^{page 212 note 1} Holyoake, George Jacob, Life of Joseph Rayner Stephens: Preacher and Political Orator (London, 1881), pp. 97, 146, 232, 102–103.Google Scholar

^{page 212 note 2} Gammage, R. G., History of the Chartist Movement: 1837–1854, 2nd ed. (New York, 1894, reprinted 1969)Google Scholar; Hovell, Mark, The Chartist Movement, 2nd ed. (Manchester, 1925).Google Scholar

^{page 212 note 3} West, Julius, A History of the Chartist Movement (New York, 1968), pp. 91, 96.Google Scholar

^{page 212 note 4} Ibid., p. 126.

^{page 212 note 5} Beer, Max, History of British Socialism (London, 1921), II, p. 16.Google Scholar

^{page 212 note 6} Rosenblatt, F. F., The Chartist Movement: In Its Social and Economic Aspects (New York, 1916, reprinted 1967), pp. 128–129.Google Scholar Hermann Schlüter makes the same point based on the evidence of the political sermons of 1839, in Die Chartisten -Bewegung. Ein Beitrag zur sozialpolitischen Geschichte Englands (Stuttgart, 1922), p. 98.Google Scholar

^{page 212 note 7} Cole, G. D. H., Chartist Portraits (London, 1941), p. 79.Google Scholar

^{page 213 note 1} Schoyen, A. R., The Chartist Challenge (London, 1958), p. 38.Google Scholar

^{page 213 note 2} Read, Donald and Glasgow, Eric, Feargus O'Connor: Irishman and Chartist (London, 1961).Google Scholar

^{page 213 note 3} Driver, Cecil, Tory Radical: The Life of Richard Oastler (New York, 1946), pp. 396–7Google Scholar; Edsall, Nicholas C., The anti-Poor Law movement, 1834–44 (Manchester, 1971), pp. 182–185.Google Scholar

^{page 213 note 4} Ward, J. T., “Revolutionary Tory: The Life of Joseph Rayner Stephens of Ashton-under-Lyne (1805–1879)”, in: Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society, LXVIII (1958), p. 103Google Scholar; this article (pp. 93–116) is the best piece of work on Stephens.

^{page 214 note 1} Northern Star, 21 April 1838, p. 6. Perhaps one cause of his temporary retirement was his stay with Richard Oastler when Oastler was convalescing from a nervous breakdown. See C. Driver, Tory Radical, p. 378.

^{page 214 note 2} Manchester & Salford Advertiser, 22 September 1838, p. 3.

^{page 215 note 1} Northern Star, 17 February 1838, p. 3.

^{page 215 note 2} Ibid., 29 September 1838, p. 6.

^{page 215 note 3} Ibid., 6 October 1838, p. 6.

^{page 216 note 1} Ibid., 17 November, 1838, p. 6. In making such statements, Stephens was drawing on a long and rich tradition of English social thought and popular social attitudes. Both the labouring poor on the one hand and elements of the gentry and nobility on the other hand subscribed to it. For an analysis primarily drawn from behavioural evidence of popular attitudes among the working people, see Thompson, E. P., “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century”, in: Past & Present, No 50, (1971), pp. 76–136.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPerkin, Harold used literary evidence in his examination of the social thought of the nobility in The Origins of Modern English Society, 1780–1880 (London, 1969), pp. 237–252.Google ScholarRoberts, David has pointed out forcefully that this line of thought did not lead to effective legislation, “Tory Paternalism and Social Reform in Early Victorian England”, in: American Historical Review, LXIII (1958), pp. 323–337.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For the translation of the popular attitudes into articulate protest, see Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (London, 1963).Google Scholar Stephens was not the only popular leader who held to an old ideal of mutual responsibility; his ideas were remarkably similar to those of Richard Oastler. See Cecil Driver, Tory Radical.

^{page 216 note 2} Northern Star, 17 November 1838, p. 6.

^{page 217 note 1} Ibid., 20 October 1838, p. 7; 17 November 1838, p. 6.

^{page 217 note 2} Ibid., 17 November 1838, p. 6.

^{page 217 note 3} Ibid., 29 September 1838, p. 6.

^{page 218 note 1} Ibid., 17 August 1839, p. 6.

^{page 218 note 2} Ibid., 17 November 1838, p. 6.

^{page 218 note 3} Ibid., 27 October 1838, pp. 5, 6.

^{page 219 note 1} Ibid., 20 October 1838, p. 7.

^{page 219 note 2} This discussion of Stephens's advocacy of “physical force” does not take into account his emotional needs, which must remain highly conjectural. Over and above Stephens's inherent aggressiveness, his talk of arming and of “war to the knife” may have offered some satisfaction to him personally, for it gave him emotional stature in his personalised confrontation with the powers of darkness embodied in New Poor Law officialdom. They could not take him for granted if he could call forth a whole host of redressers. More certainly an element in Stephens's vehemence was that the New Poor Law represented in his eyes a fatal blow to the old world of mutual dependence – a blow struck by the landowners, who were the only hope for maintaining the old relationship. Because the New Poor Law undermined the basis of his entire social thought and justification, Stephens attacked it with all the vigour and apparent disproportion of an intellectually and emotionally threatened man.

