‘a few Contingent parishes have only to declare the land to be theirs and …
other adjacent parishes would immediately follow the example …
thus would a beautiful and powerful New Republic
instantly arise in full vigour’;
His other publications included:
Restorer of Society to its Natural State,
The Real Rights of Man,
The Restorer;
Theirs was a dream of a revolutionary Utopia:
Spensonia!

But the end of war in 1815 and peace at last!
And …

Soldiers and sailors on the streets,
Unemployed weavers,
Corn Laws to protect landlord profits by keeping out cheaper corn imports
(Lord Sidmouth, Home Secretary:
‘Man cannot create abundance where Providence has inflicted scarcity’;
‘The alleviation of the difficulties is not to be looked for
from the intervention of Government and Parliament’),
‘Bread or Blood’ riots in East Anglia in 1816,
Hampden Clubs formed for political reform, and
Extension of the suffrage, secret ballot, and annual parliaments,
Republican newspapers such as The Black Dwarf,
And The Gorgon, and William Cobbett’s Political Register
(Derided as ‘Twopenny Trash’ by the patrician ruling class,
Yet it would sell 60,000 a week,
Ten times that of the Times and Observer):
‘If the skulkers will not join you,
If the decent fireside gentry still keep aloof,
Proceed by yourselves’ …
And so we proceed to Spa Fields in 1816,
Thousands present with the tricolour, the Cap of Liberty,
When followers of Thomas Spence attempted something of a coup d’etat,
Trying to scale the walls at the Tower of London,
Devising an ‘Anti-Cavalry Machine’, ‘The Night Cat’,
Designed to suffocate soldiers in their barracks.
The leaders were charged with High Treason,
But the involvement of a government spy
Led to their acquittal;
One year later and we have a sort of hunger march,
The March of the Blanketeers,
The same year, the Pentridge Rising of 1817 –
Another armed uprising of sorts,
With agent-provocateur fabulations (Oliver the Spy) …
But, this time, executions and transportation followed:
‘The jurors of our Lord the King upon their oath present that …
Jeremiah Brandreth … otherwise called the Nottingham Captain …
together with a great multitude of false traitors …
to the number of five hundred and more,
arrayed and armed in a war-like manner,
that is to say with swords, pistols, clubs, bludgeons, and other weapons …
did then with great violence parade and march in a hostile manner
in and through divers villages, places, and public highways …
and did then and there maliciously and traitorously
attempt and endeavour by force of arms
to subvert and destroy the Government and Constitution of the Realm’;
The Black Dwarf remembered Jeremiah Brandreth differently:
FORMED BY NATURE FOR DEEDS OF DARING
HIS SOUL POSSESSED A DEGREE OF PERSONAL COURAGE
AND AN EXTENT OF SELF-COMMAND
WHICH
UNDER THE SMILE OF FORTUNE MIGHT HAVE ENABLED HIM
TO ECLIPSE THE FAME OF MARLBOROUGH
AND RIVAL THE GLORY OF NAPOLEON’;
William Turner cried out on the gallows:
‘This is all Oliver and the Government’,
But a parliamentary secret committee talked of:
‘some general plan of simultaneous or connected insurrection;
the object … after consolidating a sufficient force,
to march upon London,
and there to overthrow the existing Government
and to establish a republic’;
And from Manchester:
‘the lower orders
are everywhere meeting in large bodies
and are very clamorous’ about
‘a general union of the lower orders throughout the kingdom’;

The suspension of Habeas Corpus followed in 1817,
And the Seditious Meetings Act,
The use of government spies and agents-provocateurs
(In passing, btw,
even if the government did use spies
and agents-provocateurs,
to furnish the justificatory evidence
necessary for policies of repression,
we have to say that the plots still happened),
The spread of barracks: 26, 000 troops stationed in barracks,
Rather than in inns where they might become disaffected:

The Black Dwarf 1817:

‘The army and the people are … separated from each other … no intercourse must be allowed … lest the soldier should begin to remember that he is a man’;

William Hone, 1817:

‘Our Lord who art in the Treasury,
whatsoever be thy name,
thy power be prolonged,
thy will be done throughout the Empire …
Turn us not out of our places,
But keep us in the House of Commons,
The land of Pensions and Plenty;
And deliver us from the People.
Amen.’
Joseph Swann, a newspaper seller,
Imprisoned for four and a half years in 1819,
For selling ‘treasonable material’:
‘Off with your fetters; spurn the slavish yoke,
None, now, or never, can your chain be broke;
Swift then, rise and give the fatal stroke.’

