Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T09:37:49.622Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

THE CULTURE OF COMBINATION: SOLIDARITIES AND COLLECTIVE ACTION BEFORE TOLPUDDLE*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2015

CARL J. GRIFFIN
CARL J. GRIFFIN*
Affiliation:
University of Sussex
*
Department of Geography, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, bn1 9sj[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Beyond the repression of the national waves of food rioting during the subsistence crises of the 1790s, workers in the English countryside lost the will and ability to mobilize. Or so the historical orthodoxy goes. Such a conceptualization necessarily positions the ‘Bread or Blood’ riots of 1816, the Swing rising of 1830, and, in particular, the agrarian trade unionism practised at Tolpuddle in 1834 as exceptional events. This article offers a departure by placing Tolpuddle into its wider regional context. The unionists at Tolpuddle, it is shown, were not making it up as they went along but instead acted in ways consistent with shared understandings and experiences of collective action and unionism practised throughout the English west. In so doing, it pays particular attention to the forms of collective action – and judicial responses – that extended between different locales and communities and which joined farmworkers, artisans, and industrial workers together. So conceived, Tolpuddle was not an exception. Rather, it can be more usefully understood as a manifestation of deeply entrenched cultures, an episode that assumes its historical potency because of its subsequent politicized representations.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 58 , Issue 2 , June 2015 , pp. 443 - 480
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

The research on which this article is based was funded by a British Academy Small Research Grant (SG091233). An earlier version of the article was presented at the Community, Cohesion and Social Stability: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives conference held at Bangor University, 13–14 September 2012 and as a Modern British History seminar at the University of Cambridge on 21 January 2013.

References

1 The men were James and George Loveless, John and Thomas Stanfield, James Hammett, and James Brine.

2 Archer, J., Social unrest and popular protest in England, 1780–1840 (Cambridge, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 8.

3 For the best of the accounts, see Citrine, W., The book of the Martyrs of Tolpuddle, 1834–1934 (London, 1934)Google Scholar; Marlow, J., The Tolpuddle Martyrs (London, 1971)Google Scholar; Wells, R., ‘Tolpuddle in the context of English agrarian labour history, 1780–1850’, in Rule, J., ed., British trade unionism: the formative years (London, 1988), pp. 98–142Google Scholar. Also see George Loveless's extraordinary personal account: The victims of Whiggery (London, 1838)Google Scholar.

4 37 Geo. III c. 123, ‘An Act for the more effectually preventing the administering or taking of unlawful oaths’.

5 See Griffiths, C., ‘Remembering Tolpuddle: rural history and commemoration in the inter-war Labour movement’, History Workshop Journal, 44 (1997), pp. 145–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 A museum to the memory of the Tolpuddle Martyrs forms part of the TUC's 1934 housing development. The village also hosts an annual ‘Festival and Rally’ and ‘Radical History School’: www.tolpuddlemartyrs.org.uk/ accessed 20 Apr. 2013. On the bishop of London, see Independent, 17 Apr. 2013.

7 There is an unchallenged assumption in these claims that rural workers were actually involved in food riots. While the point has never been systematically analysed, Roger Wells adduces some evidence of the involvement of rural workers in his magisterial study of the subsistence crises of the 1790s. This author is currently engaged in a study of the ‘rural’ food riot: Wells, R., Wretched faces: famine in wartime England, 1793–1802 (Stroud, 1988), pp. 161–8Google Scholar.

8 Wells, R., ‘The development of the English rural proletariat and social protest, 1700–1850’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 6 (1979), pp. 115–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Charlesworth, A., ‘The development of the English rural proletariat and social protest, 1700–1850: a comment’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 8 (1980), pp. 101–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Wells, Wretched faces, p. 116.

10 Hobsbawm, E. and Rudé, G., Captain Swing (London, 1969)Google Scholar, p. 281.

11 Ibid.; Wells, R., ‘The moral economy of the English countryside’, in Randall, A. and Charlesworth, A., eds., Moral economy and popular protest: crowds, conflict and authority (Basingstoke, 2000), pp. 209–71Google Scholar.

