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Swing Riots

From Wikipedia, in a visual modern way
Horse-powered threshing machine
Horse-powered threshing machine

The Swing Riots were a widespread uprising in 1830 by agricultural workers in southern and eastern England in protest of agricultural mechanisation and harsh working conditions. It began with the destruction of threshing machines in the Elham Valley area of East Kent in the summer of 1830 and by early December had spread through the whole of southern England and East Anglia.[1]

The first threshing machine was destroyed on Saturday night, 28 August 1830, and by the third week of October, more than 100 threshing machines had been destroyed in East Kent. As well as attacking the popularly-hated threshing machines, which displaced workers, the protesters rioted over low wages and required tithes by destroying workhouses and tithe barns associated with their oppression. They also burned ricks and maimed cows.[1][2]

The rioters directed their anger at the three targets identified as causing their misery: the tithe system, requiring payments to support the established Anglican Church; the Poor Law guardians, who were thought to abuse their power over the poor; and the rich tenant farmers, who had been progressively lowering workers' wages and introduced agricultural machinery.[1] If captured, the protesters faced charges of arson, robbery, riot, machine-breaking and assault. Those convicted faced imprisonment, transportation and possibly execution.[3]

The Swing Riots had many immediate causes. The historian J. F. C. Harrison believed that they were overwhelmingly the result of the progressive impoverishment and dispossession of the English agricultural workforce over the previous fifty years leading up to 1830.[1] In Parliament, Lord Carnarvon had said that the English labourers were reduced to a plight more abject than that of any race in Europe, with their employers no longer able to feed and employ them.[4][5] A 2020 study found that the presence of threshing machines caused greater rioting and that the severity of the riots was lowest in areas with abundant employment alternatives and the highest in areas with few alternative employment opportunities.[6][7]

The name "Swing Riots" was derived from Captain Swing, the fictitious name often signed to the threatening letters sent to farmers, magistrates, parsons and others. He was regarded as the mythical figurehead of the movement.[8] ('Swing' was apparently a reference to the swinging stick of the flail used in hand threshing.) The Swing letters were first mentioned by The Times newspaper on 21 October 1830.[9]

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Elham Valley

Elham Valley

The Elham Valley is a chalk valley carved by the River Nailbourne situated in the North Downs in East Kent. The valley is named after the settlement of Elham. Other settlements in the valley include Etchinghill, Lyminge, Barham, Kingston, Bishopsbourne and Bridge.

East Anglia

East Anglia

East Anglia is an area in the East of England, often defined as including the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Angles, a people whose name originated in Anglia, in what is now Northern Germany.

Hay

Hay

Hay is grass, legumes, or other herbaceous plants that have been cut and dried to be stored for use as animal fodder, either for large grazing animals raised as livestock, such as cattle, horses, goats, and sheep, or for smaller domesticated animals such as rabbits and guinea pigs. Pigs can eat hay, but do not digest it as efficiently as herbivores do.

English Poor Laws

English Poor Laws

The English Poor Laws were a system of poor relief in England and Wales that developed out of the codification of late-medieval and Tudor-era laws in 1587–1598. The system continued until the modern welfare state emerged after the Second World War.

Agricultural machinery

Agricultural machinery

Agricultural machinery relates to the mechanical structures and devices used in farming or other agriculture. There are many types of such equipment, from hand tools and power tools to tractors and the countless kinds of farm implements that they tow or operate. Diverse arrays of equipment are used in both organic and nonorganic farming. Especially since the advent of mechanised agriculture, agricultural machinery is an indispensable part of how the world is fed. Agricultural machinery can be regarded as part of wider agricultural automation technologies, which includes the more advanced digital equipment and robotics. While agricultural robots have the potential to automate the three key steps involved in any agricultural operation, conventional motorized machinery is used principally to automate only the performing step where diagnosis and decision-making are conducted by humans based on observations and experience.

Arson

Arson

Arson is the crime of willfully and deliberately setting fire to or charring property. Although the act of arson typically involves buildings, the term can also refer to the intentional burning of other things, such as motor vehicles, watercraft, or forests. The crime is typically classified as a felony, with instances involving a greater degree of risk to human life or property carrying a stricter penalty. Arson which results in death can be further prosecuted as manslaughter or murder. A common motive for arson is to commit insurance fraud. In such cases, a person destroys their own property by burning it and then lies about the cause in order to collect against their insurance policy.

