I HAVE drawn upon manuscript sources selectively, and in particular at those points where it seemed to me advisable to re-examine the accepted accounts. In the Public Record Office the most valuable sources have been the Home Office Papers (H.O.), especially series 40 and 42: miscellaneous bundles relating to the London Corresponding Society, food riots, &c., in the Privy Council Papers (P.C.): and the Treasury Solicitor’s Papers (T.S.), which sometimes contain the evidence (informers’ reports, depositions, intercepted letters, &c.) from which the Crown briefs against State prisoners were prepared. I have also consulted the Place Collection in the British Museum (Add. MSS.), and have found most useful Place’s ‘Autobiography’, the Minute Books and Letter Books of the L.C.S., notes on aspects of L.C.S. history by Hardy, Richter, Lemaitre, and Oxlade: Place’s materials on the life of Spence and his notes on 1816–20: and Lovett’s notes on the history of the National Union of the Working Classes and Others. I have explained in my text some reasons why it is advisable to use Place’s historical materials with some caution.
The Fitzwilliam Papers are part of the large Wentworth collection now in the care of Sheffield Reference Library. They include some part of the correspondence on public affairs of Earl Fitzwilliam, together with reports from Yorkshire J.P.s and other informants, during the time when he was Lord Lieutenant of the West Riding. I have drawn on series F. 44, 45 and 52, which are of interest for the early 1790s, the years 1801–3, and for Luddism. Two other sources have been of value for Luddism. The Radcliffe Papers include some correspondence preserved by Sir Joseph Radcliffe, the exceedingly active Huddersfield magistrate who received his knighthood in recognition of his services in bringing leading Yorkshire Luddites to trial. The manuscripts remain in the custodianship of his descendant, Captain J. B. E. Radcliffe, at Rudding Park, Harrogate, and they are catalogued by the National Register of Archives. The Papers of the Framework-Knitters’ Committee were seized in 1814 and remain in the Nottingham City Archives. They cover the years 1812–14, and an admirable selection has been published in the Records of the Borough of Nottingham, 1800–1832 (1952). These have been my main manuscript sources.
Most of the scarcer pamphlets, periodicals, &c., cited in the text are to be found in the British Museum or in the John Rylands Library (Manchester). It has not been possible to follow the press intensively for the fifty years covered by my narrative, and I have therefore, once again, consulted newspapers and periodicals selectively, in the attempt to throw light upon certain problems and periods. I have referred frequently to Cobbett’s Political Register, The Times, the Leeds Mercury, and the Nottingham Review, and on occasions to other provincial papers. Among Jacobin, Radical, trade unionist, or Owenite periodicals which I have consulted are:
For the 1790s: Eaton’s Politics for the People; The Patriot (Sheffield); Thelwall’s Tribune; The Cabinet (Norwich); Perry’s Argus; The Philanthropist; The Moral and Political Magazine; The Cambridge Intelligencer, The Sheffield Iris. (The most interesting writing in the 1790s, however, is in pamphlet, rather than periodical, form).
For the Wars, and the years 1816–20: Flower’s Political Review; Bone’s Reasoner; The Alfred; The Independent Whig; Hone’s Reformist’s Register; Sherwin’s Republican; Sherwin’s Political Register; The Black Dwarf; The ‘Forlorn Hope’; The Axe Laid to the Root; The People; The Political Observer; The Legislator; The Briton; Duckett’s Despatch; The Gorgon; The Black Book (originally published in periodical parts); The Examiner; The Champion; The Cap of Liberty; The Medusa; The Manchester Observer; The White Hat; The Theological Comet, or Free-Thinking Englishman; The Blanketteer; Carlile’s Republican; The Birmingham Inspector; Hunt’s Addresses to Radical Reformers.
For the 1820s and early 1830s: The Economist; The Mechanic’s Magazine; The Trades Newspaper; The Artizan’s London and Provincial Chronicle; Carlile’s Prompter; Cobbett’s Two-Penny Trash; The Devil’s Pulpit; The Voice of the People; Dr King’s Cooperator; Common Sense; The Union Pilot; The Lancashire and Yorkshire Cooperator; The Poor Man’s Advocate; The Voice of the West Riding; The Poor Man’s Guardian; The Working Man’s Friend; The Radical Reformer; The Cosmopolite; The Cracker; The Crisis; The Destructive; The People’s Conservative; The Man; The Pioneer; The Herald of the Rights of Industry. Also (for later periods) Bronterre’s National Reformer; The Social Pioneer, The Ten Hours’ Advocate; The Labourer; The Northern Star; Notes to the People.