In 1819, the ban on political meetings ended,
There were calls for female suffrage in the North,
40,000 Glasgow weavers met to petition the Prince Regent
for assistance so as to emigrate to Canada –
But for radicals, the answer would have to be universal suffrage,
And the secret ballot and annual parliaments;
The summer would be the time for a signal meeting,
Manchester to be the venue
(Hunt at Smithfield, 21st July 1819:
‘After the first day of 1820 we cannot, conscientiously,
consider ourselves … as bound by any persons styling themselves
our representatives, other than those who shall be
fully, freely and fairly chosen by the voices and votes
of the largest proportion of the members of the state’),
With Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt to address 60,000 people
(‘Libellous, seditious, factious, levelling, revolutionary,
Republican, democratical, atheistical villain’)
All in orderly procession, dressed in their Sunday best,
All following Hunt’s request that they should bring
‘No other weapon that that of an approving conscience’,
Banners were profuse:
UNITY & STRENGTH;
PARLIAMENTS ANNUAL – SUFFRAGE UNIVERSAL;
Red caps of liberty at this perfectly legal meeting,
With nigh on 20% of Lancashire’s population present,
But in rode the Yoemanry,
And then the Hussars, flashing their swords
(Nearly three foot long and weighing two ibs two ounces)
Within minutes eleven dead and over four hundred wounded,
Sprawled everywhere on the ground were
‘Hats, bonnets, shawls, shoes, musical instruments …
In the midst stood the hustings with its broken flag-staffs
and tattered banners’;
Samuel Bamford described it thus:
‘the hustings remained,
with a few broken and hewed flag staves erect
and a torn and gashed banner or two drooping,
whilst over the whole field were strewed the caps,
bonnets, hats, shawls and shoes …
trampled, torn and bloody.
The Yoemanry had dismounted –
Some were easing their horses’ girths,
Others adjusting their accoutrements;
And some were wiping their sabres.
Several mounds of human bodies still remained as they had fallen,
Crushed down and smothered.
Some of these still groaning – some with staring eyes,
Were gasping for breath and others would never breath again …’
Eleven dead and over four hundred wounded;
The Prince Regent offered his congratulations for
‘prompt, decisive and efficient measures
for the preservation of the public tranquillity’;
Lord Sidmouth, Home Secretary, in private:
‘an essential principle of government … the confidence of the magistracy …
a readiness to support them in all honest, reasonable, and well-intended acts,
without inquiring too minutely whether they might
have performed their duty a little better or a little worse.’
The local authorities thanked the Yoemanry:
‘Their extreme forbearance exercised
when insulted and defied by the rioters’;
And so that was the meeting at St Peter’s Fields,
Peterloo, 1819,
Witnessed thus, by Lieutenant Joliffe, 15th Hussars:
‘although nine tenths of the sabre wounds were caused by the Hussars,
it redounds to the human forbearance
of the men of the 15th that more wounds were not received,’;
Peterloo, followed by the dictatorial Six Acts,
And Shelley’s Masque of Anarchy –
‘I met Murder on the way
It had a face like Castlereagh …
Ye are Many, They are few’ …
Peterloo, followed by the spy-riddled 1820 Cato Street Conspiracy:
Arthur Thistlewood, Watson and co. organised
The Committee of Two Hundred,
They met surreptitiously at the White Lion in Wych Street,
Planning a coup d’etat with the formation of a Provisional Government
(Thistlewood’s planned speech:
‘Your tyrants are destroyed.
The friends of liberty are called upon to come forward.
The provisional government is now sitting.’),
The spark – the assassination of the cabinet in revenge for Peterloo,
Whilst they were dining at Lord Harrowby’s,
The idea being to decapitate the cabinet
(Henry Bathurst’s would have been included, btw),
And parade the heads on spikes through London’s chartered streets:
James Ings:
‘ I will enter the room first, I will go in with a brace of pistols,
a cutlass and a knife in my pocket
and after two swordsmen have despatched them,
I will cut off every head that is in that room
And Lord Castlereagh’s and Lord Sidmouth’s
I will bring away in a bag …
As soon as I get into the room I shall say:
“Well my Lords, I have as good men here as your Manchester Yoemanry.
Enter Citizens, and do your duty.”’
But the Bow Street Runners broke into the stable loft in Cato Street,
The conspirators were taken prisoner after a skirmish;
Whilst they were held at the Horse and Groom,
A search of the loft revealed
‘a great quantity of pistols, blunderbusses, swords and pikes’;
Charges of high treason followed,
For the conspirators ‘ did compass, imagine, invent, devise
And intend to deprive and depose our said Lord the King of …
The style, honour and kingly name
Of the imperial crown of this realm’;
Secondly, they intended
‘To move and excite insurrection, rebellion and war against the King …
and to subvert and alter the legislature, rule and government
and to bring and put the King to death’;
Ings emphasised the role of Edward the Spy:
‘The Attorney-General knew …
when I was before Lord Sidmouth,
a gentleman said,
Lord Sidmouth knew all about this for about two month’;
Bruit said,
‘Should I die, by this case,
I have been seduced by a villain,
who, I have no doubt,
has been employed by Government’;
Thistlewood: ‘Liberty and Justice
Have been driven from confines by a set of villains,
Whose thirst for blood is only to be equalled …
By their plunder’;
Apart from castigating Edwards, he spoke also of Peterloo:
‘when infants were sabred in their mothers’ arms
and the breast from which they drew the tide of life,
was severed from the parent’s body’;
‘High treason was committed against the people of Manchester,
I resolved that the lives of the instigators of the massacre
should atone for the souls of the murdered innocents’,