Penal transportation

Penal transportation

Penal transportation or transportation was the relocation of convicted criminals, or other persons regarded as undesirable, to a distant place, often a colony, for a specified term; later, specifically established penal colonies became their destination. While the prisoners may have been released once the sentences were served, they generally did not have the resources to return home.

J. F. C. Harrison

J. F. C. Harrison

John Fletcher Clews Harrison, usually cited as J. F. C. Harrison, was a British academic who was Professor of History at the University of Sussex and author of books on history, particularly relating to Victorian Britain.

Henry Herbert, 2nd Earl of Carnarvon

Henry Herbert, 2nd Earl of Carnarvon

Colonel Henry George Herbert, 2nd Earl of Carnarvon DL, FSA, styled The Honourable Henry Herbert from 1780 to 1793 and Lord Porchester from 1793 to 1811, was a British peer, nobleman, and Whig politician.

Captain Swing

Captain Swing

"Captain Swing" was a name that was appended to several threatening letters during the rural Swing Riots of 1830, when labourers rioted over the introduction of new threshing machines and the loss of their livelihoods. The name was made-up and it came to symbolise the anger of the poor labourers in rural England who wanted a return to the pre-machine days when human labour was used.

Magistrate

Magistrate

The term magistrate is used in a variety of systems of governments and laws to refer to a civilian officer who administers the law. In ancient Rome, a magistratus was one of the highest ranking government officers, and possessed both judicial and executive powers. In other parts of the world, such as China, a magistrate was responsible for administration over a particular geographic area. Today, in some jurisdictions, a magistrate is a judicial officer who hears cases in a lower court, and typically deals with more minor or preliminary matters. In other jurisdictions, magistrates are typically trained volunteers appointed to deal with criminal and civil matters in their local areas.

Parson

Parson

A parson is an ordained Christian person responsible for a small area, typically a parish. The term was formerly often used for some Anglican clergy and, more rarely, for ordained ministers in some other churches. It is no longer a formal term denoting a specific position within Anglicanism, but has some continued historical and colloquial use.

Background

Early 19th-century England was almost unique among major nations in having no class of landed smallholding peasantry.[10] The Enclosure Acts of rural England contributed to the plight of rural farmworkers. Between 1770 and 1830, about 6 million acres (24,000 km2) of common land were enclosed. The common land had been used for centuries by the poor of the countryside to graze their animals and grow their own produce. The land was now divided up among the large local landowners, leaving the landless farmworkers solely dependent upon working for their richer neighbours for a cash wage.[11] That may have offered a tolerable living during the boom years of the Napoleonic Era, when labour had been in short supply and corn prices high, the return of peace in 1815 resulted in plummeting grain prices and an oversupply of labour.[10]

According to the social historians John and Barbara Hammond, enclosure was fatal to three classes: the small farmer, the cottager and the squatter.[12][13] Before enclosure, the cottager was a labourer with land; after enclosure, he was a labourer without land.[14]

In contrast to the Hammonds' 1911 analysis of the events, the historian G. E. Mingay noted in his 1997 book that when the Swing Riots broke out in 1830, the heavily-enclosed Midlands remained almost entirely quiet, but the riots were concentrated in the southern and south-eastern counties, which were little affected by enclosure.[15] Some historians have posited that the reason was that in the West Midlands, for example, the rapid expansion of the Potteries and the coal and iron industries provided an alternative range of employment to agricultural workers.[16]

Critically, J. D. Chambers and G. E. Mingay suggested that the Hammonds exaggerated the costs of change, but enclosure really meant more food for the growing population; more land under cultivation and, on the balance, more employment in the countryside.[17] The modern historians of the riots, Eric Hobsbawm and George Rudé, cited only three of a total of 1,475 incidents as being directly caused by enclosure.[18] Since the late 20th century, those contentions have been challenged by a new class of recent historians.[19] Enclosure has been seen by some as causing the destruction of the traditional peasant way of life, however miserable:

"Enclosure dissipated the haze which surrounded rural poverty and left it nakedly visible as propertyless labour"

— Hobsbawm/Rude. Captain Swing p. 16

Landless peasants could no longer maintain an economic independence and so had to become labourers.[20] Surplus peasant labour moved into the towns to become industrial workers.[21]

In the 1780s, workers would be employed at annual hiring fairs, or ‘mops’, to serve for the whole year. During that period, the worker would receive payment in kind and in cash from his employer, would often work at his side, and would commonly share meals at the employer's table. As time passed, the gulf between farmer and employee widened. Workers were hired on stricter cash-only contracts, which ran for increasingly shorter periods. First, monthly terms became the norm. Later, contracts were offered for as little as a week.[22] Between 1750 and 1850, farm labourers faced the loss of their land, the transformation of their contracts and the sharp deterioration of their economic situations. By the time of the 1830 riots, they had retained very little of their former status except the right to parish relief, under the Old Poor Law system.[23]

