Microsoft Office 2016 – Illustrated Introductory Access-1

Solutions to Access 2016 Module 4 EOM Exercises

Illustrated Microsoft Office 365 and Access 2016

Intermediate 1st Edition Friedrichsen
1305877993 9781305877993
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MODULE 4
Using Reports

Table of Contents
Module 4: Using Reports ............................................................................................................................... 2
Concepts Review ............................................................................................................................................ 2
Skills Review ................................................................................................................................................... 2
Independent Challenge 1 ............................................................................................................................... 4
Independent Challenge 2 ............................................................................................................................... 4
Independent Challenge 3 ............................................................................................................................... 5
Independent Challenge 4 ............................................................................................................................... 6
Visual Workshop ............................................................................................................................................ 7

© 2016 Cengage Learning®. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Microsoft Office 2016 – Illustrated Introductory Access-2
Solutions to Access 2016 Module 4 EOM Exercises

Module 4: Using Reports

Concepts Review

Screen Labeling Matching Items Multiple Choice

1. Group & Sort button
2. Text Box button
3. Label button 10. c 17. c
4. Category Header section 11. a 18. b
bar
5. Group, Sort, and Total pane 12. b 19. c
6. TripName sort by field 13. f 20. d
7. Text box with calculated 14. d 21. d
expression (to subtotal the
Duration field)
8. Add Existing Fields button 15. e 22. a
(may be missing from Figure
4-20)
9. Tab Order button 16. g 23. a
(may be missing from Figure
4-20)

Skills Review
Data File: LakeHomes-4.accdb. Solution File: LakeHomes-4-Solution.accdb

The final solution for the Listings by Realtor report created in steps 1-7 is shown in Figure 4-21. Note:

1b. Check to make sure all the fields on Figure 4-21 are on the report: RLast, RPhone, Type, SqFt, BR, Bath,
and Asking.
1c. Check to make sure the data is grouped by RealtorNo and further sorted in descending order by Asking.
1d. Check for a stepped layout and landscape orientation. The title of the report and name of the report
should be Listings by Realtor.
2b. Make sure there is adequate space between Asking and Type fields.
2c. Modify the labels as shown in Figure 4-21 ( RLast should be Realtor. RPhone should be Cell. SqFt
should be Square Ft, BR should be Bedrooms and Bath should be Baths as shown in step 2c.)
3b. The text box with the page calculation should be moved to the left of the 9” mark on the horizontal
ruler.
3c. Check to make sure the report fits within one landscape piece of paper in Print Preview. The right edge
of the report should be moved to the left within the 10” mark on the horizontal ruler in Design View to

© 2016 Cengage Learning®. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Microsoft Office 2016 – Illustrated Introductory Access-3
Solutions to Access 2016 Module 4 EOM Exercises

accommodate this. The Baths label and Bath text box may also need to be moved to the left to
accommodate this.
4b. Make sure records are grouped by RealtorNo, then grouped by Type, and then sorted in descending
order by the Asking field in the Group, Sort, and Total pane.
4c. Move the Type combo box from the Detail section to the Type Header section.
4d. Move the Type combo box in the Type Header section to about the 1” mark on the horizontal ruler.
4e. Delete the Type label in the Page Header section.
4f. Resize the Asking, Square Ft, Bedrooms, and Baths columns as needed to evenly space the information.
5b. Look for Subtotal of Asking field in RealtorNo Footer with a Subtotal: label.
5e. Look for Grand Total of Asking field in Report Footer with a Grand Total: label.
6b. & c. Look for right-alignment of all number fields and right edges of Asking, subtotal, and grand total
text box calculations.
6d. Look for a Comma format on the Asking, subtotal, and grand total text box calculations with 0 digits to
the right of the decimal point.
7a. The Detail section Alternate Row Color should be No Color.
7b. The Type Header section Alternate Row Color should be No Color.
7c. RealtorNo Header section Shape Fill Color should be Green 2.
7d. RLast and RPhone text box Shape Fill color should be Green 2 to match RealtorNo Header color.
7e. Listings by Realtor label in Report Header should be bold and large enough to display entire label.
7f. Font color of labels in Page Header section should be black.
7g. Report should look like Figure 4-21, fit on two pages, and the grand total should be 7,957,993. No
blank pages should appear between printed pages.
7h. A label should be added to left side of the Footer section with the student’s name.

Step 8:

8a, 8b, 8c. Check labels against Print Preview solution below. Make sure student knows the difference
between Report View (shows only one column) and Print Preview which shows columns as prescribed by
the Avery 5160 label definition (3 columns by 10 rows although there are only 4 labels in this report).
8d. Check to make sure the labels are sorted by AgencyName and the report is named Labels Agencies.
8f. Student may change the name of Big Cedar Realtors to their own name.

© 2016 Cengage Learning®. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Microsoft Office 2016 – Illustrated Introductory Access-4
Solutions to Access 2016 Module 4 EOM Exercises

Independent Challenge 1
Data File: Conventions-4.accdb. Solution File: Conventions-4-Solution.accdb

The last page of the final solution is shown in Figure 4-22.

b. The fields shown in the figure are selected: AttendeeFirst, AttendeeLast, CompanyName,
ConventionName, CountryName.
c. Records are grouped by Conventions and by CompanyName, then further sorted by AttendeeLast.
d. Report uses a Block layout and a Portrait orientation, and is titled and named Convention Attendees.
e. ConventionName label is modified to Convention. CompanyName to Company. CountryName,
AttendeeLast, and AttendeeFirst labels are deleted.
f-g. Count of Attendees: label and =Count([AttendeeLast]) text box added to ConventionNo Footer section.
h. Controls from step g are resized to clearly see information.
i. Controls from steps g-h are copied to Report Footer section.
j. All labels are formatted with black text color.
k-l. Extra space in report is removed so report is no wider than a single sheet of paper.
m. Student name is added as a label to the left side of the Report Footer section.

Independent Challenge 2
Data File: Service-4.accdb. Solution File: Service-4-Solution.accdb

The final calculations in the Report Footer are shown in Figure 4-23. A portion of the first page of the final
solution is shown below.

© 2016 Cengage Learning®. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Microsoft Office 2016 – Illustrated Introductory Access-5
Solutions to Access 2016 Module 4 EOM Exercises

Note:

b. Micah Ati in Members table is changed to student’s name.

c. Fields are selected as shown: FirstName, LastName, Dues, ActivityDate, HoursWorked.
d. Records are grouped by Members, sorted in ascending order by ActivityDate.
e. Report uses a Stepped layout and Portrait orientation. Activity Log is the title and name of report.
f. All controls are resized to show information clearly.
g. FirstName label is modified to First Name; LastName to Last Name; ActivityDate to Date; HoursWorked
to Hours.
h-i MemberNo Footer section contains the subtotal label and sum statistic shown, Total:
=Sum([HoursWorked]).
j. Controls from step i. are copied to Report Footer section and label changed to Grand Total:
k. HoursWorked and subtotals are right aligned.
l. Student’s name is added as a label to left side of Report Footer section.
m. No blank pages exist between printed pages.

Independent Challenge 3
Data File: Salvage-4.accdb. Solution File: Salvage-4-Solution.accdb

The final solution for the Report Footer section of the Deposit Listings report is shown in Figure 4-24.

Items to double check include:

b. A1 Salvage Center an in Centers table is changed to Student’s Last Name Salvage.
c. Fields shown in Figure 4-24 are selected: CenterName, DepositDate, Weight, ClubName.
d. Records are grouped by Centers and sorted in ascending order by DepositDate.
e. Report uses a Stepped layout and Portrait orientation. Deposit Log is the report title and name.
f. Weight label and date are centered in both the Detail, CenterNumber Footer, and Report Footer
sections. DepositDate label changed to Date.
g. Labels are modified with spaces between words. CenterName to Center Name; and ClubName to Club
Name.
h. i. j. Weight is summed with Subtotal label and =Sum([Weight]) expression in a text box in
CenterNumber Footer section.
k. Label and text box from step j are copied, pasted, and modified to be Count: =Count([Weight]) to count
the records in CenterNumber Footer section.
l. Label and text box from step j are copied, pasted, and modified to be Average: =Avg([Weight]) to
average the records in CenterNumber Footer section..
m. Format property of =Avg([Weight]) expression changed to Standard with 0 Decimal Places.
n. Three labels and expressions from CenterNumber Footer section are copied and pasted to Report
Footer section.
o. Corresponding controls in CenterNumber Footer and Report Footer section are aligned.
p. Labels in Report Footer section are changed to Total Sum: and Total Count:
q. A label with the student’s name is added to the left edge of the Report Footer section.
r. Extra space in each section is removed from the report.
© 2016 Cengage Learning®. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Another document from Scribd.com that is
random and unrelated content:
Gage, who probably had no such intention, asked for the leader or
captain nobody came forward, but a letter was thrown into the ring with
a general shout. The letter which Lord Gage picked up and took to the
Vestry for consideration read as follows: ‘We the labourers of Ringmer
and surrounding villages, having for a long period suffered the greatest
privations and endured the most debasing treatment with the greatest
resignation and forbearance, in the hope that time and circumstances
would bring about an amelioration of our condition, till, worn out by
hope deferred and disappointed in our fond expectations, we have taken
this method of assembling ourselves in one general body, for the purpose
of making known our grievances, and in a peaceable, quiet, and orderly
manner, to ask redress; and we would rather appeal to the good sense of
the magistracy, instead of inflaming the passions of our fellow labourers,
and ask those gentlemen who have done us the favour of meeting us this
day whether 7d. a day is sufficient for a working man, hale and hearty, to
keep up the strength necessary to the execution of the labour he has to
do? We ask also, is 9s. a week sufficient for a married man with a family,
to provide the common necessaries of life? Have we no reason to
complain that we have been obliged for so long a period to go to our
daily toil with only potatoes in our satchels, and the only beverage to
assuage our thirst the cold spring; and on retiring to our cottages to be
welcomed by the meagre and half-famished offspring of our toilworn
bodies? All we ask, then, is that our wages may be advanced to such a
degree as will enable us to provide for ourselves and families without
being driven to the overseer, who, by the bye, is a stranger amongst us,
and as in most instances where permanent overseers are appointed, are
men callous to the ties of nature, lost to every feeling of humanity, and
deaf to the voice of reason. We say we want wages sufficient to support
us, without being driven to the overseer to experience his petty tyranny
and dictation. We therefore ask for married men 2s. 3d. per day to the
first of March, and from that period to the first of October 2s. 6d. a day:
for single men 1s. 9d. a day to the first of March, and 2s. from that time
to the first of October. We also request that the permanent overseers of
the neighbouring parishes may be directly discharged, particularly Finch,
the governor of Ringmer poorhouse and overseer of the parish, that in
case we are obliged, through misfortune or affliction, to seek parochial
relief, we may apply to one of our neighbouring farmers or tradesmen,
who would naturally feel some sympathy for our situation, and who
would be much better acquainted with our characters and claims. This is
what we ask at your hands—this is what we expect, and we sincerely
trust this is what we shall not be under the painful necessity of
demanding.’
While the Vestry deliberated the labourers remained quietly in the yard
of the poorhouse. One of them, a veteran from the Peninsular War who
had lost a limb, contrasted his situation on 9d. a day with that of the
Duke of Wellington whose ‘skin was whole’ and whose pension was
£60,000 a year. After they had waited some time, they were informed
that their demands were granted, and they dispersed to their homes with
huzzas and tears of joy, and as a sign of the new and auspicious era they
broke up the parish grindstone, a memory of the evil past.[429]
An important feature of the proceedings in Kent and Sussex was the
sympathy of other classes with the demands of the labourers. The
success of the movement in Kent and Sussex, and especially of the rising
that began at Brede, was due partly, no doubt, to the fact that smuggling
was still a common practice in those counties, and that the agricultural
labourers thus found their natural leaders among men who had learnt
audacity, resourcefulness, and a habit of common action in that school of
danger. But the movement could not have made such headway without
any serious attempt to suppress it if the other classes had been hostile.
There was a general sense that the risings were due to the neglect of the
Government. Mr. Hodges, one of the Members for Kent, declared in the
House of Commons on 10th December that if the Duke of Wellington
had attended to a petition received from the entire Grand Jury of Kent
there would have been no disturbances.[430]
The same spirit is displayed in a letter written by a magistrate at Battle,
named Collingwood. ‘I have seen three or four of our parochial
insurrections, and been with the People for hours alone and discussing
their matters with them which they do with a temper and respectful
behaviour and an intelligence which must interest everyone in their
favor. The poor in the Parishes in the South of England, and in Sussex
and Kent greatly, have been ground to the dust in many instances by the
Poor Laws. Instead of happy peasants they are made miserable and sour
tempered paupers. Every Parish has its own peculiar system, directed
more strictly, and executed with more or less severity or harshness. A
principal tradesman in Salehurst (Sussex) in one part of which,
Robertsbridge, we had our row the other night, said to me these words
“You attended our meeting the other day and voted with me against the
two principal Rate payers in this parish, two Millers, paying the people
in two gallons of bad flour instead of money. You heard how saucy they
were to their betters, can you wonder if they are more violent to their
inferiors? They never call a man Tom, Dick etc. but you d——d rascal
etc., at every word, and force them to take their flour. Should you
wonder that they are dissatisfied?” These words he used to me a week
before our Robertsbridge Row. Each of these Parochial Rows differs in
character as the man whom they select as leader differs in impudence or
courage or audacity or whatever you may call it. If they are opposed at
the moment, their resistance shows itself in more or less violent outrages;
personally I witnessed but one, that of Robertsbridge putting Mr.
Johnson into the cart, and that was half an accident. I was a stranger to
them, went among them and was told by hundreds after that most
unjustifiable assault that I was safe among them as in my bed, and I
never thought otherwise. One or two desperate characters, and such there
are, may at any moment make the contest of Parish A differ from that of
Parish B, but their spirit, as far as regards loyalty and love for the King
and Laws, is, I believe, on my conscience, sound. I feel convinced that
all the cavalry in the world, if sent into Sussex, and all the spirited acts of
Sir Godfrey Webster, who, however, is invaluable here will (not?) stop
this spirit from running through Hampshire, Wiltshire, Somersetshire,
where Mr. Hobhouse, your predecessor, told me the other day that they
have got the wages for single men down to 6s. per week (on which they
cannot live) through many other counties. In a week you will have
demands for cavalry from Hampshire under the same feeling of alarm as
I and all here entertained: the next week from Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, and
all the counties in which the poor Rates have been raised for the payment
of the poor up to Essex and the very neighbourhood of London, where
Mr. Geo. Palmer, a magistrate, told me lately that the poor single man is
got down to 6s. I shall be over to-morrow probably at Benenden where
they are resolved not to let either Mr. Hodges’s taxes, the tithes or the
King’s taxes be paid. So I hear, and so I dare say two or three carter boys
may have said. I shall go to-morrow and if I see occasion will arrest
some man, and break his head with my staff. But do you suppose that
that (though a show of vigor is not without avail) will prevent
Somersetshire men from crying out, when the train has got to them, we
will not live on 6s. per week, for living it is not, but a long starving, and
we will have tithes and taxes, and I know not what else done away with.
The only way to stop them is to run before the evil. Let the Hampshire
Magistrates and Vestries raise the wages before the Row gets to their
County, and you will stop the thing from spreading, otherwise you will
not, I am satisfied. In saying all this, I know that I differ with many able
and excellent Magistrates, and my opinion may be wrong, but I state it to
you.’
It is not surprising that magistrates holding these opinions acted rather
less vigorously than the central Government wished, and that Lord
Camden’s appeals to them not to let their political feelings and ‘fanciful
Crotchets’[431] interfere with their activity were unsuccessful. But even
had all the magistrates been united and eager to crush the risings they
could not act without support from classes that were reluctant to give it.
The first thought of the big landed proprietors was to re-establish the
yeomanry, but they found an unexpected obstacle in the temper of the
farmers. The High Sheriff, after consultation with the Home Secretary,
convened a meeting for this purpose at Canterbury on 1st November, but
proceedings took an unexpected turn, the farmers recommending as a
preferable alternative that public salaries should be reduced, and the
meeting adjourned without result. There were similar surprises at other
meetings summoned with this object, and landlords who expected to find
the farmers rallying to their support were met with awkward resolutions
calling for reductions in rent and tithes. The Kent Herald went so far as
to say that only the dependents of great landowners will join the
yeomanry, ‘this most unpopular corps.’ The magistrates found it equally
difficult to enlist special constables, the farmers and tradesmen definitely
refusing to act in this capacity at Maidstone, at Cranbrook, at Tonbridge,
and at Tonbridge Wells,[432] as well as in the smaller villages. The
chairman of the Battle magistrates wrote to the Home Office to say that
he intended to reduce his rents in the hope that the farmers would then
consent to serve.
Even the Coast Blockade Service was not considered trustworthy. ‘It is
the last force,’ wrote one magistrate, ‘I should resort to, on account of
the feeling which exists between them and the people hereabouts.’[433] In
the absence of local help, the magistrates had to rely on military aid to
quell a mob, or to execute a warrant. Demands for troops from different
quarters were incessant, and sometimes querulous. ‘If you cannot send a
military force,’ wrote one indignant country gentleman from Heathfield
on 14th November, ‘for God’s sake, say so, without delay, in order that
we may remove our families to a place of safety from a district which
want of support renders us totally unable longer to defend.’[434] Troops
were despatched to Cranbrook, but when the Battle magistrates sent
thither for help they were told to their great annoyance that no soldiers
could be spared. The Government indeed found it impossible to supply
enough troops. ‘My dear Lord Liverpool,’ wrote Sir Robert Peel on 15th
November, ‘since I last saw you I have made arrangements for sending
every disposable cavalry soldier into Kent and the east part of Sussex.
General Dalbiac will take the command. He will be at Battel to-day to
confer with the Magistracy and to attempt to establish some effectual
plan of operations against the rioters.’
The 7th Dragoon Guards at Canterbury were to provide for East Kent;
the 2nd Dragoon Guards at Maidstone were to provide for Mid-Kent;
and the 5th Dragoon Guards at Tunbridge Wells for the whole of East
Sussex. Sir Robert Peel meanwhile thought that the magistrates should
themselves play a more active part, and he continually expressed the
hope that they would ‘meet and concert some effectual mode of resisting
the illegal demands.’[435] He deprecated strongly the action of certain
magistrates in yielding to the mobs. Mr. Collingwood, who has been
mentioned already, received a severe reproof for his behaviour at
Goudhurst, where he had adopted a conciliatory policy and let off the
rioters on their own recognisances. ‘We did not think the case a very
strong one,’ he wrote on 18th November, ‘or see any very urgent
necessity for the apprehension of Eaves, nor after Captain King’s
statement that he had not felt a blow, could we consider the assault of a
magistrate proved. The whole parish unanimously begged them off, and
said that their being discharged on their own recognisances would
probably contribute to the peace of the parish.’
The same weakness, or sympathy, was displayed by magistrates in the
western part of Sussex, where the rising spread after the middle of
November. In the Arundel district the magistrates anticipated
disturbances by holding a meeting of the inhabitants to fix the scale of
wages. The wages agreed on were ‘2s. a day wet and dry and 1s. 6d. a
week for every child (above 2) under 4,’ during the winter: from Lady
Day to Michaelmas 14s. a week, wet and dry, with the same allowance
for children. A scale was also drawn up for lads and young men. The
mobs were demanding 14s. a week all the year round, but they seem to
have acquiesced in the Arundel scale, and to have given no further
trouble. At Horsham, the labourers adopted more violent measures and
met with almost universal sympathy. There was a strong Radical party in
that town, and one magistrate described it later as ‘a hot Bed of
Sedition.’ Attempts were made, without success, to show that the
Radicals were at the bottom of the disturbances. The district round
Horsham was in an agitated state. Among others who received
threatening letters was Sir Timothy Shelley of Field Place. The letter was
couched in the general spirit of Shelley’s song to the men of England:—