But Black Cap Chief Justice was unmoved:
‘You and each of you; be taken here to the gaol from whence you came
and from thence that you be drawn upon a hurdle to a place of execution
and there be hanged by the neck until you be dead; and that
afterwards your heads shall be severed from your bodies
and your bodied be divided into four quarters
to be disposed of as his majesty shall think fit.
And may God in his infinite goodness have mercy on your souls’;
Thistlewood disdainfully took snuff as he listened to the verdict;
The date chosen: a hurried May 1st 1820 –
Thistlewood:
‘The sooner we go, sir, the better’;
And on the scaffold, Tidd and Thistlewood shook hands:
‘Well, Mr Thistlewood. How do you do?’
‘I was never better.’
After they had hung for half an hour,
Their bodies were taken down, de-hooded,
And their heads were placed on the block:
‘This is the head of Arthur Thistlewood, the traitor.’
One by one, the heads were shown,
But the crowd shouted:
‘Bring out Edwards!
Shoot that bloody murderer!’
Windows were smashed afterwards …
The Home Office had received a plenitude of anonymous letters
Before May 1st, threatening violence:
‘To Ministers, Privy Councillors, Bloody-minded wretches –
Ye are now brooding with hellish delight
On the sacrifice ye intend to make on those poor creatures
Ye took out of Cato Street on pretence
Of punishing them for what your own horrid spies
And agents instigated … But know this,
Ye demons, on an approaching day
And in an hour when you least expect it
Ye yourselves shall fall a sacrifice to
The just vengeance of an oppressed
And suffering people who shall behold
Your bloody corpses dragged in Triumph through their streets.’

The 1820s saw the rise of trade union action again
(The consequence being the Tolpuddle Martyrs in 1834),
And then in 1830, the Captain Swing agricultural riots,
When southern England was ablaze,
Followed by the crisis of 1830-32 over parliamentary reform,
When the Whig government divided the middle from the working class
(‘Seducing the bourgeoisie’),
By giving the vote to householders on a stiff property qualification,
Thereby ensuring continued aristocratic dominance,
And preventing any possibility of revolution.
In the words of Macaulay:
“Reform that ye may preserve”
(Remember! The word ‘democracy’
was a pejorative then to our rulers),
But when it seemed that the House of Lords was determined
To prevent any semblance of reform
and even limited extension of the franchise,
Riots followed at Derby, Nottingham and Bristol,
There was a run on gold at the Bank of England,
There were rumours of armed marches from the provinces on London,
Of refusals to pay taxes,
Of mutinies in the army and refusals to obey orders,
Windows were smashed in the houses of infamous reactionaries,
Such as the Duke of Wellington,
There were strikes in the industrial north, midlands and Wales …

An Interlude not The Prelude:

Wordsworth might have grown up ‘fostered alike by beauty and by fear’,
But it was fear alone that stalked him in 1817,
Seeing treason and sedition, ‘even among these mountains’,
Informing the prime minister of the necessity
Of an armed presence in the capital,
Otherwise, ‘four and twenty hours would not elapse
before the tricoloured flag would be planted …’

An Epilogue of Sorts

When next in London, let’s walk the sites of these radical pubs,
Where treason and sedition were discussed as standard:
The Two Bells, the Flying Horse, the Ham and Windmill,
The Bleeding Heart; the Coach and Horses;
The Brown Bear and the Black Horse.

The Country 1830-32,
Through they eyes of those who lived then:

Mrs Arbuthnot’s Journal Nov 4 1830

‘The Duke of Wellington was ‘hooted and hissed’ at ‘wherever they could see him’ at the opening of Parliament by ‘the people who were … very disorderly’ and called out ‘No police! … and in various parts of the town attacked the police most furiously … we have taken great precautions against the mobs. Troops and artillery have been brought to London, the guards doubled, the police all on the alert … wherever the mobs have assimilated they have been routed & severely beat by the police … Hunt and Cobbett have opened a meeting house they call the Rotunda near Blackfriars Bridge, and there they assemble & harangue crowds of the lowest order in the most seditious manner, and from that place they issue in large bodies & come & alarm the … West End … I hope the mob will soon be tired of getting nothing but blows from the police.’

29th November

‘The country is in a terrible state, thanks to all the people who have been lauding the French Revolution up to the skies and dinning in the ears of the people that, if they choose to rise, nothing can resist them. The consequence has been that all over the country the peasantry, who in many parts really do suffer under great privations, have been worked upon by incendiaries & agitators & have burnt rickyards & broke machines; in many parts there have been violent conflicts between the mob & the constables.’

Mary Frampton

‘The unpopularity of the Duke of Wellington was extreme, so as to render his life in danger from the pressures of the crowd, stones being thrown at him &c.’

The Times 9 December 1830

‘if enemies to universal suffrage .. it is because such a principle would be, in effect, a narrowing of the representative system, by the virtual exclusion of all influence derived from property, and an absolute surrender … to a single class – a class moved to frequent warfare … by the extremes of destitution and desperation acting upon incurable ignorance, prejudice and distrust.’

