‘Policy on the Hoof’: Sir Robert Peel, Sir Edward …...Kent and Sussex Weald in early November...

Rural History (2004) 15, 2, 127–148. C© 2004 Cambridge University Press 127DOI: 10.1017/S0956793304001207 Printed in the United Kingdom

‘Policy on the Hoof’: Sir Robert Peel,Sir Edward Knatchbull and the Trial ofthe Elham Machine Breakers, 18301

C A R L J . G R I F F I NSchool of Geography, University of Southampton, Highfield,Southampton, S017 1BJ

Abstract On 22nd October 1830 Sir Edward Knatchbull passed sentence on sevenmen for threshing-machine breaking in the Elham Valley area of East Kent. Thefour day sentence enraged both local farmers and Home Secretary Peel alike, andwas seized upon by other labourers and artisans hostile to threshing-machineswho believed that Knatchbull had legitimised such acts of rural Luddism. Thetrial sparked an intensification of ‘Swing’ in East Kent and for the first time actsof overt protest beyond. Knatchbull, upon being pressed by George Maule, theTreasury Solicitor, admitted that the sentences could not have been otherwiseunder circumstances he was not at liberty to disclose. This paper examines thesecircumstances and uncovers a bizarre chain of events which shed new light on boththe genesis of ‘Swing’ and also upon local-central government relations regardingpolicy implementation and creation.

On 28th August 1830 a threshing-machine was destroyed at Lower Hardres, nearCanterbury in East Kent, by a small gang of labourers from the nearby villages of Elham,Lyminge and Stelling. This act, according to Hobsbawm and Rude’s Captain Swing, theirseminal study of the ‘Swing Riots’, was the first to bear the hallmark of ‘Swing’.2 Althoughthey acknowledged the spate of incendiary fires in the Sevenoaks and Orpington area ofnorth-west Kent in the mid-summer of 1830, they concurred that it was the destructionof threshing-machines in the Elham Valley area of East Kent that was ‘the characteristicfeature of the labourers’ movement of 1830’.3 Recent revisionist work has shown that theactivities of the East Kent machine-breakers both commenced earlier, the first machinewas broken on 24th August at Barham, not at Lower Hardres four days later as wasstated in Captain Swing, and were more concerted than previously believed.4 It was notuntil 22nd October that the first machine-breakers were brought to trial, at the East KentMichaelmas Quarter Sessions at St. Augustines, Canterbury. Sir Edward Knatchbull,the local Tory MP, an active magistrate and estate owner at Mersham, near Ashford, wasthe long-standing chairman of the Sessions. The seven men tried that day on charges ofbreaking various threshing-machines in and around the Elham Valley were sentenced tofour days imprisonment in Canterbury gaol, rather than the maximum sentence of sevenyears transportation.5 The events of that day, rather than stopping the actions of an active

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gang, which, in the short term, it succeeded in doing, seemed to legitimise the actionsof the machine-breakers; over the next week a further eighteen threshing-machines weredestroyed in East Kent alone and there was the appearance for the first time of mass-mobilisations in the Weald.6 To Hobsbawm and Rude, it was a lack of ‘means’ on behalfof the government, and want of ‘means or the will’ amongst the farmers and justices, inthe period between the outbreak of disturbance and the trial, that led to the ‘unparalleledlenity’ of Knatchbull’s sentences.7

The analysis in Captain Swing promoted the thesis that, despite Tory Home SecretaryPeel’s apparent disgust at Knatchbull’s sentencing, it was the outbreak of ‘riots’ in theKent and Sussex Weald in early November that provoked Peel into taking ‘any positiveaction’, rather than the trial itself.8 But even then it was not until the election of LordGrey’s Whig government, and the installation of Lord Melbourne as Home Secretaryon 23rd November, that the government resolutely intervened in the suppression of thedisturbances.9

This paper supports Roger Wells’ thesis that ‘no fundamental policy change derivedfrom Grey’s ministry’s replacement of Wellington’s’.10 However, this paper also contendsthat it was the trial itself and the intensification of machine-breaking in the Winghamarea, from the 23rd October, the day after the trial of the Elham men, that heralded amuch stronger government response to Swing, not the later ‘risings’ in the Weald, letalone the installation of Melbourne as Home Secretary. Peel’s resolve was stiffened inresponse to the events of the few days after the trial; his interventionism was intensifiedand his advice became more severe. Despite the importance of the events leading up tothis trial and the interplay between the local and national judiciary in the suppressionof Swing in its birthplace, they have not provoked much recent academic work. Manygeneralisations still exist. Indeed, despite the fact that Hobsbawm and Rude’s CaptainSwing was first published over thirty years ago, only Wells has seriously challenged theirinterpretations of local and central government’s initial response to Swing.11

This paper, by combining Knatchbull’s previously under-utilised correspondence withboth the Home Office and various members of the judiciary in Kent, as well as his noteson local Swing incidents, with other correspondence, newspaper reports, parliamentarydebates and depositions, offers for the first time an explanation of the motives behindKnatchbull’s infamously ‘lenient’ sentences.12 Between the time of the first Swing trialand the installation of Melbourne as Home Secretary a full month elapsed. During thistime in East Kent alone, at least sixty-five Swing incidents occurred, including twenty-four cases of arson, and Swing, for the first time, spread not only beyond Kent butalso beyond the south-east and into the Home Counties.13 Indeed, by mid-NovemberSwing had already reached its peak. It was not only the farmers of East Kent, who werequick to point the finger at Knatchbull, but also members of the wider ruling classesthroughout England, who complained about the effect of the lenient sentences. Some ofthese complainants addressed their critiques directly to Knatchbull but most made theirfeelings known in letters to either Peel or Phillips, the Permanent Under-Secretary at theHome Office.14

The second part of this paper goes on to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy that itwas the election of Lord Grey’s Whig government and the subsequent appointment of

The Trial of the Elham Machine Breakers, 1830 129

Melbourne as Peel’s successor that led to a more hard-line and hands-on approach by theGovernment. Wellington’s Government was already active in the suppression of Swingbefore the first trial. Peel sanctioned the sending of George Leadbitter, an experiencedBow Street detective and also, as Roger Wells’ has emphasised, approved the dispatch ofGeorge Maule, the Treasury Solicitor, to Kent as early as four days after the trial. Thisintervention by central government extended beyond a detective capacity to advisingnot only on a plan of action necessary to arrest those involved in machine-breaking butalso on how to apply the law. This intervention was intensified after the trial, with Peelbecoming increasingly irritated at the leniency of the magistrates in applying the lawand their ineffectiveness at bringing others to trial.15 At a meeting of Kent justices on1st November, attended by Maule, Knatchbull claimed that the sentences could not havebeen otherwise under circumstances which he was not at liberty to disclose.16 This paperseeks to shed light on Knatchbull’s enigmatic behaviour through the unravelling of a seriesof complex events in and around the Elham area. What follows is an attempt to reconstructthe complex interaction between the law and its enforcement in the suppression of Swing.Such an approach necessarily places a great deal of importance, upon events at the locallevel, mirroring the key belief of the Italian proponents of ‘microhistory’, that by reducingthe scale of historical research it is possible ‘to isolate and test the many abstractions ofsocial thought’.17 It is important therefore to embed the empirical body of this paperwithin, firstly, a deliberation upon the ways in which power and control, or lack of it, areconstructed and negotiated between different spatial scales, especially as regards protestand resistance, and, secondly, a consideration of the usefulness of the microhistory modelto the study of rural England.

