Thomspon, The Moral Economy of The English Crowd in The Eighteenth Century

The Past and Present Society
The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century Author(s): E. P. Thompson Source: Past & Present, No. 50 (Feb., 1971), pp. 76-136 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/650244 . Accessed: 03/01/2014 16:17
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Oxford University Press and The Past and Present Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Past &Present.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 128.239.99.140 on Fri, 3 Jan 2014 16:17:54 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
THE MORAL ECONOMY OF THE ENGLISH CROWD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY*

shall He thatwithholdeth Corn,the People shallcursehim: but Blessing be upontheHead ofhimthatselleth it. Proverbs xi. 26.
I
of the term"mob". I wish in this againstthe loose employment article to extend thewarning to theterm"riot",especially the where food riotin eighteenth-century Englandis concerned. This simplefour-letter word can concealwhatmaybe described as a spasmodic viewof popularhistory. According to thisviewthe commonpeople can scarcely the be takenas historical before agents FrenchRevolution. Before thisperiodthey and intrude occasionally canvas,in periodsofsuddensocial upon the historical spasmodically disturbance. These intrusions ratherthan selfare compulsive, consciousor self-activating: to economic theyare simpleresponses in stimuli. It is sufficient to mention a bad harvest or a down-turn and all requirements ofhistorical are satisfied. trade, explanation even amongthosefewBritish historians who have Unfortunately, added to our knowledge of such popularactions,severalhave lent in only a supportto the spasmodicview. They have reflected disclose. cursoryway upon the materialswhich they themselves Thus Beloffcomments on the food riots of the early eighteenth when unemployment and high prices century:"this resentment, combinedto make conditions venteditselfin attacks unendurable, and millers,attacks which often must have upon corn-dealers into mere excusesforcrime".' But we searchhis pages degenerated in vain for evidenceas to the frequency of this "degeneration". in hisuseful ofdisturbance, allowshimself one chronicle Wearmouth,
WE HAVEBEEN WARNEDIN RECENTYEARS,BY GEORGERUDE AND OTHERS,
* This article reportsresearch commenced in 1963 and somewhat retarded in the past fiveyearsby the exigenciesand alarums of workin a new university. An earlierversionwas presentedat a conferenceorganized by the Department of Historyat the State University of New York at Buffaloin April 1966. I have also to thankthe Nuffield Foundation fora more recentgrantin aid of research; and to thank Mr. Malcolm Thomas, Miss J. Neeson and Mr. E. E. Dodd for assistance. The originalpaper has been revised and extended at a number of points. 1 M. Beloff, Public Order and Popular Disturbances,r660-.7.4 (Oxford, 1938), P. 75.
THE ENGLISH CROWD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
77
offoodriots in his study category: explanatory "distress".2 Ashton, among the colliers,brings the support of the paternalist:"the forby someof the colliers turbulence is, of course,to be accounted of reaction it was the instinctive than more elementary politics: thing and of the riots were "rebellions The to belly", virility hunger".3 thatthisis somehowa comforting thereis a suggestion explanation. - hunger. - instinctive The line of analysisruns: elementary the tradition:"Spasmodic rises in food Charles Wilson continues to on the Tyne to riotin 1709,tin miners keelmen pricesprovoked at Falmouthin 1727". One spasm led on to plunder granaries was "plunder".4 the outcome another: has lagged in the rear of social history For decades systematic in the untilthe present economichistory, day,whena qualification in is assumedto confer, second discipline automatically, proficiency has recent that therefore thefirst. One cannot scholarship complain is onlyimperfectly which evidence and quantify tended to sophisticate schoolis of courseRostow, understood. The dean ofthespasmodic in I948.5 whose crude "social tensionchart"was first put forward of an index to we need this, unemploytogether onlybring According mentand one of highfood pricesto be able to chartthe courseof truth (people social disturbance. This contains a self-evident in much the same and when are waya "sexual they hungry): protest can be tensionchart"would showthatthe onsetof sexual maturity ofsexualactivity. The objection witha greater correlated frequency at if used unwisely, is thatsuch a chart, mayconcludeinvestigation or cultural theexactpointat whichit becomesofserioussociological interest: (or beingsexy),whatdo people do? How is beinghungry
2 R. F. Wearmouth, Methodismand the CommonPeople of the Eighteenth (London, 1945), esp. chaps. I and 2. Century 3 T. S. Ashton and J. Sykes, The Coal Industryof the Eighteenth Century (Manchester, 1929), p. 131. 4Charles Wilson, England's Apprenticeship, 1603-1763 (London, 1965), p. 345. It is true that the Falmouth magistratesreported to the duke of Newcastle (i6 Nov. 1727) that "the unrulytinners"had "broke open and plundered several cellars and granaries of corn". Their report concludes with a comment which suggests that they were no more able than some modern historiansto understandthe rationale of the direct action of the tinners: "the occasion of these outrageswas pretendedby the riotersto be a scarcityof corn in the county, but this suggestion is probably false, as most of those who carried offthe corn gave it away or sold it at quarter price". Public Record Office(hereafter P.R.O.), S.P., 36/4/22. 1 W. W. Rostow, BritishEconomyin theNineteenth Century(Oxford, 1948), studies which correlate prices, esp. pp. 122-5. Among the more interesting harvests,and popular disturbanceare: E. J. Hobsbawm, "Economic Fluctuations and Some Social Movements", in Labouring Men (London, 1964) and in England, 1700-i8oo (Oxford, 1959). T. S. Ashton, EconomicFluctuations
78
PAST AND PRESENT
NUMBER 50
their behaviourmodified by custom,culture,and reason? And thatthe primary stimulus of "distress"is present) (havinggranted doestheir behaviour contribute towards anymore complex, culturallymediatedfunction, whichcannotbe reduced- howeverlong it is - back to stimulus of statistical stewedoverthe fires once analysis again? Too manyof our growth historians are guilty of a crasseconomic the of and reductionism, motive, behaviour, obliterating complexities ifthey noteditinthework oftheir marxist function, which, analogues, would makethemprotest. The weakness whichtheseexplanations shareis an abbreviated viewof economic man. Whatis perhapsan occasion for surpriseis the schizoid intellectual climate,which thisquantitative to co-exist permits historiography (in thesameplaces and sometimes in the same minds)witha social anthropology which derives from Durkheim, Weber,or Malinowski. We knowall about tissueofsocialnorms thedelicate and reciprocities the which regulates lifeof Trobriand and the psychic in the involved islanders, energies cargo cults of Melanesia; but at some pointthisinfinitely-complex social creature,Melanesian man, becomes (in our histories)the eighteenth-century Englishcollierwho claps his hand spasmodically and responds to elementary stimuli. economic uponhis stomach, To the spasmodicI will oppose myown view.6 It is possibleto detect in almost every eighteenth-century crowd action some notion. By the notionof legitimation I meanthatthe legitimizing men and womenin the crowdwereinformed thatthey by the belief traditional orcustoms; weredefending that and,in general, rights they were supportedby the wider consensusof the community. On occasionthis popularconsensuswas endorsedby some measureof licenceafforded the consensus by the authorities.More commonly, thatitoverrode motives offear or deference. was so strong The foodriotin eighteenth-century Englandwas a highly-complex formof directpopularaction,disciplined and withclearobjectives. How fartheseobjectives wereachieved- thatis, how farthe food to riotwas a "successful" form ofaction- is too intricate a question thelimits of an article;but the questioncan at leastbe tacklewithin with unexamined than,as is customary, posed(rather beingdismissed a negative), and thiscannotbe doneuntilthecrowd'sownobjectives are identified. It is of coursetruethatriotsweretriggered offby or dealers, soaringprices,by malpractices among by hunger. But
6 I have foundmost helpfulthe pioneeringstudyby R. B. Rose, "Eighteenth Century Price Riots and Public Policy in England", InternationalReview of Social History, vi (1961); and G. Rud6, The Crowdin History(New York, 1964).