Historically, the monasteries had taken responsibility for the impotent poor, but after their dissolution in 1536 to 1539, responsibility passed to the parishes.[24] the Act of Settlement in 1662 had confined relief strictly to those who were natives of the parish. The poor law system charged a Parish Rate to landowners and tenants, which was used to provide relief payments to settled residents of the parish who were ill or out of work.[25] The payments were minimal, and at times, degrading conditions were required for their receipt.[1][24] As more and more people became dependent on parish relief, ratepayers rebelled ever more loudly against the costs, and lower and lower levels of relief were offered. Three "one-gallon" bread loaves a week were considered necessary for a man in Berkshire in 1795. However provision had fallen to just two similarly-sized loaves being provided in 1817 Wiltshire.[26] The way in which poor law funds were disbursed led to a further reduction in agricultural wages since farmers would pay their workers as little as possible in the knowledge that the parish fund would top up wages to a basic subsistence level (see Speenhamland system).[26][27]

To that mixture was added the burden of the church tithe. Originally, it had been the church's right to a tenth of the parish harvest.[28] However, the earlier collection of goods in kind had been replaced by a cash levy that was payable to the local Church of England parson and went to pay his often-considerable stipend. The cash levy was generally rigorously enforced, whether the resident was a Church member or not, and the sum demanded was often far higher than a poor person could afford. Calls for a large reduction in the tithe payment were prominent among the demands of the rioters.[29]

The final straw was the introduction of horse-powered threshing machines, which could do the work of many men.[1][30] They spread swiftly among the farming community and threatened the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of farmworkers.[30] Following the terrible harvests of 1828 and 1829, farm labourers faced the approaching winter of 1830 with dread.[1]

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Smallholding

Smallholding

A smallholding or smallholder is a small farm operating under a small-scale agriculture model. Definitions vary widely for what constitutes a smallholder or small-scale farm, including factors such as size, food production technique or technology, involvement of family in labor and economic impact. Smallholdings are usually farms supporting a single family with a mixture of cash crops and subsistence farming. As a country becomes more affluent, smallholdings may not be self-sufficient, but may be valued for the rural lifestyle. As the sustainable food and local food movements grow in affluent countries, some of these smallholdings are gaining increased economic viability. There are an estimated 500 million smallholder farms in developing countries of the world alone, supporting almost two billion people.

Peasant

Peasant

A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasants existed: slave, serf, and free tenant. Peasants might hold title to land either in fee simple or by any of several forms of land tenure, among them socage, quit-rent, leasehold, and copyhold.

John Lawrence Hammond

John Lawrence Hammond

John Lawrence Le Breton Hammond was a British journalist and writer on social history and politics. A number of his best-known works were jointly written with his wife, Barbara Hammond. She was the sister of poet and novelist G. F. Bradby.

Barbara Hammond

Barbara Hammond

Lucy Barbara Hammond was an English social historian who researched and wrote many influential books with her husband, John Lawrence Hammond, including the Labourer trilogy about the impact of enclosure and the Industrial Revolution upon the lives of workers.

Enclosure

Enclosure

Enclosure or Inclosure is a term, used in English landownership, that refers to the appropriation of "waste" or "common land" enclosing it and by doing so depriving commoners of their rights of access and privilege. Agreements to enclose land could be either through a formal or informal process. The process could normally be accomplished in three ways. First there was the creation of "closes", taken out of larger common fields by their owners. Secondly, there was enclosure by proprietors, owners who acted together, usually small farmers or squires, leading to the enclosure of whole parishes. Finally there were enclosures by Acts of Parliament.

J. D. Chambers

J. D. Chambers

Jonathan David Chambers was a British historian.

G. E. Mingay

G. E. Mingay

Gordon Edmund Mingay was a British historian.

Eric Hobsbawm

Eric Hobsbawm

Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm was a British historian of the rise of industrial capitalism, socialism and nationalism. A life-long Marxist, his socio-political convictions influenced the character of his work. His best-known works include his tetralogy about what he called the "long 19th century", The Age of Extremes on the short 20th century, and an edited volume that introduced the influential idea of "invented traditions".