Constituting the Law: The New Spaces of Social History

1. Negotiating Power and ControlEnglish provincial government in late Hanoverian England retained a vitality rooted instrongly articulated regional identities. Despite the centralising agenda of Westminster,government policy was interpreted, implemented and evolved in the meetings of quartersessions, the dominant element in English local government, vestries and other localinstitutions of provincial governance.18 Indeed, as David Eastwood has pointed out,the ‘transformation of institutions and political culture of rural England’ should not beseen ‘as a necessary consequence of the modernization of the English state but rather asa particular consequence of a specific history of state modernization’.19 However, as weshall see, the regional strength of government generated a tension in local-centre relations,as exemplified by Peel’s apparent dismay at Knatchbull’s sentences.20

Despite this obvious and important tension, the local-centre, or even local-regional,relationship has not figured highly in past protest work. Hobsbawm and Rude’s CaptainSwing, so important in shaping the agenda and form of protest studies in the past thirtyyears, contained a brief chapter entitled ‘Repression’, which offered little more than acommentary on the various Swing trials. Other than commenting on Peel’s disdain ofKnatchbull’s actions and Melbourne’s dismay at local magistrates who capitulated to

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the ‘mob’s’ demands, there is no sense that the actions of both the local authoritiesand central government were in any sense the product of a negotiation between thetwo, let alone anything more than merely fixed responses to events, a kind of black boxmodel of policy implementation.21 It was not until E. P. Thompson’s article on ‘TheMoral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century’ that the importanceof local policy implementation, and formation, was holistically tackled. Thompson putforward the idea that the ‘moral economy’ of the crowd was managed and containedby a ‘theatre of concession and regulation’,22 an interaction between the necessaryand contingent local measures by magistrates and urban administrators and centralgovernment frameworks. These were all, as Douglas Hay has stated, articulated withinthe confines of the already sophisticated debate between holders of political economydoctrines and the more paternally minded.23 In Thompson’s review of the post-‘moraleconomy’ literature, he forcefully rounded on his critics, who misunderstood the purposeof his original thesis with their claims that it ‘tells us virtually nothing about why someplaces were almost perennially subject to disturbances whilst others remained almostcompletely undisturbed’.24

In the same way the response of the local ruling orders was not dependent on thestrict enforcement of a pre-determined policy from the centre. Dependence on centralgovernment policy, Vogler believes, did not occur until the late 1940s.25 The policies ofthe local forces of law and order, whilst loosely framed in the context of the law, werenot pre-determined. They were dependent on the local contingencies, which providedthe context of the events, personalities and the often odd juxtapositions created by theunfolding of events. However, this is not to say, as Charlesworth has stated, that theexperience of events elsewhere, especially within the region, did not have any impact uponthe unravelling of the event at the level of the locale, where events actually occurred.26

Indeed, the complex interplay between opposing groups and ‘authority’ in such overtoutbreaks can produce seemingly odd alliances and fissures.27 For instance, a crowd’sresponse to dearth could find support from urban authorities unconvinced that it wasscarcity alone that had precipitated acute shortages of grain.28 In the context of Swing,Randall and Newman have also shown that the genesis of the reaction of the authorities inWiltshire to the disturbances is hard to delineate. Comparing the Wiltshire magistraciesactions in 1830 to those of their eighteenth-century counterparts dealing with food riots,Randall and Newman concluded that ‘it is hard distinguish between belief and expediencyas motives of magisterial action.’29

2. Microhistories and ProtestCobb’s otherwise flattering review of Captain Swing highlighted what he saw as the needto locate the various incidents that occurred during Swing into the close context of thecommunities in which their multifarious perpetrators lived. Cobb’s cry (‘and now tothe study of Lower Hardres’) has been quoted so often that it has assumed an almostmantra like quality.30 Charlesworth, in his sophisticated mapping of Hobsbawm andRude’s logging of Swing incidents, claimed that it was not Lower Hardres that neededintensive study but the supposedly radically motivated Brede in East Sussex, as well


as other Swing centres on the London highway. The ascendancy of the ‘locale thesis’was heightened yet further by the so-called Wells-Charlesworth debate, which centredaround Wells’ controversial claim that for the rural poor the process of ‘becoming’ aproletariat was fiercely articulated in the shift from overt crowd intervention, within theframework of the ‘moral economy’, to the covert tactics of arson and threatening letters,amongst other forms. Wells’ paper prompted a plethora of responses but the debate,unsurprisingly, remained unresolved.31 One thing that was agreed upon however was theneed for what Reay sees as ‘more locally based studies of everyday life’.32

Similar calls were made by Wrightson and Charlesworth on the launch of RuralHistory. They located the problems that faced rural history and labelled them as aform of academic ‘enclosure’: an increasing move by individual historians to becomehedged into specific, and often narrow, time periods, and a withdrawal to increasinglyisolated sub-disciplines. Charlesworth further developed Wrightson’s ideas with specificreference to protest studies, especially highlighting the need to embed local and nationaladministrative history within the local contexts in which they actually operated and gaveshape to local events. Such calls have been heeded and indeed there has been a flood ofsmall area studies. Some of these studies have concentrated on specific aspects of socialchange using small areas to highlight particular trends, direct responses to Wrightson’shope of ‘understanding ourselves in time’,33 whilst others have been more obviouslyinfluenced by the work of Carlo Ginzburg and his fellow microhistorians.34

Whilst the microhistory approach also has a clear resonance with post-Thompsonianprotest and labour studies in its stated belief that the present has no real and tangiblelink to past agencies, the approach has some limitations. Whilst some locales are richlyserved in the archive, others are not. Indeed, ‘microhistory’ (as opposed to a more general,less spatially conceptual ‘local history’) developed in Italy, and not elsewhere, preciselybecause of the wealth of the archival resources there: the result of a bureaucracy thatinterrogated its people, and recorded the results, more intensively than England.35 Mostarchival traces show not the everyday but those moments where, for whatever reasons,the life paths of the rural poor crossed with those of the bourgeoisie and elites: eitherat birth, marriage, death; in census enumerators’ returns; as paupers; or as criminals.Despite these problems such an approach is still important. Such brief encounters canreveal, with a little imagination, the complexity of the lives of these ‘lost peoples’ throughoccasionally highlighting their attitudes and beliefs.36 The next section of this papershows how important the non-everyday can be in, after Bourdieu, altering the ‘durabledispositions’ that generate and structure social practices.37

Section 1: The Canterbury Trial

IDespite serving as a minister in Peel’s later administration, Sir Edward Knatchbull’smoment of notoriety was when, on the 22nd October, in his capacity of chairman ofthe East Kent Quarter Sessions, he handed down the supposedly ‘lenient’ sentences tothe seven Elham men.38 It was this infamous trial that sparked a wave of anger and

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contempt amongst both farmers within his constituency and those further afield. Wereit not for Knatchbull’s sentencing and its subsequent repercussions, the actions of theElham machine-breakers would have been largely forgotten. Subsequent retrospectivesof these events serve to prove, by inference, the importance attached to the Canterburytrial.

One such retrospective appeared in The Spectator. This investigation lookedspecifically into the reasons that sparked off the initial wave of machine-breaking inElham, and uncovered a public dispute between the ‘most influential’ local farmers andanother farmer who had introduced a threshing-machine. The hostile farmers were alsosupported by a local magistrate, Reverend Price, the Lyminge vicar. This open hostilityof many farmers led local labourers and artisans to believe, claimed The Spectator, thatthe destruction of the machines was a ‘meritorious act, and, relying on the opinion oftheir betters, a judicious act’.39 Indeed the majority of the Barham vestry, who hadearlier in the year decided to terminate the employment of non-parishioners, decidedthat threshing-machines should be put out of use in the parish. Despite this some of thefarmers persisted in their use.40 Reverend Price had also been active before and duringthe harvest in attempting to convince the farmers not to mow their wheat, as it was cruelto deprive the poor of gleaning, and presumably also to reduce the amount of labouringhours required by sickles as opposed to scythes. For those farmers who did mow, Priceclaimed a tithe on the ‘rakings’ and distributed it to the poor, an action that later madethe farmers comment that Price did not view the proceedings with the same horror asthey did.41

Despite the fact that some farmers had encouraged labourers to break the machinesby resort to bribes of various sorts, one offering a pound for the first machine destroyedand another a barrel of ale when all the machines were broken, labourers had neededlittle encouragement.42 All the machine-breaking episodes of the ‘gang’ were conductedat night, and at least occasionally some of the men involved had blackened faces. Whilstthis was possibly to subsume individual identities into the collective act, an air of generalsecrecy existed in the reported conversations between the ‘gang’ and farmers; quite clearlythose engaged in machine-breaking had something to hide.43

IIThe first documented involvement of the forces of law and order came when, on Monday30th August, William Dodd, a substantial farmer at Upper Hardres, laid an officialinformation before Richard Halford and General Mulcaster, two East Kent magistrates.Dodd stated that a ‘riotous and tumultuous assembly’ of one hundred people hadalready destroyed four threshing-machines within his locality, and that he hoped thejustices would take such steps as necessary to protect his property. Acting on thisinformation, Halford and General Mulcaster, accompanied by some specifically swornspecial constables, proceeded to the Hardres Court farm of Dodd. Despite waiting onthe premises for ‘some hours’ nothing occurred, consequently the party returned home.Dodd however believed that an attack was still likely, and in fear that a civil power wouldnot be strong enough against the machine-breakers, called for the 7th Dragoons to follow


the magistrates from Canterbury. On their arrival the thirty dragoons were placed atthe rear of the farm and were to appear on being given a signal if the civil powers wereoverwhelmed. Nothing transpired.44 Despite not yet actually having encountered themachine-breakers, it is instructive that Dodd labelled them as ‘riotous’, whereas in alltheir machining-breaking episodes the group were well disciplined and never threatenedtumult.45 This involvement of the military at Hardres also resulted in the first report inthe local press of the machine-breaking incidents that had been going on in the Elhamarea for over a week.46