12 For a delineation of the economic contours of the region and an assertion of regional distinctiveness, see Bettey, J., Wessex from ad 1000 (London, 1986)Google Scholar, chs. 6 and 7. On the complex industrial landscape, see Raven, N., ‘“A humbler, industrious class of female”: women's employment and industry in the small towns of southern England, c. 1790–1840’, in Lane, P., Raven, N., and Snell, K. D. M., eds., Women, work, and wages in England, 1600–1850 (Woodbridge, 2004), pp. 170–89Google Scholar. On the cloth industry, see Randall, A., Before the Luddites: custom, community and machinery in the English woollen industry, 1776–1809 (Cambridge, 1991)Google Scholar.

13 Poole, S., ‘Forty years of rural history from below: Captain Swing and the historians’, Southern History, 32 (2010), p. 18Google Scholar.

14 Jones, D., ‘Thomas Campbell Foster and the rural labourer: incendiarism in East Anglia in the 1840s’, Social History, 1 (1976), pp. 5–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Hobsbawm and Rudé, Captain Swing, pp. 98, 12.

16 For an overview of developments, see Griffin, C., Protest, politics and work in rural England, 1700–1850 (Basingstoke, 2014), pp. 11–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Wells, ‘The development of the English rural proletariat’, passim; Thompson, E. P., ‘The moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth century’, Past & Present, 50 (1971), pp. 132, 136CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Charlesworth, ‘A comment’; Wells, R., ‘Social conflict and protest in the English countryside in the early nineteenth century: a rejoinder’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 8 (1981), pp. 514–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 The subsequent papers were subsequently collected together with some further reflections by the editors in Reed, M. and Wells, R., eds., Class, conflict and protest in the English countryside, 1700–1880 (London, 1990)Google Scholar.

20 Archer, J. ‘The Wells–Charlesworth debate: a personal comment on arson in Norfolk and Suffolk’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 9 (1982), pp. 277–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Thompson, ‘The moral economy’, p. 76.

22 Randall, A., Riotous assemblies: popular protest in Hanoverian England (Oxford, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Price, R., Labour in British society (London, 1986)Google Scholar; Chase, M., Early trade unionism: fraternity, skill and the politics of labour (2000; London, 2012)Google Scholar; J. Rule, ‘Industrial disputes, wage bargaining and the moral economy’, in Randall and Charlesworth, eds., Moral economy and popular protest, pp. 166–86; Randall, Before the Luddites, esp. ch. 5; Navickas, K., Loyalism and radicalism in Lancashire, 1798–1815 (Oxford, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ch. 5.

24 For a recent study of the transnational lives of smugglers and fishermen, see Morieux, R., ‘Diplomacy from below and belonging: fishermen and cross-channel relations in the eighteenth century’, Past & Present, 202 (2009), pp. 83–125CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Wells, R., ‘Popular protest and social crime: the evidence of criminal gangs in rural southern England, 1790–1860’, Southern History, 13 (1991), pp. 32–81Google Scholar.

26 Collins, E. J. T., ‘Migrant labour in British agriculture in the nineteenth century’, Economic History Review, 29 (1976), pp. 38–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Agricultural gangs, though, were relatively unimportant in the west compared to East Anglia, gave some further opportunities, but await their historian in the English west. For the most recent treatment of the subject, see Verdon, N., ‘The employment of women and children in agriculture: a reassessment of agricultural gangs in nineteenth-century Norfolk’, Agricultural History Review, 49 (2001), pp. 41–55Google ScholarPubMed.

27 Griffin, C., ‘The violent Captain Swing?’, Past & Present, 209 (2010), pp. 149–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Archer, J., ‘Poaching gangs and violence: the urban–rural divide in nineteenth-century Lancashire’, British Journal of Criminology, 39 (1999), pp. 25–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Report from assistant hand-loom weavers’ commissioners, British Parliamentary Papers 1840 (14), vxxxvii, part ii, pp. 410 and 442, cited in Hammond, J. and Hammond, B., The skilled labourer, 1760–1832 (London, 1919)Google Scholar, p. 162.