‘Men of England, wherefore plough,

For the lords who lay ye low,’

which his father may, or may not, have read. The writer urged him, ‘if
you wish to escape the impending danger in this world and in that which
is to come,’ to go round to the miserable beings from whom he exacted
tithes, ‘and enquire and hear from there own lips what disstres there in.’
Like many of these letters, it contained at the end a rough picture of a
knife, with ‘Beware of the fatel daggar’ inscribed on it.
In Horsham itself the mob, composed of from seven hundred to a
thousand persons, summoned a vestry meeting in the church. Mr.
Sanctuary, the High Sheriff for Sussex, described the episode in a letter
to the Home Office on the same day (18th November). The labourers, he
said, demanded 2s. 6d. a day, and the lowering of rents and tithes: ‘all
these complaints were attended to——thought reasonable and complied
with,’ and the meeting dispersed quietly. Anticipating, it may be, some
censure, he added, ‘I should have found it quite impossible to have
prevailed upon any person to serve as special constable——most of the
tradespeople and many of the farmers considering the demands of the
people but just (and) equitable——indeed many of them advocated
(them)——a doctor spoke about the taxes——but no one backed him
——that was not the object of the meeting.’ A lady living at Horsham
wrote a more vivid account of the day’s work. She described how the
mob made everybody come to the church. Mr. Simpson, the vicar, went
without more ado, but Mr. Hurst, senior, owner of the great tithes, held
out till the mob seized a chariot from the King’s Arms and dragged it to
his door. Whilst the chariot was being brought he slipped out, and
entered the church with his two sons. All the gentlemen stood up at the
altar, while the farmers encouraged the labourers in the body of the
church. ‘Mr. Hurst held out so long that it was feared blood would be
shed, the Doors were shut till the Demands were granted, no lights were
allowed, the Iron railing that surrounds the Monuments torn up, and the
sacred boundary between the chancel and Altar overleapt before he
would yield.’ Mr. Hurst himself wrote to the Home Office to say that it
was only the promise to reduce rents and tithes that had prevented
serious riots, but he met with little sympathy at headquarters. ‘I cannot
concur,’ wrote Sir Robert Peel, ‘in the opinion of Mr. Hurst that it was
expedient or necessary for the Vestry to yield to the demands of the Mob.
In every case that I have seen, in which the mob has been firmly and
temperately resisted, they have given way without resorting to personal
violence.’ A neighbouring magistrate, who shared Sir Robert Peel’s
opinion about the affair, went to Horsham a day or two later to swear in
special constables. He found that out of sixty-three ‘respectable
householders’ four only would take the oath. Meanwhile the difficulties
of providing troops increased with the area of disturbances. ‘I have
requested that every effort may be made to reinforce the troops in the
western part of Sussex,’ wrote Sir Robert Peel to a Horsham magistrate
on 18th November, ‘and you may judge of the difficulty of doing so,
when I mention to you that the most expeditious mode of effecting this is
to bring from Dorchester the only cavalry force that is in the West of
England. This, however, shall be done, and 100 men (infantry) shall be
brought from the Garrison of Portsmouth.’