79
as to whatwere thesegrievances within a popularconsensus operated in marketing, and whatwereillegitimate milling, legitimate practices baking, etc. This in its turn was groundedupon a consistent andobligations, oftheproper economic traditional viewofsocialnorms functions of several partieswithinthe community, which,taken the moraleconomyof thepoor. can be said to constitute together, An outrageto these moral assumptions, quite as much as actual was theusual occasionfordirect action. deprivation, While this moraleconomycannotbe describedas "political"in it cannot as unpolitical be described anyadvancedsense,nevertheless it ofthe since and notions either, held, supposeddefinite, passionately commonweal - notions in the which,indeed,foundsome support of the authorities; tradition notionswhich the people paternalist so loudlyin theirturnthatthe authorities re-echoed were,in some of the people. Hence this moraleconomy measure,the prisoners and impingedverygenerally upon eighteenth-century government of disturbance. The and did notonlyintrude at moments thought, word"riot"is too smallto encompass all this. II As we speakofthecash-nexus which the industrial merged through so there is a sensein which we can speakoftheeighteenthrevolution, bread-nexus. The conflict between the countryside and the century town was mediatedby the price of bread. The conflict between traditionalism and the new political economyturned upon the CornLaws. Economicclass-conflict in nineteenth-century England found its characteristic expressionin the matterof wages; in Englandtheworking eighteenth-century people were most quickly inflamed to actionby rising prices. This highly-sensitive consumer-consciousness co-existed withthe of in the corn belt of the East greatage agricultural improvement, and South. Those years whichbrought to a new Englishagriculture were punctuated pitchof excellence by the riots- or, as contemoften described or "risings of the them,the "insurrections" poraries poor"- of 1709, 1740, 1756-7, 1766-7,1773, 1782, and, above all, floated 1795 and I8OO-I. This buoyant capitalist industry upon an irasciblemarket whichmightat any time dissolveinto marauding withbludgeons, or rose in the bands, who scouredthe countryside to "set the price" of provisions at the popularlevel. market-place The fortunes of thosemostvigorous classesrested, in the capitalist finalanalysis, two meat,wool; and the first upon the sale of cereals,
80o
PAST AND PRESENT
NUMBER 50
to themillions who mustbe sold,withlittle intermediary processing, ofthemarket-place weretheconsumers. Hence thefriction takesus intoa central areaofthenation's life. did not live by The labouring century people in the eighteenth collected breadalone,but (as thebudgets by Eden and David Davies ofthemlivedvery on bread. This breadwas not show)many largely wheaten bread gainedgroundsteadily wheaten, although altogether until the early 1790s. In the 1760s Charles over othervarieties thatofa supposedpopulation ofaboutsix millions in Smith estimated 888,ooo ate rye, England and Wales, 3,750,000were wheat-eaters, and 623,000oats.7 By 1790 we mayjudge that 739,000ate barley, ofthepopulation wereeating at leasttwo-thirds wheat., The pattern ofpoverty, in part, ofconsumption reflected, and, comparative degrees withpoor soils and upland in part,ecologicalconditions. Districts districts (like the Pennines)wherewheatwill not ripen,were the tinners of other cereals. Still,in the I790s, the Cornish strongholds in on barleybread. Much oatmealwas consumed subsisted largely - and not onlyby the poor.9 Accounts and Yorkshire Lancashire and butitwouldseemthatNewcastle from Northumberland conflict, had bythengoneoverto wheat, pitvillages manyofthesurrounding and smallertownssubsistedon oatmeal,rye whilethe countryside and "graypease".1' ofbarley bread,maslin,x0or a mixture white bread the was gaining upon darker again, Through century, a matter ofstatus-values which varieties. This was partly wholemeal to whitebread,but by no meanswholly so. The becameattached be briefly mentioned. butseveral is most may complex, aspects problem to sell white breador ofbakers and ofmillers It was to theadvantage which mightbe gained fromsuch sales since the profit fineflour, of thiswas in parta consequence was,in general, larger. (Ironically, the of Bread was since Assize consumer-protection, paternalist from thebread their from to prevent thebakers intended taking profit
7 C. Smith, ThreeTractson theCorn-Tradeand Corn-Laws,2nd edn. (London, 1766), pp. 14o, 182-5. 8 See Fitzjohn Brand, A Determination of the Average Depressionof Wheat Peace etc. (London, 18oo), pp. 62-3, 96. in War belowthatof thePreceding 1 These generalizationsare supported by "replies from towns as to bread in use", returnedto the PrivyCouncil in 1796 in P.R.O., P.C.I/33/A.87 and A.88. 10For maslin (a mixed bread of several cereals) see Sir William Ashley, The Bread of our Forefathers (Oxford, 1928), pp. 16-19. 11See C. Smith, op. cit., p. 194 (for 1765). But the mayor of Newcastle that reported(4 May 1796) rye bread was "much used by the workmenemployed in the Coal Trade", and a reporterfrom Hexham Abbey said that barley, barley and gray pease, or beans, "is the only bread of the labouring poor and farmers'servantsand even of many farmers",with rye or maslin in the towns: P.R.O., P.C.I/33/A.88.
8I
to make as little of the poor; hence it was in the baker'sinterest and thatlittle "household"breadas possible, nasty.12) In thecities, ofadulteration, to thedangers dark breadwassuspect which werealert for noxious additives. In the last as offering easy concealment and decades of the century manymillersadapted theirmachinery so thattheywerenotin factable to dresstheflour for bolting-cloths, "household"loaf,producing theintermediary onlythefiner qualities fora brown loafwhichone observer loafand the"offal" forthewhite as to endanger theconstituand pernicious found"so musty, griping, in times of scarcity, of the authorities, to tion".13 The attempts of coarser grades(or,as in 1795,thegeneral imposethemanufacture use ofthe"household"loaf),wereattended and by manydifficulties, and bakers.14 often resistance by bothmillers feelingsof status were profoundly By the end of the century and was threatened wheatenbread prevailed, involvedwherever by thatlabourers a coarser mixture. There is a suggestion accustomed from breadactually could notwork- suffered to wheaten weakness, to changeto rougher or nausea - if forced mixtures.16 indigestion, Even in the face of the outrageous pricesof 1795 and 18OO-I,the resistance of manyof the working peoplewas impermeable.16The Guild Stewards of Calne informedthe Privy Council in 1796 that "creditable"people were using the barley-and-wheat mixture
12 Nathaniel Forster, An Enquiry into the Cause of the High Price of Provisions(London, 1767), PP. 144-7. 13 on the PerniciousConsequences J. S. Girdler, Observations of Forestalling, and Ingrossing (London, I8oo), p. 88. Regrating 14The problemwas discussed lucidly in [Governor] Pownall, Considerations on the Scarcity and High Prices of Bread-cornand Bread (Cambridge, 1795), esp. pp. 25-7. See also Lord John Sheffield,Remarks on the Deficiencyof Grain occasionedby the bad Harvest of 1799 (London, 18oo), esp. pp. 105-6 for the evidence that (1795) "there is no household bread made in London". A Honiton correspondent in 1766 describedhousehold bread as "a base mixture of fermented Bran ground down and bolted, to which is added the worst kind of meal not rang'd": Hist. MSS. Comm., City of Exeter, series lxxiii, p. 255. On this very complex question see furtherS. and B. Webb, "The Assize of Bread", Economic Ji., xiv (1904), esp. pp. 203-6. 11See e.g. Lord Hawkesbury to the duke of Portland, I9 May 1797, in P.R.O., H.O. 42/34. 16 See R. N. Salaman, The Historyand Social Influence of the Potato (Cambridge, 1949), esp. pp. 493-517. Resistance extended from the wheat-eating south and midlandsto the oatmeal-eating fromStockport north;a correspondent in 1795 noted that "a very liberal subscriptionhas been entered into for the oatmeal & other provisionsamong the poor at reduced purpose of distributing to the common prices - This measure, I am sorryto say, gives littlesatisfaction people, who are still clamorous & insist on having wheaten bread": P.R.O., See also J. L. and B. Hammond, The Village Labourer(London, W.O. I/Io94. 1966 edn.), pp. II9-23.
82
PAST AND PRESENT
NUMBER 50
and thatthemanufacturing and labouring required byauthority, poor withlargefamilies
in similar terms: The Bailiff of Reigate reported
have in general used barley bread alone. The rest, making perhaps someand others, with smaller thing about one-thirdof the poor manufacturers families(sayingtheycould get nothingbutbread) have, as beforethe scarcity, eat nothingbut baker's bread, made of wheatmeal called seconds.17 ... as to the poor labourers who have scarce any sustenance but bread, & from the custom of the neighbourhood have always eaten bread made of wheat only; amongst these I have neither urged nor wished a mixture of to supporttheirlabour. bread, least theyshould not be nourishedsufficiently
Those few labourerswho had tried a mixture "found themselves feeble, hot,& unableto labourwithanydegreeof vigor".18 When, introduced an Act (popularly in December 18oo, the government knownas the BrownBreadAct or "Poison Act") whichprohibited of thanwholemeal theresponse from millers flour, anyother making the people was immediate. At Horsham(Sussex),
A number of women ... proceeded to Gosden wind-mill,where, abusing the millerforhaving served them with brown flour,theyseized on the cloth at the same time Bread Act, and cut it into a thousand pieces; threatening to serve all similar utensils he might in futureattemptto use in the same manner. The amazonian leader of this petticoated cavalcade afterwards regaled her associates with a guinea's worth of liquor at the Crab Tree public-house.
of the meal according to the directions withwhichhe was thendressing
the Act was repealedin less than two As a resultof such actions,
19 months.
of morethanone-half oftheweekly Whenpriceswerehigh, budget a labourer'sfamilymightbe spent on bread.20 How did these in the field,to the labourers' cerealspass, fromthe crops growing homes? At first sightit appearssimple. There is the corn: it is at the mill,baked,and takento market, threshed, harvested, ground
'7 P.R.O., P.C.I/33/A.88. Compare the returnfrom J. Boucher, vicar of Epsom, 8 Nov. 18oo, in H.O. 42/54: "Our Poor live not only on the finest wheaten bread, but almost on bread alone". "8 P.R.O., P.C.I/33/A.88. 19 P.R.O., P.C.I/33/A.88; Reading Mercury, 16 Feb. ISoi. Hostility to these changes in milling,which were imposed by an Act of I8oo (41 Geo. III, in and Sussex. Surrey Complainants produced c.I6) was especially strong it as disagreeable samples of the new bread to a SurreyJ.P.: "They represented to the taste (as indeed it was), as utterlyincompetentto support them under their daily labour, & as productive of bowelly complaints to them and to their childrenin particular": Thomas Turton to Portland, 7 Feb. 18oi01, H.O. 42/61. The Act was repealed in ISOI: 41 Geo. III, c.2. 20 See in Husbandry especiallythe budgetsin D. Davies, The Case ofLabourers (Bath, 1795); and in Sir FrederickEden, The State of thePoor (London, 1797). Also D. J. V. Jones,"The Corn Riots in Wales, 1793-18o1", WelshHist. Rev., ii (4)(1965), App. I, p. 347.