From the correspondence of Reverend Price and a Quarter Sessions deposition it isapparent that George Leadbitter, a member of the Bow Street Police, was sent to Elhamto investigate. There remains no record of Knatchbull calling for the assistance of a policeofficer; a document that would be filed in either the ‘Domestic Correspondence’ or the‘County Correspondence’ files of the Home Office. However one anonymous informerfrom Paddlesworth, bordering Lyminge, claimed that the area was in anarchy as the smallfarmers were active in the machine-breaking gangs, and that as the local magistrates wereineffectual Peel should send down a London police officer to reassert order. There isno record, in either the Home Office files or the personal correspondence of Peel, thatKnatchbull requested the assistance of a member of the London police. Furthermore,there is no record of George Leadbitter being in the employ of the Bow Street office untilthe following year.47 Knatchbull was a tireless magistrate and an old-fashioned agricul-tural Tory opposed to police reform. It is quite unlikely that he would have instigated thecall for outside assistance within his magisterial jurisdiction. Indeed it is instructive thatin all of his correspondence Knatchbull never directly or indirectly mentions Leadbitter,although, conversely, this means that he did not express any irritation at his involvement.Knatchbull’s role, it seems, was to coordinate the actions of the local magistrates in thedetection and committal of those who had already carried out criminal acts. As chair ofthe East Kent Sessions and East Kent MP, Knatchbull had an important and symbolicresponsibility to his electorate, to other local magistrates and to those in the Home Office.

As Leadbitter was in Elham before the first trial we cannot attribute his role in Elhamas a response by Peel to Knatchbull’s ‘unparalleled lenity’. Leadbitter’s role, it seems,was as a general go-between. He was used, by Reverend Price, to take the charged tothe gaol at Canterbury – presumably under the belief that the parish constable alonewould be too inefficient and somewhat susceptible to pressure from the comrades ofthose charged to carry out this duty. He also offered advice to the magistrates, somethingPrice was only too happy to call upon, although he had ‘not the slightest clue to theproceedings’.48 A few days after the trial Knatchbull reported to Peel that ‘strangers’were active in the county, exciting ‘the people’. He suggested that, in all probability, withcriticism of his sentencing in mind, it was ‘extremely probable that intelligent officersstation’d as required, may render much service to the (my emphasis) Magistrates’.49

Knatchbull presumably thought that magistrates other than himself should have suchoutside assistance if they so desired.

However, it was Reverend Bramall, the Elham vicar, whose detective work made thedecisive breakthrough in apprehending the machine-breakers. Without being prompted,Bramall decided that it was his pastoral role to attempt to convince the men to surrender

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voluntarily. Indeed he had considerable success with fifty men coming forward. Manyof the men had been press-ganged into taking part in the machine-breaking episodes.Some had been bribed beyond resistance with beer. Others had been genuinely underthe impression that it was not illegal to break threshing-machines. When told by Bramallthat it was an offence punishable by law they were persuaded that it would lessen theirchances of conviction if they confessed.50

At a meeting of East Kent magistrates, called to discuss the actions that should betaken to bring the machine-breakers to trial, held in Canterbury on 25th September, thegathered justices decided to raise a subscription to offer a reward of £500 for sufficientevidence to convict the ringleaders in court. Knatchbull believed that this approach wasvital as ‘in cases like the present people were afraid to say what they know, and thismoney would be used to induce them to give the necessary information’. On the sameday the ‘Farmers of East Kent’ met at the Rose Inn, Canterbury. This meeting was alsoattended by Knatchbull who, with quite ironic foresight, stated his belief that ‘the lawsof our country ought not to be violated in this disgraceful manner . . . an end should bebrought to these unlawful proceedings, or they might lead to more serious results’. Thechairman was Edward Hughes of Smeeth who had already lost his threshing-machine tothe exertions of the men from Elham. Hughes, obviously still smarting from the attack,proffered his opinion that if ‘the Magistrates . . . had not taken those early steps whichthey might have . . . they had certainly now come forward with great energy’. Hughes alsoclaimed that the men were planning to attack the clergy next and that mob law ‘shouldtake precedence of all others’.51

In the last week of September some of those who had been on the machine-breakingepisodes, most notably Jack Spicer,52 gave statements about the group’s actions, eventhough the men had made a pact ‘that if any constable came to take any of them theothers were to rescue them’ and that if any of them gave evidence against them ‘theothers would kill them’.53 Reverend Price, spurred on by a comment from the farmersthat he did not view the events with the same horror, attended a second meeting ofthe farmers to show that he too would not tolerate such actions. Indeed, with somedepositions taken, Reverend Price had enough information to start proceedings againstthe supposed ringleaders. On the morning of 27th September the constables, presumablyincluding Leadbitter, caught Edward Read, one of the ‘Head Men’, and later that eveningPrice arrested Ingram Swaine, the supposed lead figure, but did not manage to captureSwaine’s co-resident William Spicer who fled the house. Over the next few days the otherringleaders were also captured and the recognisances of thirty-seven men were taken toappear at the next Kent Assizes, if they were called.54 It had taken over a month since thedestruction of the first threshing-machine to make the arrests.

Phillips wrote on behalf of Peel, presumably with the knowledge that some men hadcome forward, to Knatchbull on 2nd October to approve of the actions of the magistrates,despite his belief that rewards were ineffective.55 Peel also tempered Bramall’s Christianactions with clear formal legal advice: ‘He [Peel] feels confident that the Magistracy willtake as much care as possible in discharging persons, who may voluntarily surrender,on their own Recognizances’ and that these recognisances would probably be forfeitedalthough the ringleaders had to be made an example of.56


However, the men, it appears, were outraged at Price’s zealous actions. Hughes’prediction turned out to be correct. As the machine-breakers were partly inspired to taketheir line of action after Price’s earlier negative comments on threshing-machines, and hissupport of their cause in the gleaning dispute, they viewed his role in their capture andarrest as a betrayal. Price had received intelligence in the afternoon of Monday 4th Octoberthat he may expect ‘a Body of the rioters to wait on me (and to come and buy Sherry!)to ascertain whether the machines shall be put down, if they will surrender themselves,and return, like Good Boys to their Duty’. Price contacted Knatchbull that evening as hewas unsure as to what his line of conduct should be. Price believed that he should make‘no concession – no compromise of course’, but could not see what option he had but togive the labourers an affirmative answer. Price assumed that Knatchbull would informhim what action to take. In the event he did not have enough time. On the following dayhis barn, full of wheat and barley, and eight stacks were reduced to ashes.57

The alarm had been given at about 10 pm, but as the farm premises were locatedin a hollow some way from the main village, the fire had been blazing for some timebefore the call was made. James Fowley had been digging potatoes in a field in view ofPrice’s farm. Twenty minutes before he left work he saw, first, a women with a child ona donkey cart, followed a few moments later by a couple with two children. Just beforehalf past six he left the field. When he passed again at 6.45 pm the barn still had not beensubsumed by flames. Price’s bailiff, John Wakefield, saw the fire for the first time at about10.15 pm.