On the title-page to Part One there are reproduced the two sides to one of the token coins issued by the London Corresponding Society. Many such coins were issued – they were struck, for example, in honour of the juries which acquitted Hardy, Tooke and Thelwall, and Daniel Isaac Eaton – and Thomas Spence struck many others. On the title-page to Part Two there is a rough wood-blocked card, supposedly used as a ticket of admission to secret Luddite meetings in Lancashire (1812). On the title-page to Part Three, Cruikshank’s mock memorial to the victors of Peterloo is from William Hone and George Cruikshank’s A Slap at Slop (1822).
Finally, there are a few secondary authorities which demand mention since I have been (like all students of this period) very much indebted to them. A. Aspinall, The Early English Trade Unions (1949) provides an excellent selection of documents from the Home Office Papers for the years when the Combination Acts were in force. G. D. H. Cole and A. W. Filson, British Working Class Movements: Select Documents (1951) provides a wider selection of source-material, and M. Morris, From Cobbett to the Chartists (1948) a more abbreviated selection. Those who cannot gain access to Cobbett’s Political Register (his Rural Rides are available in the Everyman edition) will find ably edited selections in G. D. H. and M. Cole, The Opinions of William Cobbett (1944) and in W. Reitzel, The Progress of a Ploughboy (1933). Both H. L. Jephson, The Platform (1892) and G. Wallas, Life of Francis Place (1898) draw extensively and verbatim from Place’s manuscripts, very often too uncritically. Of the books by J. L. and B. Hammond, The Skilled Labourer (1919) remains of outstanding importance, and The Village Labourer (1911) is scarcely less important. (The Town Labourer (1917) is a more impressionistic work). M. D. George, London Life in the Eighteenth Century (1930); J. H. Clapham, Economic History of Modern Britain, (Cambridge, 1927); S. and B. Webb, History of Trade Unionism (1894: revised 1920); and I. Pinchbeck, Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution (1930) have all earned their place as reference books. There is no volume of comparable weight on early democratic and Radical history; perhaps the best introductions remain, G. S. Veitch, The Genesis of Parliamentary Reform (1913) – although Veitch’s English Jacobins are too pious and constitutionalist for belief – and, for later years, W. D. Wickwar, The Struggle for the Freedom of the Press (1928) and J. R. M. Butler, The Passing of the Great Reform Bill (1914). (S. Maccoby’s interesting volume on English Radicalism, 1786–1832 (1955), is in general too much oriented towards parliamentary goings-on to throw light on the kinds of problem examined in this book). Samuel Bamford’s Passages in the Life of a Radical (Heywood, 1841) and William Lovett’s Life and Struggles in Pursuit of Bread. Knowledge, and Freedom (1876) – both of which have appeared in subsequent editions – are essential reading for any Englishman. Students who wish to place this history in a wider framework will find in E. Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution (1962) and Asa Briggs, The Age of Improvement (1959) the material for an European and a British frame of reference; while E. Halévy, England in 1815 (1924) remains the outstanding general survey of early nineteenth-century British society.
To attempt a full bibliography in a book which covers such an extensive period and so many topics must either appear pretentious or incomplete. In each section of the book I have been at pains to indicate in my footnotes the most relevant secondary authorities; and I hope that I have given sufficient indication of my main primary sources in the same place. I must therefore ask for the reader’s indulgence, and leave him with the envoi of a Spitalfields silk weaver (from Samuel Sholl’s Historical Account of the Silk Manufacture – 1811) by way of apology:
My loom’s entirely out of square,
My rolls now worm-eaten are;
My clamps and treadles they are broke,
By battons, they won’t strike a stroke;
My porry’s covered with the dust,
My shears and pickers eat with rust;
My reed and harness are worn out,
My wheel won’t turn a quill about;
My shuttle’s broke, my glass is run,
My droplee’s shot – my cane is done!