83
eaten. But at everypoint withinthis processthereare radiating aroundwhich forextortion, flash-points opportunities complexities, riots could arise. And it is scarcelypossible to proceed further modelof without out, in a schematic way,the paternalist sketching and manufacturing the marketing platonic process- the traditional ideal appealed to in Statute,pamphlet,or protestmovement of commerce realities and consumption againstwhichthe awkward werein friction. in an erodedbodyof Statute modelexisted The paternalist law,as lawand custom. It wasthemodelwhich, wellas common often, very in timesof emergency untilthe theactionsof Government informed to appeal. continued 1770s; and to which many local magistrates from the shouldbe, so faras possible, In thismodel,marketing direct, cornin bulk shouldbring their to theconsumer. The farmers farmer in to thelocal pitching market; theyshouldnotsell it whilestanding it in the hope of risingprices. the field,nor should theywithhold no sales shouldbe made before shouldbe controlled; The markets statedtimes,when a bell would ring; the poor should have the or meal first, in smallparcels,with to buy grain,flour, opportunity whentheir and measures. Ata certain hour, weights duly-supervised a second bell would ring,and largerdealers needs were satisfied, (duly licensed)mightmaketheirpurchases. Dealers were hedged inscribed aroundwithmanyrestrictions, uponthemusty parchments in and engrossing, codified of the laws against forestalling, regrating mustnot thereignof EdwardVI. They mustnotbuy(and farmers they crops,normight sell) by sample. They mustnotbuystanding in thesame market at a to sell again(within threemonths) purchase or in neighbouring and so on. Indeed,formostof markets, profit, the middleman remained and the eighteenth century legally suspect, restricted.21 his operations were,in theory, severely Millers we passto consumer-protection. Frommarket-supervision - bakers as servants ofthe wereconsidered and - to a greater degree for but for not a a fair allowance. community, working Many profit
21 The best general study of eighteenth-century corn marketingremains R. B. Westerfield,Middlemen in English Business, 1660-1760 (New Haven, 1915), ch. 2. Also see N. S. B. Gras, The Evolutionof theEnglishCorn Market (Cambridge, Mass., 1915); D. G. Century from the Twelfthto the Eighteenth Barnes,A History oftheEnglishCornLaws (London, 1930); C. R. Fay, The Corn Laws and Social England (Cambridge, 1932); E. Lipson, EconomicHistoryof England on England, 6th edn. (London, 1956), ii, pp. 419-48; L. W. Moffitt, the Eve of the IndustrialRevolution(London, 1925), ch. 3; G. E. Fussell and in Farm Produce in C. Goodmen, "Traffic Eighteenth Century England", History,xii (2)(1938); Janet Blackman, "The Food Supply of an Agricultural Industrial Town (Sheffield)",BusinessHistoryv (1963).
84
PAST AND PRESENT
NUMBER 50
ofthepoorwouldbuytheir in themarket graindirect (or obtainit as to wagesor in gleaning); wouldtakeit to themillto supplement they be ground, wherethe miller exacta customary toll,and then might wouldbaketheir ownbread. In Londonandthoselarge towns where thishad longceasedto be therule, thebaker's or profit allowance was calculatedstrictly to the Assize of Bread,whereby either according thepriceor theweight oftheloafwas ordered in relation to theruling of wheat.22 price This model, of course, parts companyat many points with realities. Whatis moresurprising is to notehow eighteenth-century farpartsof it were stilloperative. Thus Aikinin 1795 is able to describe theorderly of Preston market: regulation
The weeklymarkets... are extremely well regulatedto preventforestalling and regrating. None but the town's-people are permittedto buy during the firsthour, which is from eight to nine in the morning: at nine others may purchase: but nothingunsold must be withdrawnfromthe markettill one o'clock, fishexcepted .... 23
In thesameyearinthe South-West area notedfortradition(another at Exeterattempted to control alism)thecityauthorities "hucksters, and retailers" themfrom the market between higlers, by excluding 8 a.m. and noon,at whichhoursthe Guildhallbell wouldbe rung.24 The Assize of Bread was still effective the eighteenth throughout in Londonandinmany market towns.25 If wefollow century through the case of sale by samplewe may observehow dangerous it is to assumeprematurely thedissolution ofthecustomary restrictions. It is often supposedthatsale of cornbysamplewas general by the
S. and B. Webb, "The Assize of Bread", Economic Ji., xiv, (1904). toforty Miles roundManDescription of theCountry fromthirty chester (London, 1795), p. 286. One of the best survivingrecords of a wellregulated manorial market in the eighteenthcenturyis that of Manchester. Here market lookers for fish and flech, for corn weights and measures, for white meats, for the Assize of Bread, aletasters,and officers to prevent "enand regretting" were appointed throughoutthe century, grossing,forestalling and finesforshortweightand measure, unmarketable meat, etc. were frequent until the 1750s; supervision thereafterwas somewhat more perfunctory (although continuing) with a revival of vigilance in the 1790s. Fines were imposed for selling loads of grain before the market bell in 1734, 1737, and 1748 (when William Wyat was fined 20os"for selling beforethe Bell rung and declaring he would sell at any Time of the Day in Spite of eitherLord of the Mannor or any person else"), and again in 1766. The Court Leet Recordsof the Manor of Manchester,ed. J. P. Earwaker (Manchester, 1888/9), vols. vii, viii and ix, passim. For the regulationof forestalling at Manchester, see note 64 below. 24 Proclamation by Exeter Town Clerk, 28 March 1795, in P.R.O., H.O. 42/34. "The Baking Industry 25 See S. and B. Webb, op. cit.,passim; and J. Burnett, in the NineteenthCentury",BusinessHistory,v (1963), PP. 98-9.
22
28 J. Aikin,A
85
the practice whenBest describes middleof the seventeenth century, in East Yorkshire,26and certainly by 1725, when Defoe gave his accountof the corntrade.27 But,whilemany famous largefarmers this most counties in wereno doubtselling date,theold by by sample intheenvirons werestillcommon, and evensurvived markets pitching thedeclineof country described of London. In 1718a pamphleteer takenplace onlyin recent as having markets years:
One can see little else besides toy-shopsand stalls for bawbles and knickThe tolls are sunk to nothing; and where, in the memoryof knacks .... thereus'd to come to town upon a day, one, two, perhaps many inhabitants, three,and in some boroughs, four hundred loads of corn, now grass grows in the market-place.
and to had come to shun the market The farmers (he complained) at theirdoors. Other deal with jobbers and other "interlopers" to market a singleload "to make a show of still brought farmers was donein and to havea Priceset",butthemainbusiness a market, are or which called in a handkerchief of corn bag samples"."8 "parcels farmers of things. But manysmaller This was, indeed,the drift as before;and the old to pitchtheirgrainin the market continued in men's mindsas a sourceof resentment.Again modelremained were contested. In 1710 and again the new marketing procedures on behalfof the poor people of StonyStratford a petition (Bucks.) and dealerswere"buyingand sellingin thatthe farmers complains and att theirBarne Doores soo that now the poor the farmyards cannothave a Gristat reasonableratesforour money Inhabitants whichis a GreatCalamity".29 In 1733 severalboroughs petitioned the house of commonsagainstthe practice: Haslemere (Surrey) the trade - they complainedof millersand mealmenengrossing to ofcornbysmallsamples, refusing great quantities "secretly bought buy such as hath been pitch'd in open market".30There is a in the practice, and of a loss of underhand of something suggestion in themarketing procedure. transparency do notdie down,although advancesthecomplaints As thecentury In thedearth northwards and westwards. to move tend of1756 they the Privy Council, in additionto settingin motionthe old laws
26 Rural Economyin Yorkshirein 1641 (Surtees Society, xxxiii, 1857), pP. 99-105. 27 The Complete English Tradesman(London, 1727), ii, part 2. 28 Anon., An Essay to prove that Regrators, Forestallers, Hawkers, Engrossers, and Jobbersof Corn, Cattle, and other Marketable Goods are Destructiveof to the in a Common Nuisance to the and Poor, Kingdom General Trade, Oppressors 13, 18-20. (London, pp. 1718), 29 Bucks. Rec. Off.,Q.Sessions, Michaelmas. 30 Commons Journals,2 March 1733.
