Customs in Common, page 31
The Corporation itself donated £21.1 Such measures were very commonly followed, the initiative coming sometimes from a corporation, sometimes from individual gentry, sometimes from Quarter Sessions, sometimes from parish authorities, sometimes from employers — especially those who employed a substantial labour-force (such as lead-miners) in isolated districts.
MS diary of Reading Corporation, Central Public Library, Reading: entry for 24 January 1757. £30 was disbursed “towards the present high price of Bread” on 12 July 1795.
The measures taken in 1795 were especially extensive, various and well-documented. They ranged from direct subscriptions to reduce the price of bread (the parishes sometimes sending their own agents direct to the ports to purchase imported grain), through subsidies from the poor rates, to the Speenhamland system. The examination of such measures would take us farther into the history of the poor laws than we intend to go.2 But the effects were sometimes curious. Subscriptions, while quieting one area, might provoke riot in an adjacent one, through arousing a sharp sense of inequality. An agreement in Newcastle in 1740 to reduce prices, reached between merchants and a deputation of demonstrating pitmen (with aldermen mediating), resulted in “country people” from outlying villages flooding into the city; an unsuccessful attempt was made to limit the sale to persons with a written certificate from “a Fitter, Staithman, Ton Tail Man, or Churchwarden”. Participation by soldiers in price-setting riots in 1795 was explained, by the duke of Richmond, as arising from a similar inequality: it was alleged by the soldiers “that while the Country People are relieved by their Parishes and Subscriptions, the Soldiers receive no such Benefit”. Moreover, such subscriptions, while being intended to buy off riot (actual or potential), might often have the effect of raising the price of bread to those outside the benefit of subscription.1 In South Devon, where the authorities were still acting in 1801 in the tradition of 1757, the process can be seen. The Exeter crowd demonstrated in the market for wheat at 10s. a bushel:
Especially useful are replies from correspondents in Annals of Agriculture, xxiv and xxv (1795). See also S. and B. Webb, “The Assize of Bread”, op. cit., pp. 208-9; J. L. and B. Hammond, op. cit., ch. vi; W. M. Stern, op. cit., pp. 181-6.
A point to be watched in any quantified analysis: the price officially returned from a market in the aftermath of riot might rise, although, as a consequence of riot or threat of riot, the poor might be receiving corn at subsidised rates.
The Gentlemen and Farmers met, & the People waited their decision. . . They were informed that no Price they shou’d name or fix would be agreed to, & principally because the principle of fixing a Price wou’d be resisted. The Farmers then agreed at 12s and every Inhabitant to have it in proportion to their Families. . .
The Arguments of the discontented at Exmouth are very cogent. “Give us whatever quantity the Stock in Hand will afford, & at a price by which we can attain it, & we shall be satisfied; we will not accept any Subscription from the Gentry because it enhances the Price, & is a hardship on them”.2
Newcastle — advertisement 24 June 1740 in City Archives Office; duke of Richmond, 13 Apr. 1795, PRO, WO 1/1092; Devon — James Coleridge, 29 Mar. 1801, HO 42/61.
The point here is not just that prices, in time of scarcity, were determined by many other factors than mere market-forces: anyone with even a scanty knowledge of much-maligned “literary” sources must be aware of that. It is more important to note the total socio-economic context within which the market operated, and the logic of crowd pressure. One other example, this time from a hitherto riot-free market, may show this logic at work. The account is that of a substantial farmer, John Toogood, in Sherborne (Dorset). The year 1757 commenced with “general complaint” at high prices, and frequent accounts of riots elsewhere:
On the 30th of April, being Market-Day, many of our idle and insolent Poor Men and Women assembled and begun a Riot in the Market House, went to Oborn Mill and brought off several Bags of Flour and divided the Spoil here in Triumph.
On the next Monday an anonymous letter, directed to Toogood’s brother (who had just sold ten bushels of wheat at 14s. 10d. — “a great price indeed” — to a miller), was found in the abbey: “Sir, If you do not bring your Wheat into the Market, and sell it at a reasonable price, your Barns shall be pulled down. . .”.
As Rioting is quite a new Thing in Sherborne. . . and as the neighbouring Parishes seemed ripe for joining in this Sport, I thought there was no Time to be lost, and that it was proper to crush this Evil in it’s Bud, in Order to which we took the following Measures.