29 Neeson, J., Commoners: common right, enclosure and social change in England, 1700–1820 (Cambridge, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 189; Rule, J., The experience of labour in eighteenth-century industry (London, 1981)Google Scholar, p. 13.

30 Randall, Before the Luddites, p. 49.

31 In a later interjection on the differences between Luddism and machine breaking in Swing, Randall suggested that the experience of everyday life for farmworkers was rooted in the moral economy, whereas for industrial workers the experience of everyday life was increasingly refracted through the lens of class consciousness: Randall, A., ‘“The Luddism of the poor”: Captain Swing, machine breaking and popular protest’, Southern History, 32 (2010), pp. 41–61Google Scholar.

32 On labour mobility, see Snell, K. D. M., Annals of the labouring poor: social change and agrarian England, 1660–1900 (Cambridge, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, passim; Goose, N., ‘Cottage industry, migration, and marriage in nineteenth-century England’, Economic History Review, 61 (2008), pp. 798–819CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On pauper letters, see Sockoll, T., ed., Essex pauper letters, 1731–1837 (Oxford, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Levene, A., ed., Narratives of the poor in eighteenth-century Britain (5 vols., London, 2006)Google Scholar, i.

33 Wells, Wretched faces; Bohstedt, J., The politics of provisions: food riots, moral economy, and market transition in England, c. 1550–1850 (London, 2011)Google Scholar, chs. 5 and 6.

34 As John Bohtedt has argued, the small market towns of Devon were precisely the type of settlements where Thompson's concept of the moral economy played out most strongly: established communities where the ‘rules’ of engagement and expectations of the plebs and the patricians alike were mutually understood: Riots and community politics in England and Wales, 1790–1810 (Cambridge, MA, 1983)Google Scholar, ch. 2.

35 Western Flying Post, 13 and 20 May, 3 June, 8 July; Simpson's Salisbury Gazette, 23 May; Taunton Courier, 23 and 30 May; Bath Chronicle, 6 July 1816; Criminal Process Register, 1809–20, p. 113, Dorset History Centre (DHC), NG/PR1/D1/2.

36 Aarron Moody JP, Kingsdon nr Yeovil to Sidmouth, 13 May 1816, with enclosures, The National Archives (TNA), HO 42/150, fos. 320–2.

37 Salisbury and Winchester Journal, 15 and 22 May; Bath Chronicle, 11 and 25 May 1826.

38 Thomas Johnes Esq. MP, Langston Cliff Cottages nr Exeter to Sidmouth, 17 Mar. 1816, including two enclosures, TNA, HO 42/149, fos. 173–7.

39 Western Flying Post, 5 June 1826; T. Jenkins, ‘Taunton’, in Fisher, D., ed., The history of parliament: the House of Commons, 1820–1832 (Cambridge, 2009)Google Scholar. On electoral riots in Shaftesbury and elsewhere in Dorset, see K. Bawn, ‘Social protest, popular disturbances and public order in Dorset, 1790–1838’ (Ph.D. thesis, Reading, 1984), pp. 52–75.

40 Westbury All Saints, vestry minute, 20 July 1819, Wiltshire and Swindon Archives, 548/2.

41 Devizes and Wiltshire Gazette, 28 May and 17 Dec. 1829.

42 Bath Chronicle, 8 Apr. 1830.

43 Salisbury and Winchester Journal, 3 Aug. 1829.

44 On the language of opposition, see Binfield, K., ed., The writings of the Luddites (Baltimore, MD, 2004)Google Scholar, p. 43.

45 For two particularly brutal battles on the Dorset coast, Lulworth and Overmoigne respectively, see Dorset County Chronicle, 1 Feb. 1827 and 10 Mar. 1831.

46 Criminal Process Register, 1809–20, DHC, NG/PR1/D1/2; Criminal Process Register, 1820–5, DHC, NG/PR1/D1/3; Prison Register, 1827–38, DHC, NG/PR1/D2/2.