Until the middle of November the rising was confined to Kent, Sussex
and parts of Surrey, with occasional fires and threatening letters in
neighbouring counties. After that time the disturbances became more
serious, spreading not only to the West of Sussex, but to Berkshire,
Hampshire, and Wiltshire. On 22nd November the Duke of Buckingham
wrote from Avington in Hampshire to the Duke of Wellington: ‘Nothing
can be worse than the state of this neighbourhood. I may say that this
part of the country is wholly in the hands of the rebels ... 1500 rioters are
to assemble to-morrow morning, and will attack any farmhouses where
there are threshing machines. They go about levying contributions on
every gentleman’s house. There are very few magistrates; and what there
are are completely cowed. In short, something decisive must instantly be
done.’
The risings in these counties differed in some respects from the rising in
Kent and Sussex. The disturbances were not so much like the firing of a
train of discontent, they were rather a sudden and spontaneous explosion.
They lasted only about a week, and were well described in a report of
Colonel Brotherton, one of the two military experts sent by Lord
Melbourne to Wiltshire to advise the magistrates. He wrote on 28th
November: ‘The insurrectionary movement seems to be directed by no
plan or system, but merely actuated by the spontaneous feeling of the
peasantry and quite at random.’ The labourers went about in larger
numbers, combining with the destruction of threshing machines and the
demand for higher wages a claim for ‘satisfaction’ as they called it in the
form of ready money. It was their practice to charge £2 for breaking a
threshing machine, but in some cases the mobs were satisfied with a few
coppers. The demand for ready money was not a new feature, for many
correspondents of the Home Office note in their letters that the mobs
levied money in Kent and Sussex, but hitherto this ‘sturdy begging,’ as
Cobbett called it, had been regarded by the magistrates as unimportant.
The wages demanded in these counties were 2s. a day, whereas the
demands in Kent and usually in Sussex had been for 2s. 6d. or 2s. 3d.
Wages had fallen to a lower level in Hampshire, Berkshire and Wiltshire.
The current rate in Wiltshire was 7s., and Colonel Mair, the second
officer sent down by the Home Office, reported that wages were
sometimes as low as 6s. It is therefore not surprising to learn that in two
parishes the labourers instead of asking for 2s. a day, asked only for 8s.
or 9s. a week. In Berkshire wages varied from 7s. to 9s., and in
Hampshire the usual rate seems to have been 8s.
The rising in Hampshire was marked by a considerable destruction of
property. At Fordingbridge, the mob under the leadership of a man called
Cooper, broke up the machinery both at a sacking manufactory and at a
manufactory of threshing machines. Cooper was soon clothed in
innumerable legends: he was a gipsy, a mysterious gentleman, possibly
the renowned ‘Swing’ himself. At the Fordingbridge riots he rode on
horseback and assumed the title of Captain Hunt. His followers
addressed him bareheaded. In point of fact he was an agricultural
labourer of good character, a native of East Grimstead in Wilts, who had
served in the artillery in the French War. Some two months before the
riots his wife had robbed him, and then eloped with a paramour. This
unhinged his self-control; he gave himself up to drink and despair, and
tried to forget his misery in reckless rioting. Near Andover again a
foundry was destroyed by a mob, after the ringleader, Gilmore, had
entered the justices’ room at Andover, where the justices were sitting,
and treated with them on behalf of the mob. Gilmore also was a labourer;
he was twenty-five years old and had been a soldier.
The most interesting event in the Hampshire rising was the destruction of
the workhouses at Selborne and Headley. Little is reported of the
demolition of the poorhouse at Selborne. The indictment of the persons
accused of taking part in it fell through on technical grounds, and as the
defendants were also the persons charged with destroying the Headley
workhouse, the prosecution in the Selborne case was abandoned. The
mob first went to Mr. Cobbold, Vicar of Selborne, and demanded that he
should reduce his tithes, telling him with some bluntness ‘we must have
a touch of your tithes: we think £300 a year quite enough for you ... £4 a
week is quite enough.’ Mr. Cobbold was thoroughly alarmed, and
consented to sign a paper promising to reduce his tithes, which amounted
to something over £600, by half that sum. The mob were accompanied
by a good many farmers who had agreed to raise wages if the labourers
would undertake to obtain a reduction of tithes, and these farmers signed
the paper also. After Mr. Cobbold’s surrender the mob went on to the
workhouse at Headley, which served the parishes of Bramshott, Headley
and Kingsley. Their leader was a certain Robert Holdaway, a
wheelwright, who had been for a short time a publican. He was a
widower, with eight small children, described by the witnesses at his trial
as a man of excellent character, quiet, industrious, and inoffensive. The
master of the workhouse greeted Holdaway with ‘What, Holdy, are you
here?’ ‘Yes, but I mean you no harm nor your wife nor your goods: so
get them out as soon as you can, for the house must come down.’ The
master warned him that there were old people and sick children in the
house. Holdaway promised that they should be protected, asked where
they were, and said the window would be marked. What followed is
described in the evidence given by the master of the workhouse: ‘There
was not a room left entire, except that in which the sick children were.
These were removed into the yard on two beds, and covered over, and
kept from harm all the time. This was done by the mob. They were left
there because there was no room for them in the sick ward. The sick
ward was full of infirm old paupers. It was not touched, but of all the rest
of the place not a room was left entire.’ The farmers looked on whilst the
destruction proceeded, and one at least of the labourers in the mob
declared afterwards that his master had forced him to join.
In Wiltshire also the destruction of property was not confined to
threshing machines. At Wilton, the mob, under the leadership of a certain
John Jennings, aged eighteen,[436] who declared that he ‘was going to
break the machinery to make more work for the poor people,’ did £500
worth of damage in a woollen mill. Another cloth factory at
Quidhampton was also injured; in this affair an active part was taken by
a boy even younger than Jennings, John Ford, who was only seventeen
years old.[437]
The riot which attracted most attention of all the disturbances in
Wiltshire took place at Pyt House, the seat of Mr. John Benett, M.P. for
the county. Mr. Benett was a well-known local figure, and had given
evidence before several Committees on Poor Laws. The depth of his
sympathy with the labourers may be gauged by the threat that he uttered
before the Committee of 1817 to pull down his cottages if Parliament
should make length of residence a legal method of gaining a settlement.
Some member of the Committee suggested that if there were no cottages
there would be no labourers, but Mr. Benett replied cheerfully enough
that it did not matter to a labourer how far he walked to his work: ‘I have
many labourers coming three miles to my farm every morning during the
winter’ (the hours were six to six) ‘and they are the most punctual
persons we have.’ At the time he gave this evidence, he stated that about
three-quarters of the labouring population in his parish of Tisbury
received relief from the poor rates in aid of wages, and he declared that it
was useless to let them small parcels of land. The condition of the poor
had not improved in Mr. Benett’s parish between 1817 and 1830, and
Lord Arundel, who lived in it, described it as ‘a Parish in which the Poor
have been more oppressed and are in greater misery as a whole than any
Parish in the Kingdom.’[438] It is not surprising that when the news of
what had been achieved in Kent and Sussex spread west to Wiltshire, the
labourers of Tisbury rose to demand 2s. a day, and to destroy the
threshing machines. A mob of five hundred persons collected, and their
first act was to destroy a threshing machine, with the sanction of the
owner, Mr. Turner, who sat by on horseback, watching them. They
afterwards proceeded to the Pyt House estate. Mr. Benett met them,
parleyed and rode with them for some way; they behaved politely but
firmly, telling him their intentions. One incident throws a light on the
minds of the actors in these scenes. ‘I then,’ said Mr. Benett afterwards,
‘pointed out to them that they could not trust each other, for any man, I
said, by informing against ten of you will obtain at once £500.’ It was an
adroit speech, but as it happened the Wiltshire labourers, half starved,
degraded and brutalised, as they might be, had a different standard of
honour from that imagined by this magistrate and member of Parliament,
and the devilish temptation he set before them was rejected. The mob
destroyed various threshing machines on Mr. Benett’s farms, and refused
to disperse; at last, after a good deal of sharp language from Mr. Benett,
they threw stones at him. At the same time a troop of yeomanry from
Hindon came up and received orders to fire blank cartridges above the
heads of the mob. This only produced laughter; the yeomanry then began
to charge; the mob took shelter in the plantations round Pyt House and
stoned the yeomanry, who replied by a fierce onslaught, shooting one
man dead on the spot,[439] wounding six by cutting off fingers and
opening skulls, and taking a great number of prisoners. At the inquest at
Tisbury on the man John Harding, who was killed, the jury returned a
verdict of justifiable homicide, and the coroner refused to grant a warrant
for burial, saying that the man’s action was equivalent to felo de se. Hunt
stated in the House of Commons that the foreman of the jury was the
father of one of the yeomen.
We have seen that in these counties the magistrates took a very grave
view of the crime of levying money from householders. This was often
done by casual bands of men and boys, who had little connection with
the organised rising. An examination of the cases described before the
Special Commissions gives the impression that in point of fact there was
very little danger to person or property. A farmer’s wife at Aston Tirrold
in Berkshire described her own experience to the Abingdon Special
Commission. A mob came to her house and demanded beer. Her husband
was out and she went to the door. ‘Bennett was spokesman. He said
“Now a little of your beer if you please.” I answered “Not a drop.” He
asked “Why?” and I said “I cannot give beer to encourage riot.” Bennett
said “Why you don’t call this rioting do you?” I said “I don’t know what
you call it, but it is a number of people assembled together to alarm
others: but don’t think I’m afraid or daunted at it.” Bennett said
“Suppose your premises should be set on fire?” I said “Then I certainly
should be alarmed but I don’t suppose either of you intends doing that.”
Bennett said “No, we do not intend any such thing, I don’t wish to alarm
you and we are not come with the intention of mischief.”’ The result of
the dialogue was that Bennett and his party went home without beer and
without giving trouble.
It was natural that when mob-begging of this kind became fashionable,
unpopular individuals should be singled out for rough and threatening
visits. Sometimes the assistant overseers were the objects of special
hatred, sometimes the parson. It is worth while to give the facts of a case
at St. Mary Bourne in Hampshire, because stress was laid upon it in the
subsequent prosecutions as an instance of extraordinary violence. The
clergyman, Mr. Easton, was not a favourite in his parish, and he preached
what the poor regarded as a harsh and a hostile sermon. When the parish
rose, a mob of two hundred forced their way into the vicarage and
demanded money, some of them repeating, ‘Money or blood.’ Mrs.
Easton, who was rather an invalid, Miss Lucy Easton, and Master Easton
were downstairs, and Mrs. Easton was so much alarmed that she sent
Lucy upstairs to fetch 10s. Meanwhile Mr. Easton had come down, and
was listening to some extremely unsympathetic criticisms of his
performances in the pulpit. ‘Damn you,’ said Daniel Simms,[440] ‘where
will your text be next Sunday?’ William Simms was equally blunt and
uncompromising. Meanwhile Lucy had brought down the half-sovereign,
and Mrs. Easton gave it to William Simms,[441] who thereupon cried ‘All
out,’ and the mob left the Eastons at peace.
One representative of the Church was distinguished from most of the
country gentlemen and clergymen of the time by his treatment of one of
these wandering mobs. Cobbett’s letter to the Hampshire parsons,
published in the Political Register, 15th January 1831, contains an
account of the conduct of Bishop Sumner, the Bishop of Winchester. ‘I
have, at last, found a Bishop of the Law Church to praise. The facts are
these: the Bishop, in coming from Winchester to his palace at Farnham,
was met about a mile before he got to the latter place, by a band of
sturdy beggars, whom some call robbers. They stopped his carriage, and
asked for some money, which he gave them. But he did not prosecute
them: he had not a man of them called to account for his conduct, but,
the next day, set twenty-four labourers to constant work, opened his
Castle to the distressed of all ages, and supplied all with food and other
necessaries who stood in need of them. This was becoming a Christian
teacher.’ Perhaps the bishop remembered the lines from Dryden’s Tales
from Chaucer, describing the spirit in which the good parson regarded
the poor:

‘Who, should they steal for want of his relief,

He judged himself accomplice with the thief.’