Having called a Meeting at the Almshouse, it was agreed that Mr. Jeffrey and I should take a Survey of all the most necessitous Families in the Town, this done, We raised about £100 by Subscriptions, and before the next Market Day, our Justice of the Peace and some of the principal Inhabitants made a Procession throughout the Town and published by the Cryer of the Town the following Notice.
“That the Poor Families of this Town will be supplied with a Quantity of Wheat sufficient for their Support every Week ’till Harvest at the Rate of 8s p. Bushel and that if any person whatsoever after this public Notice shall use any threatening Expressions, or commit any Riot or Disorder in this Town, the Offender shall be forthwith committed to Prison.”
They then contracted for wheat, at 10s. and 12s. the bushel, supplying it to a “List of the Poor” at 8s. until harvest. (Sixty bushels weekly over this period will have involved a subsidy of between £100 and £200.) “By these Means we restored Peace, and disappointed many loose, disorderly Fellows of the Neighbouring Parishes, who appeared in the Market with their empty Bags, expecting to have had Corn without Money.” John Toogood, setting down this account for the guidance of his sons, concluded it with the advice:
If the like Circumstances happen hereafter in your Time and either of you are engaged in Farmering Business, let not a covetous Eye tempt you to be foremost in advancing the Price of Corn, but rather let your Behaviour shew some Compassion and Charity towards the Condition of the Poor. . .1
MS diary of John Toogood, Dorset CRO, D 170/1.
It is within such a context as this that the function of riot may be disclosed. Riot may have been, in the short term, counter-productive, although this has not yet been proved. But, once again, riot was a social calamity, and one to be avoided, even at a high cost. The cost might be to achieve some medium, between a soaring “economic” price in the market, and a traditional “moral” price set by the crowd. That medium might be found by the intervention of paternalists, by the prudential self-restraint of farmers and dealers, or by buying-off a portion of the crowd through charities and subsidies. As Hannah More carolled, in the persona of the sententious Jack Anvil, when dissuading Tom Hod from riot:
So I’ll work the whole day, and on Sundays I’ll seek
At Church how to bear all the wants of the week.
The gentlefolks, too, will afford us supplies,
They’ll subscribe — and they’ll give up their puddings and pies.
Derry down.1
“The Riot: or, half a loaf is better than no bread, &c”, 1795, in Hannah More, Works (1830), ii, pp. 86-8.
Derry down, indeed, and even Tra-la-dee-bum-deeay! However, the nature of gentlefolks being what it is, a thundering good riot in the next parish was more likely to oil the wheels of charity than the sight of Jack Anvil on his knees in church. As the doggerel on the outside of the church door in Kent had put it succinctly in 1630:
Before we arise
Less will safise.
VIII
We have been examining a pattern of social protest which derives from a consensus as to the moral economy of the commonweal in times of dearth. It is not usually helpful to examine it for overt, articulate political intentions, although these sometimes arose through chance coincidence. Rebellious phrases can often be found, usually (one suspects) to chill the blood of the rich with their theatrical effect. It was said that the Newcastle pitmen, flushed with the success of their capture of the Guildhall, “were for putting in practice the old levelling principles”; they did at least tear down the portraits of Charles II and James II and smash their frames. By contrast, bargees at Henley (Oxfordshire) in 1743 called out “Long Live the Pretender”; and someone in Woodbridge (Suffolk) in 1766 nailed up a notice in the market-place which the local magistrate found to be “peculiarly bold and seditious and of high and delicate import”: “We are wishing [it said] that our exiled King could come over or send some Officers.” Perhaps the same menace was intended, in the South-West in 1753, by threats that “the French w’d be here soon”.1
Newcastle — MS account of riots in City Archives; Henley — Isaac, op. cit., p. 186; Woodbridge — PRO, WO 1/873: 1753 — Newcastle MSS, Brit. Lib. Add MS 32732, fo. 343. Earl Poulet, Lord Lieutenant of Somerset, reported in another letter to the duke of Newcastle that some of the mob “came to talk a Levelling language, viz. they did not see why some sh’d be rich & others poor”: ibid., fos. 214-5.
