1. Aspinall, op. cit., pp. 4–5.
1. See Donald Read, Press and People (1861), pp. 69–73; also F. Knight, op. cit., p. 72 and J. Taylor, ‘The Sheffield Constitutional Society’, Trans. Hunter Arch. Soc., V., 1939.
2. Fitzwilliam papers, F.44 (a).
1. For a fuller account see H. Collins, op. cit., p. 110, and for a thorough investigation of procedures, see Dr Seaman’s unpublished thesis. The rules were changed on several occasions, and the account above is based largely upon impressions gained from the minute books of the first two or three years.
1. Divisional records and Powell’s reports in P.C. A.38; ‘Examinations before the Privy Council’, T.S. 11.3509; Grove in T.S. 11.3510(A); Place’s account, Add. MSS 27808; Binns, Recollections, pp. 45–6; A Member, Account of the British Convention, p. 40; Correspondence of the L.C.S. (1795), p. 29, 35. 2,600 new members were made between June and November 1795.
2. Minutes of L.C.S., Add. MSS. 27812; Binns, op. cit., p. 36.
1. Add. MSS 27808; G. Wallas, op. cit., p. 22; R. Birley, The English Jacobins (1924), Appendix II, p. 5.
2. P. A. Brown, op. cit., p. 73; Reid, op. cit., p. 8. Place’s account may describe artisans and tradesmen in Central London, the other accounts divisions in the East and South.
1.Cf. A. Soboul, Les sans-culottes parisiens en l’an 11 (Paris, 1958), Book 11, and the valuable discussion of the social basis of the sectionaires in R. Cobb, ‘The People in the French Revolution’, Past and Present, XV, April 1959.
1. See C. Cestre, op. cit., pp. 74 ff.
1. Tribune, 25 April, 23 May 1795; C. Cestre, op. cit., p. 173.
2. Although the Combination Act was not passed until 1799, this only strengthened existing legislation against trade unions.
1. Tribune, 3 Volumes, passim; Cestre, op. cit., pp. 175 f.; J. Thelwall, The Rights of Nature (1796), Letters I and II.
1. Materials for the life of Spence in Place Collection, Add. MSS. 27808; O. D. Rudkin, Thomas Spence and his Connections (1927); A. W. Waters, Trial of Spence in 1801, &c. (Leamington Spa, 1917); A. Davenport, The Life, Writings and Principles of Thomas Spence (1836); T. Spence, Pig’s Meat: The Rights of Infants (1797): The Restorer of Society to its Natural State (1801): Cole and Filson, op. cit., pp. 124–8; T. Evans, Christian Polity the Salvation of the Empire (1816), pp. 14, 33, and Life of Spence (Manchester, 1821).
2. Add. MSS. 27808. In the summer of 1796 Place resigned from the Executive, in March 1797 from the General Committee, and in June 1797 from the society. Powell’s reports (P.C. A.38) show that the intake of new members almost stopped after the passing of the Two Acts: 16 divisions failed to meet in January 1796: 1094 were still meeting regularly in divisions in February: 826 in March: 626 in May: 459 in June: and only 209 in November. Place was still named as Assistant Secretary in December 1796.
3. Binns, op. cit., p. 44; D. V. Erdman, op. cit., p. 272.
1. In February 1797 the French actually made a small landing near Fishguard, on the Pembrokeshire coast: see E. H. S. Jones, The Last Invasion of Britain (Cardiff, 1950).
1. J. Thelwall, Poems Chiefly written in Retirement (Hereford, 1801), pp. xxx, 129; Cestre, op. cit., p. 142 ff.; H.O. 42.41; E. Blunden (ed.), Coleridge Studies (1934).
2. C. J. Fox, 5160, Sir A. Gardner, 4814 (elected). John Home Tooke, 2819 (not elected).
3. Thelwall, The Rights of Nature, Letter I, pp. 25–9. Norwich: Hon. H. Hobart, 1622, W. Windham, 1159 (elected). Bartlett Gurney, 1076 (not elected). Nottingham: Lord Carrington, 1211, D. P. Coke, 1070 (elected). Dr Crompton, 560 (not elected).
1. Moral and Political Magazine of the L.C.S., November 1796; P.C. A.38; H.O. 65.1; L.C.S. Letter-book, Add. MSS. 27815; Reid, op. cit., pp. 17–20.
1. G. E. Manwaring and B. Dobrée, The Floating Republic (Penguin edn), esp. pp. 200, 246, 265–8.This account underplays the evidence as to Jacobin influence in the fleet, which is very much more fully examined in C. Gill, The Naval Mutinies of 1797 (1913).
1. C. Gill, op. cit., pp. 301, 319, 327, 339 et seq., and Appendix A; and, for Watson, deposition of Henry Hastings in P.C. A. 152, and entry in D.N.B. Sensational stories as to a European-wide secret conspiracy of illuminism and Jacobinical freemasonry appear to be baseless in their relation to England, although they may have some bearing on Irish events: see Abbé Barruel, Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism, translated and annotated by Hon. R. Clifford (1798), IV.. pp. 529 f.