There was an exhibition of free speaking at Hungerford, where the

magistrates sat in the Town Hall to receive deputations from various
mobs, in connection with the demand for higher wages. The magistrates
had made their peace with the Hungerford mob, when a deputation from
the Kintbury mob arrived, led by William Oakley, a young carpenter of
twenty-five. Oakley addressed the magistrates in language which they
had never heard before in their lives and were never likely to hear again.
‘You have not such d——d flats to deal with now, as you had before; we
will have 2s. a day till Lady Day, and 2s. 6d. afterwards for labourers and
3s. 6d. for tradesmen. And as we are here we will have £5 before we
leave the place or we will smash it.... You gentlemen have been living
long enough on the good things, now is our time and we will have them.
You gentlemen would not speak to us now, only you are afraid and
intimidated.’ The magistrates acceded to the demands of the Kintbury
mob and also gave them the £5, after which they gave the Hungerford
mob £5, because they had behaved well, and it would be unjust to treat
them worse than their Kintbury neighbours. Mr. Page, Deputy-
Lieutenant for Berks, sent Lord Melbourne some tales about this same
Kintbury mob, which was described by Mr. Pearse, M.P., as a set of
‘desperate savages.’ ‘I beg to add some anecdotes of the mob yesterday
to illustrate the nature of its component parts. They took £2 from Mr.
Cherry a magistrate and broke his Machine. Afterwards another party
came and demanded One Pound——when the two parties had again
formed into one, they passed by Mr. Cherry’s door and said they had
taken one pound too much, which they offered to return to him which it
is said he refused—they had before understood that Mrs. Cherry was
unwell and therefore came only in small parties. A poor woman passed
them selling rabbitts, some few of the mob took some by force, the
ringleader ordered them to be restored. At a farmer’s where they had
been regaled with bread cheese and beer one of them stole an umbrella:
the ringleader hearing of it, as they were passing the canal threw him into
it and gave him a good ducking.’[442]
In the early days of the rising in Hampshire, Wiltshire and Berkshire,
there was a good deal of sympathy with the labourers. The farmers in
many cases made no objection to the destruction of their threshing
machines. One gentleman of Market Lavington went so far as to say that
‘nearly all the Wiltshire Farmers were willing to destroy or set aside their
machines.’ ‘My Lord,’ wrote Mr. Williams, J.P., from Marlborough, ‘you
will perhaps be surprised to hear that the greatest number of the
threshing machines destroyed have been put out for the Purpose by the
Owners themselves.’ The Duke of Buckingham complained that in the
district round Avington ‘the farmers have not the Spirit and in some
instances not the Wish to put down’ disturbances.[443] At a meeting in
Winchester, convened by the Mayor to preserve the peace (reported in
the Hampshire Chronicle of 22nd November), Dr. Newbolt, a clergyman
and magistrate, described his own dealings with one of the mobs. The
mob said they wanted 12s. a week wages: this he said was a reasonable
demand. He acted as mediator between the labourers and farmers, and as
a result of his efforts the farmers agreed to these terms, and the labourers
returned to work, abandoning their project of a descent on Winchester.
The Mayor of Winchester also declared that the wages demanded were
not unreasonable, and he laid stress on the fact that the object of the
meeting was not to appoint special constables to come into conflict with
the people, but merely to preserve the peace. Next week Dr. Newbolt put
an advertisement into the Hampshire Chronicle, acknowledging the vote
of thanks that had been passed to him, and reaffirming his belief that
conciliation was the right policy.[444] At Overton, in Hampshire, Henry
Hunt acted as mediator between the farmers and a hungry and menacing
mob. Such was the fear of the farmers that they gave him unlimited
power to make promises on their behalf: he promised the labourers that
their wages should be raised from 9s. to 12s., with house rent in addition,
and they dispersed in delight.
Fortune had so far smiled upon the rising, and there was some hope of
success. If the spirit that animated the farmers, and in Kent many of the
landowners, had lasted, the winter of 1830 might have ended in an
improvement of wages and a reduction of rents and tithes throughout the
south of England. In places where the decline of the labourer had been
watched for years without pity or dismay, magistrates were now calling
meetings to consider his circumstances, and the Home Office Papers
show that some, at any rate, of the country gentlemen were aware of the
desperate condition of the poor. Unhappily the day of conciliatory
measures was a brief one. Two facts frightened the upper classes into
brutality: one was the spread of the rising, the other the scarcity of
troops.[445] As the movement spread, the alarm of the authorities inspired
a different policy, and even those landowners who recognised that the
labourers were miserable, thought that they were in the presence of a
rising that would sweep them away unless they could suppress it at once
by drastic means. They pictured the labourers as Huns and the
mysterious Swing as a second Attila, and this panic they contrived to
communicate to the other classes of society.
Conciliatory methods consequently ceased; the upper classes substituted
action for diplomacy, and the movement rapidly collapsed. Little
resistance was offered, and the terrible hosts of armed and desperate men
melted down into groups of weak and ill-fed labourers, armed with sticks
and stones. On 26th November the Times could report that seventy
persons had been apprehended near Newbury, and that ‘about 60 of the
most forward half-starved fellows’ had been taken into custody some
two miles from Southampton. Already the housing of the Berkshire
prisoners was becoming a problem, the gaols at Reading and Abingdon
being overcrowded: by the end of the month the Newbury Mansion
House and Workhouse had been converted into prisons. This energy had
been stimulated by a circular letter issued on 24th November, in which
Lord Melbourne urged the lord-lieutenants and the magistrates to use
firmness and vigour in quelling disturbances, and virtually promised
them immunity for illegal acts done in discharge of their duty. A village
here and there continued to give the magistrates some uneasiness, for
example, Broughton in Hants, ‘an open village in an open country ...
where there is no Gentleman to overawe them,’[446] but these were
exceptions. The day of risings was over, and from this time forward,
arson was the only weapon of discontent. At Charlton in Wilts, where
‘the magistrates had talked of 12s. and the farmers had given 10s.,’ a
certain Mr. Polhill, who had lowered the wages one Saturday to 9s.,
found his premises in flame. ‘The poor,’ remarked a neighbouring
magistrate, ‘naturally consider that they will be beaten down again to
7s.’[447] By 4th December the Times correspondent in Wiltshire and
Hampshire could report that quiet was restored, that the peasantry were
cowed, and that men who had been prominent in the mobs were being
picked out and arrested every day. He gave an amusing account of the
trials of a special correspondent, and of the difficulties of obtaining
information. ‘The circular of Lord Melbourne which encourages the
magistrates to seize suspected persons, and promises them impunity if
the motives are good (such is the construction of the circular in these
parts), and which the magistrates are determined to act upon, renders
inquiries unsafe, and I have received a few good natured hints on this
head. Gentlemen in gigs and post chaises are peculiar objects of jealousy.
A cigar, which is no slight comfort in this humid atmosphere, is regarded
on the road as a species of pyrotechnical tube; and even an eye glass is in
danger of being metamorphosed into a newly invented air gun, with
which these gentlemen ignite stacks and barns as they pass. An innocent
enquiry of whose house or farm is that? is, under existing circumstances,
an overt act of incendiarism.’
In such a state of feeling, it was not surprising that labourers were
bundled into prison for sour looks or discontented conversation. A
zealous magistrate wrote to the Home Office on 13th December after a
fire near Maidenhead, to say that he had committed a certain Greenaway
to prison on the following evidence: ‘Dr. Vansittart, Rector of
Shottesbrook, gave a sermon a short time before the fire took place,
recommending a quiet conduct to his Parishioners. Greenaway said
openly in the churchyard, we have been quiet too long. His temper is
bad, always discontented and churlish, frequently changing his Master
from finding great difficulty in maintaining a large family from the
Wages of labour.’
Meanwhile the rising had spread westward to Dorset and
Gloucestershire, and northward to Bucks. In Dorsetshire and
Gloucestershire, the disturbances were much like those in Wiltshire. In
Bucks, in addition to the usual agricultural rising, with the breaking of
threshing machines and the demand for higher wages, there were riots in
High Wycombe, and considerable destruction of paper-making
machinery by the unemployed. Where special grievances existed in a
village, the labourers took advantage of the rising to seek redress for
them. Thus at Walden in Bucks, in addition to demanding 2s. a day
wages with 6d. for each child and a reduction of tithes, they made a
special point of the improper distribution of parish gifts. ‘Another person
said that buns used to be thrown from the church steeple and beer given
away in the churchyard, and a sermon preached on the bun day. Witness
(the parson) told them that the custom had ceased before he came to the
parish, but that he always preached a sermon on St. George’s day, and
two on Sundays, one of which was a volunteer. He told them that he had
consulted the Archdeacon on the claim set up for the distribution of
buns, and that the Archdeacon was of opinion that no such claim could
be maintained.’
At Benson or Bensington, in Oxfordshire, the labourers, after destroying
some threshing machines, made a demonstration against a proposal for
enclosure. Mr. Newton, a large proprietor, had just made one of many
unsuccessful attempts to obtain an Enclosure Act for the parish. Some
thousand persons assembled in the churchyard expecting that Mr.
Newton would try to fix the notice on the church door, but as he did not
venture to appear, they proceeded to his house, and made him promise
never again to attempt to obtain an Enclosure Act.[448]
The movement for obtaining higher wages by this rude collective
bargaining was extinguished in the counties already mentioned by the
beginning of December, but disturbances now developed over a larger
area. A ‘daring riot’ took place at Stotfold in Bedfordshire. The labourers
met together to demand exemption from taxes, dismissal of the assistant
overseer, and the raising of wages to 2s. a day. The last demand was
refused, on which the labourers set some straw alight in a field to alarm
the farmers. Mr. Whitbread, J.P., brought a hundred special constables,
and arrested ten ringleaders, after which the riot ceased. There were
disturbances in Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex; and in many other counties
the propertied classes were terrified from time to time by the news of
fires. In Cambridgeshire there were meetings of labourers to demand
higher wages, in some places with immediate success, and one
magistrate was alarmed by rumours of a design to march upon
Cambridge itself on market day. In Devonshire Lord Ebrington reported
an agitation for higher wages with encouragement from the farmers. He
was himself impressed by the low wages in force, and had raised them in