Most common are general “levelling” threats, imprecations against the rich. A letter at Witney (1767) assured the bailiffs of the town that the people would not suffer “such damned wheesing fat guted Rogues to Starve the Poor by such Hellish Ways on purpose that they may follow hunting horse-racing etc. and to maintain their familys in Pride and extravagance”. A letter on the Gold Cross at Birmingham’s Snow Hill (1766), signed “Kidderminster & Stourbridge”, was perhaps in the mode of rhyming doggerel —
. . . there is a small Army of us upwards of three thousand all ready to fight
& I’ll be dam’d if we don’t make the King’s Army to shite
If so be the King & Parliament don’t order better
we will turn England into a Litter
& if so be as things don’t get cheaper
I’ll be damd if we don’t burn down the Parliament House & make all better. . .
A letter in Colchester in 1772 addressed to all farmers, millers, butchers, shopkeepers and corn merchants, warned all the “damd Rogues” to take care,
for this is november and we have about two or three hundred bum shells a getting in Readiness for the Mellers [millers] and all no king no parliment nothing but a powder plot all over the nation.
The gentlemen of Fareham (Hampshire) were warned in 1766 to prepare “for a Mob or Sivel war”, which would “pull George from his throne beat down the house of rougs [rogues] and destroy the Sets [seats] of the Law makers”. “Tis better to Undergo a forrieghn Yoke than to be used thus”, wrote a villager near Hereford in the next year. And so on, and from most parts of Britain. It is, in the main, rhetoric, although rhetoric which qualifies in a devastating way the rhetoric of historians as to the deference and social solidarities of Georgian England.1
Witney — London Gazette, Nov. 1767, no. 10779; Birmingham — PRO, WO 1/873; Colchester — London Gazette, Nov. 1772, no. 11304; Fareham — ibid., Jan. 1767, no. 10690; Hereford — ibid., Apr. 1767, no. 10717.
Only in 1795 and 1800-1, when a Jacobin tinge is frequent in such letters and handbills, do we have the impression of a genuine undercurrent of articulate political motivation. A trenchant example of these is some doggerel addressed to “the Broth Makers & Flower Risers” which gave a Maldon (Essex) magistrate cause for alarm:
On Swill & Grains you wish the poor to be fed
And underneath the Guillintine we could wish to see your heads
For I think it is a great shame to serve the poor so —
And I think a few of your heads will make a pretty show.
Scores upon scores of such letters circulated in these years. From Uley (Gloucestershire), “no King but a Constitution down down down O fatall down high caps and proud hats forever down down. . .”. At Lewes (Sussex), after several militiamen had been executed for their part in price-setting, a notice was posted: “Soldiers to Arms!”
Arise and revenge your cause
On those bloody numskulls, Pitt and George,
For since they no longer can send you to France
To be murdered like Swine, or pierc’d by the Lance,
You are sent for by Express to make a speedy Return
To be shot like a Crow, or hang’d in your Turn. . .
At Ramsbury (Wiltshire) in 1800 a notice was affixed to a tree:
Downe with Your Luxzuaras Government both spirital & temperal Or you starve with Hunger. they have stripp you of bread Chees Meate &c &c &c &c &c. Nay even your Lives have they Taken thousands on their Expeditions let the Burbon Family defend their owne Cause and let us true Britons look to Our Selves let us banish Some to Hanover where they came from Downe with your Constitution Arect a republick Or you and your offsprings are to starve the Remainder of our Days dear Brothers will you lay down and die under Man eaters and Lave your offspring under that Burden that Blackguard Government which is now eatain you up.
God Save the Poor & down with George III.1
Maldon — PRO, WO 40/17; Uley — W. G. Baker, Oct. 1795, HO 42/36; Lewes — HO 42/35; Ramsbury — enclosure in the Rev. E. Meyrick, 12 June 1800, HO 42/50.