86
PAST AND PRESENT
NUMBER 50
issued a proclamation againstforestalling, enjoining"all farmers, underseverepenalties, to bringtheircornto open market, and not to sell by sampleat their own dwellings".31But the authorities did not liketo be pressedon the pointtoo closely:in 1766 (another year of scarcity)the Surreymagistrates enquired whetherbuyingby a punishable and received a portenoffence, samplein factremained is notby his office entitled touslyevasivereply- H.M.'s Secretary to giveinterpretation to the Laws.32 Two letters give some insightinto the spread of new practices towards the West. A correspondent to Lord Shelburne in writing at Chippenham andmillers of"confederacy": 1766accusedthedealers
sentto market fora quarter of wheat, and though therewere He himself and it was soon after bell rang, themarket wherever his manyloads there, was " 'Tis sold". So that,though ... to avoid agentapplied,the answer the penalty of the law, theybringit to market, yet the bargainis made
before,and the marketis but a farce .... 3
could be the actualoccasionof riot:in June1757 it (Such practices was reported that"thepopulation roseat Oxford and in a fewminutes seized and divideda load of cornthatwas suspectedto have been to the market to save appearboughtby sample,and onlybrought a correspondent in Dorchester in from ances".34) The secondletter, of that describes a different he claimed 1772, practice market-fixing: thegreat farmers to fixthepricebefore themarket, gottogether
and manyof thesemen won'tsell less thanforty whichthe poor bushels,
can't purchase. Thereforethe miller,who is no enemy to the farmer, gives the price he asks and the poor must come to his terms. 3
to complain at theextension of Paternalists and thepoorcontinued market which we,looking back,tendto assumeas inevitable practices and "natural".36 But whatmaynowappearas inevitable was not,in theeighteenth a matter forapproval. A characcentury, necessarily thesupposed teristic (of 1768)exclaimed against indignantly pamphlet to of farmer as he likes with his own. This wouldbe do liberty every a "natural",not a "civil" liberty:
It cannotthen be said to be the libertyof a citizen,or of one who lives under the protectionof any community;it is ratherthe liberty of a savage; therefore he who avails himself thereof,deserves not that protection,the power of
P.C. 1/6/63. Calendar of Home Ofice Papers (London, 1879), 1766, pp. 92-4. 33 Ibid., pp. 91-2. Magazine, xxvii (1757), p. 286. 34 Gentleman's 35 Anonymousletterin P.R.O., S.P. 37/9. 36 Examples, from an abundant literature,will be found in: Gentleman's Magazine, xxvi (1756), p. 534; Anon. [Ralph Courteville], The Cries of the Public (London, 1758), p. 25; Anon. ["C.L."], A Letterto a Memberof ParliamentproposingAmendments to the Laws against Forestallers,Ingrossers,and iv (1765), et Commerciale, (London, 1757), PP. 5-8; MuseumRusticum Regraters p. 199; Forster,op. cit., p. 97.
31P.R.O.,
32
affords. Society
87
ofthefarmer is "a material Attendance at market partof hisduty;he to secret orto disposeofhisgoodselsewhere"."7 shouldnotbe suffered the 176osthepitching But after markets so little function performed in mostpartsof the Southand the Midlandsthat,in thesedistricts, the complaint is less oftenheard,although the againstsample-sale thatthepoorcannot is stillbeingmade complaint buyin smallparcels at theend ofthe century. 38 In partsof theNorthit was a different matter. A petitionof Leeds labourersin 1795 complainsof the "corn factors and the millersand a set of peopul which we call and mealmen hucksters who have gotthe cornintotharehandsthat theymayhold it up and sell it at thareowne priceor theywill not sell it". "The farmers no cornto markit but whattheycarre carry in tharepockitfortharesample.. . whichcause the pooreto groane verymuch".39 So long it tookfora process,whichis oftendated from at leastone hundred to work itswayout. yearsearlier, This example has been followedto illustrate the densityand ofthedetail, thediversity oflocal practices, and theway particularity in which popular resentment could arise as old marketpractices the same diversity, existsthroughout changed. The same density, the scarcely-charted area of marketing.The paternalist modelwas, of course, breakingdown at many other points. The Assize of of bakers,simply in checking the profits Bread, althougheffective reflected the rulingprice of wheator flour, and could in no way influence these. The millerswere now, in Hertfordshire and the ThamesValley, substantial and sometimes dealers very entrepreneurs, in grain or malt as well as large-scalemanufacturers of flour.40 Outsidethemaincorn-growing urbanmarkets could districts, simply not be supplied withoutthe operationof factors whose activities would have been nullified if legislation had been againstforestallers enforced. strictly How fardid theauthorities thattheir modelwas drifting recognize apartfromreality? The answermust changewiththe authorities
37 Anon., An Enquiry into the Price of Wheat, Malt, etc. (London, 1768), pp. 119-23. 31See e.g. Davies (below p. Ioi). It was reportedfrom Cornwall in 1795 that "many farmers refuseto sell [barley]in small quantitiesto the poor, which causes a great murmuring": P.R.O., H.O. 42/34; and fromEssex in ISoo that "in some places no sale takes place exceptingat the ordinaries,where buyers and sellers (chieflyMillers and Factors) dine together... the benefitof the Market is almost lost to the neighbourhood"; such practices are mentioned "with great indignationby the lower orders": P.R.O., H.O. 42/54. 39 P.R.O., H.O. 42/35. 40 See F. J. Fisher, "The Development of the London Food Market, 15401640", Econ. Hist. Review,v (1934-5).
88
PAST AND PRESENT
NUMBER 50
concernedand with the advance of the century. But a general answercan be offered: the paternalists normal did,in their practice, muchof the change,but theyreferred back to thismodel recognize whenever arose. In thistheywerein partthe prisoners emergency of the people, who adopted partsof the model as theirrightand thatambiguity was actually heritage. There is even an impression welcomed. It gave magistrates in disturbeddistricts, in time of some room for to their and some endorsement dearth, manoeuvre, to reduce prices by suasion. When the Privy Council attempts in unreadableGothictypethreatening dire penalties proclamations forestallers, laders, hucksters, etc., it against badgers, broggers, to put the fearof God intolocal millers and helpedthe magistrates thatthelegislation dealers. It is true was repealed forestallers against in 1772;buttherepealing thenext Actwas notwelldrawn, and during of 1795 Lord Kenyon,the chiefjustice,tookit upon majorscarcity to announcethatforestalling an indictable offence himself remained at common law: "though theact of EdwardVI be repealed (whether an I takenot upon me to say) yetit stillremains wiselyor unwisely The offence at commonlaw, co-evalwiththe constitution. ..".4 trickle ofprosecutions whichcan be observed thecentury throughout - usually - didnotdry ofscarcity for offences and only in years petty morein 1795and 18oo-i thanat any wereprobably up: indeed,there timein the previoustwenty-five years.42 But it is clear thatthey to thepoorthat weredesigned forsymbolic as demonstrations effect, the authorities in theirinterests. wereactingvigilantly Hence the paternalist and also a model had an ideal existence, and moderate real existence. In yearsof good harvests fragmentary But if pricesrose prices,the authorities lapsed into forgetfulness. and the poor becameturbulent, it was revived, at leastforsymbolic effect.
41 Lord Kenyon's charge to the Grand Juryat ShropshireAssizes, Annals But he was not proclaiming a new xxv (1795), PP. IIO-II. of Agriculture, view of the law: the 1780 edition of Burn's Justice, ii, pp. 213-4 had already stressed that (despite the Acts of 1663 and 1772) "at the common law, all endeavours whatsoeverto enhance the common price of any merchandize ... whetherby spreadingfalserumours,or by buyingthingsin a marketbeforethe accustomed hour, or by buying and selling again the same thing in the same market" remained offences. 42 Girdler,op. cit.,pp. 212-60, listsa numberof convictions in 1795 and 18oo. Privateassociationswere establishedin severalcountiesto prosecuteforestallers: see the Rev. J. Malham, The Scarcity of Grain Considered(Salisbury, 18oo), pp. 35-44. Forestalling etc. remained offencesat common law until 1844: W. Holdsworth,Historyof EnglishLaw (London, 1938 edn.), xi, p. 472. See also below, note 64.