Edward Gower was also in the employ of Reverend Price and had been on at least oneof the machine-breaking episodes. Gower had left the barn at 6 pm, and passed it againat 6.30 pm when he saw Fowley at work in the field. When he arrived at the blazing barnlater that evening he met John Carvill who told him that he had run out of the fire withhis clothes off and then put them on. Gower later convinced himself that it was Carvillwho had set fire to Price’s barn.58 The next day Carvill refused to swear on oath claiminghis word was as good as his oath, which as he had already sworn once he would neverswear again. He claimed that he left the Poor House in Lyminge just after the clock struckseven and went directly to Price’s barn and stack-yard, upon which he crept into one ofthe lodges in the yard and fell asleep at about 7.15 pm. At that time there was no fire.After a ‘while’ he was woken suddenly by a ‘roaring’ noise, which he ascertained wasfrom a fire. So alarmed was Carvill that he grabbed his clothes and ran out of the yarddressing himself as he left. On leaving he met Gower coming from the Bean field with‘many others’ close behind him.59

Price had paid the price for his inconsistency and had forced Knatchbull to contactPeel to explain the cause of events. Knatchbull’s letter gives us the clearest statementof his policy in dealing with the machine-breakers. He and Price had been ‘adoptingand enforcing such measures as he considered most likely to restore the Peace’. Hefurther explained that the fire that had caused Price’s misery was the result of his rolein apprehending the machine-breakers. However he also claimed that the root of theproblem was the fact that the farmers were very short of money and consequently couldnot employ enough labourers and pay those they did employ properly, ‘they would ratherdo anything than encounter such a winter as the last’.60 Peel responded with an offer of a

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reward of £100 to capture the incendiarist, an offer, he was at pains to mention to avoidsetting precedence, made only because the afflicted party was a county magistrate.61

The events at Price’s farm sent his Elham counterpart, Reverend Bramall, into a panic.Bramall wrote to Price on 6th October fearing a similar reprisal:

From what Mr. Pitlock informs me, I apprehend very effectual means are about being adoptedagainst some of my parishioners who thro’ my exertions have surrendered themselves to your menas persons concerned in breaking the threshing-machines – should such be the resolution of theGentlemen met at your house, I beg to suggest to their consideration, whether I ought not at thesame time to be arrested (or at least allowed to remove out of the neighbourhood for a season) [thiscrossed out] I need not explain my motive for offering this advice I am a husband, the father of alarge family with the children of others under my roof. I may have acted indiscreetly in what I havedone but I took no step without seeking that aid which a Christian ministry is bound to ask for inthe hour of peril and difficulty.

P.S. I have shown the foregoing to Mrs. Brammall who advises me to explain more fully my motivefor writing to you – It is then no other than a persuasion that my life is in jeopardy if the partiesalluded to should be arrested.62

C. H. Hallett also wrote to Knatchbull with a concern for Bramall’s well-being. TheElham vicar, confiding in Hallett, confessed that he feared the men who had volunteeredthemselves to him would now think that he had entrapped them. He was, however,convinced that from their conduct since coming forward they would be more likely tohelp in the discovery of the incendiarist than instigate such an act.63

IIIBy the time of the first trial Knatchbull’s hands were effectively tied. One fellow magistratehad become a victim of his own inconsistencies, and the man chiefly responsible for thesurrender of the machine-breakers had put his own Christian faith before the law and inso doing had exposed himself to the vagaries of the law of the land, and rendered himselfunable to perform his pastoral duties through fear of reprisals. One can only ponder thatKnatchbull too was living in fear of a covert attack for his part in the proceedings. Menfrom his parish of Mersham had been identified as active in the destruction of Hughes’machine at Brabourne and six of his parishioners had written to him in fear asking himto swear in special constables.64

The seven men from Elham and Lyminge taken into detention by Price, with helpfrom Bramall and Leadbitter, had already spent over three weeks in the Canterburygaol before their trial. In Elham the families of Henry and Edward Read, as well asIngram Swaine were receiving relief from the parish.65 Bramall took the opportunity ofa scheduled meeting of the Elham vestry to increase his credentials with his flock, andhis safety, by inviting either Price or another member of the Lyminge vestry to discussthe ‘poor men currently in Canterbury gaol’. Symbolically this appeal was made on theday before the trial. No response was received but presumably Reverend Bramall hadimproved the chances of not being the next victim of a vengeful incendiarist.66

At the Quarter Sessions both Price and Lord Camden, the Lord Lieutenant of Kent,were present along with at least twenty-two other magistrates for East Kent. Knatchbull


in the customary preamble to the Grand Jury made the astonishing confession that he didnot understand the nature of the evidence in support of the charges for he had not hadenough time to read the lengthy depositions, although he stated that, by way of a deterrent,anyone who was with machine-breakers at the time, even if they were not one of the actualdestroyers, was guilty of aiding and abetting. If the evidence was satisfactory, Knatchbullreminded the Grand Jury, they must find them guilty. Most unusually, none of theevidence had come from the victims of the ‘crimes’. Much relied on the admissibilityof two accomplices who had turned King’s evidence against their fellow accused.Mr. Pollock, the counsel for the prosecution, called up the two ‘approvers’ before theGrand Jury on the bills brought before them. The Jury found the bills true, in otherwords they accepted the evidence as admissible for the charges brought and returnedto the courtroom. William Spicer was the first of the men before the court. He pleadedguilty for being present though not for breaking the machine. Knatchbull approved ofthe plea and advised Spicer not to retract it. All the other men followed Spicer withthe exception of David Arnold who pleaded not guilty to both charges, but admittedhis guilt to a similar offence. As all the men, bar Arnold, had admitted their guilt inbeing present, Pollock decided he would not trouble the court with the evidence, thusbizarrely acquitting Arnold despite admitting his guilt to a non-indicted offence. Themagistrates then retired for a short time before the ‘prisoners’ were brought to the barto hear their sentences. That the men had acted ‘under ill and dangerous advice, andupon mistaken notions of your interest and welfare’ were not mitigating circumstances,according to Knatchbull, but because so many of their fellow villagers had also comeforward to admit their also being present he could not sentence them to the maximumseven years transportation. Instead they were each to be gaoled for four days withouthard labour. Any future machine-breakers would, however, if found guilty, feel the fullforce of the law.67

The day after the trial a further five machines were broken in East Kent, but moreworryingly on the night of the trial a threshing-machine was destroyed at Hartlip in WestKent. Some of the group who broke the machine had blackened their faces and were armedwith guns and pistols. Moreover, the magistrate Reverend Poore informed Peel that therewas a regular ‘intercourse with those concerned in breaking the machines (& and I fearthe Incendiaries) at the two extremities of the county, as they in this neighbourhood havebeen heard to say, they could obtain the assistance of one Hundred men from either orboth parts whenever required’.68 One of the ‘original’ farmers to have his machine brokenwrote in disgust to Knatchbull convinced that the sentence had encouraged others: ‘Thesubsequent outrages, bear out [my] arguments . . . temporizing with anarchists seldomsucceeds; as a seditious and revolutionary spirit pervades the county nothing less than theextreme rigors of the law, will preserve social order’.69 Peel’s tone had drastically changedwhen he wrote to Camden three days after the trial: ‘I should have thought a severeexample in the case of Destruction of farming property would have had a much greatereffect – than the unparalleled lenity shown to the Destroyers of Thrashing Machines.’70

On 25th November a special Quarter Sessions was held at Canterbury to try the latestwave of machine-breakers. Knatchbull held true to his word and sentenced four of thoseconvicted to seven years transportation ‘beyond the seas’.71

138 Carl J. Griffin

Section 2: The Response of PeelThe destruction of threshing-machines by the Elham men was of unparalleled intensityin comparison to any other gang in English history, and, as such, with no case in point,the interpretation of the law posed potential problems. The law did not specifically dealwith the destruction of new forms of machinery, so that other statutes dealing with thedestruction of property provided the judicial framework. However, despite the fact thateach Quarter Sessions and every Assize was left to its own judgement in interpretingActs of Parliament and ‘turning general principles into practical day to day policies’,72

there has been too much emphasis on the ‘hands off’ role of the Tory government.73 SirRobert Peel, either directly or through Under-Secretary Phillips, kept up a constant trainof correspondence with local magistrates, a ministerial tool which he used to attempt tomanipulate the application of the law.

Despite this, Peel knew well the importance of following protocol in such matters. Hisnetwork of county and city magistrates was in most cases the only sources of informationhe had about events in the provinces. Both he and Melbourne were most reluctant to makeuse of spies, and were careful not to stir the sensibilities and even vanities of magistrates:

If I originated utterance with the ordinary executions of the local magistrates or did anything – butprofess a readiness to attend to any suggestion that they offered me – I might be counteracting themundesignedly – and certainly think I should incur the Risk of offending some [original emphasis].74

Peel knew that others would be less offended with his original utterances. Even beforethe trial his intervention was striking. He corresponded regularly with Knatchbull andLord Camden on an official Home Office basis rather than a personal level, until the Torygovernment was replaced in the day-to-day running of government departments by thenew Whig administration. This correspondence was not however entered in the officialHome Office Disturbances Entry Book until 26th October, i.e. after the trial. Quite whyPeel thought it wise to keep the record of the initial Swing activities out of the officialrecords is not clear. Perhaps he believed that the first events in East Kent did not warrantthe label of ‘disturbance’. Indeed throughout the 1820s the entry book was used only torecord cases of seditious activity, attacks on local officials or riot.75