places still quiet; a mistake for which he apologised. Even Hereford,
‘this hitherto submissive and peaceful county,’ was not unaffected. In
Northamptonshire there were several fires, and also risings round
Peterborough, Oundle and Wellingborough, and a general outbreak in the
Midlands was thought to be imminent. Hayricks began to blaze as far
north as Carlisle. Swing letters were delivered in Yorkshire, and in
Lincolnshire the labourer was said to be awakening to his own
importance. There were in fact few counties quite free from infection,
and a leading article appeared in the Times on 6th December, in which it
was stated that never had such a dangerous state of things existed to such
an extent in England, in the period of well-authenticated records. ‘Let the
rich be taught that Providence will not suffer them to oppress their fellow
creatures with impunity. Here are tens of thousands of Englishmen,
industrious, kind-hearted, but broken-hearted beings, exasperated into
madness by insufficient food and clothing, by utter want of necessaries
for themselves and their unfortunate families.’
Unfortunately Providence, to whom the Times attributed these
revolutionary sentiments, was not so close to the scene as Lord
Melbourne, whose sentiments on the subject were very different. On 8th
December he issued a circular, which gave a death-blow to the hope that
the magistrates would act as mediators on behalf of the labourers. After
blaming those magistrates who, under intimidation, had advised the
establishment of a uniform rate of wages, the Home Secretary went on,
‘Reason and experience concur in proving that a compliance with
demands so unreasonable in themselves, and urged in such a manner, can
only lead, and probably within a very short period of time, to the most
disastrous results.’ He added that the justices had ‘no general legal
authority to settle the amount of the wages of labour.’ The circular
contained a promise on the part of the Government that they would adopt
‘every practicable and reasonable measure’ for the alleviation of the
labourers’ privations.
From this time the magistrates were everywhere on the alert for the first
signs of life and movement among the labourers, and they forbade
meetings of any kind. In Suffolk and Essex the labourers who took up
the cry for higher wages were promptly thrown into prison, and arbitrary
arrests became the custom. The movement was crushed, and the time for
retribution had come. The gaols were full to overflowing, and the
Government appointed Special Commissions to try the rioters in
Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorset, Berks, and Bucks. Brougham, who was
now enjoying the office in whose pompous manner he must have lisped
in his cradle, told the House of Lords on 2nd December, ‘Within a few
days from the time I am addressing your Lordships, the sword of justice
shall be unsheathed to smite, if it be necessary, with a firm and vigorous
hand, the rebel against the law.’
The disturbances were over, but the panic had been such that the upper
classes could not persuade themselves that England was yet tranquil. As
late as Christmas Eve the Privy Council gave orders to the archbishop to
prepare ‘a form of prayer to Almighty God, on account of the troubled
state of certain parts of the United Kingdom.’ The archbishop’s
composition, which was published after scores of men and boys had been
sentenced to transportation for life, must have been recited with genuine
feeling by those clergymen who had either broken, or were about to
break, their agreement to surrender part of their tithes. One passage ran
as follows: ‘Restore, O Lord, to Thy people the quiet enjoyment of the
many and great blessings which we have received from Thy bounty:
defeat and frustrate the malice of wicked and turbulent men, and turn
their hearts: have pity, O Lord, on the simple and ignorant, who have
been led astray, and recall them to a sense of their duty; and to persons of
all ranks and conditions in this country vouchsafe such a measure of Thy
grace, that our hearts being filled with true faith and devotion, and
cleansed from all evil affections, we may serve Thee with one accord, in
duty and loyalty to the King, in obedience to the laws of the land, and in
brotherly love towards each other....’
We shall see in the next chapter what happened to ‘the simple and
ignorant’ who had fallen into the hands of the English judges.
 CHAPTER XII
THE LAST LABOURERS’ REVOLT
II
The bands of men and boys who had given their rulers one moment of
excitement and lively interest in the condition of the poor had made
themselves liable to ferocious penalties. For the privileged classes had
set up a code under which no labourer could take a single step for the
improvement of the lot of his class without putting his life and liberties
in a noose. It is true that the savage laws which had been passed against
combination in 1799 and 1800 had been repealed in 1824, and that even
under the less liberal Act of the following year, which rescinded the Act
of 1824, it was no longer a penal offence to form a Trades Union. But it
is easy to see that the labourers who tried to raise their wages were in
fact on a shelving and most perilous slope. If they used threats or
intimidation or molested or obstructed, either to get a labourer to join
with them or to get an employer to make concessions, they were guilty of
a misdemeanour punishable with three months’ imprisonment. They
were lucky if they ran no graver risk than this. Few of the prosecutions at
the Special Commissions were under the Act of 1825. A body of men
holding a meeting in a village where famine and unemployment were
chronic, and where hardly any one had been taught to read or write,
might very soon find themselves becoming what the Act of 1714 called a
riotous assembly, and if a magistrate took alarm and read the Riot Act,
and they did not disperse within one hour, every one of them might be
punished as a felon. The hour’s interval did not mean an hour’s grace,
for, as Mr. Justice Alderson told the court at Dorchester, within that hour
‘all persons, even private individuals, may do anything, using force even
to the last extremity to prevent the commission of a felony.’
There were at least three ways in which labourers meeting together to
demonstrate for higher wages ran a risk of losing their lives, if any of
their fellows got out of hand from temper, or from drink, or from hunger
and despair. Most of the prosecutions before the Special Commissions
were prosecutions under three Acts of 1827 and 1828, consolidating the
law on the subject of offences against property and offences against the
person. Under the eighth section of one Act (7 and 8 George . c. 30),
any persons riotously or tumultuously assembled together who destroyed
any house, stable, coach-house, outhouse, barn, granary, or any building
or erection or machinery used in carrying on any trade or manufacture
were to suffer death as felons. In this Act there is no definition of riot,
and therefore ‘the common law definition of a riot is resorted to, and in
such a case if any one of His Majesty’s subjects was terrified there was a
sufficient terror and alarm to substantiate that part of the charge.’[449]
Under the sixth section of another Act, any person who robbed any other
person of any chattel, money, or valuable security was to suffer death as
a felon. Now if a mob presented itself before a householder with a
demand for money, and the householder in fear gave even a few coppers,
any person who was in that mob, whether he had anything to do with this
particular transaction or not, whether he was aware or ignorant of it, was
guilty of robbery, and liable to the capital penalty. Under section 12 of
the Act of the following year, generally known as Lansdowne’s Act,
which amended Ellenborough’s Act of 1803, it was a capital offence to
attempt to shoot at a person, or to stab, cut, or wound him, with intent to
murder, rob, or maim. Under this Act, as it was interpreted, if an
altercation arose and any violence was offered by a single individual in
the mob, the lives of the whole band were forfeit. This was put very
clearly by Baron Vaughan: ‘There seems to be some impression that
unless the attack on an individual is made with some deadly weapons,
those concerned are not liable to capital punishment; but it should be
made known to all persons that if the same injury were inflicted by a
blow of a stone, all and every person forming part of a riotous assembly
is equally guilty as he whose hand may have thrown it, and all alike are
liable to death.’ Under section 4 of one Act of 1827 the penalty for
destroying a threshing machine was transportation for seven years, and
under section 17 the penalty for firing a rick was death. These were the
terrors hanging over the village labourers of whom several hundreds
were now awaiting their trial.
The temper of the judges was revealed in their charges to the Grand
Juries. In opening the Maidstone Assizes on 14th December, Mr. Justice
Bosanquet[450] declared that though there might be some distress it was
much exaggerated, and that he was sure that those whom he had the
honour to address would find it not only their duty but their pleasure to
lend an ear to the wants of the poor.[451] Mr. Justice Taunton[452] was
even more reassuring on this subject at the Lewes Assizes: the distress
was less than it had been twelve months before. ‘I regret to say,’ he went
on, ‘there are persons who exaggerate the distress and raise up barriers
between different classes—who use the most inflammatory language—
who represent the rich as oppressors of the poor. It would be impertinent
in me to say anything to you as to your treatment of labourers or
servants. That man must know little of the gentry of England, whether
connected with the town or country, who represents them as tyrants to
the poor, as not sympathising in their distress, and as not anxious to
relieve their burdens and to promote their welfare and happiness.’[453] In
opening the Special Commission at Winchester Baron Vaughan[454]
alluded to the theory that the tumults had arisen from distress and
admitted that it might be partly true, but, he continued, ‘every man
possessed of the feelings common to our nature must deeply lament it,
and endeavour to alleviate it (as you gentlemen no doubt have done and
will continue to do), by every means which Providence has put within
his power.’ If individuals were aggrieved by privations and injuries, they
must apply to the Legislature, which alone could afford them relief, ‘but
it can never be tolerated in any country which professes to acknowledge
the obligations of municipal law, that any man or body of men should be
permitted to sit in judgment upon their own wrongs, or to arrogate to
themselves the power of redressing them. To suffer it would be to relapse
into the barbarism of savage life and to dissolve the very elements by
which society is held together.’[455] The opinions of the Bench on the
sections of the Act (7 and 8 George . c. 30) under which men could be
hung for assembling riotously and breaking machinery were clearly
expressed by Mr. Justice Parke[456] (afterwards Lord Wensleydale) at
Salisbury: ‘If that law ceases to be administered with due firmness, and
men look to it in vain for the security of their rights, our wealth and
power will soon be at an end, and our capital and industry would be
transferred to some more peaceful country, whose laws are more
respected or better enforced.’[457] By another section of that Act seven
years was fixed as the maximum penalty for breaking a threshing
machine. Mr. Justice Alderson[458] chafed under this restriction, and he
told two men, Case and Morgan, who were found guilty at the Salisbury
Special Commission of going into a neighbouring parish and breaking a
threshing machine, that had the Legislature foreseen such crimes as
theirs, it would have enabled the court to give them a severer sentence.
[459]