Mrs Arbuthnot’s Journal 16 May 1831

‘The Duke has lost heart entirely. He thinks the revolution is begun and that nothing can save us … he foresees nothing but civil war & convulsion.’

Mrs Mundy to Lady H. Frampton, Markeaton, 15 October 1831

‘MY DEAR MOTHER … Conceive how horrid it was on Sunday morning, just as we had finished our doleful breakfast, having been up all night, and having the yells of the multitude and the crash of windows, and doors still ringing in our ears to have a gentleman (My Meynell) ride up, saying that he was just come from Derby (where he had expected to be annihilated by the mob …), that they had forced the town gaol and liberated twenty-three prisoners, were proceeding to the county gaol … and were coming on to us … Fortunately the gaoler made a gallant defence, which delayed the rioters until the dragoons arrived from Nottingham, which was only just in time, as they were preparing to scale the walls … We are very thankful for our preservation … for the Nottingham rioters plundered much more; and at Colwick, near Nottingham – Mr Muster’s place – they entered, seized the furniture and pictures, which they made into a bonfire before the door; and utterly ruined it.’

Mrs Arbuthnot’s Journal 23rd October 1831

‘…the mob broke the windows of several houses. They broke all the Duke of Wellington’s windows in broad daylight … there was not a single policeman came till the mob had been throwing stones for 55 minutes & then not one man was taken up.’

The Reverend J.L. Jackson to C.B. Wollaston, Clifton 31st October 1831

‘…the knots of men standing about the streets were of the most awful character. Three individuals were killed by the soldiers and more wounded. In the afternoon we heard that the multitude was assembled in much greater masses, and about four o’clock we saw the new City and County Gaol in flames; afterwards the Bridewell and another prison in the Gloucester Road … In the course of the evening Queen’s Square was fired and the Bishop’s palace … the … Mansion House … the Custom House … Other property to an immense amount is also destroyed. This morning an actual slaughter has taken place; it is supposed … that above seventy persons have been killed, besides a large number who have been wounded. The military charged through some of the principal streets.’

Charles Greville’s Journal 11 November 1831

‘The country was beginning to sleep after the fatigues of Reform, when it was rattled up by the business of Bristol, which for brutal ferocity and wanton unprovoked violence may vie with some of the worst scenes of the French Revolution … nothing could exceed the ferocity of the populace, the imbecility of the magistracy or the good conduct of the troops. More punishment was inflicted by them than has been generally been known, and some hundreds were killed or severely wounded by the sabre. One body of dragoons pursued a rabble of colliers into the country and covered the fields and roads with the bodies of wounded wretches, making a severe example of them …’

Lord Fitzroy Somerset to the Duke of Wellington, Horse Guards, 2 Nov 1831

‘MY DEAR LORD
… The force we shall have in and about London on Monday next …
The 1st Life Guards, from Windsor to Hyde Park Riding House.
The 2nd Life Guards, Regent’s Park Barracks.
The Blues, Hyde Park Barracks.
The 9th Lancers, King’s Stables, Pimlico.
The 7th Dragoon guards … to assemble either at the Obelisk
or Vauxhall Bridge.
One squadron of the Greys … to move up from Croydon to Vauxhall Bridge or some other convenient spot.
Four guns, Riding Establishment, St. John’s Wood.
Four guns or more, Carlton House stables.
One Battalion of Foot Guards and detachment of Artillery, Tower.
Four battalions of Foot Guards, Portman Street Barracks, Knightsbridge Barracks, Mews Barracks, Westminster quarters daily duties.
500 marines, from Woolwich, at Deptford Dockyard or the Obelisk.
To these four guns might be added.
This is all the force we can at present muster, and the garrisons at Portsmouth and Chatham are not as strong as they ought to be.
Your most faithful and affectionate,
Fitzroy Somerset.

The Poor Man’s Guardian, No. 22, Saturday 19 November 1831

‘BURNING A BISHOP IN EFFIGY!
Remember, remember,
The Fifth of November
Between fifteen and twenty thousand persons paraded the streets … For, lo! And behold! Here is a fat, bloated, blundering bishop … we hereby commit his infernal body to the flames … in the certain belief that eternal damnation will be his portion, and that he will never inherit a glorious resurrection.
Good Lord! Put down aristocrats;
Let boroughmongers be abhorred;
And from all tithes and shovel hats
Forthwith deliver us Good Lord!’

Lord Lyttelton to Lady Lyttelton

‘London 9 May
My Yoemanry Commission I shall probably … resign … God grant that I may not be obliged again to turn out again … for the suppression of a local riot.’

The Times on the demand for gold at the bank, 15 May
‘MONEY-MARKET and CITY INTELLIGENCE

Monday evening

The demand for gold at the Bank is increasing … According to the best estimate that can be found, about 1,000,000l in gold may have been drawn out.

16 May

A steady demand for gold is kept up at the Bank … Every man of common understanding is convinced that the gold in the Bank will be exhausted in a week if a Tory ministry is appointed in the face of the obstinate determination against it on the part of the people.’

