WELCOME and INTRODUCTION by Professor Bill Lucas
– The English Project, its aims and its purpose in promoting the CAPTAIN SWING RIOTS BICENTENRY COMMEMORATION
– A quick historical overview of the SWING Riots and how one of the most notorious episodes within the riots in Hampshire was the conviction and execution of the 19 year old Henry Cook ‘of this parish’.
‘The fate of Henry Cook excites no commiseration.’ said The Times on January 3, 1831 as part of its extensive coverage of the Winchester Grand assize in which 300 men were tried.
SILENCE…before a door SLAMS
SAM: as J. R. Ackerley enters…walks up the aisle…improvising as he sees the audience .
Asks “Does anyone know the whereabouts of Henry Cook’s grave … the boy who was executed [or ‘hanged’] for his part in the Swing Riots? Couldn’t find it anywhere etc…”
He is guided to the memorial plaque…by the audience – or if not … Bill calls out to him
He moves to the plaque …reads it’s out..
Walks back up the aisle…thanking the audience for their help… then breaks into the poem:
Micheldever by
J.R. Ackerley
CHRIS: We have just heard ‘Micheldever’ by J. R. Ackerley, Joseph Randolph Ackerley, Joe Ackerley. Writer, Editor, Poet. Born in 1896, he died in 1967. ‘Micheldever’ was written in 1940, at the start of World War II. Ackerley had served as an officer in World War I, and was deeply depressed by England’s being at war again. His concerns in the poem reflect a dark time in England’s history. And Ackerley’s concerns echo those of William Cobbett, radical, journalist, politician, and farmer. Cobbett was born in 1763, and he had strong links to Micheldever and Hampshire. A week after the execution of Henry Cook, Cobbett argued that the penalties and punishments being meted out to rioting farm labourers would prove counter-productive.
NIGEL/COBBETT: The means of terror or of punishment are not calculated to put an end to the [violence]. It is an old saying that, if you kill a fly twenty flies come to his burying. The newspapers tell its, and indeed we know the fact must he so, that there is scarcely a village in the counties before mentioned, and particularly in Hampshire and Wiltshire, which has not been, in a greater or less degree, plunged into a state of mourning in consequence of the late trials and their result.
Their memory is grieved, their banishment or death lamented; but the relations and friends acquiesce : the law takes its course, and no vengeful feelings are excited in the survivors. You have read the Birmingham petition for the sparing of the lives of the men at
Winchester ; if you have not, I beg you to read it. The question, however, is not what sort of feelings the surviving labourers ought to entertain upon the subject ; but what feelings they are likely to entertain ; and now, then, consider the effect of screaming mothers and wives and children ; think of the.feelings of fathers for sons, brothers for brothers, friends for friends ; and consider that there can be scarcely one single man, amongst the labourers of Hampshire and Wiltshire especially, unaffected in his mind and heart by these transactions. The Morning Chronicle, in giving an account of the hanging of Cooper and Cooke, at Winchester, last Saturday, concludes the account thus: “There was not a crowd of more than 300 persons, and those chiefly boys. Some of the crowd were heard to say they would willingly give a “sovereign for a reprieve. The moment the drop fell most of them went away.
The special constables were in attendance at seven o’clock and, in fact, composed the greater part of the crowd. Close under the scaffold, on some doors, was written in chalk ‘ MURDER FOR MURDER ! BLOOD FOR BLOOD ! ‘ Now, this is what we never see and never hear of when malefactors are executed at other times. Cooper’s offence was riding at the head of a mob, who extorted money, or broke machines, or something of that sort. Cooke’s offence was, striking Bingham Baring with a sledge hammer. But Baring was well enough to appear and give evidence against him; and it appears was seen immediately after the affair walking in the streets of Winchester ; so that this was very far from being MURDER; and, before the passing of Ellenborough’s Act it would have been an ASSAULT, punishable not even with transportation, but with fine or imprisonment, or both.