Mr. Justice Park[460] was equally stern and uncompromising in defending

the property of the followers of the carpenter of Nazareth against the
unreasoning misery of the hour. Summing up in a case at Aylesbury, in
which one of the charges was that of attempting to procure a reduction of
tithes, he remarked with warmth: ‘It was highly insolent in such men to
require of gentlemen, who had by an expensive education qualified
themselves to discharge the sacred duties of a Minister of the Gospel, to
descend from that station and reduce themselves to the situation of
common labourers.’[461]
Few judges could resist the temptation to introduce into their charges a
homily on the economic benefits of machinery. Mr. Justice Park was an
exception, for he observed at Aylesbury that the question of the
advantages of machinery was outside the province of the judges, ‘and
much mischief often resulted from persons stepping out of their line of
duty.’[462] Mr. Justice Alderson took a different view, and the very next
day he was expounding the truths of political economy at Dorchester,
starting with what he termed the ‘beautiful and simple illustration’ of the
printing press.[463] The illustration must have seemed singularly intimate
and convincing to the labourers in the dock who had never been taught
their letters.
Such was the temper of the judges. Who and what were the prisoners
before them? After the suppression of the riots, the magistrates could
pick out culprits at their leisure, and when a riot had involved the whole
of the village the temptation to get rid by this method of persons who for
one reason or another were obnoxious to the authorities was irresistible.
Hunt, speaking in the House of Commons,[464] quoted the case of
Hindon; seven men had been apprehended for rioting and they were all
poachers. Many of the prisoners had already spent a month in an
overcrowded prison; almost all of them were poor men; the majority
could not read or write.[465] Few could afford counsel, and it must be
remembered that counsel could not address the court on behalf of
prisoners who were being tried for breaking machines, or for belonging
to a mob that asked for money or destroyed property. By the rules of the
gaol, the prisoners at Salisbury were not allowed to see their attorney
except in the presence of the gaoler or his servant. The labourers’
ignorance of the law was complete and inevitable. Many of them thought
that the King or the Government or the magistrates had given orders that
machines were to be broken. Most of them supposed that if a person
from whom they demanded money threw it down or gave it without the
application of physical force, there was no question of robbery. We have
an illustration of this illusion in a trial at Winchester when Isaac Hill,
junior, who was charged with breaking a threshing machine near
Micheldever, for which the maximum penalty was seven years, pleaded
in his defence that he had not broken the machine and that all that he did
‘was to ask the prosecutor civilly for the money, which the mob took
from him, and the prosecutor gave it to him, and that he thanked him
very kindly for it,’[466] an admission which made him liable to a death
penalty. A prisoner at Salisbury, when he was asked what he had to say
in his defence to the jury, replied: ‘Now, my Lord, I ‘se got nothing to
say to ’em, I doant knaow any on ’em.’[467] The prisoners were at this
further disadvantage that all the witnesses whom they could call as to
their share in the conduct of a mob had themselves been in the mob, and
were thus liable to prosecution. Thus when James Lush (who was
afterwards selected for execution) and James Toomer appealed to a man
named Lane, who had just been acquitted on a previous charge, to give
evidence that they had not struck Mr. Pinniger in a scuffle, Mr. Justice
Alderson cautioned Lane that if he acknowledged that he had been in the
mob he would be committed. Lane chose the safer part of silence.[468] In
another case a witness had the courage to incriminate himself. When the
brothers Simms were being tried for extorting money from Parson
Easton’s wife, a case which we have already described, Henry Bunce,
called as a witness for the defence, voluntarily declared, in spite of a
caution from the judge (Alderson), that he had been present himself and
that William Simms did not use the expression ‘blood or money.’ He was
at once ordered into custody. ‘The prisoner immediately sprung over the
bar into the dock with his former comrades, seemingly unaffected by the
decision of the learned judge.’[469]
Perhaps the darkest side of the business was the temptation held out to
prisoners awaiting trial to betray their comrades. Immunity or a lighter
sentence was freely offered to those who would give evidence. Stokes,
who was found guilty at Dorchester of breaking a threshing machine,
was sentenced by Mr. Justice Alderson to a year’s imprisonment, with
the explanation that he was not transported because ‘after you were taken
into custody, you gave very valuable information which tended greatly to
further the ends of justice.’[470] These transactions were not often
dragged into the daylight, but some negotiations of this character were
made public in the trial of Mr. Deacle next year. Mr. Deacle, a well-to-do
gentleman farmer, was tried at the Lent Assizes at Winchester for being
concerned in the riots. One of the witnesses against him, named Collins,
admitted in cross-examination that he believed he should have been
prosecuted himself, if he had not promised to give evidence against Mr.
Deacle; another witness, named Barnes, a carpenter, stated in cross-
examination that during the trials at the Special Commission, ‘he being
in the dock, and about to be put on his trial, the gaoler Beckett called him
out, and took him into a room where there were Walter Long, a
magistrate, and another person, whom he believed to be Bingham
Baring, who told him that he should not be put upon his trial if he would
come and swear against Deacle.’ When the next witness was about to be
cross-examined, the counsel for the prosecution abruptly abandoned the
case.[471]