2. This Act against illegal oaths was that used against the Luddites and the ‘Tolpuddle Martyrs’.
1. A prisoner examined in May 1798 deposed that the Manchester Society ‘had much fallen off’ in 1796 ‘owing to a quarrel between the Gentlemen who belonged to it & the Mechanics of the Society’. It would seem that the mechanics proceeded to form branches of the United Englishmen, 29 divisions of which are listed in another deposition in H.O. 42.45.
1. Report of Committee of Secrecy (1799), passim; various sources in T.S. 11.333 and 4406; P.C. A.152, A.158, A.161; H.O. 42.43/6.
2. Committee of Secrecy (1799), passim; T.S. 11.333; P.C. A.152; Binns, op. cit., chs. 4 to 6.
1. See H. Collins, op. cit., p. 132; R. Hodgson, Proceedings of General Committee of L.C.S. (Newgate, 1798); Committee of Secrecy (1799), Appendix, pp. 70–3; H. C. Davis, op. cit., pp. 92–3.
1. Add. MSS. 35142 ff. 62–6. Possibly Place’s account has gained acceptance because an underground organization by its nature, leaves almost no papers behind it, and therefore has, for the historian, no existential reality.
2. Reports of John Tunbridge and Gent, P.C. A.144.
3. Report of Committee of Secrecy (1799), p. 74.
1. See J. R. Western, ‘The Volunteer Movement as an Anti-Revolutionary Force, 1793–1801’, English Hist. Rev., 1956, p. 603; and, for the deficiencies of the Volunteers, The Town Labourer, pp. 87–9.
2. Various papers in P.C. A.152; Meikle, op. cit., pp. 171, 191–2; Clef du Cabinet des Souverains, 2 Frimaire, an VII; D.N.B.
3. For Despard, see below, pp. 521–8.
4. G. Sangster to Sidmouth, 13 April 1817, H.O. 42. 163.
1. P.C. A.152; Binns, op. cit., pp. 140–1.
1. T. Evans, Christian Polity, p. iv; Reasoner, 26 March 1808; ‘Narrative of John Oxlade’, Add. MSS. 27809; P.C. A.161.
2. T.S. 11.5390.
3. H.O. 119.1; H.O. 65.1.
4. G. Wakefield, Reply to the Bishop of Llandaff (1798), p. 36.
1. Thelwall, unlike the Solitary, remained in radical politics. Subsisting during the Wars as a teacher of elocution, he reappeared on a radical platform at Westminster in November 1818, ‘to the no small astonishment of the Company,’ noted the Gorgon, ‘like a man risen from the dead’ (21 November 1818). Thereafter he edited the Champion, was harassed by the prosecuting societies, and took part in the Reform Bill agitation of 1831–2. But he was not in tune with the new movement, and his work lacked his early originality and challenge.
2. L.C.S. Letter-book, Add. MSS. 27815.
1. For studies of the connexions between reformers and the manufacturing interest in the early 1790s, see E. Robinson, ‘An English Jacobin: James Watt’, Camb. Hist. Journal, XI (1953–5), p. 351; W. H. Chaloner, ‘Dr Joseph Priestley, John Wilkinson, and the French Revolution’, Trans. Royal Hist. Soc. 5th Series, VIII (1958), p. 25.
1. Thelwall, The Rights of Nature, Letter I, p. 20.
2. Two of the most cogent pamphlets on their side were Gerrald’s, A Convention the Only Means of Saving Us from Ruin (1793) and T. Cooper, Reply to Mr Burke’s Invective against Mr Cooper and Mr Watt (Manchester, 1792). For Cooper’s emigration to America, see D. Malone, The Public Life of Thomas Cooper (New Haven, 1926).
1. See F. E. Mineka, The Dissidence of Dissent (1944).
2. Eaton was the only one of these who returned. See below, p. 662. There was also a small colony of English Jacobin émigrés in Paris, including Sampson Perry, Ashley, Goldsmith, Dr Maxwell, and John Stones, who published the anti-Pitt Argus, and most of whom became profoundly disillusioned with Bonapartism. See S. Perry, Argus (1796), p. 257; J.G. Alger, Englishmen in the French Revolution (1889).
1. Among those influenced by Gale Jones and John Frost was Frost’s namesake, the former Mayor of Newport, who led the Chartist insurrection of 1839 in Wales: see D. Williams, John Frost (Cardiff, 1939), pp. 13–14.
2. A. T. Patterson, op. cit., pp. 70, 74; J. F. C. Harrison, ‘Chartism in Leicester’, Chartist Studies, ed. A. Briggs (1959), p. 132; G. Bown, Physical Force (Leicester, 1848).
3.T. Bewick. A. Memoir, ed. M. Weekley (Cresset, 1961), pp. 146–8, 153.
1. See below, pp. 458–61.
2. See below, pp. 546–8.
1. Cited in Poor Man’s Guardian, 17 November 1832, which adds (of the memory of the Terror) ‘this holds in thousands of instances besides that of Mr Elliott’.
2. J. Thelwall, Rights of Nature (1796), II, p. 32.
1. W. A. L. Seaman, op. cit., p: 20 notes evidence of societies in over 100 places in England and Scotland.