authorized (as it did in 1709, 1740, 1756 and 1766) the posting of
89
III thanthat victories have been moreoverwhelming Few intellectual wonin thematter theproponents ofthenewpolitical which economy corntrade. Indeed,so absolutehas oftheinternal of theregulation conceal thattheycan scarcely seemedto some historians the victory model of the new The withthe defeated theirimpatience party.43 be takenas thatof Adam economy may,withconvenience, political Smith,althoughThe Wealthof Nationsmay be seen not onlyas a to which central terminus butalso as a grand many pointofdeparture of in the the middle lines of discussion century eighteenth important (some of them,like CharlesSmith'slucid Tractson theCorn Trade concernedto demolish the old paternalist (1758-9), specifically all run. The debate between1767 and 1772 marketregulation) in the repeal of legislation which culminated againstforestalling, fouryearsbefore in this area, for laisser-faire signalleda victory, Adam Smith'sworkwas published. - a direct This signified less a new model than an anti-model Tudor policiesof "provision". "Let to the disintegrating negative wrote Arbuthnot in act thatregards thecornlawsbe repealed", every and it will findits level".44 The 1773; "Let corn flowlike water, of the corn trade" was also the unrestrained freedom "unlimited, demand of Adam Smith.45 The new economy entailed a deno lessfar-reaching ofthetheory oftrade and consumption moralizing dissolution ofrestrictions thanthemorewidely-debated uponusury.46 thatSmithand his colleagues it is notsuggested By "de-moralizing" forthe public good.48 It is or were unconcerned were immoral47
. as Adam Smith has shown ..."); 43 See e.g. Gras, op. cit., p. 241 (".. M. Olson, Economicsof the WartimeShortage (North Carolina, 1963), P. 53 ("People were quick to finda scapegoat"). betweenthe 44 J. Arbuthnot ("A Farmer"), An Inquiryinto the Connection PresentPrice of Provisionsand the Size of Farms (London, 1773), p. 88. 4 Adam Smith's "digression concerningthe Corn Trade and Corn Laws" is in Book Iv, chapter5 of The Wealthof Nations. 46 R. H. Tawney takes in the question in Religion and theRise of Capitalism (London, 1926), but it is not centralto his argument. 47 The suggestion was made, however, by some of Smith's opponents. One pamphleteer,who claimed to have known him well, alleged that Adam Smith had said to him that "the ChristianReligion debased the human mind", and that "Sodomy was a thingin itselfindifferent". No wonder that he held heartlessviews on the corn trade: Anon., Thoughts of an Old Man of IndepenFortuneon thePresent dentMind though Dependent High Pricesof Corn (London, I8oo), p. 4. I see no reason to disagree with ProfessorA. W. 48 On the level of intention Coats, "The Classical Economists and the Labourer", in Land, Labour and L. and G. E. Mingay (London, 1967). But intention Jones Population,ed. E. is a bad measure of ideological interestand of historicalconsequences.
90
PAST AND PRESENT
NUMBER 50
49 Smith saw the two as going together: "The laws concerningcorn may everywherebe compared to the laws concerning religion. The people feel in what relateseitherto theirsubsistencein this themselvesso much interested must yield to their life,or to theirhappiness in a lifeto come, that government prejudices. .".
that the new politicaleconomywas disinfested of meant,rather, intrusive moralimperatives.The old pamphleteers were moralists first and economists second. In the new economic theory questions as to the moralpolity of marketing do not enter, unlessas preamble and peroration. In practical thenewmodelworked in thisway. The natural terms, of supplyand demandin thefreemarket wouldmaximize operation the satisfaction of all parties and establish the common good. The market was neverbetter thanwhenit was leftto regulate regulated itself. In thecourseofa normal thepriceof cornwouldadjust year, itself the market mechanism. Soon after the small harvest through and all thosewithharvest and Michaelmas rentsto farmers, wages out theircornand bringit to market, or release pay, would thresh whatthey to sell. FromSeptember had pre-contracted to Christmas low pricesmightbe expected. The middling farmers would hold their in thehopeofa rising until theearly while corn, market, spring; the most opulentfarmers and farming would hold some of gentry theirsuntilstilllater- fromMay to August- in expectation of the market at the In this the corn reserves nation's way catching top. wereconveniently overfifty-two rationed, by the pricemechanism, without as middlemen weeks, anyintervention bythe State. Insofar intervened forthe farmers' and contracted crops in advance,they thisserviceof rationing even moreefficiently. In years performed of dearth the priceof grain advanceto uncomfortable might heights; butthiswas providential, to since(apartfrom an incentive providing the importer) it was again an effective formof rationing, without of the whichall stockswould be consumed in the first nine months for andin theremaining three months dearth wouldbe exchanged year, actualfamine. The onlyway in whichthis self-adjusting economy mightbreak downwas through the meddlesome interference of the Stateand of from areasof popularprejudice.49 Corn mustbe leftto flowfreely to of Hence the a areas middleman scarcity. necessary, surplus played and laudable r61e. The prejudicesagainstforestallers productive, as superstitions on a level withwitchcraft. Smithdismissedcurtly Interference with the naturalpattern of trade mightinduce local fromincreasing theiroutput. If faminesor discouragefarmers sales wereforced, or pricesrestrained in timesof dearth, premature
91
excessive stocks be consumed. If farmers did hold backtheir might to suffer whenpricesbroke. As graintoo long,theywouldbe likely - millers, fortheother bakers mealmen, dealers, popularculprits much the same logic applied. Their tradeswere competitive.At the mosttheycould onlydistort theirnatural levelover pricesfrom short and often to their discomfiture. ultimate Whenprices periods, theremedy was seennotin a beganto soarat theend ofthecentury, return to the regulation of trade,but in more enclosure, tillageof wastelands,improvement. It shouldnotbe necessary to arguethatthemodelofa natural and forthe bestgood of self-adjusting economy, working providentially as the notionswhich upheld the all, is as much a superstition model - although, it is a superstition which paternalist curiously, some economichistorians have been the last to abandon. In some Smith's modelconformed moreclosely to eighteenth-century respects realitiesthan did the paternalist; and scope of and in symmetry intellectual construction it was superior. But one shouldnot overlookthespeciousair of empirical whichthemodelcarries. validation Whereas thefirst to a moral whatought to be men's norm appeals duties- thesecondappearsto say: "thisis thewaythings reciprocal or wouldworkifthe Statedid notinterfere".And yetifone work, considers thesesections of TheWealth lessas ofNations they impress an essayin empirical thanas a superb, self-validating enquiry essayin logic. Whenwe consider theactualorganization oftheeighteenth-century corntrade, verification of is to hand. There neither model empirical 0 no has beenlittle detailed ofmarketing;5 of majorstudy investigation thatkeyfigure, themiller.51 Even thefirst of Smith's letter alphabet - theassumption thathighpriceswerean effective form ofrationing remainsno more than an assertion. It is notoriousthat the demandforcorn,or bread,is highly inelastic. Whenbreadis costly, thepoor(as one highly-placed was oncereminded) do notgo observer over to cake. In the view of some observers, when prices rose labourers eatthesamequantity ofbread, butcutoutother items might in theirbudgets;theymight even eat more breadto compensate for the loss of otheritems. Out of one shilling, in a normalyear,6d.
50See, however, A. Everitt, "The Marketing of AgriculturalProduce", in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. iv, 500oo-640, ed. Joan Thirsk (Cambridge, 1967) and D. Baker, "The Marketing of Corn in the first half of the Eighteenth Century: North-east Kent", Agric. Hist. Rev., xviii, (1970). in R. Bennett and J. Elton, Historyof 51 There is some useful information Corn Milling (Liverpool, 1898), 4 vols.
92
PAST AND PRESENT
NUMBER 50
ofgardenstuff"; might go on bread,6d. on "coarsemeatand plenty thewholeshilling wouldgo on bread.52 butin a high-price year of grain it is well known thatthe price movements In anyevent, cannot be accounted for by simple supply-and-demand price distorted cornexports and thebounty mechanisms; paid to encourage cornwas a primenecessity matters further. Next to air and water, to any deficiency sensitive in supply. In 1796 of life,abnormally in wheat was thattheoverall Arthur Youngcalculated cropdeficiency was 81 percent:giving lessthan25 percent;butthepriceadvance (by his calculation) a profit to theagricultural of?20 millions community writerscomplainedthatthe over a normalyear.53 Traditionalist of "monopoly";they farmers and dealersacted fromthe strength as "too absurd to be were rebuttedin pamphletafterpamphlet, seriously treated: what! more than two hundred thousand this was not whether people... !".54 The pointat issue,however, the but whether farmer or thatdealercould act as a "monopolist",
52 Emanuel Collins, Lying Detected(Bristol, 1758), pp. 66-7. This seems to be confirmedby the budgets of Davies and Eden (see note 20 above), and of observers: see The Unknown Mayhew, ed. E. P. Thompson nineteenth-century and E. Yeo (London, 1971), App. II. E. H. Phelps Brown and S. V. Hopkins, "Seven Centuries of the Prices of Consumables compared with Builders' Wage rates", Economica,xxii (1956), pp. 297-8 allow only 20% of the total household budget on farinaceousfood, althoughthe budgets of Davies and of Eden (taken in high price years) show an average of 53%. This again suggests that in such years bread consumptionremained stable, but other items were cut out altogether. In London theremay already have been a greaterdiversificationof diet by the 1790s. P. Colquhoun wrote to Portland, 9 July 1795, that there was abundance of vegetables at Spitalfields market, expecially potatoes, "that great substitute for Bread", carrots and turnips: P.R.O., P.C.I/27/A.54. xxvi (1796), pp. 470, 473. Davenant had estimated 53Annals of Agriculture, in the harvestof one-tenthraised the price by threein 1699 that a deficiency tenths: Sir C. Whitworth, The Political and Commercial Works of Charles Davenant (London, 1771), ii, p. 224. The problem is discussed in W. M. "The Bread Crisis in Britain,1795-6", Economica,new ser., xxxi (1964), Stemrn, and J. D. Gould, "AgriculturalFluctuations and the English Economy in the EighteenthCentury",Jl. Econ. Hist., xxii (1962). Dr. Gould puts weight on a point often mentioned in contemporaryapologetics for high prices (e.g. Farmer'sMagazine, ii, I8Ol, p. 81) that the small growers,in a year of scarcity, required their entire crop for seed and for their own consumption: in such as thishe findsthe "chieftheoretical factors explanationof the extremevolatility of grain prices in the early modem period". One would require more investigation of the actual operation of the market before such explanations carry conviction. 54 Anon., ["A Country Farmer"], Three Letters to a Member of the House the Prices of Provisions(London, 1766), pp. 18-19. ... concerning of Commons on the Corn Bill For other examples see Lord John Sheffield,Observations (London, 1791), P. 43; Anon., Inquiryinto the Causes and Remediesof the late and presentScarcity and highPrice of Provisions(London, 18oo), p. 33; J. S. Fry, Letterson the Corn-Trade (Bristol, 1816), pp. Io-II.
