Book contents
- Conspiracy on Cato Street
- Conspiracy on Cato Street
- Copyright page
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Illustrations and Maps
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Timeline
- A Note on the Text
- Part One The Simple Tale
- Part Two Taking Its Measure
- Chapter 3 Interpreting the Conspiracy
- Chapter 4 What They Were Up Against
- Chapter 5 What They Believed
- Chapter 6 Fantasy, Myth, and Song
- Chapter 7 Rebellion’s Habitats
- Part Three Thistlewood: His Story
- Part Four Ordinary Britons
- Part Five The Executions
- The People Listed
- Historiographical Note
- Trial Reports
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 6 - Fantasy, Myth, and Song
from Part Two - Taking Its Measure
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 April 2022
- Conspiracy on Cato Street
- Conspiracy on Cato Street
- Copyright page
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Illustrations and Maps
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Timeline
- A Note on the Text
- Part One The Simple Tale
- Part Two Taking Its Measure
- Chapter 3 Interpreting the Conspiracy
- Chapter 4 What They Were Up Against
- Chapter 5 What They Believed
- Chapter 6 Fantasy, Myth, and Song
- Chapter 7 Rebellion’s Habitats
- Part Three Thistlewood: His Story
- Part Four Ordinary Britons
- Part Five The Executions
- The People Listed
- Historiographical Note
- Trial Reports
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Unemployment, hunger, and declining craft status were more significant than the formal ideas most historians have attended to in radicalising London’s poor. Few of the poor wanted outright revolution.Rather, their mental worlds were packed by a melange of myths, slogans, and ‘intellectual bric-a-brac’, and naïve fantasies and wishful thoughts about the prospects of change.Myths about a golden past, the ‘free-born Englishman’, and the oppressions of the Norman Yoke were spread in songs and slogans of considerable antiquity, and provided the primary languages of radical dissent.
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- Information
- Conspiracy on Cato StreetA Tale of Liberty and Revolution in Regency London, pp. 114 - 136Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022