Alexander Somerville’s Autobiography of a Working Man

‘At Birmingham, two hundred thousand persons … resolved to pay no King’s taxes, until the bill passed, and, if need be, to remove bodily the whole two hundred thousand of them, and encamp, with other political unions, on Hampstead … Heath, to be near parliament … It was rumoured that the Birmingham political union was to march for London that night; and that we were to stop it on the road. We had been daily and nightly booted and saddled, with ball cartridge in each man’s possession, for three days ready to turn out at a moment’s notice. But until this day we had rough sharpened no swords … to make them inflict a ragged wound … we implored the people … not to allow rioting, window breaking, or any outrage on property; else, if refusing to draw swords on them, in the event of our being brought before a court martial for such disobedience, we would have no justification.’

Hobhouse’s Recollections

19May

‘I went to Place. He told me that there would, positively, have been a rising if Wellington had received power yesterday. Everything was arranged for it, he himself would not have slept at home …’

22 May

‘Charles Fox [MP] … said to King, “By recalling Lord Grey, you have saved the country from civil war.”
“Yes,” said the King, “for the present.”

The Peterloo Massacre, Robert Reid, Windmill Books 2018
Artisans and Sans-Culottes Gwyn A. Williams Libris 1989
Democracy and Reform D.G. Wright Longmans Seminar Series 1981
The Floating Republic Manwaring & Dobree Pen and Sword Books 2004
The Cato Street Conspiracy John Stanhope Jonathan Cape 1962
Reform or Revolution E.A. Smith Alan Sutton 1992
Waterloo to Peterloo R.J. White Heinemann 1957 (It was Bernard Crick’s copy!)
The Lives of … The Leaders of the Cato Street Conspiracy … Primary Source Edition Nabu Public Domain Reprints
Enemies of the State M. J. Trow Pen & Sword 2010

A new poem about Peterloo

06
Dec

A new poem about Peterloo

Lynette Cawthra

People use our collections for all sorts of reasons. A poet called Oliver Lomax came in recently to read some of our eye-witness accounts of the Peterloo Massacre of 1819. He is now generously sharing his resulting poem:

Peterloo

I beg you will endeavour to preserve the most
perfect silence. Put your hand to the ground and
take its pulse.

The time of the martyr is at your feet. A climate
of angels lying low in a buried world, fragment
seeds of liberty,

sixpences of bone spent for us. This is the archaeology
of the heart, be meticulous with it and know that
their ballad is in your blood.

Their cries still rent the air outside the room
where The Sex Pistols played, outside the rooms
chasing Michelin stars,

where borough mongers and their abettors from
an umbilical distance away severed the contract
of the heart.

As hussars’ sabres cut the seams of heaven
and bled down on to the field a holy alliance,
not to be petitioned by prayer.

A flock that had drawn from the four corners of the
North West, a forest of men, women, children and liberty
cut down, made to buckle in its bloom.

The ball in their right breast a Tory sphere
that still orbits the poor today as they rust in a
half-life harbour.

Eclipses the truth on bedroom tax suicides and
blots out the sun on the homeless wards. All evidence
must be received, we are all the body of John Lees.

Look up two hundred years and see time like
a mirage, the ghosts of us, hold their dreams aloft
like something new born.

And let us sit beside poverty, have a word in its ear.

Say, listen ‘We are here’.

Henry Hunt and Peterloo

‘With Henry Hunt, we’ll go my boys,
With Henry Hunt, we’ll go,
We’ll mount the Cap of Liberty,
In spite of Nadin Joe.

On the 16th day of August
Eighteen hundred and nineteen,
A meeting held in Peter’s Field
Was glorious to be seen,

Joe Nadin and his big bulldogs,
As you might plainly see,
And on the other side,
Stood the bloody cavalry.

With Henry Hunt, we’ll go my boys,
With Henry Hunt, we’ll go,
We’ll mount the Cap of Liberty,
In spite of Nadin Joe.’

So how did a Wiltshire gentleman farmer
End up on the hustings at Peterloo?
How did a seemingly egotistical,
And self-regarding rhetorician,
End up being eulogized by the North,
And revered by the industrial working class?

Tell me, Mr. Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt,
Up there, on the hustings and platforms,
In your self-centred, narcissistic white hat,
How did it happen?

‘With Henry Hunt, we’ll go my boys,
With Henry Hunt, we’ll go,
We’ll mount the Cap of Liberty,
In spite of Nadin Joe.

On the 16th day of August
Eighteen hundred and nineteen,
A meeting held in Peter’s Field
Was glorious to be seen,

Joe Nadin and his big bulldogs,
As you might plainly see,
And on the other side,
Stood the bloody cavalry.

With Henry Hunt, we’ll go my boys,
With Henry Hunt, we’ll go,
We’ll mount the Cap of Liberty,
In spite of Nadin Joe.’

Tell me, Mr. Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt,
Up there, on the hustings and platforms,
In your self-centred, narcissistic white hat,
How did it happen?