Now mind, the labourers are not lawyers, they know nothing of Ellehborough’s Act; their estimate of crimes is traditionary and it will take a great deal indeed to convince them and to produce perfect acquiescence in their mind upon the subject of this punishment. “Kill one fly, and twenty come to his burying.” Accordingly the very next sentence in The Chronicle newspaper is in these words : ” There ‘have been eight fires in the neighbourhood of Blandford since Saturday last. This circumstance will almost preclude the hope of mercy being extended to the unhappy men now under sentence of death. The same news- paper contains an account of five fresh fires in the neighbourhood of Norwich ; and The Times newspaper of Saturday gives an account of several fires in Wiltshire, two of which it speaks of as follows. “The first fire, which I described as illuminating the country for miles, around, was, I understand, on the premises of Mr. Rexworthy, near Wilton. His dwelling- house, out-houses, and corn-ricks were all burnt to the ground. I had not time in my way through here to-day to get the particulars farther than that Mr.Rexworthy had been active in bringing some of the late rioters to justice. The second fire, which I said was in the neighbourhood of Wimborne, was of corn-ricks only. These also were the property of a person connected with the late prosecutions. This fire was not near Wilton but near Heytesbury, and it was so great that it lighted the street at Fisherton, though at fifteen miles distance from it. I pray you to look at these words from The Times newspaper! I pray you to look well at the cause there stated for this tremendous fire. Pray, read these words with attention.
Look also in the papers of to-day at a great fire near Dover. Remember the fire in Essex the other day, in the very village from which poor Ewan had been taken to be hanged ! From the single village of Pewsey there are, I am told, eleven persons taken and condemned to be transported ; and when the carrier, from whom the story came to me, came away, mothers were crying for their sons, wives for their husbands, children for their fathers, sisters for their brothers, and, in short, all was frantic lamentation.
CHRIS: The arrival in the countryside of mechanical threshing machines threatened the jobs of the labourers who threshed the wheat by hand, swinging their flails to separate the wheat from the chaff. The flails were also called ‘swings’: so the Swing Riots. The cause of the Swing Riots and the social stress of the 1820s and 1830s was, according to William Cobbett, the Gap between the authorities and the ordinary people.
NIGEL/COBBETT: King’s Ministers, you know, know very little about the habits or the means of the labouring people. I do not impute this to you as a fault : your way of life, your own habits and pursuits and associations, have precluded you from possessing this knowledge ; and, as to obtaining it from others few persons approach you who do possess it, and very rarely indeed will it happen that one of these will be found honest enough to tell you that you have not the power to do that which you wish to do. Power to induce it to listen to objections to its own effectiveness, must be in the hands of those who are endued with all those ‘ rare qualities which induce wise and just judges to listen to arguments against the competence of their own jurisdiction. Hence it is that you do know and that you can know very little about the real character, the disposition, the propensities and the habits of the labourers and especially about the means which they possess of gratifying their vengeful feelings where, unhappily, they entertain them.
CHRIS: Now, as it happens, just a short time before the Swing Riots exploded a large number of men from Barton Stacey, Bullington and Wonston, all in the Dever Valley, had united in signing a Petition to the new King, William the Fourth, who had just been crowned. It was an attempt to convey to the King the conditions in which the labourers and their families were living.
BILL: played as the carrier of the petitioner to the King. Improvise
To the King’s most excellent Majesty,
We humbly implore your Majesty to cast an eye of pity on the misery and wretchedness that at this moment pervades every part of the country and of which your Majesty’s petitioners have had their full share. That many of us have not food sufficient to satisfy our hunger, nor clothes to hide the nakedness of ourselves our wives and children, nor fuel wherewith to warm us. While at the same time our farms are filled with corn, our garners with wool our pastures abound with cattle and our lands abound with wood and coal, all of which display this state of misery have your Majesties humble petitioners long lived, anxiously looking forward to better days. But to our great sorrow and disappointment we find oppression daily press heavier and heavier upon our shoulders til at length we are driven to the brink of despair. This misery and wretchedness does not proceed from any fault on the part of the petitioners. Some of your Majesty’s wealthy subjects impute this prevailing depression to an over production which we positively deny. We more reasonably and justly impute a misrepresentation in the Common House of Parliament. That not one of your Majesty’s petitioners have ever been allowed to exercise his right of voting at an election, that right by the present system being confined to the rich in consequence of which men have been returned to serve in Parliament in whom the people have no confidence, who consult not the people’s welfare and happiness but have entered into unnecessary and unjust wars to defray the expenses of laying on us without our consent an immense weight of taxes directly contrary to the law of the land which says that money shall not be taken out without their consent or the consent of their representatives. Though now we are at the distance of sixteen years from the war the taxes continue but little abated. That in consequence of this misrepresentation in the government or People’s House of Parliament, we have to complain that upwards of £50,000 annually are extorted and of which sum the middle and labouring classes pay the greatest share.