47 Sherborne Journal, 23 July 1829; Western Flying Post, 23 Apr. 1821.

48 Salisbury and Winchester Journal, 3 May 1790. C. R. Dobson's list of labour disputes between 1717 and 1800 details forms of combination amongst agricultural workers in Essex and Kent in 1736 over the employment of Irish labourers, Cambridgeshire in 1761 over harvest wages, Middlesex in 1763, 1766, and again in 1774 and 1775 during the hay harvest, Kent over wages and perquisites in 1795, and in Essex in 1800 over wages: Masters and journeymen: a prehistory of industrial relations, 1717–1800 (London, 1980), pp. 154–70Google Scholar. While this list has not been systematically updated, Wells has detailed further collective actions over wages in the 1790s and 1800s: Wells, ‘Moral economy’, pp. 229–30.

49 Wells, Wretched faces, pp. 113, 118.

50 Felix Farley's Bristol Journal, 10 Aug. 1816; Dorset County Chronicle, 30 June 1825; Bristol Gazette, 17 June 1830; Wells, ‘Moral economy’, pp. 230–2; Griffin, C., The rural war: Captain Swing and the politics of protest (Manchester, 2012), pp. 54–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 Prison Register, 1827–38, DHC, NG/PR1/D2/2, fos. 1–24.

52 Criminal Process Register, 1782–1808, DHC, NG/PR1/D1/1, p. 147.

53 Orth, J., Combination and conspiracy: a legal history of trade unionism, 1721–1906 (Oxford, 1991)Google Scholar, ch. 7. For the use of the act post-Tolpuddle, see Frank, C., Master and servant law: Chartists, trade unions, radical lawyers and the magistracy in England, 1840–1865 (London, 2010)Google Scholar. On its notoriety amongst trade unionists, see White, G. and Henson, G., A few remarks on the state of the laws, at present in existence, for regulating masters and work-people (London, 1823)Google Scholar, p. 51, cited in Chase, Early trade unionism, p. 90.

54 For cases prosecuted under the Master and Servant Act, see Criminal Process Register, 1820–5, DHC, NG/PR1/D1/3, pp. 134, 146, 155, and 191; Criminal Process Register, 1825–8, DHC, NG/PR1/D1/4, pp. 9, 15, 39, and 59; Prison Register, 1827–38, DHC, NG/PR1/D2/2, pp. 56, 109, and 125.

55 Criminal Process Register, 1820–5, DHC, NG/PR1/D1/3, pp. 43–4. For the full record series also, see Criminal Process Registers, 1782–1808, 1809–20, 1820–5, 1825–8, DHC, NG/PR1/D1/1–4; and Prison Register, 1827–38, DHC, NG/PR1/D2/2.

56 Wells, ‘Moral economy’, p. 230.

57 Dobson, Masters and journeymen, pp. 154–7, 157–70; Waddell, B., God, duty and community in English economic life, 1660–1720 (Woodbridge, 2012)Google Scholar, p. 209.

58 Salisbury and Winchester Journal, 10 June; Bath Chronicle, 13 June; Western Flying Post, 17 June 1816. In 1817, a further protest concerning the clothiers’ prices took place at Dilton Marsh when a number of weavers gathered and took some of the cloths from the looms and marched with them to Warminster in protest: Graham, H., The annals of the Yeomanry Cavalry of Wiltshire (Liverpool, 1886)Google Scholar, p. 63.

59 Taunton Courier, 9 May 1821.

60 Bath Chronicle, 24 Jan.; Morning Post, 25 Jan.; Western Flying Post, 28 Jan.; Salisbury Journal, 28 Jan. and 18 Feb. 1822.

61 Felix Farley's Bristol Journal, 5 and 12 July, and 2 Aug.; Bath Chronicle, 17 July 1823.

62 Felix Farley's Bristol Journal, 13 Apr.; Bath Chronicle, 2 May 1816. For a detailed, if aged, analysis of labour relations in the paper industry, see Coleman, D., ‘Combinations of capital and of labour in the English paper industry, 1789–1825’, Economica, 21 (1954), pp. 32–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63 Taunton Courier, 6 Mar.; Salisbury and Winchester Journal, 10 Mar. 1817.