‘I was born on the 6th November 1773, in Wiltshire, at Widdington Farm, not within a mile of any other habitation, near Upavon. Widdington Farm lies about a mile from the turnpike road … a lone farm, in a valley upon the downs. How well I remember bringing my newly wedded wife there! A deep silence reigned around; not a tree nor even a bush was to be seen; and since we left the turnpike road, the carriage having passed over the turf for nearly the last mile, the well-known sound of wheels rattling over the stones had never once vibrated.
But as a young man, both bachelor and husband, I was a patriotic loyalist, as you would expect of a gentleman of my lineage. And when my father died, what he rented, and what he left of his own, was nearly all the tything of Littlecot, as well as Chisenbury farm, and I was in possession of Widdington farm, about two miles distant. All the farms were now in my occupation, and, as I thought it proper to live more centrical, I took Chisenbury House, a large old-fashioned, handsome mansion.
But not withstanding my elevated position as a landowner, other gentlemen showed a degree of condescension towards me; and that disinclined me to show any support for them. My loyalism began to wane; and my patriotism began to wither.
And, of course, the policies of Pitt, and the French War, led to further disenchantment: the government spies, the informers, the threat to liberties, the pauperization of the laboring classes; I was stirred, too, by the adamantine example of Colonel Despard, and by the despicable use of the military in the North in 1812. No too mention the sybaritic decadence of the rich.’

And all this helped turn Henry Hunt Esq.
Into white hat Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt,
Who whilst wary of armed revolt,
Was equally wary of milksop political reform:
He wanted universal suffrage,
Not just household suffrage,
Together with annual parliaments and the secret ballot;
In short,
This 18th century gentleman farmer,
Who spent over two years in prison after Peterloo
Became a bridge and a conduit to the age of Chartism –
Hear the Chartist William Lovett
On Hunt’s brief but industrious time
In the House of Commons:

‘In vain do all sides of the House unite, cough, shuffle and groan … he pauses for a moment, until the unanimous clamour of disgust is at its height, and then, re-pitching his notes, apparently without an effort, lifts his halloo as clear and distinct above the storm, as ever ye heard a minster bell tolling over the racket of a village wake.’

His speeches acted as a clarion call –
His antagonism towards corruption
And the political control of a few aristocrats
Was exemplary from the beginning:

‘It was they who voted away the public money, and created the debt. It was they who squandered the resources of the country upon their relatives, their friends, their pomp, and their parasites. The people had nothing to do with the anti-Jacobin war. That war, and the debt which grew out of it, had been voted by a corrupt House of Commons, chosen by these 157 worthies.’

And then a year later, in 1812,
Alliterative again at the Bristol elections:
‘I am of no party but the people and I detest all those who plunder that people.’
He may have lost that election, but the shouts of
‘Hunt for ever’ resounded through the streets,
As Oxymandian-like, the King’s statue,
Came tumbling down in Portland Square;

And then at the end of the French Wars,
When the Corn Laws were passed to keep out cheap foreign corn,
And so enrich the aristocracy at the expense of the poor,
‘Under the protection of a military force, in defiance of the prayers, the petitions, and the remonstrances of a great majority of the people of England’;

And then a year later at the Spa Fields meeting in Clerkenwell,
Where, at times, he spoke in the third person:

‘he knew well what ought to be done in such a crisis. He knew well the superiority of mental over physical force; nor would he counsel any resort to the latter till the former had been found ineffectual. Before physical force was applied to, it was their duty to petition, to remonstrate … Those who resisted the just demands of the people were the real friends of confusion and bloodshed; but if the fatal day should be destined to arrive, he assured them that, if he knew anything of himself, he would not be found concealed behind a counter, or sheltering himself in the rear’;

And after Spa Fields, he spoke at Bristol,
At Brandon Hill, in the pouring rain:

‘We want no tumults, no riots, only our rights … The partisans of corruption wanted a Plot – they would give anything for a Plot – but we shall disappoint them … Let them surround us with their cavalry and artillery – we will oppose to them the artillery of truth, reason, and justice’;

Spa Fields made him a national figure:
And it emphasised his position
Betwixt the minority revolutionaries
And the reformist household suffragists –
He introduced himself to the London Convention in 1817
(Of Hampden Clubs, at the Crown and Anchor),
As one who was supported by the following:
14,000 petitioners of Bristol,
8,000 of Bath,
And over 100,000 at Spa Fields;
And even though he opposed physical force activity,
He nailed his colours to the mast in 1817,
In the spy-riddled atmosphere of that year –
Hoping to save the men of the Pentridge Rising
From execution;
Defending the Spa Fields revolutionaries
Against charges of high treason,
Exposing the role of Castle, the government spy,
In the aftermath of Spa Fields and the Rising;
Hunt was now the radical champion in the West Country
(A freeman of Bristol),
In London,
And in the industrial midlands and north, too;
He was the people’s choice –
See the red flag unfurled, inscribed thus:
‘UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE’,
With a Cap of Liberty, inscribed thus:
‘Hunt and Liberty’;