George Rudé

George Rudé

George Rudé was a British Marxist historian, specializing in the French Revolution and "history from below", especially the importance of crowds in history.

Hiring and mop fairs

Hiring and mop fairs

Hiring fairs, also called statute or mop fairs, were regular events in pre-modern Great Britain and Ireland where labourers were hired for fixed terms. They date from the time of Edward III, and his attempt to regulate the labour market by the Statute of Labourers in 1351 at a time of a serious national shortage of labour after the Black Death. Subsequent legislation, in particular the Statute of Apprentices of 1563, legislated for a particular day when the high constables of the shire would proclaim the stipulated rates of pay and conditions of employment for the following year. Because so many people gathered at a fair, it quickly turned into the major place for matching workers and employers. Hiring fairs continued well into the 20th century, up to the Second World War in some places but their function as employment exchanges was diminished by the Corn Production Act 1917. This legislation guaranteed minimum prices for wheat and oats, specified a minimum wage for agricultural workers and established the Agricultural Wages Board, to ensure stability for farmers and a share of this stability for agricultural workers.

Poor Relief Act 1662

Poor Relief Act 1662

The Poor Relief Act 1662 was an Act of the Cavalier Parliament of England. It was an Act for the Better Relief of the Poor of this Kingdom and is also known as the Settlement Act or the Settlement and Removal Act. The purpose of the Act was to establish the parish to which a person belonged, and hence clarify which parish was responsible for him should he become in need of Poor Relief. This was the first occasion when a document proving domicile became statutory: these were called "settlement certificates".

Berkshire

Berkshire

Berkshire is a historic county in South East England. One of the home counties, Berkshire was recognised by Queen Elizabeth II as the Royal County of Berkshire in 1957 because of the presence of Windsor Castle, and letters patent were issued in 1974. Berkshire is a county of historic origin, a ceremonial county and a non-metropolitan county without a county council. The county town is Reading.

Riots

A letter threatening to burn Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, sent in 1830 and signed "Swing".
A letter threatening to burn Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, sent in 1830 and signed "Swing".

Starting in the south-eastern county of Kent, the Swing Rioters smashed the threshing machines and threatened farmers who had them.[31] The riots spread rapidly through the southern counties of Surrey, Sussex, Middlesex and Hampshire before they spread north into the Home Counties, the Midlands and East Anglia.[4] Originally, the disturbances were thought to be mainly a southern and East Anglian phenomenon, but subsequent research has revealed just how widespread Swing riots really were, with almost every county south of the Scottish border involved.[32]

In all, sixty percent of the disturbances were concentrated in the south (Berkshire 165 incidents, Hampshire 208, Kent 154, Sussex 145, Wiltshire 208); East Anglia had fewer incidents (Cambridge 17, Norfolk 88, Suffolk 40); and the Southwest, the Midlands and the North were only marginally affected.[33]

The tactics varied from county to county, but typically, threatening letters, often signed by Captain Swing, would be sent to magistrates, parsons, wealthy farmers or Poor Law guardians in the area.[34] The letters would call for a rise in wages, a cut in the tithe payments and the destruction of threshing machines, or people would take matters into their own hands.[34] If the warnings were not heeded local farm workers would gather, often in groups of 200 to 400, and would threaten the local oligarchs with dire consequences if their demands were not met.[34] Threshing machines would be broken, workhouses and tithe barns would be attacked and the rioters would then disperse or move on to the next village.[34] The buildings containing the engines that powered the threshing machines were also a target of the rioters and many gin gangs, also known as horse engine houses or wheelhouses, were destroyed, particularly in south−eastern England.[35]

Other actions included incendiary attacks on farms, barns and hayricks in the dead of night, when it was easier to avoid detection.[34] Although many of the actions of the rioters, such as arson, were conducted in secret at night, meetings with farmers and overseers about the grievances were conducted in daylight.[1]

Despite the prevalence of the slogan "Bread or Blood", only one person is recorded as having been killed during the riots, which was one of the rioters by the action of a soldier or farmer.[1] The rioters' only intent was to damage property.[34] Similar patterns of disturbances and their rapid spread across the country were often blamed on agitators or on "agents" sent from France, where the revolution of July 1830 had broken out a month before the Swing Riots had begun in Kent.[36]

Despite all of the different tactics used by the agricultural workers during the unrest, their principal aims were simply to attain a minimum living wage and to end rural unemployment.[34]

A 2021 study that examined how information and diffusion shaped the riots found "that information about the riots traveled through personal and trade networks but not through transport or mass media networks. This information was not about repression, and local organizers played an important role in the diffusion of the riots".[37]

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Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

Corpus Christi College, is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. From the late 14th century through to the early 19th century it was also commonly known as St Benet's College.