64 Chase, Early trade unionism, p. 88; Wells, ‘Tolpuddle’, p. 118.

65 A strike amongst the building trades at Bideford in Devon coincided with the parliamentary debates over the repeal, but the timing was probably more obviously driven by markedly improved economic conditions, something evidenced by the fact that the strike was offensive – a demand for an additional 2s a week – rather than defensive: Western Flying Post, 3 May 1824.

66 Felix Farley's Bristol Journal, 5 Mar.; Dorset County Chronicle, 7 Apr.; Western Flying Post, 11 and 25 Apr., and 11 June 1825. Stocking frame knitters at Tewksbury had also struck work in February in an attempt to secure the same wages as had been assented to in the ‘northern counties’, the same group having petitioned parliament in early 1824 for the repeal of the Combination Laws. While wage increases were assented to, these were not sufficient from preventing some of the knitters from moving to Derby and Nottingham where higher wages were paid. Workers in Tewksbury thus being tied not into western circuits but instead those of the Midlands and north: Morning Chronicle, 10 Mar. 1824; Bath Chronicle, 17 Feb.; Felix Farley's Bristol Journal, 19 Feb. 1825.

67 Dorset County Chronicle, 20 Oct. 1825 and 26 June 1828; Felix Farley's Bristol Journal, 22 Oct. 1825, 3 and 10 Dec. 1825; Bath Chronicle, 19 June 1828; Southampton Herald, 30 Jan. and 4 Dec. 1826; Western Flying Post, 30 June 1828.

68 P. B. Purnell, Stancombe Park, to the duke of Beaufort, 31 Jan. 1826, TNA, HO 40/19, fos. 8–14.

69 Trowbridge magistrates to marquis of Lansdowne, 5 Jan.; J. M. Phipps, Bowood, to Trowbridge magistrates, 5 Jan. 1829; Trowbridge and Bradford handbills (forwarded to the Home Office, n.d., but Jan. 1829), TNA, HO 40/23, fos. 9–10, 11–12, 13–14, and 15; Hammond and Hammond, The skilled labourer, p. 163.

70 Mr Petty, Brinscombe, to Henry Burgh JP, Stroud, 20 Feb. 1829, TNA, HO 40/23, fos. 77–9.

71 Edward Sheppard, nr Uley, to Peel, 9 Feb., Beaufort, Badminton, to Peel, 24 Feb., Henry Burgh, Stroud, to Beaufort, 17 and 21 Feb., J. H. Petty, Brinscombe to Burgh, 20 Feb. and 3 Mar., Col. J. Kingscote, Kingscote, to Beaufort, 25 Mar., Beaufort, Heythorp, to Peel, 31 Mar., enclosing letter from Burgh (28 Mar.) and report from Bow Street Officer Fagan (30 Mar.), TNA, HO 40/23, fos. 52–5, 72–3, 74–5, 76, 77–9, and 89–90, 101–2, 104–9; Keene's Bath Journal, 16 Mar. 1829.

72 Beaufort to Peel, 17 Apr., enclosing letters from Hawkins, Stroud to Kingscote (10 Apr.) and Kingscote, Horsley to Beaufort (15 Apr.), and a copy of the rules of the ‘Gloucestershire Union…Association’; Beaufort, Grosvenor Square to Peel, 28 Apr. 1829, TNA, HO 40/23, fos. 136–40, and 157–8; Hammond and Hammond, The skilled labourer, p. 163.

73 Devizes and Wiltshire Gazette, 23 Apr. 1829.

74 Thompson, E. P., The making of the English working class (London, 1968), pp. 887–8Google Scholar.

75 See Chase, Early trade unionism, pp. 115–16; Sykes, R., ‘Trade unionism and class consciousness: the “revolutionary” period of general unionism, 1829–1834’, in Rule, ed., British trade unionism, pp. 180–6Google Scholar.