93
interests as a wholewere able, witha longand trading producing to take advantageof trainof favourable circumstances, continuing of a primenecessity of lifeand to enhancethe price theircommand to theconsumer, in muchthesamewayas theadvanced industrialized nationstodayhave been able to enhancethe priceof certain manufactured goodsto theless advancednations. As the century advancedmarketing became lesstransprocedures the hands of a more complex parent,as the corn passed through network of intermediaries. Farmerswere selling,not in an open in a local and regional market sense,was theaim competitive (which, of the paternalist rather thanthe laisser-faire model),but to dealers or millers to hold stocksand keep the who werein a better position market as population rose, high. In thelast decadesof thecentury, so consumptionpressed continually upon production,and the couldmore command a seller's market. Wartime producers generally while not in factinhibiting the import of grain conditions, greatly conditions of scarcity, nevertheless accentuated during psychological tensions in such years.55 Whatmattered in setting the post-harvest of theharvest price,was the expectation yield:and thereis evidence in the last decadesof the century of the growth of a farming lobby, well awareof thepsychological factors in post-harvest involved price levels, assiduously fostering an expectation of shortage.56 in yearsof dearth the farmers' faceswerewreathed in Notoriously, smiles,5' while in years of abundant harvest Dame Nature's inconsiderate cries of "distress". bountycalled forthagricultural And no matter howbountiful theyieldmight appearto theeyeofthe harvest was accompanied townsman, floods, every by talkof mildew, earswhichcrumbled to powder whenthreshing commenced. blighted The free marketmodel supposes a sequence of small to large their cornto market overtheyear;butat theend of farmers, bringing the century, as high-price yearsucceededupon high-price year,so moresmallfarmers wereable to hold back supplyuntilthe market roseto their satisfaction.(It was, after of all, forthemnota matter routinemarketing but of intense, interest: their profit consuming fortheyearmight or dependvery largely upon thepricewhichthree
55 See Olson, Economicsof the WartimeShortage,ch. 3; W. F. Galpin, The Grain Supply of England duringtheNapoleonic Period (New York, 1925). on the 56 See e.g. Anon., ["A West Country Maltster"], Considerations and theNecessities present High PricesofProvisions, ofLife (London, 1764), p. Io. a Yorkshire land-owner wrote in 1708, "the dearth of corn hope", 57 "I which is likelyto continue for several years to come will make husbandryvery to in and profitable us, breaking up improvingall our new land": cited by Beloff,op. cit., p. 57.
94
PAST AND PRESENT
NUMBER 50
fourcorn-stacks had to be paid,thegrowth in might fetch). If rents to be accommocountry bankingmade it easier for the farmer dated.58 The September or Octoberriotwas often by precipitated the failure of pricesto fall after a seemingly and harvest, plentiful indicated a conscious confrontation and between reluctant producer consumer. angry but These comments notin refutation ofAdam Smith, are offered, to indicate untilour simply placeswherecautionshouldbe exercised is greater. We need onlysay of the laisser-faire model knowledge thatit is empirically and thatthereis unproven; inherently unlikely; some evidenceon the otherside. We have recently been reminded that"merchants made moneyin the eighteenth and that century", the market".59 grain merchants may have made it "by operating are occasionally as frankly Such operations recorded, although rarely as was notedby a Whittlesford and cornmerchant (Cambs.) farmer
in his diaryin 1802: I bought ReythisTime TwelveMonthat 50os perQr. I couldhavesold it
122s per Qr. The poor had their flower,good rey, for 2s 6d per peck. to me, whichwas Is 9d per peck. It was a Blessing Parish paid the difference
to thePoorand goodto me. I bought 320 Quarters.60
on thistransaction was above ?1,ooo. The profit
If one can reconstruct clearalternative modelsbehindthe policies the of traditionalists and of politicaleconomists, can one construct ofthe crowd? This is less easy. One same forthe moraleconomy is confronted by a complex of rationalanalysis,prejudice,and of response to dearth. Nor is it possible,at any traditional patterns to the groupswhichendorsedthe given moment, clearly identify articulate and theories ofthecrowd. Theycomprise and inarticulate, include men of educationand address. After1750 each year of to the and letters was accompanied scarcity by a spate of pamphlets press, of unequal value. It was a common complaintof the
Pitt... on to theRt. Hon. William is notedin Anon.,A Letter 58 The point theCausesof theHighPriceofProvisions (Hereford, 1795),p. 9; Anon.,["A ofPractical A Letter tothe Rt.Hon.LordSomerville (London, Society Farmers"], Revolution in theIndustrial Country Banking p. 49. Cf. L. S. Pressnell, 18OO), (Oxford, 1956),pp. 346-8. "A FreshLook at WheatPricesand and C. M. Elliott, 59C. W. J.Grainger in theEighteenth Markets Econ.Hist.Rev.,2nd ser.,xx, (1967),p. Century",
262.
IV
(Cambridge, 1934),P. 211.
60
E. M. Hampson, The Treatment of Povertyin Cambridgeshire, 1597-1834
95
offree tradein cornthatmisguided added fuelto protagonists gentry ofmobdiscontent. theflames Thereis truth in this. The crowdderived itssenseoflegitimation, in fact,from the paternalist model. Many gentlemen stillresented themiddleman as an interloper. Wherelordsofthe manor retained market the loss (through rights theyresented etc.) of sample-sales theirmarket tolls. If theywere landlord-farmers, who witnessed meat or flourbeing marketed at prices disproportionately high in relationto theirown receipts fromthe dealers,theyresented the of these common tradesmen the more. The of profits essayist 1718 has a titlewhichis a precisof his matter:An Essay to provethat Hawkersand Jobbers Forestallers, Regrators, Engrossers, of Corn, Cattle, and otherMarketableGoods... are Destructive of Trade, to thePoor, and a Common Nuisanceto theKingdom in Oppressors General. All dealers (unless simple droversor carters,moving provisionsfrom one point to the next) appeared to this not unobservant writer as a "vile and pernicious set ofmen"; and, in the classic termsof reprovaladopted by men of settledestateto the bourgeois,
they are a vagabond sort of people .... They carrytheir all about them, and their ... stock is no more than a plain ridinghabit, a good horse, a list of the fairs and markets,and a prodigious quantity of impudence. They have the mark of Cain, and like him wander fromplace to place, drivingan trade between the fairdealer and the honest consumer.6e interloping
61 Adam Smith noted nearly sixtyyears later that the "popular odium ... which attendsthe corn trade in years of scarcity, the only years in which it can be veryprofitable, renderspeople of characterand fortuneaverse to enterinto it. It is abandoned to an inferiorset of dealers". Twenty-fiveyears later fromthe again Earl Fitzwilliamwas writing:"Dealers in corn are withdrawing in an article trafficking in which had render'd them trade, afraid to traffic liable to so much obloquy & calumny,and to be run at by an ignorantpopulace, withoutconfidence in protection fromthose who oughtto be more enlighten'd": Fitzwilliamto Portland,3 Sept. I8oo, P.R.O., H.O. 42/51. But an examination of the fortunesof such familiesas the Howards, Frys and Gurneys mightcall in question such literary evidence. 62 Emanuel Collins, op. cit., pp. 67-74. In 1756 several Quaker meetinghouses were attackedduringfood riotsin the Midlands: Gentleman's Magazine, xxvi (1756), p. 4o8.
This hostility to the dealer existedeven among many country some of whomwerenotedto be inactive whenpopular magistrates, disturbances theareasundertheir sweptthrough jurisdiction. They werenot displeased on dissenting or Quakercornfactors. by attacks A Bristol whois clearly a cornfactor, pamphleteer, complained bitterly in 1758 to the J.P.sof "yourlaw-giving in mob", whichprevented, the previousyear,the exportof corn fromthe Severn and Wye and of "manyfruitless to severalJustices of the valleys, applications Peace".62 Indeed, the convictiongrows that a popular hubbub
96
PAST AND PRESENT
NUMBER 50
was not unwelcometo some in authority.It againstforestallers fromthe farmers distracted attention and rentiers;while vague threats Sessional forestallers Quarter against gaveto thepoora notion thatthe authorities wereattending to theirinterests. The old laws a dealercomplained in 1766, forestallers, against
are printed in every newspaper, and stuck up in every corner,by order of the justices, to intimidatethe engrossers,against whom many murmurings are propagated. The common people are taught to entertaina very high opinion and reverenceforthese laws ....