But these crisis years of the wars (1800-1) would demand separate treatment. We are coming to the end of one tradition, and the new tradition has scarcely emerged. In these years the alternative form of economic pressure — pressure upon wages — is becoming more vigorous; there is also something more than rhetoric behind the language of sedition — underground union organisation, oaths, the shadowy “United Englishmen”. In 1812 traditional food riots overlap with Luddism. In 1816 the East Anglian labourers do not only set the prices, they also demand a minimum wage and an end to Speenhamland relief. They look forward to the very different revolt of labourers in 1830. The older form of action lingers on into the 1840s and even later: it was especially deeply rooted in the South-West.2 But in the new territories of the industrial revolution it passed by stages into other forms of action. The break in wheat prices after the wars eased the transition. In the northern towns the fight against the corn jobbers gave way to the fight against the Corn Laws.
See A. Rowe, “The Food Riots of the Forties in Cornwall”, Report of Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society (1942), pp. 51-67. There were food riots in the Scottish Highlands in 1847; in Teignmouth and Exeter in November 1867; and in Norwich a curious episode (the “Battle of Ham Run”) as late as 1886.
There was another reason why 1795 and 1800-1 bring us into different historical territory. The forms of action which we have been examining depended upon a particular set of social relations, a particular equilibrium between paternalist authority and the crowd. This equilibrium was dislodged in the wars, for two reasons. First, the acute anti-Jacobinism of the gentry led to a new fear of any form of popular self-activity; magistrates were willing to see signs of sedition in price-setting actions even where no such sedition existed; the fear of invasion raised the Volunteers, and thus gave to the civil powers much more immediate means for meeting the crowd, not with parley and concession, but with repression.1 Second, such repression was legitimised, in the minds of central and of many local authorities, by the triumph of the new ideology of political economy.
See J. R. Western, “The Volunteer Movement as an Anti-Revolutionary Force, 1793-1801”, Eng. Hist. Rev., lxxi (1956).
Of this celestial triumph, the Home Secretary, the duke of Portland, served as Temporal Deputy. He displayed, in 1800-1, a quite new firmness, not only in handling disturbance, but in overruling and remonstrating with those local authorities who still espoused the old paternalism. In September 1800 a significant episode occurred in Oxford. There had been some affair of setting the price of butter in the market, and cavalry appeared in the town (at the request — as it transpired — of the Vice-Chancellor). The Town Clerk, on the direction of the mayor and magistrates, wrote to the Secretary at War, expressing their “surprise that a military body of horse soldiers should have made their appearance early this morning”:
It is with great pleasure I inform you that the people of Oxford have hitherto shewn no disposition to be riotous except the bringing into the market [of] some hampers of butter and selling it at a shilling a pound and accounting for the money to the owner of the butter be reckoned of that description. . .
“Notwithstanding the extreme pressure of the times”, the City authorities were of “the decided opinion” that there was “no occasion in this City for the presence of a regular Soldiery”, especially since the magistrates were being most active in suppressing “what they conceive to be one of the principal causes of the dearness, the offences of forestalling, ingrossing, and regrating. . .”.
The Town Clerk’s letter was passed over to the duke of Portland, and drew from him a weighty reproof:
His Grace. . . desires you to inform the Mayor and Magistrates, that as his official situation enables him in a more particular manner to appreciate the extent of the publick mischief which must inevitably ensue from a continuance of the riotous proceedings which have taken place in several parts of the Kingdom in consequence of the present scarcity of Provisions, so he considers himself to be more immediately called upon to exercise his own judgement and discretion in directing adequate measures to be taken for the immediate and effectual suppression of such dangerous proceedings. For greatly as His Grace laments the cause of these Riots, nothing is more certain than that they can be productive of no other effect than to increase the evil beyond all power of calculation. His Grace, therefore, cannot allow himself to pass over in silence that part of your letter which states “that the People of Oxford have hitherto shewn no disposition to be riotous, except the bringing into Market some Hampers of Butter, and selling it at a Shilling a pound, and accounting for the money to the Owner of the Butter, can be reckoned of that description”.
So far from considering this circumstance, in the trivial light in which it is represented in your letter (even supposing it to stand unconnected with others of a similar and a still more dangerous nature, which it is to be feared is not the case) His Grace sees it in the view of a violent and unjustifiable attack on property pregnant with the most fatal consequences to the City of Oxford and to it’s Inhabitants of every description; and which His Grace takes it for granted the Mayor and Magistrates must have thought it their bounden duty to suppress and punish by the immediate apprehension and committal of the Offenders.1