We complain that the taxes lie most heavy on these articles which are necessaries of the poor man’s life such as malt, hops, tea, sugar, tobacco, soap, candles etc which cause the price of those articles to be twice their real value, that our wages at this time are not more than nine shillings per week.
BILL: Improvises… explaining he walked all the way and back and never handed over to Parliament
CHRIS: So let us now go back to that period five or six years before the Swing Riots, that period which, over time, led to the conditions which led to the violence. Poets of all classes were writing about the state of England. Included among them was George, Lord Byron, an aristocrat who did not share the general aristocratic fear and hatred of the poor. His poem THE AGE OF BRONZE pointed the finger of guilt at the landowners who had done well out of the Napoleonic wars, but who were in the post-war years pressurising their tenants for ever-greater rents:
SAM/BYRON:
Alas, the Country! how shall tongue or pen
Bewail her now Un-country gentlemen?
The last to bid the cry of warfare cease
The first to make a malady of peace.
For what were all these country patriots born?
To hunt—and vote—and raise the price of corn?
Bread was high, the farmer paid his way,
And acres told upon the appointed day.
But where is now the goodly audit ale?
The purse-proud tenant, never known to fail?
The farm which never yet was left on hand?
The marsh reclaimed to most improving land?
The impatient hope of the expiring lease?
The doubling rental? What an evil’s peace!
In vain the prize excites the ploughman’s skill,
In vain the Commons pass their patriot bill;
The Landed Interest—(you may understand
It phrases much better leaving out the land)—
The land self-interest groans from shore to shore
For fear that plenty should attain the poor.
Or else the Ministry will lose their votes,
And patriotism, so delicately nice,
Her loaves will lower to the market price;
For ah! “the loaves and fishes,” once so high,
Are gone—their oven closed, their ocean dry,
And nought remains of all the millions spent
Excepting to grow moderate and content
Farmers of war, dictators of the farm;
They roared, they dined, they drank, they swore they meant
Oh die for England—why then live?—for rent!
Their love of country, millions all miss-spent,
How reconcile? by reconciling rent!
And will they not repay the treasures lent?
No: down with everything, and up with rent!
Such, landlords! was your appetite for war,
And gorged with blood, you grumble at a scar!
So rent may rise, bid Bank and Nation fall,
Lo, Mother Church, while all religion writhes,
Church, state, and faction wrestle in the dark,
Tossed by the deluge in their common ark
Shorn of her bishops, banks, and dividends,
Another Babel soars—but Britain ends.
And why? to pamper the self-seeking wants,
And prop the hill of these agrarian ants.
CHRIS: Byron’s poem was written at about the time that JOHN KEATS, a Londoner, was in Winchester. There he composed AN ODE TO AUTUMN. The most beautiful of all poems that evoke and recall that season. Keats saw only the beauty of the Hampshire countryside. He did not see the ugliness of labourers’ lives. He did not see the ugliness of landowners’ demands. Keats’s evocation of the winnowing wind is charming, but that was not how the SWING rioters saw the job of threshing and winnowing as they swung their scythes in the heat and dust.
SAM:
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,–
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
CHRIS: Another poet, rather older than KEATS, who wrote about Autumn was THOMAS HOLCROFT. He was sympathetic to the French Revolution and helped Thomas Paine publish the first part of The Rights of Man. But, like Keats, he viewed the life and labour of the agricultural worker through the lens of a classical poetry. A vision that blinded the educated to the desperate conditions of the Hampshire farm labourer:
SAM: as Thomas Holcroft
Ere the beard of thistle
When the cottage chimney its smoke sails, Ere the tadpoles wag their tales,
When the maids with milking pails
Doff their mits and blow their nails;
And wanton greybeards crack their jokes By the glowing ember’s light,
And scare the girls with tale of sprite; Then will we. o’er ale and cakes,
Brag of feats at autumn wakes.
When the swallows, twittering sing
When bridegrooms make our three bells rings, Ding dong ding -ding dong ding;
When the valley’s face I have seen
Veiled in many a shade of green;
When girls, of husbands, nightly dream,
And jolly swains get clotted cream;
Then we, upon crimson beds,
Will troll our glees and rest our heads.
When the young frog fears the rook,
When the kine stand in the brook
When sleepy louts lose many a crook,
And codlings drop when trees are shook; When salt mushrooms dip the dappled wing; When the sun with straight-down beam
Lathers well the lusty team
Then beneath new hay-ricks we
Will sing with might and merry glee.