The first Special Commission was opened at Winchester with suitable

pomp on 18th December. Not only the prison but the whole town was
crowded, and the inhabitants of Winchester determined to make the best
of the windfall. The jurymen and the Times special correspondent
complained bitterly of the abnormal cost of living, the latter mentioning
that in addition to extraordinary charges for beds, 5s. a day was exacted
for firing and tallow candles, bedroom fire not included. The three
judges sent down as commissioners were Baron Vaughan, Mr. Justice
Parke, and Mr. Justice Alderson. With them were associated two other
commissioners, Mr. Sturges Bourne, of assistant overseer fame, and Mr.
Richard Pollen. The Duke of Wellington, as Lord-Lieutenant, sat on the
Bench. The Attorney-General, Mr. Sergeant Wilde, and others appeared
to prosecute for the Crown. The County took up every charge, the
Government only the more serious ones.
There were three hundred prisoners, most of them charged with extorting
money by threats or with breaking machinery. What chance had they of a
fair trial? They started with the disabilities already described. They were
thrown by batches into the dock; the pitiless law was explained to the
jury; extenuating circumstances were ruled out as irrelevant. ‘We do not
come here,’ said Mr. Justice Alderson, ‘to inquire into grievances. We
come here to decide law.’ But though evidence about wages or distress
was not admitted, the judges did not scruple to give their own views of
the social conditions which had produced these disturbances. Perhaps the
most flagrant example was provided by a trial which happily was for a
misdemeanour only. Seven men were indicted for conspiring together
and riotously assembling for the purpose of raising wages and for
compelling others to join them. The labourers of the parish of Fawley
had combined together for two objects, the first to raise their wages,
which stood at 9s. a week, the second to get rid of the assistant overseer,
who had introduced a parish cart, to which he had harnessed women and
boys, amongst others an idiot woman, named Jane Stevens. The
labourers determined to break up the cart, but they desisted on the
promise of a farmer that a horse should be bought for it. Lord Cavan was
the large landowner of the parish. He paid his men as a rule 9s. a week,
but two of them received 10s. The mob came up to his house to demand
an increase of wages: Lord Cavan was out, quelling rioters elsewhere.
Lady Cavan came down to see them. ‘Seeing you are my neighbours and
armed,’ said she, ‘yet, as I am an unprotected woman, I am sure you will
do no harm.’ The labourers protested that they meant no harm, and they
did no harm. ‘I asked them,’ said Lady Cavan afterwards, in evidence,
‘why they rose then, there was no apparent distress round Eaglehurst,
and the wages were the same as they had been for several years. I have
been in several of their cottages and never saw any appearance of
distress. They said they had been oppressed long and would bear it no
longer.’ One man told her that he had 9s. a week wages and 3s. from the
parish, he had heard that the 3s. was to be discontinued. With the
common-sense characteristic of her class Lady Cavan assured him that
he was not improving his position by idling. The labourers impressed the
Cavan men, and went on their peaceful way round the parish. The
farmers who gave evidence for the prosecution were allowed to assert
that there was no distress, but when it came to evidence for the defence a
stricter standard of relevancy was exacted. One witness for the prisoners
said of the labourers: ‘The men were in very great distress; many of the
men had only a few potatoes in their bag when they came to work.’ ‘The
learned judges objected to this course of examination being continued: it
might happen that through drinking a man might suffer distress.’ The
Attorney-General, in his closing speech, asserted again that the prisoners
did not seem to have been in distress. Baron Vaughan, in summing up,
said that men were not to assemble and conspire together for the purpose
of determining what their wages should be. ‘That which at first might be
in itself a lawful act, might in the event become illegal.... A respectful
statement or representation of their grievances was legal, and to which
no one would object, but the evidence, if they believed it, showed that
the conduct of this assembly was far from being respectful. No one could
feel more for the distresses of the people than he did, but he would never
endure that persons should by physical strength compel wages to be
raised. There was no country where charity fell in a purer stream than in
this. Let the man make his appeal in a proper and respectful manner, and
he might be assured that appeal would never be heard in vain.... His
Lordship spoke very highly of the conduct of Lady Cavan. She had
visited the cottages of all those who lived in the neighbourhood, she
knew they were not distressed, and she also felt confident from her
kindness to them that they would not offer her any violence.’ All seven
were found guilty; four were sentenced to six months hard labour, and
three to three months.
Very few, however, of the cases at Winchester were simple
misdemeanours, for in most instances, in addition to asking for higher
wages, the labourers had made themselves liable to a prosecution for
felony, either by breaking a threshing machine or by asking for money.
Those prisoners who had taken part in the Fordingbridge riots, or in the
destruction of machinery near Andover, or in the demolition of the
Headley Workhouse, were sentenced to death or to transportation for life.
Case after case was tried in which prisoners from different villages were
indicted for assault and robbery. The features varied little, and the
spectators began to find the proceedings monotonous. Most of the
agricultural population of Hampshire had made itself liable to the death
penalty, if the authorities cared to draw the noose. The three hundred
who actually appeared in Court were like the men on whom the tower of
Siloam fell.
A case to which the prosecution attached special importance arose out of
an affair at the house of Mr. Eyre Coote. A mob of forty persons, some
of whom had iron bars, presented themselves before Mr. Coote’s door at
two o’clock in the morning. Two bands of men had already visited Mr.
Coote that evening, and he had given them beer: this third band was a
party of stragglers. Mr. Coote stationed his ten servants in the portico,
and when the mob arrived he asked them, ‘What do you want, my lads?’
‘Money,’ was the answer. ‘Money,’ said Mr. Coote, ‘you shan’t have.’
One of the band seemed to Mr. Coote about to strike him. Mr. Coote
seized him, nine of the mob were knocked down and taken, and the rest
fled. Six of the men were prosecuted for feloniously demanding money.
Baron Vaughan remarked that outrages like this made one wonder
whether one was in a civilised country, and he proceeded to raise its
moral tone by sentencing all the prisoners to transportation for life,
except one, Henry Eldridge, who was reserved for execution. He had
been already capitally convicted of complicity in the Fordingbridge riots,
and this attempt to ‘enter the sanctuary of Mr. Eyre Coote’s home’
following upon that crime, rendered him a suitable ‘sacrifice to be made
on the altar of the offended justice’ of his country.
In many of the so-called robberies punished by the Special Commissions
the sums taken were trifling. George Steel, aged eighteen, was sentenced
to transportation for life for obtaining a shilling, when he was in liquor,
from Jane Neale: William Sutton, another boy of eighteen, was found
guilty of taking 4d. in a drunken frolic: Sutton, who was a carter boy
receiving 1s. 6d. a week and his food, was given an excellent character
by his master, who declared that he had never had a better servant. The
jury recommended him to mercy, and the judges responded by
sentencing him to death and banishing him for life. George Clerk, aged
twenty, and E. C. Nutbean, aged eighteen, paid the same price for 3d.
down and the promise of beer at the Greyhound. Such cases were not
exceptional, as any one who turns to the reports of the trials will see.
The evidence on which prisoners were convicted was often of the most
shadowy kind. Eight young agricultural labourers, of ages varying from
eighteen to twenty-five, were found guilty of riotously assembling in the
parish of St. Lawrence Wootten and feloniously stealing £2 from William
Lutely Sclater of Tangier Park. ‘We want to get a little satisfaction from
you’ was the phrase they used. Two days later another man, named
William Farmer, was charged with the same offence. Mr. Sclater thought
that Farmer was like the man in the mob who blew a trumpet or horn, but
could not swear to his identity. Other witnesses swore that he was with
the mob elsewhere, and said, ‘Money wa want and money wa will hae.’
On this evidence he was found guilty, and though Mr. Justice Alderson
announced that he felt warranted in recommending that he should not
lose his life, ‘yet, it was his duty,’ he continued, ‘to state that he should
for this violent and disgraceful outrage be sent out of the country, and
separated for life from those friends and connections which were dear to
him here: that he should have to employ the rest of his days in labour, at
the will and for the profit of another, to show the people of the class to
which the prisoner belonged that they cannot with impunity lend their
aid to such outrages against the peace and security of person and
property.’
We have seen that at the time of the riots it was freely stated that the
farmers incited the labourers to make disturbances. Hunt went so far as
to say in the House of Commons that in nineteen cases out of twenty the
farmers encouraged the labourers to break the threshing machines. The
county authorities evidently thought it unwise to prosecute the farmers,
although it was proved in evidence that there were several farmers
present at the destruction of the Headley Workhouse, and at the
demonstration at Mr. Cobbold’s house. Occasionally a farmer, in
testifying to a prisoner’s character, would admit that he had been in a
mob himself. In such cases the judge administered rebukes, but the
prosecution took no action. There was, however, one exception. A small
farmer, John Boys, of the parish of Owslebury, had thrown himself
heartily into the labourers’ cause. A number of small farmers met and
decided that the labourers’ wages ought to be raised. Boys agreed to take
a paper round for signature. The paper ran as follows: ‘We the
undersigned are willing to give 2s. per day for able-bodied married men,
and 9s. per week for single men, on consideration of our rents and tithes
being abated in proportion.’ In similar cases, as a rule, the farmers left it
to the labourers to collect signatures, and Boys, by undertaking the work
himself, made himself a marked man. He had been in a mob which
extorted money from Lord Northesk’s steward at Owslebury, and for this
he was indicted for felony. But the jury, to the chagrin of the prosecution,
acquitted him. What followed is best described in the report of Sergeant
Wilde’s speech in the House of Commons (21st July 1831). ‘Boyce was
tried and acquitted: but he (Mr. Wilde) being unable to account for the
acquittal, considering the evidence to have been clear against him, and
feeling that although the jury were most respectable men, they might
possibly entertain some sympathy for him in consequence of his situation
in life, thought it his duty to send a communication to the Attorney-
General, stating that Boyce was deeply responsible for the acts which
had taken place: that he thought he should not be allowed to escape, and
recommending that he be tried before a different jury in the other Court.
The Attorney-General sent to him (Mr. Wilde) to come into the other
Court, and the result was that Boyce was then tried and convicted.’ In the
other more complaisant Court, Farmer Boys and James Fussell,
described as a genteel young man of about twenty, living with his
mother, were found guilty of heading a riotous mob for reducing rents
and tithes and sentenced to seven years’ transportation.[472]
This was not the only case in which the sympathies of the jury created a
difficulty. The Home Office Papers contain a letter from Dr. Quarrier, a
Hampshire magistrate, who had been particularly vigorous in
suppressing riots, stating that Sir James Parke discharged a jury at the
Special Commission ‘under the impression that they were reluctant to
convict the Prisoners which was more strongly impressed upon the mind
of the Judge, by its being reported to his Lordship that “some of the
Gosport Jurors had said, while travelling in the stage coach to
Winchester, that they would not convict in cases where the Labourers
had been driven to excess by Poverty and low Wages!” It was
ascertained that some of those empannelled upon the acquitting Jury
were from Gosport, which confirmed the learned Judge in the
determination to discharge them.’[473]
An interesting feature of the trials at Winchester was the number of men
just above the condition of agricultural labourers who threw in their lot
with the poor: the village mechanics, the wheelwrights, carpenters,
joiners, smiths, and the bricklayers, shoemakers, shepherds and small
holders were often prominent in the disturbances. To the judges this fact
was a riddle. The threshing machines had done these men no injury; they
had not known the sting of hunger; till the time of the riots their
characters had been as a rule irreproachable. Nemo repente turpissimus
fuit, and yet apparently these persons had suddenly, without warning,
turned into the ‘wicked and turbulent men’ of the archbishop’s prayer.
Such culprits deserved, in the opinions of the bench, severer punishment
than the labourers, whom their example should have kept in the paths of
obedience and peace.[474] Where the law permitted, they were sentenced
to transportation for life. One heinous offender of this type, Gregory, a
carpenter, was actually earning 18s. a week in the service of Lord
Winchester. But the most interesting instances were two brothers, Joseph
and Robert Mason, who lived at Bullington. They rented three or four
acres, kept a cow, and worked for the neighbouring farmers as well.
Joseph, who was thirty-two, had a wife and one child; Robert, who was
twenty-four, was unmarried. Between them they supported a widowed
mother. Their characters were exemplary, and the most eager malice
could detect no blot upon their past. But their opinions were dangerous:
they regularly took in Cobbett’s Register and read it aloud to twenty or
thirty of the villagers. Further, Joseph had carried on foot a petition for
reform to the king at Brighton from a hundred and seventy-seven
‘persons, belonging to the working and labouring classes’ of Wonston,
Barton Stacey and Bullington, and was reported to have given some
trouble to the king’s porter by an importunate demand for an audience.
The recital of these facts gave rise to much merriment at his trial, and
was not considered irrelevant by judges who ruled out all allusions to
distress.[475] An interesting light is thrown on the history of this petition
by a fragment of a letter, written by Robert Mason to a friend, which
somehow fell into the hands of a Captain Thompson of Longparish, and
was forwarded by him to the Home Office as a valuable piece of
evidence.
‘P.S.—Since I wrote the above I have saw and talked with two
persons who say “Bullington Barton and Sutton has sent a
petition and why not Longparish Hursborne and Wherwell
send another.” I think as much, to be sure if we had all signed
one, one journey and expense would have served but what is
expence? Why I would engage to carry a Petition and deliver
it at St. James for 30 shillings, and to a place like Longparish
what is that? If you do send one pray do not let Church
property escape your notice. There is the Church which cost
Longparish I should think nearly £1500 yearly: yes and there
is an old established Chaple which I will be bound does not
cost £25 annually. For God sake....’ (illegible).
The first charge brought against the Masons was that of robbing Sir
Thomas Baring’s steward of £10 at East Stretton. The money had been
taken by one of the mobs; the Masons were acquitted. They were next
put on their trial together with William Winkworth, a cobbler and a
fellow reader of Cobbett, and ten others, for a similar offence. This time
they were accused of demanding £2 or £5 from Mr. W. Dowden of
Micheldever. The Attorney-General, in opening the case, drew attention
to the circumstances of the Masons and Winkworth, saying that the
offence with which they were charged was of a deeper dye, because they
were men of superior education and intelligence. A humane clergyman,
Mr. Cockerton, curate of Stoke Cheriton, gave evidence to the effect that
if the men had been met in a conciliatory temper in the morning they
would have dispersed. Joseph Mason and William Winkworth were
found guilty, and sentenced, in the words of the judge, to ‘be cut off from
all communion with society’ for the rest of their lives. Robert Mason was
still unconvicted, but he was not allowed to escape. The next charge