Radical thought now turned to plans for mass campaigns –
The 1817 Seditious Meetings Act had nearly run its course –
There was a plethora of ideas:
Petitions and Remonstrances
And Declarations to the Prince Regent,
But once Lord Sidmouth, the Home Secretary,
Rejected the idea of such a proposal,
Hunt decided to take these documents north to Manchester –
He was acclaimed by thousands at mass meetings,
For he was the Spa Fields’ leader and salvation,
And Samuel Bamford led his praises in verse:
‘Thou raised thy voice and the people awakening
Beheld the foul source of corruption display’d
And loyal stupidity, quickly forsaking …
The shouts of thousands for freedom arose …’,
And as the fateful year of 1819 progressed,
Hunt was resolute:
The planned mass meeting at St Peter’s Field would be legal,
And it would be peaceful,
He famously declared that people should attend,

‘armed with no other weapon but that of a self-approving conscience; determined not to suffer yourselves to be irritated or excited, by any means whatsoever, to commit any breach of the public peace.’

He even offered himself up to the magistrates beforehand,
To ensure they would have no pretext to stop the meeting,
Yet Bamford excoriated Hunt after the disaster,
Viewing him as an egocentric coward in an egocentric white hat –
In fact, Hunt was arrested on a charge of high treason,
And spent eleven days in solitary confinement;
He wrote to Lord Sidmouth, deploring the

‘illegal conduct of the military towards an unarmed and peaceable people,
met for the purpose of exercising what they thought they had a perfect right to do’;

He wanted to take the Manchester magistrates to court,
He wanted to speak at the victims’ inquests …
On his eventual release on bail
(His charge dropped to one of seditious conspiracy),
Vast crowds greeted him en route to Manchester,
Where he was greeted as a conquering hero,
Celebratory white hats were everywhere,
And green ribbons: ‘Hunt and Liberty’,
‘The daring Champion of unrivall’d fame,
The Patriot Hunt (immortal be his name!),
Has sworn to advocate the suff’rers’ cause,
And bring to light the spurners of the laws’.

Hunt wrote thus: ‘The day is arriving when we shall see whether Corruption has left any virtue in our Courts of Justice, or whether our Constitutional rights were buried in the Tomb of Peterloo.’

The government, of course, praised the Manchester magistrates,
And the dictatorial Six Acts followed,
While Hunt was eventually convicted on a charge
Of unlawful seditious assembling
For the purpose of exciting discontent;
He wrote his transparently egotistical memoirs
In Ilchester gaol, but he still campaigned
For political unions to mobilise for universal suffrage;
He also developed ideas for a radical museum in London:

‘an ocular demonstration that all the wealth of the nation consists of the labour and talent of the useful or working classes’ and ‘where the Radicals from all parts of the kingdom may be seen to meet each other when they are in the metropolis’;

National celebrations followed his release in 1822,
Especially in the industrial north;
A year later he gave a speech in Bristol,
That epitomised the extent of his radicalism:

‘I have had all the magistrates, all the parsons against me … I am an enemy to the injustice that naturally arises from the system on which they act … (loud cheers.) I am an enemy to Corn Laws, game laws, and to all laws that mark a degrading contrast between the lazy and the industrious … There must be high and low, rich and poor, but the honest hard-working man ought to have all the conveniences of life, and some of its comforts (Cheers).’
But despite this attitude, he never wavered from support for universal suffrage –
And so, he had little stock for the Whigs and their eventual 1832 Great Reform Act –
‘All plans for reform which do not embrace universal suffrage, with the protection of the ballot, are unjust in principle … and are calculated … to prolong the slavery and degradation of the intelligent and industrious workmen of the United Kingdom’;

Thus, when he returned to Manchester in 1830,
A crowd of 50,000 awaited him:

‘Although it is now eleven years since you saw me, did you ever hear of me deserting my colours? Did you ever hear of me deserting the cause of the people, even when confined in a gaol? (Loud cries of “we never did.”) I know you have not, and you never will. (“Bravo Hunt.”)

Out in the southern countryside,
In the winter of 1830,
He was seen as a possible mediator,
As the Captain Swing riots rapidly spread,
And then, of course, he was elected as MP,
For the pot-walloper Preston constituency,
In the December 1830 election,
But Hunt would continue to remain aloof,
Even when there was an arguable threat of revolution,
In the furore over the terms of the eventual Reform Act:

‘The lying press had deceived them, or they would know that Lord John Russell …
had never pretended that the bill was to give any substantial benefits to the working classes; they had all along declared that they had proposed it as a means of cementing the tottering institutions of the country, by giving to a larger portion of the middle class the right of exercising the elective franchise. It was their agents and the public press … that … endeavoured to make the people believe that it would benefit the mass of people’;

And when he was rapturously received at Preston,
On Guy Fawkes Night in 1831,
With a 19th century light show,
Flags, banners and a band,
He third person observed:

‘Never before, I believe, was a Member of Parliament so caressed
by so very great a majority of his Constituents, as the Member of the Working Classes of Preston’;

He went on to declare about the crowd of 5,000 that,

‘even if I had been the father of the whole of this … it is impossible
they could have received me with more affection, or with more enthusiasm’;
Such was the fervour and excitement that troops were moved to Preston;