76 Devizes and Wiltshire Gazette, 25 Feb.; Sherborne Journal, 18 Mar. 1830.

77 As Samantha Shave has recently demonstrated, the period witnessed a professionalization of the surveillance and personal scrutiny of the poor through the appointment of paid assistant overseers and the election of select vestries: Shave, S. A., ‘The impact of Sturges Bourne's poor law reforms in rural England’, Historical Journal, 56 (2013), pp. 399–429CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

78 The situation at Taunton and in the surrounding villages was particularly acute due to the recent collapse in the silk trade – most notoriously played out in the protests of the Spitalfields weavers in the capital – the end of the serge trade, and the almost total decay in the local woollen trade: Dorset County Chronicle, 6 May 1830.

79 Sherborne Journal, 8 July (Wells); Keene's Bath Journal, 2 Aug. (Bristol and Bath); Dorset County Chronicle, 5 Aug. (Poole); Capt. R. J. Fawcett, Shaftesbury to Peel, 6 Aug. 1830, TNA, HO 52/7, fo. 269; Dorset County Chronicle, 17 Mar. 1831 (Shaftesbury).

80 Wells, ‘Tolpuddle’, p. 118.

81 Keene's Bath Journal, 6 Dec. 1830.

82 Randall, A. and Newman, E., ‘Protest, proletarians and paternalists: social conflict in rural Wiltshire, 1830–1850’, Rural History, 6 (1995), pp. 208–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

83 Sherborne Journal, 2 Dec. 1830.

84 Hobsbawm and Rudé, Captain Swing, pp. 126–7, 259.

85 Prison Register, 1827–38, DHC, NG/PR1/D2/2; Dorset County Chronicle, 13 Jan. 1831.

86 Griffin, C., ‘Swing, Swing redivivus, or something after Swing? On the death throes of a protest movement, December 1830–December 1833’, International Review of Social History, 54 (2009), pp. 468–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

87 On incendiarism in the west, see E. Billinge, ‘Rural crime and protest in Wiltshire, 1830–1875’ (Ph.D. thesis, Kent at Canterbury, 1984), appendix 2; Bawn, ‘Social protest’, appendix 2. On the broader culture, see Poole, S., ‘“A lasting and salutary warning”: incendiarism, rural order and England's last scene of crime execution’, Rural History, 19 (2008), pp. 163–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

88 E. B. Portman, Bryanstone, to Melbourne, 2 Dec., Rev. B. Downe, St James Rectory, Shaftesbury, to Phillips, 26 Nov., P. M. Chitty Esq., Shaftesbury, to Melbourne, 27 Nov. 1830, TNA, HO 52/7, fos. 262–3, 282–3, and 293–293a.

89 Edward Coles, clerk of the peace for Somerset, Taunton, to Phillips, 18 Dec., enclosing handbill, Rev. J. Clarke JP, Clayhidon, to Melbourne, 20 Dec. 1830, Mayor John Evered, Bridgwater, to Melbourne, 17 Dec. 1830, with enclosure, TNA 52/9, fos. 539–41, 542–3, and 544–7. On Cresswell's involvement with Hunt, see Belchem, J., ‘Orator Hunt’: Henry Hunt and English working-class radicalism (Oxford, 1985), pp. 160Google Scholar, 162–3.

90 Clerk of the peace of Somerset, Taunton to Phillips, 12 Dec. 1830, with enclosures, TNA HO 52/9, fos. 555–8.

91 Bridgwater and Somersetshire Herald, 5 Jan. 1831.

92 SS report on Rotunda meeting, c. 19 Apr. 1831, TNA, HO 64/11, fo. 229, cited in Wells, ‘Tolpuddle’, pp. 121–2.

93 Sherborne Journal, 12 and 19 May 1831.

94 Sherborne Journal, 22 Sept.; Times, 8 Nov. 1831

95 Sherborne Journal, 13 Jan. 1831; Great British Historical GIS, Middlezoy CP/AP through time, population statistics, URL: www.visionofbritain.org.uk/unit/10438160/cube/TOT_POP, date accessed: 21 Dec. 2013.

96 Bath Chronicle, 13 Oct. 1831; Neale, R. S., Bath, 1680–1850: a social history (London, 1981), pp. 337–9Google Scholar. A similar public meeting held at Frome on the following day attracted an estimated 4,000–5,000 people: Times, 17 Oct. 1831.