S3 Anon., Reflections on thepresent and theComplaints High Price ofProvisions, and Disturbances arisingtherefrom (London, 1766), pp. 26-7, 31. 64 Contraryto the common assumption,the forestalling legislationhad not fallen into desuetude in the firsthalf of the eighteenth century. Prosecutions were infrequent, but sufficiently evident to suggest that they had some effect upon regulatingpetty dealing in the open market. At Manchester (see note fines for or 23 above) forestalling regratingtook place sometimes annually, sometimes every two or three years, from 1731 to 1759 (seven fines). Commodities involved included butter, cheese, milk, oysters,fish, meat, carrots, pease, potatoes, turnips, cucumbers, apples, beans, gooseberries, currants, cherries, pigeons,fowls,but veryrarelyoats and wheat. Fines are less frequent after 1760 but include 1766 (wheat and butter), 1780 (oats and eels), 1785 the Court Leet (meat), and 1796, 1797 and 1799 (all potatoes). Symbolically, officers to preventforestalling jumped from3 or 4 appointed annually (1730were prose1795) to 7 in 1795, 15 in 1796, I6 in 1797. In addition offenders cuted on occasion (as in 1757) at Quarter Sessions. See Earwaker, Court Leet Records(cited note 23 above), vols. vii, viii, and ix and Constables' Accounts see Essex Quarter (note 68 below), ii, p. 94. For other examples of offences, Sessions, indictments,2 Sept. 1709, 9 July 17II (engrossingoats), and also of fish, wheat, rye, butter, and, again, 171 for cases involving forestalling 13 Jan. 1729/30: Essex Rec. Off., Calendar and Indictments, Q/SR 541, for forestalling Q/SR 548, Q/SPb 3/7, Q/SPb b 3; Constables' presentments Rec. Off., hogs, Oct. 1735 and Oct. 1746: Bury St. Edmunds and West Suffolk of butter,Nottingham,6 Jan. 1745/6,Records DB/I/8 (5); ditto forforestalling of the Borough of Nottingham (Nottingham, 1914), vi, p. 209; conviction for of fowls (fine 13s. 4d.) at AtherstoneCourt Leet and Court Baron, forestalling 18 Oct. 1748: Warwicks. Rec. Off.,L2/24 23; cautions against the forestalling of butter etc., Woodbridge market,30 Aug. 1756: Ipswich and East Suffolk Rec. Off., V 5/9/6-3. In most Quarter-Sessional or market records the odd prosecution is to be found, before 1757. The author of Reflections and dis(cited note 63 above), writingin 1766, says these "almost-forgotten regarded statutes" were employed for the prosecution of "some submissive huckstersand indigent or terrified jobbers", and implies that the "principal factors" have despised "these menaces", believingthem to be bad law (p. 37). For 1795 and I8oo see note 42 above: the most importantcases of the prosecution of large dealers, were those of Rusby, for regratingoats (1799): see Barnes, op. cit., pp. 81-3; and of Waddington, convicted of forestalling hops at Worcester Assizes: see Times,4 Aug. I8oo and (for conviction upheld on East in Law appeal) I Reports(London, 190Io), vol. cii, pp. 56-68. 143 English
"the extraordinary Indeed, he accused the justicesof encouraging thatthepowerand spirit ofthemob is necessary to enforce pretence, the laws".63 But if the laws wereactually set in motion, theywere directedalmost withoutexceptionagainstpettyculprits- local who pocketedsmall profits on trivial wide-boysor market-men, - whilethelargedealersand millers transactions wereunaffected.64
97
an old-fashioned and crusty Middlesex Thus, totakea lateexample, a generalcampaignof prosecutions J.P., J. S. Girdler,instituted in 1796 and 18oo, with handbillsoffering againstsuch offenders letters to the press,etc. Convictions rewards forinformation, were upheld at severalQuarterSessions,but the amountgainedby the amounted shillings. We can guess speculators onlyto ten or fifteen at thekindofoffender whomhis prosecutions touched bytheliterary ofan anonymous letter whichhe received: style
We no youare an enemy to Farmers, Mealmenand Bakers and our Millers, me and another Trade ifit had notbenefor youyousonofa bitch youwold havebenemurdurd blasted rewards andpersecuting longagobyoffering your Our Trade God dam you and blastyou you shallneverlive to see another harvest. .P 65
likeGirdler werejoinedbytownsmen traditionalists Compassionate of various ranks. Most Londoners who had any suspected everyone flour or breadofevery kindofextortion. The grain, partin handling urbanlobbywas,ofcourse, in themiddle especially powerful yearsof the century, foran end to the exportbounty, or forthe pressing of all exports in timeof dearth. But London and the prohibition towns harboured inexhaustible reservesof resentment, and larger some of the wildestaccusations came fromthis milieu. A certain Dr. Manning,in the 1750s, publishedallegations that bread was notonlywithalum,chalk, adulterated andbeanmeal, butalso whiting with slaked lime and whitelead. Most sensational was his claim that millersturnedinto theirflour"sacks of old groundbones": "thecharnel housesofthedead areraked, to add filthiness to thefood of the living",or, as another "the present commented, pamphleteer mealson thebonesofthelast". age [is] making hearty wentfarbeyondthe boundsof credibility. Manning'saccusations (A criticcomputedthatif lime was being used on the scale of his more would be consumedin the London bakingthan allegations, buildingindustry).66Apartfromalum, whichwas widelyused to whiten form of adulteration was probably the bread,the commonest admixture of old, spoiled flourwith new flour.67 But the urban was quick to believethatfarmorenoxiousadulterations population were practised,and such belief contributed to the "Shude-hill in 1757,whereone of the millsattacked was Fight" at Manchester believedto mix"Accorns, and Beans,Bones,Whiting, Straw, Chopt
Girdler,op. cit., pp. 295-6. " Emanuel Collins, op. cit., pp. 16-37; P. Markham, Syhoroc (London, 1758), i, pp. 11-31; Poison Detected: or FrightfulTruths... in a Treatise on Bread (London, 1757), esp. pp. 16-38. 67 See e.g. John Smith, An Impartial Relation of Facts Concerning theMalepracticesof Bakers (London, n.d., 1740?).
6"
98
PAST AND PRESENT
NUMBER 50
even dried Horse Dung" withits flour, while at anothermill the near the hoppers(discovered by presenceof suspiciousadulterants ofbolters thecrowd) led totheburning and sieves, andthedestruction of mill-stones and wheels."6 of Therewere other, the complaints areaswhere equallysensitive, oftraditionalists thecrowdwerefedby thecomplaints or by thoseof urban professional people. Indeed, one may suggestthat if the crowd acted accordingto any consistent riotingor price-setting of theoretical reconstruction model,thenthismodelwas a selective the paternalist which most one, takingfromit all those features of cheap corn. It the poor and whichoffered a prospect favoured less generalized thanthe outlookof the paternalists. was, however, ofthepoorshowmoreparticularity: it is thismiller, The records this who provokeindignation and dealer,thosefarmers hoarding grain, informed notions action. This particularity was,however, bygeneral most clearlyonly when one of rightswhich disclose themselves in action. For in one respect themoraleconomy examines thecrowd of the crowdbrokedecisively withthatof the paternalists: forthe directaction by the crowd,whereasthe popular ethic sanctioned the paternalist valuesof orderunderpinning modelemphatically did not. of the poor was stilllocal and regional, The economy derivative Corn should be consumedin the froma subsistence-economy. in timesof scarcity. Proregionin whichit was grown, especially was aroused,and overseveralcenturies, foundfeeling by exportin riotin Suffolk in 1631 a magistrate timesof dearth. Of an export themand sentto strangers from wrote:"to see their breadthustaken has turnedthe impatienceof the poor into licentiousfuryand desperation".69In a graphicaccountof a riotin the same county how "the Mobb yearslater(1709), a dealerdescribed seventy-eight and saidthatthecornshouldnotbe several hundreds, rose,he thinks outoftown": "oftheMobb somehad halberds, somequarter carryed to Norwich, at several and someclubbs.. .". Whentravelling staffs, placeson theway:
thathe was to goe through the Mobb hearing withcorn,told himthatit theTowne,for he wasa Rogue,andCorn-Jobber, should notgo through that and some cry'dout Stonehim,some Pull him off his horse,someKnock him down,and be sureyou strike themwhat sure; thathe ... questioned
6sSee J. P. Earwaker, The Constables'Accountsof the Manor of Manchester
Family of Manchester, and the Food Riots of 1757 and 1812", Trans. Lancs. and Chesh. Antiq. Soc., xxviii (1910/II), pp. 83-90. 69 Calendar State Papers, Domestic,1631, p. 545.