Kent

Kent

Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the northwest, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the southwest, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces the French department of Pas-de-Calais across the Strait of Dover. The county town is Maidstone. It is the fifth most populous county in England, the most populous non-metropolitan county and the most populous of the home counties.

Surrey

Surrey

Surrey is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South East England, to the southwest of Greater London. Surrey has a large rural area, and several significant urban areas which form part of the Greater London Built-up Area. With a population of approximately 1.2 million people, Surrey is the 12th-most populous county in England. The most populated town in Surrey is Woking, followed by Guildford.

Middlesex

Middlesex

Middlesex is a historic county in southeast England. Its area is almost entirely within the wider urbanised area of London and mostly within the ceremonial county of Greater London, with small sections in neighbouring ceremonial counties. Three rivers provide most of the county's boundaries; the Thames in the south, the Lea to the east and the Colne to the west. A line of hills forms the northern boundary with Hertfordshire.

Hampshire

Hampshire

Hampshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in western South East England on the coast of the English Channel. Home to approximately 1.9 million people, Hampshire is the 5th-most populous county in England. Its largest settlements are the cities of Southampton and Portsmouth. The county town is Winchester. It is bordered by Berkshire to the north, Surrey to the north-east, Wiltshire to the north-west, West Sussex to the south-east, and Dorset to the south-west. The county contains two national parks: the New Forest and part of the South Downs, which together cover 45 per cent of Hampshire.

East Anglia

East Anglia

East Anglia is an area in the East of England, often defined as including the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Angles, a people whose name originated in Anglia, in what is now Northern Germany.

Captain Swing

Captain Swing

"Captain Swing" was a name that was appended to several threatening letters during the rural Swing Riots of 1830, when labourers rioted over the introduction of new threshing machines and the loss of their livelihoods. The name was made-up and it came to symbolise the anger of the poor labourers in rural England who wanted a return to the pre-machine days when human labour was used.

Tithe

Tithe

A tithe is a one-tenth part of something, paid as a contribution to a religious organization or compulsory tax to government. Today, tithes are normally voluntary and paid in cash or cheques or more recently via online giving, whereas historically tithes were required and paid in kind, such as agricultural produce. After the separation of church and state, church tax linked to the tax system are instead used in many countries to support their national church. Donations to the church beyond what is owed in the tithe, or by those attending a congregation who are not members or adherents, are known as offerings, and often are designated for specific purposes such as a building program, debt retirement, or mission work.

Gin gang

Gin gang

A gin gang, wheelhouse, roundhouse or horse-engine house, is a structure built to enclose a horse engine, usually circular but sometimes square or octagonal, attached to a threshing barn. Most were built in England in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The threshing barn held a small threshing machine which was connected to the gin gang via wooden gears, drive shafts and drive belt, and was powered by a horse which walked round and round inside the gin gang.

France

France

France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. It also includes overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans, giving it one of the largest discontiguous exclusive economic zones in the world. Its metropolitan area extends from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea; overseas territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the North Atlantic, the French West Indies, and many islands in Oceania and the Indian Ocean. Its eighteen integral regions span a combined area of 643,801 km2 (248,573 sq mi) and had a total population of over 68 million as of January 2023. France is a unitary semi-presidential republic with its capital in Paris, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre; other major urban areas include Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse, Lille, Bordeaux, and Nice.

July Revolution

July Revolution

The French Revolution of 1830, also known as the July Revolution, Second French Revolution, or Trois Glorieuses, was a second French Revolution after the first in 1789. It led to the overthrow of King Charles X, the French Bourbon monarch, and the ascent of his cousin Louis Philippe, Duke of Orléans. After 18 precarious years on the throne, Louis-Philippe was overthrown in the French Revolution of 1848.