When the sickle and the scythe
Make the ruddy farmer blithe;
When Hodge the bulky sheaf doth writhe, And our fat Vicar claims his tithe;
When Autumn yields her golden store,
Till well-filled barns can hold no more; When ripe fruits press the plenteous board, And old wives cull their wintry hoard;
Then will we, when labour’s o’er,
At harvest-home our catches roar.
CHRIS: Another poet with a bucolic view of the countryside was CHARLES NEWTON. His poem WILD NATURE rejoices in the lifestyle of the labouring classes, a lifestyle that in fact led to early death.
SAM: as Charles Newton
Fresh were the breathings of the nightborn gale,
Bright was the dew on fern and blade and thorn,
Gay was the lark that did the morning hail,
And glorious thou, O sun, that mad’st it morn;
The herds, indeed, moped with a heavier eye,
But they were happy still — and therefore so was I.
Thou sweep of russet heath, ye winding vales,
Ye wavy hillocks, you your poet loves!
And thee, sweet stream, and you ye woodland dales,
And holy aisles of dimly-lighted groves,
Whose tower like trunks tuft-ivy wrappeth round,
Whose outstretched giant arms sweep wide the grassy ground.
The man that dwells amid such scenes as these,
Sees sunny fields and breathes Creation’s air,
What can he know of wars and murderous strife,
Who whileth thus away his golden hours of life?
O all things rustically unrefined,
Honest and bare, accept my meed of praise!
This country coarseness winneth all my mind
And I am wedded to its humble ways,
And I were pleased amid these bowers to stay
More than an evening’s hour, or a long summer’s day.
CHRIS: By contrast, William Cobbett had a pragmatic view of rural living. While just as ready to admire the beauties of a landscape, he was equally aware of the economic realities and the gap between rich and poor. In the early 1820s, here he is ‘rurally riding’ in Autumn towards the estates held by the Barings – and the area where, a few years later, the fateful confrontation between Henry Cook and Bingham Baring would take place.
NIGEL/COBBETT:
Quitting Whitchurch, I went off to the left out of the Winchester-road, got out upon the high-lands, took an “observation,” as the sailors call it, and off I rode, in a straight line, over hedge and ditch, towards the rising ground between Stratton Park and Micheldever-Wood.
Stratton Park is the seat of Sir Thomas Baring, who has here several thousands of acres of land. Above all, he has Micheldever Wood, which, they say, contains a thousand acres, and which is one of the finest oak- woods in England. This large and very beautiful estate must have belonged to the Church at the time of Henry the Eighth’s Reformation and before that Alfred the Great!
It was I believe, given by him to the family of _Russell_; and it was, by them, sold to Sir Francis Baring about twenty years ago. Upon the whole, all things considered, the change is for the better.
So now Micheldever Wood is in very proper hands! (irony)
A little girl, of whom I asked my way down into East Stratton, and who was dressed in a camlet gown, white apron and plaid cloak (it was Sunday), and who had a book in her hand, told me that Lady Baring gave her the clothes, and had her taught to read and to sing hymns and spiritual songs.
As I came through the Strattons, I saw not less than a dozen girls clad in this same way. It is impossible not to believe that this is done with
a good motive; but it is possible not to believe that it is productive
of good. It must create hypocrites, and hypocrisy is the great sin of the age. Society is in a _queer_ state when the rich think, that they must educate_ the poor in order to insure their own safety. For this, at bottom, is the great motive now at work in pushing on the education scheme, though in this particular case, perhaps, there may be a little enthusiasm at work.
When persons are glutted with riches; when they have
their fill of them; when they are surfeited of all earthly pursuits,
they are very apt to begin to think about the next world; and, the moment they begin to think of that, they begin to look over the _account_ that they shall have to present. Hence the far greater part of what are called “charities.” But it is the business of governments to take care that there shall be very little of this glutting with
riches, and very little need of “charities.”
From Stratton I went on to Northington Down; then round to the South of
the Grange Park (Alex. Baring’s), down to Abbotson, and over some pretty
little green hills to Alresford, which is a nice little town of itself,
but which presents a singularly beautiful view from the last little hill coming from Abbotson.
It began raining soon after I got to Alresford, and rained all the evening. I heard here, that a Requisition for a County Meeting was in the course of being signed in different parts of the county. They mean to petition for Reform – I hope.