97 For a recent study of the riots in Nottingham, which, alongside those in Derby, predated those in the west, see Beckett, J., ‘The Nottingham Reform Bill riots of 1831’, Parliamentary History, 24 (2005), pp. 114–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

98 Dorset County Chronicle, 20 and 27 Oct.; Sherborne Journal, 20 and 27 Oct.; Morning Post, 24 Oct.; Western Flying Post, 24 and 31 Oct.; G. Thomas Jacob, Captain Dorset Yeomanry, Shillingstone, to James Frampton, 22 Oct. 1831, DHC, D/DOY/1/3/1/3; Prison Register, 1827–38, pp. 113–18, DHC, NG/PR1/D2/2.

99 Account of the Dorset Yeomanry regiment by James Frampton from its reformation in 1830, DHC, D/FRA/X4; Dorset Yeomanry Cavalry Regimental Orderly Book No. 1, entry for 11 Nov. 1831, DHC,  D/DOY/A/1/1/3.

100 The precise date of the foundation of the union at Bristol is unclear: a petition calling for annual parliaments and universal suffrage from the ‘Political Union of the City of Bristol’ was presented to parliament on 7 Mar., while a meeting of trade groups on 30 May founded the ‘Bristol Political Union’, Times, 8 Mar. 1831; Lopatin, N., Political unions, popular politics, and the Great Reform Act of 1832 (Basingstoke, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p.76; Bristol Mercury, 31 May 1831; The Alfred, 3 Oct. 1831.

101 Lopatin, Political unions, pp. 103, 106–7, 174–7; Times, 1 Nov.; Bristol Mercury, 15 Nov. 1831.

102 Lopatin, Political unions, pp. 106–7, 118; Western Flying Post, 5 Dec.; Bridgwater magistrates to Melbourne, 5 Nov. 1831, with enclosures, TNA, HO 52/15, fos. 610–15.

103 Bath Herald, 2 June; Western Flying Post, 4 June; The Alfred, 11 June; Poor Man's Guardian, 3 Nov. 1832; Lopatin, Political unions, pp. 176–7.

104 On labouring involvement in south-eastern political unions, see Griffin, The rural war, pp. 309–11.

105 Western Flying Post, 4 June; The Alfred, 26 Mar. and 23 July 1832. For the activities at Chard, see various letters and enclosures, TNA, HO 52/19, fos. 322, 327–8, 341–7, 360–405.

106 Hampshire Advertiser, 19 Nov. 1831.

107 Berks Chronicle, 5 Mar. (Ramsbury) and 4 June (West Lavington); Hampshire Advertiser, 17 Dec. 1831 (Bishops Canning parish to Devizes), and 3 May (West Lavington to Devizes) and 31 May 1834 (Great Chiverall to Devizes). Market Lavington was also the scene of ‘tumult and riot’ over several nights in Feb. 1833, in all probability concerning labourers’ impoverishment: Information of Amram Edward Saunders, Market Lavington, 29 Feb. 1832, forwarded to the Home Office by the Market Lavington magistrates, TNA, HO 52/20, fo. 123.

108 Prison Register, 1827–38, DHC, NG/PR1/D2/2, pp. 110 and 148; Dorset County Chronicle, 1 Sept.; The Alfred, 7 Nov. and 5 Dec. 1831.

109 For the emergence of general unionism in the period, see Chase, Early trade unionism, pp. 112–21.

110 Felix Farley's Bristol Journal, 27 Oct.; J. Phillips, Montacute, to Melbourne, 22 Mar. 1832, with enclosure, TNA, HO 52/19, fos. 407–9.

111 Laybourn, K., A history of British trade unionism, c. 1770–1990 (Stroud, 1992), pp. 26–7Google Scholar.

112 Cobbett's Weekly Political Register, 14 Dec. 1833; Laybourn, British trade unionism, p. 27.

113 Wells, ‘Tolpuddle’, p. 121.

114 Viscount Ebrington, Castle Hill, to Melbourne, 23 Nov. and 5 Dec. 1833, TNA, HO 52/22, fos. 166–8 and 169–72.

115 Mayor of Plymouth to Melbourne, 20/22 Feb. 1834, TNA, HO 52/24, fos. 68–9.

116 Mayor of Exeter to Melbourne, 18, 22, and 23 Jan., with enclosures, and Tiverton town clerk to Melbourne, 28 Jan. 1834, TNA, HO 52/24, fos. 70–3, 77–8, 80–7 and 88–9; Western Flying Post, 20 and 27 Jan. 1834.