Aftermath

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey
Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey

Eventually, the farmers agreed to raise wages, and the parsons and some landlords reduced the tithes and rents. However, many farmers reneged on the agreements, and the unrest increased.[3]

Many people advocated political reform as the only solution to the unrest, one of them being the radical politician and writer William Cobbett. The authorities had received many requests to prosecute him for the speeches that he had made in defence of the rural labourer, but it was for his articles in the Political Register that he was eventually charged with seditious libel.[4][38] He wrote an article, The Rural War, about the Swing Riots. He blamed those in society who lived off unearned income at the expense of hard-working agricultural labourers; his solution was parliamentary reform.[39][40] During his trial in July 1831 at the Guildhall, he subpoenaed six members of the cabinet, including the prime minister.[4] Cobbett defended himself by going on the attack. He tried to ask the government ministers awkward questions supporting his case, but they were disallowed by the Lord Chief Justice. However, he was able to discredit the prosecution's case, and at great embarrassment to the government, he was acquitted.[4]

A major concern was that the Swing Riots could spark a larger revolt. That was reinforced by the 29 July 1830 revolution in France, which overthrew Charles X, and the independence of Belgium from the Netherlands later in 1830. The support for parliamentary reform was on party lines, with the Tories against reform and the Whigs having proposed changes well before the Swing riots. The farm labourers who were involved in the disturbances did not have a vote, but it is probable that the largely landowning classes, who could vote, were influenced by the Swing Riots to support reform.[41]

Earl Grey, during a House of Lords debate in November 1830, suggested the best way to reduce the violence was to introduce reform of the House of Commons.[42] The Tory Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington, replied that the existing constitution was so perfect that he could not imagine any possible alternative that would be an improvement.[43] When that was reported, a mob attacked Wellington's home in London.[44] The unrest had been confined to Kent, but during the following two weeks of November, it escalated massively by crossing East and West Sussex into Hampshire, with Swing letters appearing in other nearby counties.[45]

Lord Melbourne
Lord Melbourne

On 15 November 1830, Wellington's government was defeated by a vote in the House of Commons. Two days later, Earl Grey was asked to form a Whig government.[44][46] Grey assigned a cabinet committee to produce a plan for parliamentary reform.[46] Lord Melbourne became Home Secretary in the new government. He blamed local magistrates for being too lenient, and the government appointed a Special Commission of three judges to try rioters in the counties of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Dorset, Wiltshire and Hampshire.[10]

The landowning class in England felt severely threatened by the riots and responded with harsh punitive measures.[1] Nearly 2,000 protesters were brought to trial in 1830–1831;[1] 252 were sentenced to death (though only 19 were actually hanged), 644 were imprisoned and 481 were transported to penal colonies in Australia.[1][47] Not all rioters were farm workers since the list of those punished included rural artisans, shoemakers, carpenters, wheelwrights, blacksmiths and cobblers.[1] One of those hanged was reported to have been charged only because he had knocked the hat off the head of a member of the Baring banking family.[48] Many of the protesters who were transported had their sentences remitted in 1835.[48]

The riots were a major influence on the Whig government. They added to the strong social, political and agricultural unrest throughout Britain in the 1830s, encouraging a wider demand for political reform, culminating in the introduction of the Great Reform Act, 1832. The act was the first of several reforms that over the course of a century transformed the British political system from one based on privilege and corruption to one based on universal suffrage and the secret ballot. In domestic elections before the Great Reform Act of 1832, only about three per cent of the English population could vote. Most constituencies had been founded in the Middle Ages and so the newly-industrial northern England had virtually no representation. Those who could vote were mainly the large landowners and wealthy commoners.[3][4][41]

The Great Reform Act was followed by the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834, ending "outdoor relief" in cash or kind and setting up a chain of designedly unwholesome workhouses covering larger areas across the country to which the poor had to go if they wanted help.[49]

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Political Register

Political Register

The Cobbett's Weekly Political Register, commonly known as the Political Register, was a weekly London-based newspaper founded by William Cobbett in 1802. It ceased publication in 1836, the year after Cobbett's death.

Seditious libel

Seditious libel

Sedition and seditious libel were criminal offences under English common law, and are still criminal offences in Canada. Sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that is deemed by the legal authority to tend toward insurrection against the established order: if the statement is in writing or some other permanent form it is seditious libel. Libel denotes a printed form of communication such as writing or drawing.

Guildhall, London

Guildhall, London

Guildhall is a municipal building in the Moorgate area of the City of London, England. It is off Gresham and Basinghall streets, in the wards of Bassishaw and Cheap. The building has been used as a town hall for several hundred years, and is still the ceremonial and administrative centre of the City of London and its Corporation. It should not be confused with London's City Hall, the administrative centre for Greater London. The term "Guildhall" refers both to the whole building and to its main room, which is a medieval great hall. The nearest London Underground stations are Bank, St Paul's and Moorgate. It is a Grade I-listed building.