Peel’s correspondence with Lord Camden in the few days before the trial, shows hisdeft touch. On 16th October Peel responded to Camden’s report of incendiary fires inKent by consoling him with the empathetic lament that he well knew ‘the difficulty oftaking effectual Precaution against the malignant designs of the incendiary’, and that inhis experience ‘Local vigilance is the best Remedy’, but ‘yet even that may be defeated’.This did not stop Peel from soliciting from Camden a response as to what he wanted theGovernment to do: ‘if they [the local magistrates] can point out . . . any mode in which theassistance of the Government can be useful – I shall have every duty to attend to thesesuggestions’. Government could not take a pro-active role in the physical suppressionof events, rather it had to wait until the local magistracy applied for help. Until thatmoment Peel’s hands were effectively tied, something he set out in his subsequent letterto Camden, ‘How can I commence “a system of cooperation” with the local authorities – theywho have local knowledge – local experience [to] point out to me what way I can assist


them? This is the uniform course in other Counties’ (original emphasis).76 Camden’sinitial response was to ask for a reward to help in the capture of the incendiaries, as hadbeen offered previously in the case of Reverend Price’s fire. Peel however followed whathe saw as ‘the invariable practice of the Home Department even in the worst of times’by declining a reward, pedantically stating that ‘the Principle is of more importance’. Heeven went so far as to state that he believed large rewards spurred the devious to raise firesso that they could claim the reward. He would, however, offer a pardon to any accompliceoffering enough evidence to convict the culprit, and would send extra troops (over andabove those normally barracked at Canterbury) in addition to the police officers alreadysent to ‘assist the magistracy’.77 The offer of additional troops suggests that Peel reallythought that the local magistrates had started to lose control. As late as 22nd SeptemberCharles Sandys, clerk to the Canterbury bench of magistrates, wrote to Peel claiming thatthe Magistrates were finding it very hard to procure any evidence against the machine-breakers and would therefore ‘be happy to receive any communication or advice whichyou may think proper to offer them’.78

Peel had already been warned about the actions of the justices in East Kent. A ‘Kentishfarmer’ from Swingfield Minnis, between Elham and Folkestone, had written to him on13th September, despairing over the path taken by Reverend Price and Mr. Deedes,a magistrate who lived at nearby Saltwood.79 The farmer stated that the men had been‘going more than a month’ and therefore was ‘greatly surprised our County Justices . . . donot put a stop to it’, especially as, he claimed, it was common knowledge in the area that‘they mean to pull down soon the Union Workhouse at Elham’. This was evidence thatwhat had so far, on the surface at least, been a form of rural Luddism, was germinating intopoliticised rural insurrection. Presumably with Price’s previously reported interventionsin mind, the farmer put forward the conspiracy theory that the neglect of the justiceswas ‘Designedly done’, with Reverend Price and Mr. Honywood, the late County MP,resident at nearby Elmstead, encouraging them on.80 Edward Hughes, one of the largestand most influential farmers in East Kent, two days before he shared the platform withKnatchbull in Canterbury, offered his opinion to the Home Office that ‘no less than20 persons have suffered’ at the hands of the machine-breakers due to the ‘inefficiency ofthe local authorities to keep order and Property inviolate’.81

Peel well knew that the trial of the Elham men was scheduled. He had not only beeninformed that the recogisances of thirty seven men had been taken but also that eightElham men had been apprehended. Peel had also written to Camden on 16th Octoberthanking him for his ‘impending visit to the sessions’.82 No doubt believing that the trialwould put a stop to the machine-breaking, Peel’s letter to Camden on 22nd October madeno mention of the Canterbury trial. His thoughts had now shifted to what he saw as the‘mystery of the fires’. Peel believed that in order to unravel the ‘mystery’ there shouldbe ‘a concert and unity of action’, to which end he sent down a London police officer toassist the local judiciary. Camden in fact had appealed for the assistance of an officer inSevenoaks three days earlier.83 Camden, stationed at Canterbury where he had earlier inthe day attended the trial, also wrote to Peel on 22nd October to inform him that not onlyhad three fires occurred in Kent on the night before the trial, but also rather disparagingly

140 Carl J. Griffin

that: ‘They [the Elham machine-breakers] were sentenced to a confinement in the Gaol for3 Days!’ (original emphasis).84 Unsurprisingly by the time of his next letter to Camden,on 25th October, Peel’s tone had drastically changed: ‘I should have thought a severeexample in the case of Destruction of farming Property would have had a much greatereffect – than the unparalleled lenity shown to the Destroyers of Thrashing Machines’.Peel’s thoughts were now again focused on rural machine-breaking.85

It was not only Peel who was quick to put the blame on Knatchbull for the post-trialre-intensification of Swing. George Gipps, a large farmer at Bekesbourne, related theapparently widespread dissatisfaction of local farmers with the sentences, claiming that ithad led to ‘mighty alarm and destruction of property’.86 Sir Henry Montresor, who hadalready lost his threshing machine at the hands of the Elham gang, philosophised that: ‘thesubsequent outrages bear out . . . [my] arguments . . . [that] temporising with anarchistsseldom succeeds; as a seditious and revolutionary spirit pervades the country nothingless than the extreme rigors of the law, will preserve social order’.87 The commentsof Mary Tylden, writing to Knatchbull about the disturbances at Frinsted, were themost severe: ‘Why is Justice asleep and afraid to show itself?’88 Richard Davenport, ofSalehurst, East Sussex reasoned that the disturbances in Sussex ‘came here from Kent,like an infection’. The correspondent to the Poor Law Enquiry in 1832 from Blechingley,Surrey, believed this spread was the direct result of the actions of ‘the magistracy inthe Districts where they commenced’ who had ‘much to answer for’. The Rodmersham(West Kent) correspondent went further: they ‘were encouraged by the leniency (I hadalmost said the pusillanimity) with which the Rioters were treated by the Bench of EastKent Magistrates after they were legally convicted of the offence’.89

Peel’s direct response to the trial was twofold. First his anger was translated into action,informing Camden as early as 26th October that George Maule, the Treasury Solicitor,was to be sent to Maidstone to assist in the general communication with ‘the mostactive magistrates in the County’.90 Phillips, issuing Maule his charge, rather tellinglycommented that ‘there has been a good deal of inactivity or want of concert among theMagistracy in general’ and in consequence Peel ‘attaches the greatest importance to yourmission’.91 Maule’s mission was later extended into Sussex and, four days before Peel wasreplaced, he was to act as the prosecutor of the machine-breakers at the Maidstone WinterAssizes.92 Another direct response was Peel’s decision to summon to Whitehall the twoWingham magistrates, who had written to request the dispatch of Police Officers to helpapprehend the machine-breakers active in the area between Wingham and Sandwich.Sir Robert wished to impress on these justices the need not to relax. However, this wasin total contrast to his earlier statement: ‘How can I commence “a system of cooperation”with the local authorities – they who have local knowledge – local experience [to] pointout to me what way I can assist them?’ (original emphasis). Peel’s decision to summonlocal magistrates to the Home Office was unprecedented. However whilst this was a directgovernment intervention, it had to look as though the government was only assisting thelocal forces so as not to break the constitutional form which the Home Secretary had tooperate in.93 Almost a month later in his final days as Home Secretary, Peel was especiallycareful to counter the suggestion of a Hawkhurst magistrate that it ‘would be expedientto prosecute artisans, carpenters, tailors, bricklayers and a smuggler because they have


nothing to do with Threshing Machines’, a legally dubious suggestion and a factuallyincorrect statement: artisans and journeymen frequently had to resort to field labour.Peel wrote back that it was up to the courts to decide on the course of action.94

By 2nd November it appeared that the local authorities were in paralysis. Magistratesaround Maidstone and the Kentish Weald had been unable to swear half of thosesummoned to be sworn as special constables. In Maidstone a ‘popular’ meeting onPenenden Heath, well attended by striking journeymen paper-makers, had called for‘Reform in the Commons House of Parl. Vote by ballot or 2 years or nothing’. Themeeting also rather ominously called for ‘respect [for] the soldiers as they are friends’.At Smithfield (London), so Maule had been informed, a penny subscription had beensupposedly set up to purchase arms for the Kentish protestors. Despite drafting troopsinto mid Kent and the Weald from Chatham, Epsom and Woolwich, the military wasstill insufficient in numbers adequately to cover all areas where mass risings were nowoccurring on a daily basis. Instead, troops were being forced to shuffle from place toplace in response to events rather than as a pro-active deterrent, leading to fatigue in theirranks.95 Increasingly irritated with this inability to curb the activities of wandering gangsof labourers and journeymen in West Kent and the Weald, Peel wrote to Camden toadvise the re-establishment of the Kent Corps of Yeoman Cavalry:

I cannot but think the re-organisation would do more to check the spirit of outrage . . . than thepresence of a military force . . . it appears to be the natural and most effectual check upon theorganised mobs which . . . have been levying contributions in some parts of the County.96

When Melbourne later took over from Peel at the Home Office he applied to the‘professional soldier’, the Duke of Wellington, for advice. Wellington responded by sayingthat ‘you cannot be too cautious in issuing arms and equipment’.97 Melbourne somewhatimperiously believed that ‘justices who clamoured for the support of troops or to raise alocal militia were nuisances who deserved discouragement’, and so welcomed this advice.Consequently he advised against the formation of any further yeoman cavalries. If Peelhad ever received the same information from Wellington, his Prime Minister, he certainlyignored it. Despite this Melbourne was virtually powerless to decline offers made by LordLieutenants.98 Indeed it was after Melbourne’s appointment as Home Secretary that themajority of the new Yeoman Cavalries were raised or existing cavalries augmented.99

By mid-November not even the intervention of Maule or the promise of much toughersentences at the forthcoming East Kent Special Sessions had stopped the powerfulmomentum of Swing. The fledgling Yeoman Cavalries in Kent were running intodifficulties recruiting enough privates, in part because of the support of many small,and not so small, farmers for the labourers’ cause. Responding to a letter from Camdenasking the government not only to pay members of the Yeomanry when on duty buteffectively to give them a salary in order to encourage enlistment, Peel felt exasperatedthat he had ‘no alternative but to make the exception’.100 Advice of a similar nature wasalso given to Maule regarding the possible prosecution of Elizabeth Studham, a girl whoconfessed to firing the poor-house at Birchington in East Kent. Phillips wrote: ‘Sir R.Peel desires me to say, that you must not think of expense in considering the expediencyof prosecuting her’.101 Peel, in conjunction with Lord Hill, had also devised a plan to

142 Carl J. Griffin

‘reinforce’ the military in Kent and Sussex and to place the various troops stationed atdifferent places throughout the counties under the command of ‘a most intelligent officer’,General Dalbiac.102 Despite Melbourne’s later sly criticism of Peel’s pandering to thosemagistrates ‘who saw in every burnt hay-stack a sign of bloody revolution’ by agreeing tothe dispatch of troops, he had little alternative but to dispatch more troops than Peel everdid to quell the disturbances that were now spreading beyond the south-east to engulfthe whole of southern England.103

Ruling Rural England: Policies on the Hoof?The day after Lord Grey’s government had taken office, Melbourne issued a proclamationoffering rewards of £500 for sufficient information to convict the multifarious rioters andincendiarists. Such a reward, however, was out of tune with the reality of the occasion.Farmers who had previously either been too scared to enrol as special constables or hadactually supported the ‘mob’ were unlikely to change their minds for £500, a sum farless than the damage caused by many Swing fires. Indeed, as Wells has stated, even theHome Office admitted that the campaign against arson had been of little use despite itsconsiderable expense. Melbourne’s proclamation only really had power as a symbolicstatement, a sign that he was not going to capitulate to the rioters and incendiarists, unlikePeel. Even Melbourne’s circular two days later advising magistrates to adopt the so-called‘Sussex Plan’, a scheme set-up by the Duke of Richmond enrolling farmers, artisansand ‘respectable’ labourers alike into constabulary forces, achieved limited success as inmost of the south-east the riots had already passed, whilst elsewhere take-up was stillmodest.104 Melbourne, despite his hard-line posturing, had no more success in deterringdisturbance than did Peel. Swing, it seemed, had its own momentum. It swept across theWeald into Sussex, then into Hampshire, into Berkshire, into Wiltshire, despite variouslocal initiatives and, since the Canterbury trial, an increasingly hard line approach fromthe government. Whilst many Swing participants were caught and tried at Melbourne’sbrutally severe Special Commissions, these acted to suppress open revolt rather thanthe extensive ‘campaign’ of arson. Hobsbawm and Rude underestimated the extent andintensity of arson attacks in 1831. In Surrey arson was actually more intense in 1831 thanin the previous year.105 Policy was not only made on the hoof in response to events, butalso in response to the unexpected impact of other policies. Melbourne, just as Knatchbulland Peel before him, had become a prisoner of events.

A number of theoretical and non-theoretical conclusions can be drawn from the eventssurrounding the Canterbury Trial. Too often the nature of authority in rural Englandhas been rendered rather simplistically like a ‘rustic’ English landscape painting, inwhich the gentry (authority) and the poor rarely meet. The poor however did notsubmissively exist in the background whilst the privileged aristocracy strutted confidentlyin the foreground. Ruling rural England was a process of negotiation, not only betweencentral and local governments but also between local policy implementation and thoseupon whom such policies impacted. Those farmers who refused to be sworn as specialconstables knew that by even agreeing to be sworn their decision would have implicationsupon those in their parish. Similarly, the initial interventions of Reverend Price in a not


uncommon gleaning dispute were in stark contrast to his later incriminating remarksto the meeting of agriculturalists; every belief, every moral, every policy was playedout against a background where the labourers and artisans of the Elham area waitedupon his every public word and deed. Even the utterance of a single word could havemultiple interpretations and subsequent implications. Such was the sophistication and‘knowingness’ of many of the rural proletariat that the interpretation of not only thespoken but also the written word was open to manipulation.106 Price’s utterances and thoseof the Barham vestry were not only listened to, but were hot topics of local conversation;the words, the content, and the meanings were debated and dissected in tap-rooms andfields.

By locating Knatchbull’s sentencing decision in the context of the events in the Elhamarea, this paper shows that not only is the ‘microhistory’ approach useful in clarifying thenature of authority but it is also important in bridging the conceptual gap between purelyinstitutional and purely social histories. This approach, despite being well suited to theexplanation of particular events, and the ways in which ‘events’ can have often unexpectedand profound effects, relies heavily on the balance of possibilities against probabilities.Of course these probabilities rest heavily upon the existing historical literature in thedelineation of what was likely, what was probable, and, as such, tend to reinforce ratherthan challenge certain aspects of the way we think about plebeian attitudes and beliefs. AsE. P. Thompson suggested, acknowledging the theoretical influence of Bourdieu, withintheir lived environment ‘all parties strove to maximise their own advantages’. But withinthe same environment it was not always clear how this could be achieved. ReverendPrice’s conflicting roles demonstrate well the sheer complexities that tend to cloud suchlife stratagems. The struggle is often not so much an external one but an internal one; thestruggle over where our position within socially manifested contestations is battled out.107

Part of Keith Wrightson’s ‘incitement to riot’ was a call to examine the everyday problemswith which people constantly struggle, to ‘illuminate the landscape surrounding majorpublic events and to reassess them accordingly’, to put the public and private together.108

It is the non-everyday, as opposed to the mundane, that plays out loudest in the archive,those moments where the public and private, however uneasily, came together in waysthat were unexpected.

Notes1. My thanks go to Andrew Charlesworth and Paul Glennie for their helpful comments on

earlier drafts of this paper.2. E. Hobsbawm and G. Rude, Captain Swing (London, 1969), pp. 90, 97.3. Ibid. pp. 90–97. Indeed, Phillip Porter, a seventeen-year old wheelwright, was tried at

the Kentish Summer Assizes for setting fire to two corn stacks of Thomas Mosyer andtwo corn stacks of James Voule. Typically for cases of arson, Porter was acquitted.P[ublic]R[ecord]O[ffice] Assi[zes] 94/2066, Indictment of Phillip Porter; Rochester Gazette,21st September 1830.

4. C. Griffin, ‘“There was no law to punish that offence”; Re-Assessing ‘Captain Swing’: RuralLuddism and Rebellion in East Kent, 1830–31’, Southern History 22 (2000), 140–41, 149.

5. Kent Herald, 28th October 1830; C[entre for] K[entish] S[tudies] Q/Sbe 120, Calendar ofprisoners for trial.

144 Carl J. Griffin

6. Griffin, ‘There was no law’, 139–53; R. Wells, ‘Mr. William Cobbett, Captain Swing, andKing William IV’, Agricultural History Review 45, 1 (1997), 37–8.

7. Hobsbawm and Rude, Captain Swing, p. 253; Sir Robert Peel, Home Office, to LordCamden, 25th October 1830, CKS U840 C250 10/6.