CHRIS: Cobbett was to return to the Micheldever area some three years later in the autumn of 1825 – and by this time it was possible to discern the impact of the great changes which had taken place socially in rural life.
Stepping back, and following my road, down by the side of the meadows of that beautiful River Itchen, and coming to Easton, I look across to Martyr’s Worthy.
Oh! All our properties, all our laws, all our manners, all our minds, have changed! This, which I have noticed, has all taken place within forty,
and most of it within the past _ten_ years. The small gentry, to about the third_ rank upwards (considering there to be five ranks from the smallest gentry up to the greatest nobility), are _all gone_, nearly to
a man, and the small farmers along with them. The Barings alone have, I should think, swallowed up thirty or forty of these small gentry without perceiving it. They, indeed, swallow up the biggest race of all; but innumerable small fry slip down unperceived, like fish down the
throats of the sharks.
It frequently happens, too, that a big gentleman or nobleman, whose estatehas been big enough to resist for a long while, and who has swilled up many small gentry, goes down the throat of the loan-dealer with all those sprats in his belly.
The big, in order to save themselves from being “_swallowed up quick_” (as we used to be taught to say in our Church Prayers against Buonaparte), make use of their _voices_ to get, through place, pension, or sinecure, something back from the taxers. Others of them _fall in love_ with the _daughters_ and _widows_ of paper-money people, big brewers, and the like; and sometimes their daughters _fall in love_ with the paper-money people’s sons, or the fathers of those sons;
But the small gentry_have no resource.
While the war lasted, – “glorious war” -there was a resource; but now alas! not only is there no war, but there is no hope of war. There is no place
for them in the army, church, navy, customs, excise, pension-list, or anywhere else. All these are now wanted by “their _betters_.”
A stock-jobber’s family will not look at such penniless things. So that while they have been the active, the zealous, the efficient instruments, in compelling the working classes to submit to half-starvation, they have at any rate been brought to the most abject ruin themselves;
……for which I most heartily thank God.
THE INTERVAL IS ANNOUNCED BY NIGEL IN ROLE AS MR COBBETT
We’ll going to have a small break now…have a relax and there’s grog here for those that need…I shall be there as I certainly need! We’ll see you again shortly.
INTERVAL
THE SECOND HALF IS ANNOUNCED BY NIGEL IN ROLE AS MR COBBETT
Hoping you good folk are well refreshed, so can we all return peaceably to our seats for the second half of our evening.
CHRIS: Welcome back, and, now, in this second half, we will track the way in which poets documented the gradual change and decay in rural life until it reached the crisis of 1830. It was a long process and started in the eighteenth century. New agricultural technology was improving efficiency and productivity at the expense of the labourers, their families and village communities. Classically trained poets continued to speak of the beauty, the calm, the purity of the rural idyll, continuing to glorify country life and the country village. But a new generation of poets would have none of it. In a poem called THE VILLAGE, GEORGE CRABBE denounced the sentimental poetic clichés with their classical roots. George Crabbe was part of a movement towards a reporting on agricultural life that gives us the context for understanding the Swing Riots. The ‘Duck’, that George Crabbe refers to is another poet realist, Stephen Duck. We will be hearing from Stephen Duck, but now let’s hear from George Crabbe. Jane Austen liked Crabbe’s poetry, saying that if she were to marry it would be to become Mrs Crabbe. She was disappointed to find that post already filled.
NIGEL as Cobbett…improvises around he ‘doesn’t much like poetry etc’
From THE VILLAGE by George Crabbe
What forms the real picture of the poor, Demands a song—the Muse can give no more
THE FLASH BOB. Four of them strategically sat amongst our audience. Launch into their two line solos of the first two verses of the Micheldever Lads…they rise separately. Then sing altogether, and to the audience. They come into the aisle moving to the top, then back down singing as they go. Using the chorus when needed to exit.
Cobbett improvise and then back on the poem from the beginning
What forms the real picture of the poor
Demands a song…the Muse can give no more
Fled are those times, if e’er such times were seen,
When rustic poets praised their native green;
No shepherds now, in smooth alternate verse,
Their country’s beauty or their nymphs’ rehearse;
Yes, thus the Muses sing of happy swains,
Because the Muses never knew their pains.