July Revolution

July Revolution

The French Revolution of 1830, also known as the July Revolution, Second French Revolution, or Trois Glorieuses, was a second French Revolution after the first in 1789. It led to the overthrow of King Charles X, the French Bourbon monarch, and the ascent of his cousin Louis Philippe, Duke of Orléans. After 18 precarious years on the throne, Louis-Philippe was overthrown in the French Revolution of 1848.

Charles X

Charles X

Charles X was King of France from 16 September 1824 until 2 August 1830. An uncle of the uncrowned Louis XVII and younger brother to reigning kings Louis XVI and Louis XVIII, he supported the latter in exile. After the Bourbon Restoration in 1814, Charles became the leader of the ultra-royalists, a radical monarchist faction within the French court that affirmed rule by divine right and opposed the concessions towards liberals and guarantees of civil liberties granted by the Charter of 1814. Charles gained influence within the French court after the assassination of his son Charles Ferdinand, Duke of Berry, in 1820 and succeeded his brother Louis XVIII in 1824.

Belgian Revolution

Belgian Revolution

The Belgian Revolution was the conflict which led to the secession of the southern provinces from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands and the establishment of an independent Kingdom of Belgium.

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, known as Viscount Howick between 1806 and 1807, was a British Whig politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1830 to 1834. He was a scion of the noble House of Grey and the namesake of Earl Grey tea.

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, was an Anglo-Irish soldier and Tory statesman who was one of the leading military and political figures of 19th-century Britain, serving twice as prime minister of the United Kingdom. He is among the commanders who won and ended the Napoleonic Wars when the Seventh Coalition defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.

House of Commons

House of Commons

The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. The leader of the majority party in the House of Commons by convention becomes the prime minister. Other parliaments have also had a lower house called the "House of Commons".

Penal transportation

Penal transportation

Penal transportation or transportation was the relocation of convicted criminals, or other persons regarded as undesirable, to a distant place, often a colony, for a specified term; later, specifically established penal colonies became their destination. While the prisoners may have been released once the sentences were served, they generally did not have the resources to return home.

Baring family

Baring family

The Baring family is a German and British family of merchants and bankers. In Germany, the family belongs to the Bildungsbürgertum, and in England, it belongs to the aristocracy.

Poor Law Amendment Act 1834

Poor Law Amendment Act 1834

The Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 (PLAA) known widely as the New Poor Law, was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed by the Whig government of Earl Grey. It completely replaced earlier legislation based on the Poor Relief Act 1601 and attempted to fundamentally change the poverty relief system in England and Wales. It resulted from the 1832 Royal Commission into the Operation of the Poor Laws, which included Edwin Chadwick, John Bird Sumner and Nassau William Senior. Chadwick was dissatisfied with the law that resulted from his report. The Act was passed two years after the Representation of the People Act 1832 which extended the franchise to middle class men. Some historians have argued that this was a major factor in the PLAA being passed.

Source: "Swing Riots", Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, (2023, January 29th), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_Riots.