8. Hobsbawm and Rude, Captain Swing, p. 254.9. Ibid., p. 256.

10. Wells, ‘Mr. William Cobbett’, p. 37.11. Even in Roger Wells’ recent review of the events leading up to the trial of Cobbett, the

efforts of the East Kent judiciary get relegated to a single paragraph: Ibid., p. 37. For areinterpretation of the response of the local gentry to events outside Swing’s initial theatresee: A. Randall and E. Newman, ‘Protest, Proletarians and Paternalists: Social Conflict inRural Wiltshire, 1830–1850’, Rural History 6, 2 (1995).

12. Knatchbull’s correspondence was utilised, albeit very differently, in Monju Dutt’sdoctoral thesis submitted in 1966. Curiously, whilst Hobsbawm was Dutt’s supervisor,he did not use this important source: M. Dutt, ‘The Agricultural Labourers’ Revoltof 1830 in Kent, Surrey and Sussex’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of London,1966).

13. C. Griffin, ‘As Lated Tongues Bespoke: Popular Protest in South-East England, 1790–1840’(unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Bristol, 2001), pp. 276–88.

14. For references to these letters see notes 68–9 and 85–8.15. Peel barely manages to disguise his dismay at Knatchbull’s actions in this letter of 25th

October to Lord Camden: ‘I should have thought a severe example in the case of Destructionof farming property would have had a much greater effect – than the unparalleled lenityshown to the Destroyers of Thrashing Machines’: Sir Robert Peel, Whitehall, to LordCamden, 25th October 1830, CKS U840 C250/10/6.

16. George Maule, Maidstone, to Phillips, Under Secretary, Home Office, 1st November, PROHO 40/27, f. 54.

17. E. Muir, ‘Introduction: Observing Trifles’, in E. Muir and G. Ruggiero (eds.), Microhistoryand the Lost Peoples of Europe (Baltimore, 1991), p. viii.

18. The essential link between the courts (Assizes, Quarter Sessions and Petty Sessions) andthe parish (Gilbert’s Union Boards of Guardians, Vestries and Select Vestries) were themagistrates acting within the immediate area of their abode. At this local level it was theiractions that rubber-stamped, or otherwise, poor law innovation within the parish or localunion, whilst also being responsible for the examination of those brought before them onsuspicion of having committed a crime. Whilst working within the frames set by central andlocal government, it was the magistrates that were the effective link between ‘official’ policyand local realities.

19. D. Eastwood, Governing Rural England: Tradition and Transformation in Local Government1780–1840 (Oxford, 1994), p. 3.

20. Hobsbawm and Rude, Captain Swing, p. 254.21. Ibid., pp. 254 and 257.22. E. P. Thompson, ‘The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century’,

Past and Present 50 (1971); A. Randall and A. Charlesworth, ‘The Moral Economy: Riot,Markets and Social Conflict’, p. 10, in Randall and Charlesworth, Moral Economy andPopular Protest: Crowds, Conflict and Authority (London, 2000).

23. D. Hay, ‘Moral Economy, Political Economy and Law’, in Randall and Charlesworth, MoralEconomy.

24. E. P.Thompson, ‘The Moral Economy Reviewed’, in Thompson, Customs in Common(London, 1991); J. Stevenson, ‘“The Moral Economy” of the English Crowd: Myth andReality’, in A. Fletcher and J. Stevenson (eds.), Order and Disorder in Early Modern England(Cambridge, 1985), p. 67. For a consideration of the evidential problems in the study of


overt protest see R. Wells, ‘ Counting Riots in Eighteenth-Century England’, Bulletin of theSociety for the Study of Labour History 37 (1978), 68–72.

25. R. Vogler, Reading the Riot Act: The Magistracy, the Police and the Army in Civil Disorder(Milton Keynes, 1991), p. 57.

26. A. Charlesworth, ‘From the Moral Economy of Devon to the Political Economy ofManchester, 1790–1812’, Social History 18, 2 (1993), 205–18.

27. As Mark Harrison has sensibly posited, groups of people can come together for a varietyof reasons, not all of which contain any ostensible element of protest. However at somepoint all such gatherings, ‘crowds’, come into contact with a response from the ‘authorities’,whomever they may be. The reason that any crowd comes together is that the individualsinvolved share one, or more, ‘assumption’ (the support of a football team, a belief thatgrain is being forestalled, the support of a political party). This assumption is one that, bydefinition, will act against other groups united on opposing assumptions. There is alwaysthe possibility that this opposition will develop into a physical contest, and here ‘authority’will always, by contestation, locate itself somewhere, in an ideological sense, between theopposing interests. M. Harrison, Crowds and History: Mass Phenomena in English Towns,1790–1835 (Cambridge, 1988), especially chapter 1.

28. R. Wells, Wretched Faces: Famine in Wartime England, 1763–1803 (Gloucester, 1988),p. 237.

29. Randall and Newman, ‘Protest, Proletarians and Paternalists’, p. 213.30. B. Reay, The Last Rising of the Agricultural Labourers: Rural Life and Protest in Nineteenth-

Century England (Oxford, 1990), p. 175.31. Wells’ original article (‘The Development of the English Rural Proletariat and Social Protest,

1700–1850’) and the six subsequent papers were initially published in the Journal of PeasantStudies (6, 2: 1979), and were later collected together in M. Reed and R. Wells (eds.), Class,Conflict and Protest in the English Countryside, 1700–1880 (London, 1990).

32. The best such ‘local’ study is Reay’s vibrant account of the last pitched battle onEnglish soil, the so-called ‘Battle of Bossenden Wood’ in 1838, and his subsequent andinterrelated microhistories of the parishes of Boughton, Dunkirk and Hernhill. These eastKent parishes had provided the backdrop and personnel for the self-styled Sir WilliamCourtenay’s millenarian ‘army’. This study linked the English and Italian ‘history frombelow’ approaches with vivid illustration. Despite the fact that Reay’s acknowledgementof the methodological influence of Ginzburg is condensed into only one paragraph, inMicrohistories the actuality is all-pervading. Indeed Reay sees the potential application as‘limitless’. B. Reay, Microhistories: Demography, Society and Culture in Rural England, 1800–1930 (Cambridge, 1996), p. 260.

33. K. Wrightson, ‘The Enclosure of English Social History’, in A. Wilson (ed.), RethinkingSocial History: English Society 1570–1920 and its Interpretation (Manchester, 1993), p. 73;A. Charlesworth, ‘An Agenda for Historical Studies of Rural Protest in Britain, 1750–1850’,Rural History 2, 2 (1991).

34. E. Muir, ‘Introduction: Observing Trifles’, in E. Muir and G. Ruggiero (eds.), Microhistoryand the Lost Peoples of Europe (Baltimore, 1991), p. viii.

35. Levi, ‘Introduction’, p. xxi.36. In this sense, Ginzburg’s approach is also of importance to the wider discipline of history.

His position privileges the source, and therefore also what is being referred to, rather thanprivileging the act of writing. This provides an important alternative to the increasinglypervasive influence of Foucault’s refamilarisation of the past in making ‘it conform to theterms of the present rather than to those of the past’. Levi, ‘Introduction’, pp. xiii, xiv.

37. P. Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge, 1977).38. From 1834 Knatchbull served as paymaster to the forces.39. The Spectator, n.d., q.f. Kent Herald, 6th January 1831.

146 Carl J. Griffin

40. Hobsbawm and Rude, Captain Swing, p. 85.41. Kent Herald, 7th October 1830.42. Reverend Price, Lyminge, and, ‘Mib Esq’, Elmsted, to Sir Edward Knatchbull, 27th

September and n.d. (but September 1830), CKS U951 C177/22, 18 and 7.43. Griffin, ‘There is no Law’, p. 153.44. Information of William Dodd, yeoman, Upper Hardres, 30th August, CKS Q/Sbe 120/1;

Kentish Gazette, 3rd September; Kent Herald, 3rd September 1830.45. Griffin, ‘There is no Law’, pp. 149–152.46. The first incident was at Wingmore Court on the Elham-Barham border on 24th August. See

the deposition of Ingram Swaine, labourer, Elham, 6th October 1830, CKS Q/SBe 120/11.47. See PRO H[ome] O[ffice] 60/1 and 2, HO 62/6. Leadbitter is first referred to on 5th April

1831, HO 60/2 p. 541.48. T. P. Junior, Denton; and, Reverend Price, Lyminge, to Knatchbull, 26th September and

6th October 1830, CKS U951 C177/17 and 25.49. Knatchbull, Mersham, to Peel, 27th October 1830, PRO HO 52/8, ff. 382–3.50. Reverend Bramall, Elham, to Reverend Price, 6th October, and Reverend Price to

Knatchbull, no date (probably 7th October 1830) and, ‘List of 37 persons involved inmachine breaking between 25 August and 22 September 1830 who voluntarily surrenderedand were bound by recognizances to appear at the next Assizes’, no date (however after 22ndSeptember), CKS U951 C177/26, 27, and 13. Knatchbull, Mersham, to Peel, 6th October1830, PRO HO 52/8, ff. 276–7.