They boast their peasants’ pipes, but peasants now
Resign their pipes and plod behind the plough;
And few amid the rural tribe have time
To number syllables and play with rhyme;
Save honest Duck, what son of verse could share
The poet’s rapture and the peasant’s care?
From one chief cause these idle praises spring, That themes so easy few forbear to sing;
They ask no thought, require no deep design,
But swell the song and liquefy the line;
The gentle lover takes the rural strain,
A nymph his mistress and himself a swain;
With no sad scenes he clouds his tuneful prayer,
But all, to look like her, is painted fair.
I grant indeed that fields and flocks have charms
For him that gazes or for him that farms;
But when amid such pleasing scenes I trace
The poor laborious natives of the place,
And see the mid-day sun, with fervid ray,
On their bare heads and dewy temples play;
While some, with feebler heads and fainter hearts,
Deplore their fortune, yet sustain their parts:
Then shall I dare these real ills to hide
In tinsel trappings of poetic pride?
CHRIS: George Crabbe spoke of ‘HONEST DUCK’. That was STEPHEN DUCK a working class poet – known as the ‘THRESHER POET’. He was discovered by a prebendary of Winchester Cathedral who introduced DUCK to high society. He gave an insight into the lives of farm workers in a poem written towards the end of the eighteenth century. DUCK’S poem tells us that the conditions deplored by William Cobbett in the 1820s were nothing new. For centuries, rural life had meant early death
SAM as Stephen Duck
DIVESTED of our Cloathes, with Scythe in Hand,
At proper Distance, Front to Front we stand:
And first the Threshers gently swung, to prove
Whether with just Exactness it will move:
That once secure, we swiftly whirl them round;
From the strong Planks our Crab-tree Staves rebound,
And echoing Barns return the rattling Sound.
Now in the Air our knotty Weapons fly,
And now with equal Force descend from high;
Down one, one up, so well they keep the Time,
The CYCLOPS’ Hammers could not truer chime
In briny Streams our Sweat descends apace,
Drops from our Locks, or trickles down our Face.
No Intermission in our Work we know;
The noisy Threshers must for ever go.
Their Master absent, others safely play;
The sleeping Threshersl does itself betray.
Nor yet, the tedious Labour to beguile,
And make the passing Minutes sweetly smile,
Can we, like Shepherds, tell a merry Tale forthwith
The Voice is lost, drown’d by the louder Scythe.
But we may think — Alas! what pleasing thing,
Here, to the Mind, can the dull Fancy bring?
Our Eye beholds no pleasing Object here,
No chearful Sound diverts our list’ning Ear.
The Shepherd well may tune his Voice to sing,
Inspir’d with all the Beauties of the Spring.
No Fountains murmur here, no Lambkins play,
No Linnets warble, and no Fields look gay;
Tis all a gloomy, melancholy Scene,
Fit only to provoke the Muse’s Spleen.
Week after Week, we this dull Task pursue,
Unless when winning Days produce a new:
A new, indeed, but frequently a worse!
The Threshers yields, but to the Master’s Curse.
He counts the Bushels, counts how much a Day;
Then swears we’ve idled half our Time away
CHRIS: One of the biggest threats to landless workers was the enclosing of common land. That deprived them of the right to graze their cattle. This was how JOHN CLARE, the poet son of a farm labourer, described the consequences of the enclosures in a poem called MORES which translated means CUSTOMS.
SAM: as John Clare
Far spread the moorey ground a level scene
Bespread with rush and one eternal green
That never felt the rage of blundering plough
Though centurys wreathed spring’s blossoms on its brow Still meeting plains that stretched them far away
In uncheckt shadows of green brown, and grey
Unbounded freedom ruled the wandering scene Nor fence of ownership crept in between
To hide the prospect of the following eye
Its only bondage was the circling sky
One mighty flat undwarfed by bush and tree Spread its faint shadow of immensity
And lost itself, which seemed to eke its bounds In the blue mist the horizon’s edge surrounds Now this sweet vision of my boyish hours
Free as spring clouds and wild as summer flowers Is faded all – a hope that blossomed free,
And hath been once, no more shall ever be Inclosure came and trampled on the grave
Of labour’s rights and left the poor a slave
And memory’s pride ere want to wealth did bow Is both the shadow and the substance now
The sheep and cows were free to range as then Where change might prompt nor felt the bonds of men
Cows went and came, with evening morn and night, To the wild pasture as their common right
And sheep, unfolded with the rising sun
Heard the swains shout and felt their freedom won.