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Further Reading

Luddite

Threshing machine

William Cobbett

Enclosure

Rebecca Riots

History of Sussex

Captain Swing

Owslebury

Days of May

Andover workhouse scandal

Petworth Emigration Scheme

Upstreet

Steep, Hampshire
See also
Notes
  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Harrison, J. F. C. (John Fletcher Clews) (1985). The common people of Great Britain : a history from the Norman Conquest to the present (1st Midland book ed.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 249–253. ISBN 0-253-20357-0. OCLC 11443785.
  2. ^ "1830 Agricultural "Swing" Riots". Hungerford Virtual Museum. 25 March 2018. Retrieved 22 May 2020.
  3. ^ a b c Andrew Charlesworth, Brian Short and Roger Wells. "Riots and Unrest", in Kim Leslie, An Historical Atlas of Sussex, pp. 74–75
  4. ^ a b c d e f Hammond. The Village Labourer 1760–1832. Ch XI. "The Last Labourers' Revolt"
  5. ^ Hansard. House of Lords Debate 22 November 1830, vol 1 Column. 617
  6. ^ Caprettini, Bruno; Voth, Hans-Joachim (2020). "Rage against the Machines: Labor-Saving Technology and Unrest in Industrializing England". American Economic Review: Insights. 2 (3): 305–320. doi:10.1257/aeri.20190385.
  7. ^ "Kill the machines". www.aeaweb.org. Retrieved 8 September 2020.
  8. ^ Horspool. The English Rebel. pp.339–340
  9. ^ The Times, Thursday, 21 October 1830; p. 3; Issue 14363; col C
  10. ^ a b c Coffin. The Dorset Page. "Captain Swing in Dorset".
  11. ^ Hammond. The Agricultural Labourer 1760–1832. Chapter III "Enclosure"
  12. ^ Hammond. The Village Labourer, 1760–1832. p. 97
  13. ^ Elmes. Architectural Jurisprudence. Title LXVI. pp. 178–179. Definition of a cottage is a small house for habitation without land. Under an Elizabeth I statute, they had to be built with at least 4 acres (16,000 m2) of land. Thus, a cottager is someone who lives in a cottage with a smallholding of land
  14. ^ Hammond. The Village Labourer, 1760–1832. p. 100
  15. ^ G. E. Mingay, Parliamentary Enclosure in England: An Introduction to Its Causes, Incidence and Impact, 1750-1850, (1997) pp.17-19
  16. ^ RICHARDS, ERIC. “‘CAPTAIN SWING’ IN THE WEST MIDLANDS.” International Review of Social History, vol. 19, no. 1, 1974, pp. 86–99. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/44581713. Accessed 12 Nov. 2020.
  17. ^ Chambers and Mingay. Agricultural Revolution. p. 104
  18. ^ E. J. Hobsbawm & G Rudé, Captain Swing (1969), appendix 1
  19. ^ J.M. Neeson. Commoners: Common Right, Enclosure: and Social Change in England, 1700-1820. p. 223
  20. ^ Hobsbawm/Rude. Captain Swing p. 16
  21. ^ Moore. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World pp. 29–30
  22. ^ Hobsbawm/Rude. Captain Swing. pp. 18–33
  23. ^ Hobsbawm/Rude. Captain Swing. pp. xxi–xxii
  24. ^ a b Friar. Sutton Local History. pp. 324–325
  25. ^ Hobsbawm/Rude. Captain Swing. p. 29
  26. ^ a b Hammonds. The Village Labourer. pp. 183–185
  27. ^ Friar. Sutton Companion to Local History. pp. 324–325
  28. ^ Hobsbawm/Rude. Captain Swing. pp. 14–15
  29. ^ Lee. Rural Society and the Anglican Clergy 1815–1914. pp. 27–29
  30. ^ a b Hobsbawm/Rude. Captain Swing. Appendix IV
  31. ^ Hobsbawm/Rude. Captain Swing. p. 71
  32. ^ John Beckett "Swing riots" The Oxford Companion to British History. Oxford Reference Online.
  33. ^ Armstrong. Farmworkers: A Social and Economic History, 1770–1980. p. 75 and Table 3.1
  34. ^ a b c d e f g Hobsbawm/Rude. Captain Swing. Ch. 10
  35. ^ Hutton. The distribution of wheelhouses in Britain. pp. 30–35
  36. ^ Smith. One Monday in November... And Beyond. p.16.
  37. ^ Aidt, Toke; Leon-Ablan, Gabriel; Satchell, Max (2021). "The Social Dynamics of Collective Action: Evidence from the Diffusion of the Swing Riots, 1830–1831". The Journal of Politics. 84: 000. doi:10.1086/714784. ISSN 0022-3816. S2CID 229531748.
  38. ^ Hansard.COBBETT'S REGISTER— INFLAMMATORY PUBLICATIONS, Debate.HC Deb 23 December 1830 vol 2 cc71-81
  39. ^ Dyck. William Cobbett and Rural Popular Culture. Ch. 7
  40. ^ Cobbet. "The Rural War" in Cobbett's Political Register. Vol. 37.
  41. ^ a b Aidt and Franck. Democratization. pp. 505–547
  42. ^ Hansard. ADDRESS IS ANSWER TO THE SPEECH. Debate 2 November 1830 vol 1 cc37-38
  43. ^ Hansard. ADDRESS IS ANSWER TO THE SPEECH. Debate 2 November 1830 vol 1 cc52-53
  44. ^ a b Gash, 'Wellesley, Arthur, first duke of Wellington (1769–1852)'
  45. ^ Charlesworth.'Social protest in a rural society'. p. 35
  46. ^ a b Mandler, 'Lamb, William, second Viscount Melbourne (1779–1848)'
  47. ^ Brian T. Robson. The Saviour City: Beneficial effects of urbanization in England and Wales in Douglas. Companion Encyclopedia of Geography: The Environment and Humankind. p. 297
  48. ^ a b Rodney Mace (1999). British Trade Union Posters: An Illustrated History. Sutton Publishing. pp. 14–15. ISBN 0750921587.
  49. ^ Green. Pauper London p.13
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