51. Notes of Justices meeting at Canterbury, 25th September, CKS U951 C177/15; Kent Herald,30th September 1830.

52. Confession of Jack Spicer, n.d. (but late September/early October 1830), CKS U951C177/12.

53. Unsigned depositions taken by Knatchbull, nd. (but late September/early October), CKSU951 C177/22.

54. Reverend Price to Knatchbull, 27th September 1830, and ‘List of persons involved swornon recognizances’, CKS U951 C177/18 and 13.

55. Peel to Camden, 18th October 1830, CKS U840 C250 10/2.56. Phillips, Whitehall, to Knatchbull, 30th September and 2nd October, CKS U951 C11/21

and 23. Peel however also stated his belief that rewards encouraged agent provocateurs tostir up trouble in attempt to claim the reward: Peel, to Camden, 18th October 1830, CKSU840 C250 10/2.

57. Reverend Price, Lyminge to Knatchbull, 27th September, 4th and 6th October 1830, CKSU951 C177/18, 24 and 25.

58. Depositions of John Wakefield, James Foulsey and Edward Gower, n.d. (but early October1830), CKS U951 C177/31.

59. Deposition of John Carvill, 6th October 1830, CKS U951 C177/32.60. Knatchbull to Peel (draft), 6th October 1830, CKS U951 C177/28.61. Phillips, Whitehall, to Knatchbull, 9th October 1830, CKS U951 C177/34.62. Reverend Bramall, Elham to Reverend Price, Lyminge, 6th October 1830, CKS U951

C177/26.63. C. H. Hallett to Knatchbull, n.d. (but probably 6th or 7th October 1830), CKS U951

C177/29.64. Letter from six Mersham householders to Knatchbull, Information of Benjamin Andrews,

26th and 27th September 1830, CKS U9C177/and 19.65. Elham Vestry Minutes, 4th and 18th October, and 1st November 1830, CAN U3/121/8/2.66. Ibid., 21st October 1830.67. Kent Herald, 28th October 1830.


68. Griffin, ‘As Lated Tongues Bespoke’, p. 276; Reverend Poore, Murston to Peel, 23rd October1830, PRO HO 52/8, ff.300–1.

69. Sir Henry Montresor, Barham, to Knatchbull, 27th October 1830, CKS U951 C14/4.70. Peel to Camden, 25th October 1830, CKS U840 C250 10/6.71. Kent Herald, 2nd December 1830.72. B. Keith-Lucas, The Unreformed Local Government System (London, 1980), p. 64.73. Hobsbawm and Rude, Captain Swing, chapter 5 and pp. 253–4.74. Phillips to Reverend Dr. Poore, Murston, Kent, 26th October 1830, PRO HO 41/8, p. 12.75. From 1820 ‘disturbance’ in-letters were classified as HO 40, out-letters were similarly

classified as HO 41.76. Camden to Peel, 15th October, PRO HO 52/8, ff.330–2; Peel to Camden, 16th and 18th

October 1830, CKS U840 C250/10/1 and 2.77. Camden, Bagham Abbey, to Peel, 17th October, PRO HO 52/8, ff. 243–4; Peel to Camden,

18th October 1830, CKS U840 C250/10/2.78. Charles Sandys, clerk to Canterbury bench of magistrates, to Peel, 22nd September 1830,

PRO HO 52/8, ff. 271–2.79. No record exists of Deedes helping in the investigation, despite his status as one of the local

magistrates.80. ‘A Kentish Farmer’, South Kent, to Home Office, 13th September 1830, PRO HO 44/21,

ff. 241–242. Again, nothing more is known about Honywood’s involvement.81. Edward Hughes, Smeeth Hill House, to Home Office, 23rd September 1830, PRO HO

44/22, ff. 263–6.82. Copy of a letter from Knatchbull to Peel, 6th October, CKS U951 C177/28; Peel to Camden,

16th October 1830, CKS U840 C250/10/1.83. Peel to Camden, 22nd October, CKS U840 C250/10/3; Camden to Peel, 19th October 1830,

PRO HO 52/8, ff. 214–5.84. Peel to Camden, 22nd October, CKS U840 C250/10/3; Camden, Canterbury, to Peel, 22nd

October 1830, PRO HO 52/8, ff. 216–8.85. Peel to Camden, 25th October 1830, CKS U840 C250/10/6.86. George Gipps, Howletts, to Knatchbull, 24th October 1830, CKS U951 C177/36.87. Sir Henry Montresor, Barham, to Knatchbull, 27th October 1830, CKS U951 C14/4.88. Mary Tylden to Knatchbull, 1st November 1830, CKS U951 C14/9.89. BPP. ‘Report from the House of Commons Select Committee Inquiring into the Adminis-

tration and Practical Operation of the Poor Laws’, (1834) vol. XXXIV, Appendix B1,‘Answer to Rural Queries’ [herein ‘Rural Queries’], question 53, replies of RichardDavenport, Rape of Hastings, p. 510 (e), Blechingley Correspondent, p. 475 (e), WilliamJohn Lushington JP, Rodmersham, p. 260 (e).

90. Peel to Camden, 26th October 1830, CKS U840 C250/10/7.91. Phillips to Maule, Treasury Solicitor, Maidstone, 31st October 1830, PRO HO 41/8

pp. 24–5.92. Phillips to Maule, 11th and 19th November 1830, PRO HO 41/8, p. 32 and pp. 72–3.93. Peel to Camden, 26th and 18th October 1830, CKS U840 C250/10/7 and 2.94. Phillips to G. N. Collingwood, Hawkhurst, 19th November 1830, PRO HO 41/8 ff.

73–4. Collingwood’s suggestion was based on a fear that the involvement of artisansand those known to live in total contempt for the law was symptomatic of a moregeneral rural insurrection, that more politicised and independent groups were startingto realise the broader political possibilities of ‘Swing’. For the involvement of artisansand journeymen in agricultural labour see: R. Wells, ‘The Moral Economy of theEnglish Countryside’, in Randall and Charlesworth, Moral Economy and Popular Protest,pp. 213–14.

148 Carl J. Griffin

95. Maule, Maidstone to Phillips, 1st and 2nd November, PRO HO 40/27, f. 54 and 56; Phillipsto Reverend Dr. Poore, Murston, 26th October, and Peel to ‘The Magistrates of Maidstone’,31st October, HO 41/8, p. 12 and 22. Maidstone Journal, 2nd November 1830.

96. Peel to Camden, 2nd November, CKS U840 C250/10/8. Presumably this was also areassertion of Peel’s belief in the importance of ‘the local authorities – they who have localknowledge – local experience’. Peel to Camden, 18th October 1830, CKS U840 C250/10/2.

97. P. Ziegler, Melbourne: A Biography of William Lamb (London, 1978), p. 133.98. Ibid., pp. 132–4.99. George Lamb, Parliamentary-Under-Secretary to various, PRO HO 51/164, pp. 371–486.

George Lamb was Melbourne’s brother.100. Peel to Camden, 12th November 1830, CKS U840 C250/10/9.101. Phillips to Maule, 18th November 1830, PRO HO 41/8, pp. 59–60.102. Peel to Camden, 12th November, CKS U840 C250/10/9; Peel to Lord Egremont, Petworth,

13th November 1830, PRO HO 41/8, p. 37.103. Ziegler, Melbourne, pp. 133–4 and 137.104. Hobsbawm and Rude, Captain Swing, pp. 255–6; Wells, ‘Mr. William Cobbett’, p. 48.105. Hobsbawm and Rude, Captain Swing, pp. 353–8; Griffin, ‘As Lated Tongues Bespoke’,

pp. 202–212, 271–291 and 312–315; R. Wells, ‘Social Protest, Class, Conflict andConsciousness, in the English Countryside’, in Reed and Wells, Class, Conflict and Protest,p. 168.

106. For examples of the ways in which plebeian interpretations of ‘text’, both verbal andscriptural, can have profound impacts see C. Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: TheCosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller, trans. J. Tedeschi and A. Tedeschi, (Baltimore, 1980)and B. Reay, Last Rising.

107. Thompson, Customs in Common, p. 102.108. Wrightson, ‘The Enclosure of English Social History’, p. 68.

‘Policy on the Hoof’: Sir Robert Peel, Sir Edward …...Kent and Sussex Weald in early November...

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