^{page 219 note 3} Robert Lowery suggested this possibility in his autobiography in the Weekly Record, 16 August 1856, p. 170. However plausible the idea may be as an explanation for Stephens's behaviour, it certainly has not been mentioned by modern historians of the agitation against the New Poor Law.

^{page 220 note 1} Sun, 10 April 1839, p. 3; Charter, 14 April 1839, pp. 188–189; Northern Star, 13 April 1839, p. 1.

^{page 221 note 1} Another model must have been the agitation against the New Poor Law which O'Connor had joined – with Stephens, Oastler, and others – and which had successfully delayed implementation of part or all of that hated Act in areas of the North for some time by the autumn of 1838. O'Connor did not point to it as a model for Chartist strategy, however, as he did to the Catholic Emancipation and Reform agitations.

^{page 221 note 2} For a discussion of the position of O'Connor and Chartist strategy, see Kemnitz, Thomas Milton, “Approaches to The Chartist Movement: Feargus O'Connor and Chartist Strategy”, in: Albion, V (1973), pp. 67–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

^{page 222 note 1} Birmingham Journal, 3 November 1838, p. 3.

^{page 222 note 2} For his success in convincing the men of the North, see the Leeds resolution in the Northern Star, 1 December 1838. Leeds was O'Connor's stronghold, but the resolution paraphrases part of Stephens's Wigan speech printed in the Star of 17 November. For further evidence, see ibid., 8 December 1838, the Leeds resolutions (p. 1), the Stalybridge address “To the Council and Members of the Birmingham Political Union” (p. 1), and the Ashton resolutions (p. 5). Stephens's influence on the subsequent addresses and resolutions must have been great, but it is impossible to separate his from O'Connor's because O'Connor came out in favour of arming in the Star on the 15th and because both were being supported together with Oastler against the attack of Daniel O'Connell on them. A Loughborough magistrate in January, 1839 attributed arming in his area to Stephens's speeches; see Harrison, J. F. C., “Chartism in Leicester”, in: Briggs, Asa (ed.), Chartist Studies (London, 1959), p. 102.Google Scholar

^{page 223 note 1} The connection between the Star and Stephens was very close. Stephens had taken £20 worth of shares when the paper was established (Holyoake, G. J., Life of Stephens, p. 181Google Scholar). The paper had built up its circulation by giving full coverage to Stephens. The most blatant use of him by the Star was soon after his arrest when the Star announced on 19 January (p. 1) that in February it would publish an issue on “superfine paper” and include in it a full length portrait of Stephens “worth One Guinea” and a biography “of the Glorious Champion”. The price to subscribers was to be six pence, but the price to nonsubscribers was to be £1 1/6d. In 1839 Stephens was appointed a sub-editor of the Star to write up his sermons for publication. They were published in the regular issues of the paper and also separately as a series of pamphlets.

^{page 225 note 1} Northern Star, 13 April 1839, p. 1. High praise.

^{page 225 note 2} Ibid., 8 June 1839, p. 8.

^{page 226 note 1} One test of his popularity was the money raised as a defence fund for him. By the end of July, 1839, nearly £600 had been collected, about half as much as the total National Rent collected to support the Convention (Northern Star, 27 July 1839, p. 5).

^{page 226 note 2} R. K. Douglas, Benjamin Hadley, and T. C. Salt did not attend the Convention after 27 February; John Pierce attended his last session on 11 March. Such men as J. P. Cobbett, Patrick Matthew, and Dr Wade joined them in withdrawing from the Convention before the end of March.

^{page 226 note 3} See his speech at Leicester reported in the Leicestershire Mercury, 24 November 1838, p. 1.

^{page 226 note 4} R. K. Douglas of Birmingham, William Lovett, and the Calton Hill resolutions passed in Edinburgh in December, 1838 all made this point; see the Birmingham Journal, 31 November 1838, p. 3; the Northern Star, 29 December, 1838, p. 8, and 15 December 1838, p. 7.

^{page 227 note 1} For attacks in papers which were not invariably hostile to the working men, see Leicestershire Mercury, 8 December 1838, p. 3; London Dispatch, 2 November 1838, p. 921; Silurian, 29 November 1838, p. 3; Weekly True Sun, 16 December 1838, p. 2212.

^{page 227 note 2} For editorials linking Stephens, O'Connor and Oastler see the London Dispatch, 7 October 1838, p. 875; Preston Observer, 1 December 1838, p. 2; Shrewsbury News, 15 December, 1838, pp. 166–167; Brighton Herald, 16 March 1839, p. 4; for another example see Daniel O'Connell's reply to the LWMA Address to the Irish People, printed in the Northern Star, 8 December 1838, p. 8.

^{page 227 note 3} British Museum, Place Collection, Set 56, Vol. III, f. 89.