CHRIS: JOHN CLARE saw the rural conditions of his day as a decline from some idealised past. Another poet who thought like Clare was OLIVER GOLDSMITH. In his poem THE DESERTED VILLAGE, Goldsmith evoked an age when village life prospered before the common land was seized by enclosing landlords:
NIGEL
Sweet smiling village,lov’liest of the lawn,
Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn:
Amidst thy bowers the tyrant’s hand is seen,
And desolation saddens all thy green;
One only master grasps the whole domain,
And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain:
No more thy glassy brook reflects the day,
But, choak’d with sedges, works its weedy way;
Along thy glades, a solitary guest,
The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest;
Amidst thy desert walks the lapwing flies,
And tires their echoes with unvaried cries;
Sunk are thy bowers in shapeless ruin all,
And the long grass o’ertops the mould’ring wall;
And trembling, shrinking from the spoiler’s hand,
Far, far away thy children leave the land.
Ill fares the land, to hast’ning ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay;
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made:
But a bold peasantry, their country’s pride,
When once destroy’d, can never be supply’d.
A time there was, ere England’s griefs began,
When every rod of ground maintain’d its man;
For him light Labour spread her wholesome store,
Just gave what life requir’d, but gave no more;
His best companions, innocence and health,
And his best riches, ignorance of wealth.
But times are alter’d; trade’s unfeeling train
Usurp the land, and dispossess the swain;
Along the lawn, where scatter’d hamlets rose,
Unwieldy wealth, and cumbrous pomp repose;
And every want to luxury ally’d,
And every pang that folly pays to pride.
These gentle hours that plenty bade to bloom,
Those calm desires that ask’d but little room,
Those healthful sports that grac’d the peaceful scene,
Liv’d in each look, and brighten’d all the green;
These far departing seek a kinder shore,
And rural mirth and manners are no more.
CHRIS: Ironically, many of the Swing Rioters did ‘depart far’ and did end up in what turned out to be a ‘kinder shore’ – because prospects in Australia, for those who survived transportation, were more promising, more prosperous, than in England. But the threat of riot had been hanging over England for decades. Luddite Riots had erupted in the north of England during the Napoleonic Wars. In Nottinghamshire, workers sent threatening letters to employers and broke into factories to destroy new weaving machines, such as the new wide weaving frames. They attacked employers, magistrates and food merchants. The Luddite Riots are far better remembered than the Swing Riots but in MICHELDEVER, in Hampshire in England south of the River Thames, the Swing Riots should be much in memory and mind. HANNAH MORE, a religious writer, philanthropist, poet, and playwright, addressed the issue of rural hunger in a poem of the turn of the century, thirty years before the Swing Riots. Her poem was called THE RIOT OR, HALF A LOAF IS BETTER THAN NO BREAD IN A DIALOGUE BETWEEN JACK ANVIL AND TOM HOD
NIGEL: Tom
SAM: Jack (after first line of 2nd verse all JACK until the last verse.
CHRIS: Commentator
TOM
“Come, neighbors, no longer be patient and quiet, Come, let us go kick up a bit of a riot;
I’m hungry, my lads, but I’ve little to eat,
So we’ll pull down the mills, and we’ll seize all the meat: I’ll give you good sport, boys, as ever you saw;
So a fig for the justice, a fig for the law.
COMMENTATOR: Then his pitchfork Tom seized.
JACK: “Hold a moment,”
COMMENTATOR: And here is what Jack says next,
JACK: I’ll show thee thy blunder, brave man, in a crack. And if I don’t prove we had better be still,
I’ll assist thee straightway to pull down every mill;
I’ll show thee how passion thy reason does cheat,
Or I’ll join thee in plunder for bread and for meat.
“What a whimsey to think thus our bellies to fill!
For we stop all the grinding by breaking the mill!
What a whimsey to think we shall get more to eat
By abusing the butchers who get us the meat!
What a whimsey to think we shall mend our spare diet By breeding disturbance, by murder and riot!
“Because I am dry, ’twould be foolish, I think,
To pull out my tap, and to spill all my drink; Because I am hungry and want to be fed,
That is sure no wise reason for wasting my bread: And just such wise reasons for mending their diet Are used by those blockheads who rush into riot.