Not that that deterred the Orator,
For when at Leeds, he declared that he was,
‘John Bull’s watchman’:

‘I came only to visit the Working Classes, and no other… I profess only to represent the Working Classes of England in the House of Commons … I am determined the Working Classes shall have the reform they want and by the living God I’ll resign my trust before I desert my Constituents of the Working Classes of England’;

(Immense cheers)
But he received no cheers in the Commons,
On the over a thousand occasions of his speaking there,
With single minded focus on the working class,
And the occasional on women’s rights,
But, the third person self-importance was never far away:

‘They might ask him what good he had done during the year and a half he had been in Parliament? It was true he had done very little, but he took credit for having consistently and fearlessly advocated the right of the working classes to earn not only the necessaries of life, but some of the comforts also – [cheers].’

After defeat in the next election at Preston,
Hunt would still act as a bridge between the 18th century and Chartism,
For example, in his address,
‘To the Unrepresented Seven Millions
of Working Men of England, Ireland, and Scotland’,

‘Therefore my advice is to the working, producing Seven Millions, never to join in any public meeting – never to join in or sign any petition – that does not embrace a prayer for Annual Parliaments, Universal Suffrage, the Ballot, an immediate repeal of the Starvation Act, called the Corn Bill’,

And when a Peeler was killed at a political meeting at Cold Bath Fields,
And after which the jury returned the remarkable verdict of justifiable homicide, Hunt gave forth his inspirational address,

‘To the Friends of Humanity and Justice,
Male and Female, of the United Kingdom’,
‘Let the people meet at all parts of the metropolis;
let the people meet at Manchester, at Bolton, at Blackburn, at Preston;
let them meet in every town and village in the north, in the south, in the east, and in the west; let all people, male and female, do honour and justice
to the brave jurymen of Calthorpe Street’;

This was to be Hunt’s last public appearance
On a London radical platform;
He would be presented with a silver cup,
‘For his unwearied exertions in advocating the cause of liberty,
and promoting the welfare of the labouring community’ –
This was from the Female Union of Preston;
He would revisit the North in his remaining months,
To give the occasional rousing speech,
And after his death, he would adorn inn signs,
And even though it was declared that:
‘Who boldly said in thirty-two,
The Bill was a cheat and vain,
Have we not found his judgement true,
We shall never see his likes again’,
Feargus O’Connor saw himself as Henry Hunt’s heir,
No wonder the Wigan Chartist banner
Foregrounded him with The People’s Charter,
With Hunt’s monument in the background,
A gold and scarlet motto running thus:
‘O’Connor Hunt’s successor’;
His birthday would be a Chartist celebration,
His Ancoats monument would be unveiled
As the 1842 Plug Riots kicked off –
It would be demolished, a generation later,
John Belchem concludes:

‘a bronze plaque was installed in the Manchester Reform Club in 1808,
where it has long been since forgotten by lunching Mancunuan businessmen. A more suitable memorial and greater recognition is due to ‘Orator’ Hunt, the man of the people, the pioneer of working-class radicalism.’

John Belchem ‘Orator’ Hunt Henry Hunt and English Working Class Radicalism
Breviary Stuff Publications 2012
Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 Henry Hunt Tredition Classics

PETER-LOO
From the Manchester Observer 28th August 1819

This is the field of Peter-Loo.
These are the poor reformers who met, on the state of affairs to debate; in the field of Peter-Loo.
These are the butchers, bloodthirsty and bold, who cut, slash’d and maim’d young, defenceless and old, who met, on the state of affairs to debate; in the field of Peter-Loo.
This is Hurly Burly, a blustering knave, and foe to the poor, whom he’d gladly enslave, who led on the butchers, bloodthirsty and bold, who cut, slash’d and maim’d young, defenceless and old, who met, on the state of affairs to debate; in the field of Peter-Loo.
These are the just-asses, gentle and mild, who to keep the peace, broke it, by lucre beguil’d, and sent Hurly Burly, a blustering knave, and foe to the poor, whom he’d gladly enslave, who led on the butchers, bloodthirsty and bold, who cut, slash’d and maim’d young, defenceless and old, who met, on the state of affairs to debate; in the field of Peter-Loo.

William Hone in The Political House that Jack Built followed suit with this description of the Prince Regent:

A dandy of sixty who bows with a grace,
And has taste in wigs, collars, cuirasses and lace;
Who, to tricksters, and fools, leaves the State and its treasure,
And, when Britain’s in tears, sails about at his pleasure.

STROUD GLOUCESTERSHIRE Tuesday 10th November 2026

Category: History

The Gladstones at Gloucester

Jack Zipes

Medieval Monarchy and a Radical View

Radical Cirencester

Pasture and turbary,
Estovers and piscary;
Pannage and housebote,
Shack and ploughbote.

Common People

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

Prehistory: Why is it so entrancing?

Party like it’s 2500BC: Stonehenge building secrets unearthed

Prehistory and Wormholes of Time

Peterloo and Revolution

REVOLUTION 1819-2019