117 J. Phillips, Montacute to Under-Secretary Phillips, Home Office, 22 Jan., TNA, HO 52/25, fos. 132–3. By mid-February, the local press reported that the union was now dissolved thanks to the co-ordinated action of the magistrates and the masters: Western Flying Post, 10 Feb. 1834.

118 Messrs Hayward & Sons, West Chinook, to Melbourne, 13 July 1833, with enclosures, TNA, HO 40/31, fos. 165–8.

119 Informer G. M. Ball report (n.d.), TNA HO 64/15, fo. 106, cited in Wells, ‘Tolpuddle’, p. 122.

120 Note, Hobsbawm and Rudé, and hence subsequent retellings of Swing in Dorset, misidentified the events at Bere Regis and Winterbourne Kingtson, referencing Frampton's post hoc telling of Swing in his history of the Dorset yeomanry. A triangulation of events with other sources suggests the date should be 25 Nov. as opposed to the 22nd: Hobsbawm and Rudé, Captain Swing, p. 325; William Castleman, Wimborne, to John Sanderson, Uxbridge House, 25 Nov., DHC, D/ANG/B5/42; Wimborne Division Magistrates to Lord Melbourne, 25 Nov., TNA, HO 52/7, fos. 278–9; Frampton, Moreton, to Earl of Ilchester, 25 Nov. 1830, DHC, D/FSI, box 242, ‘Rural disorders’ file (not catalogued).

121 Account of the Dorset Yeomanry regiment by James Frampton from its reformation in 1830, DHC, D/FRA/X4; Wimbourne Division JPs, Wimbourne, to Melbourne, 25 Nov., TNA, HO 52/7, fos. 278–9; Frampton, Moreton, to earl of Ilchester, 25 Nov. 1830, DHC, D/FSI, box 242, ‘Rural disorders’ file (not catalogued).

122 Wells, ‘Tolpuddle’, p. 121; Loveless, Victims of Whiggery, p. 10; Frampton, Moreton, to Melbourne, 2 Apr. 1834, reproduced in Citrine, The martrys of Tolpuddle, p. 183.

123 Loveless, Victims of Whiggery, p. 5. On the reduction of wages post-Swing, see Griffin, The rural war, pp. 115, 299–300.

124 A flax-comber was also found guilty of firing a flax shop in Feb. 1833, the latest in a series of incendiary attacks against flax-working buildings in the town since the summer of 1830: Dorset County Chronicle, 28 Feb.; Morning Post, 15 Mar. 1833.

125 Information of John Cox, turnkey, 1 Mar. 1834, TNA, HO 52/24, fo. 57; Marlow, The Tolpuddle Martyrs, pp. 42–3; Wells, ‘Tolpuddle’, p. 122.

126 Times, 20 Mar. 1834; Loveless, Victims of Whiggery, p. 6; Wells, ‘Tolpuddle’, p. 123; Marlow, The Tolpuddle Martyrs, p. 283.

127 Frampton, Moreton, to the earl of Ilchester, n.d. (but Mar. 1834), DHC, D/FSI/box 242.

128 Frampton to Melbourne, 5 Mar. 1834, in Citrine, The martrys of Tolpuddle, pp. 175–6.

129 Loveless, Victims of Whiggery, pp. 7–8; Wells, ‘Tolpuddle’, p. 140; On the trade union reaction to the trial, see Marlow, The Tolpuddle Martyrs, ch. 9.

130 Wells, ‘Tolpuddle’, pp. 121–2.

131 Chase, Early trade unionism, esp. chs. 4 and 5; Wells, ‘Tolpuddle’.

132 Featherstone, D., Resistance, space and political identities: the making of counter-global networks (Chichester, 2009), pp. 73–4Google Scholar, 91–7.