“I would not take comfort from others’ distresses, But still I would mark how God our land blesses; For though in Old England the times are but sad, Abroad, I am told, they are ten times as bad;
In the land of the pope there is scarce any grain,
And ’tis worse still, they say, both in Holland and Spain,
“Let us look to the harvest our wants to beguile;
See the lands with rich crops how they everywhere smile! Meantime to assist us, by each western breeze,
Some corn is brought daily across the salt seas.
Of tea we’ll drink little, of gin none at all,
And we’ll patiently wait, and the prices will fall.
“But if we’re not quiet, then let us not wonder
If things grow much worse by our riot and plunder;
And let us remember, whenever we meet,
The more ale we drink, boys, the less we shall eat.
On those days spent in riot, no bread you brought home, Had you spent them in labor, you must have had some.
“‘A dinner of herbs,’ says the wise man, ‘with quiet, Is better than beef amid discord and riot.’
If the thing could be helped, I’m a foe to all strife, And I pray for a peace every night of my life;
But in matters of state not an inch will I budge, Because I conceive I’m no very good judge.
“But though poor, I can work, my brave man, with the best; Let the king and the parliament manage the rest;
I lament both the war and the taxes together,
Though I verily think they don’t alter the weather.
The king, as I take it, with very good reason,
May prevent a bad law, but can’t help a bad season.
“The parliament men, although great is their power, Yet they cannot contrive us a bit of a shower;
And I never yet heard, though our rulers are wise, That they know very well how to manage the skies; For the best of them all, as they found to their cost, Were not able to hinder last winter’s hard frost.
“Besides, I must share in the wants of the times, Because I have had my full share in its crimes; And I’m apt to believe the distress which is sent, Is to punish and cure us of all discontent.
But harvest is coming—potatoes are come!
Our prospect clears up; ye complainers, be dumb!
“And though I’ve no money, and though I’ve no lands, I’ve head on my shoulders, and a pair of good hands; 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.
“Then before I’m induced to take part in a riot,
I’ll ask this short question—‘What shall I get by it?’ So I’ll e’en wait a little, till cheaper the bread,
For a warrent hangs o’er each rioter’s head;
And when of two evils I’m asked which is best, I’d rather be hungry than hanged, I protest.
TOM
“Thou art right; if I rise, I’m a Turk:”
CHRIS: So Tom threw down his pitchfork, and went to his work. HENRY COOK, of course, did not ‘throw down his pitchfork’ but, in circumstances which are still debated, took up a hammer and with it attacked William Bingham Baring, a businessman and a banker. Micheldever was shocked by Henry Cook’s action. Micheldever was even more shocked when Henry Cook, aged 19, was executed on 16 January 1831. ROBERT MASON, himself accused of rioting, wrote lines mourning THE DEATHS OF HENRY COOK AND JOSEPH COOPER. Cooper, like Cook, had been hanged for rioting:
HERE IS A FEW LINES OF POETRY WRITTEN BY ROBERT MASON ON THE DEATH OF COOK AND COOPER
England, England, I will weep for thee, And will my kerchief moisten with my tears.
How well for thee that God long-suffering is;
But now his patience – mercy’s near exhausted;
He looks with jealous eye – the rods prepared –
His hand is lifted up. Sweet innocence
Upon the surface ever wilt thou swim, Whilst guilt, black guilt will sink and be forgot.
This was how William Cobbett described the arrival of the young man’s corpse, back here in Micheldever, to be dropped off just yards from where we are now:
NIGEL: When Cook was cut down in the jailhouse in Winchester he was taken home in his coffin. The whole of Micheldever went to the confines of the parish to meet his corpse. Six young women dressed in white went to hold up the pall which a tradesman had lent. Twelve young men went out to the bearers and the corpse was conveyed for two miles to a place where it was interred in solemn silence. These transactions will never be wiped out of the minds of the labourers.”
Thank you for your attention. And let’s now remember the hearts of all those young men…please join in the chorus.
Choir enter singing all the verses of THE MICHELDEVER LADS…Sam to join as Ackerley
BILL ANNOUNCES THE END OF THE PERFORMANCE and alerts audience to forthcoming HODS events in September and annual Language lecture in October linked to the Captain Swing story
The English Project, launched the world’s first English Language Day in 2009 to mark the first occasion on which English was used in Parliament and to raise awareness of the estimated 7,000 varieties of English spoken in 100 countries worldwide.
This first Parliamentary speech in English, rather than in French, was made on 13th October 1362. In the same Parliament, a Statute of Pleading was approved that also permitted debate and law-making in English.