and E. Axon,"The Hatfield (Manchester, 1891), iii,pp. 359-61; F. Nicholson
CENTURY THE ENGLISHCROWDIN THE EIGHTEENTH
99
in the mountains, or in the greatsheepExcept in Westminster, far from the of corn. Manumen were never districts, sight grazing in the countryside: the colliers went was dispersed facturing industry lefttheir domestic workers to theirlabourby the side of cornfields; for wasnotconfined to theharvest. Sensitivity loomsand workshops areaswereespecially overseasexport. Marginalexporting sensitive, but where, in normal in times wherelittlecornwas exported years, of scarcity, dealers could hope for a windfallprice in London, - Kingswood, the local dearth.7" The colliers thereby aggravating theNorthEast - wereespecially Forestof Dean, Shropshire, prone the Cornishtinners had an to action at such times. Notoriously and a readinessto turn out in irascibleconsumer-consciousness, force. "We had the devil and all of a riot at Padstow",wrotea in 1773,withscarcely-concealed admiration: Bodmingentleman
manner to theprejudice of themselves madethemrisein suchan inhuman and the countrey, but thatthey stillcryedout thathe was a Rogue & was thecornintoFrance... o70 to carry going
The worstresentment was provoked in the middleyearsof the which century, by foreignexportsupon bountywas paid. The was seen as receiving cornat pricessometimes belowthose foreigner withthe aid of a bounty of the Englishmarket, paid out of English taxes. Hence the extremebitterness sometimes visitedupon the was seen as a man who and seeking exporter, private, dishonourable, factor, gain at the expenseof his own people. A NorthYorkshire who was givena ducking in the river in 1740,was told thathe was to the "no betterthan a rebel".73 In 1783 a notice was affixed market-cross in Carlisle, commencing:
& Moses Luthart PeterClemeseson this is to give you Warning thatyou mustQuit yourunlawfull the Dealing or Die and be Damed yourbuying the Poor Inhabitants of the Cityand Soborbsof Carlisle Cornto starve to send to Franceand getthe Bounty Givenby the Law fortaking the Corn out of theCountry but by theLord God Amighty we willgiveyou Bounty at theExpenceofyourLives youDamed Roagues....
in exporting Some of thepeoplehaverunto too great of corn.... lengths went whofirst thecornfactors Sevenor eight hundred tinners offered thither, ofwheat;but beingtoldthey for24 gallons shouldhave seventeen shillings broke and tookawayall in the none,they openthecellardoors, immediately or price.72 money placewithout
"And if Eany PublickHouse in Carlisle[thenoticecontinued] Lets for you or Luthart put up... Corn at theirHouses theyshallsuffer This revived in the last of the feeling years century, notably it".74
ofPopular in Britain, Disturbance 71 See D. G. D. Isaac,"A Study 1714-54" Univ.Ph.D. thesis, (Edinburgh I953), ch. I.
Papers, 1773, P. 30. 72 Calendar of Home Office
74 London Gazette, March 70 P.R.O.,
P.C.I/2/I65.
7 P.R.O., S.P. 36/50.
1783, no. 12422.
I00
PAST AND PRESENT
NUMBER 50
as to secret flewaroundthe country in 1795,whenrumours exports to France. Moreover,1795 and I8oo saw the efflorescence of a once more,as vivid as thatof one hundred regionalconsciousness years before. Roads were blockadedto preventexportfromthe and unloaded in the towns parish. Waggons were intercepted of grain by nightthroughwhich they passed. The movement of a assumed the convoy operation: proportions military
their thewaggons with loads, pond'rous Deep groan As their darkcoursethey bendalongtheroads; in dreadprocession Wheelfollowing slow, wheel, to their Withhalfa harvest, points go ... they The secret likethenight expedition, That covers stillshuns thelight itsintents, ... whenhe leaveshis bed, Whilethepoorploughman, as his shed.7" Sees thehugebarnas empty
the canals.7" Ships werestormed Threatsweremade to destroy at the ports. The miners at Nook Colliery near Haverfordwest to close the estuary at a narrow threatened on point. Even lighters from the Severnand Wyewerenotimmune attack.77 also be inflamed a dealerwhosecommitIndignation against might mentto an outsidemarket the disrupted customary suppliesof the farmer and publicannearTiverton local community.A substantial complained to the War Officein 1795 of riotous assemblies hishousebecausehe takesin Butter to pull downor fire "threatening of the neighbouring it by the Farmers& Dairymen,to forward common thatpassesbyhis doorto ... London".7" In roadwaggon, the Chudleigh (Devon) in the same year the crowd destroyed a to the local of miller who had ceased community machinery supply sincehe was undercontract to theVictualling withflour Department of the Navy for ship's biscuits:this had given rise (he says in a to the revealingphrase) "to an Idea that ive done much infimy of a London merchants before Community".79Thirty years group fortheir ofthemilitary to seektheprotection had foundit necessary cheese-warehouses Trent: alongtheriver
from theriotous colliers are nottheproperty ... in danger The warehouses and absolbutofa numerous of anymonopolizers, bodyof cheesemongers,
and OtherPoems (London, 1807), pp. 222-3. 75S. J. Pratt, Sympathy 76 Some years beforeWedgwood had heard it "threatened... to destroyour
Staffordbecause werepassing canalsandletoutthewater", through provisions East Anglia:J. Wedgwood, Address to the Young from shireto Manchester
Inhabitants of thePottery(Newcastle, 1783). 77 P.R.O., P.C.1/27/A.54; A.55-7; H.O. 42/34; 42/35; 42/36; 42/37; see also Stern, op. cit., and E. P. Thompson, The Making of the EnglishWorking Class (Penguin edn., 1968), pp. 70-3. 78 P.R.O., W.O. i/io82, JohnAshley,24 June 1795. 7 P.R.O., H.O. 42/34.
IOI
utely necessaryforthe receptionof theircheese, forthe conveyanceto Hull, thereto be ship'd forLondon.s0
are related to thecomplaint, These grievances noted,ofthe already the open market. As the dealersmoved of goods from withdrawal at provincial further fromLondon and attendedmore frequently which so they wereable to offer markets, pricesand buyin quantities to servethe small ordersof the poor. made the farmers impatient Davies in 1795,"for "Now it is out ofthecourseofbusiness",wrote to retail cornbythebushelto thisorthatpoorman; except thefarmer offavour, to hisownlabourers". in someparticular places,as a matter the theirdemandfromgrainto flour, And wherethe poor shifted much the same: was story
Neither the miller nor the mealman will sell the labourer a less quantity than a sack of flourunderthe retailprice at shops; and the poor man's pocket will seldom allow of his buyinga whole sack at once.81
Hence the labourerwas drivento the pettyretailshop, at which declined, or, wherethey priceswereenhanced.82 The old markets their functions. If a customer werekeptup, they attempted changed of bacon,Girdler wrotein 18oo, to buy a singlecheeseor halfflitch and he is toldthatthewhole "he is sureto be answered by an insult, lot has been bought up by someLondon contractor".83 of thesegrievances, whichsometimes We maytake as expressive letter occasioned riot,an anonymous droppedin 1795by the doorof the Mayorof Salisbury:
Gentlemen of the Corperation I pray you put a stop to that practice which is made use of in our Markits by Rook and other carriers in your giving them the Liberty to Scower the Market of everythingso as the Inhabitance withoutgoing to the Dealers forit and Pay what cannot buy a singel Artickel Extortionatprice they thinkproper and even Domineer over the Peopel as thow they was not Whorthyto Look on them. But theirtime will soon be at an End as soon as the Solders ear gon out of town.
is askedto ordercarriers out ofthemarket untilthe The Corporation Butchers from "and all the have been served, stop townspeople themeatawayby a Carcesat a timeBut makethemcut it up sending the in the Markitand sarve the Town first". The letterinforms citizens have swor that of three hundred "posetively Mayor upwards oftheCarriers".84 to be trowto each other fortheDistruction
80P.R.O., W.O. 1/986fo.69. 8" Davies, op. cit., pp. 33-4. 82 "The first principle laid down by a baker, when he comes into a parish, is, to get all the poor in his debt; he then makes theirbread of what weightor Magazine, xxvi (1756), p. 557. goodness he pleases .. .": Gentleman's 83 Girdler,op. cit., p. 147. 84 P.R.O., H.O. 42/34.
102
PAST AND PRESENT
NUMBER 50
Where the workingpeople could buy cereals in small parcels intensefeelingcould arise over weightsand measures. We are in Luke: "Give,and itshallbe given exhorted untoyou,goodmeasure and and shaken over,shallmengive together, running presseddown, untoyourbosom". This was not,alas,thepractice ofall farmers and of CharlesII had even dealersin protestant England. An enactment to shake themeasure, so valuablewasthepoor giventhepoortheright in themeasure makethedifference man'scornthata looseness might to himof a daywithout a loaf. The same Act had attempted, with totallackofsuccess, to enforce theWinchester measure as thenational of measures, standard. A greatvariety even within varying county to the next, gave abundant boundariesfrom one market-town for weregenerally The old measures opportunities petty profiteering. or dealers, moreoften sometimes werefavoured by farmers they they werefavoured that"the remarked by the customers. One observer from the lowerordersof people detestit [theWinchester measure], of itscontents, smallness themto this, it and thedealers... instigate their retain in and interest to being every uncertainty weights
measures".85 larger sometimes very much larger than the Winchester;
to change the measure oftenencountered resistance, Attempts riot. A letterfroma Clee Hill (Salop.) miner to a occasionally "Brother Sufferer" declared:
us Thay are goingto forourrelief to helpto Clem [starve] The Parliament to the Lower Standard. We are lesson our Measure and Wait [weight] and ready at anytimeAnd we wou'd haveyou aboutTen Thousandsworn and Cutlasses and swear one another to be true.... We havebut getArms
one Life to Loose and we will not clem ....
88
in Northiam Lettersto farmers (Sussex) warned:
to you all foryou Gentlemen all ie hope you whilltakethisas a wharning to putthelittle Bushels bie and taketheoald measher againforif [measure] thatshallborne[burn]the little you donttherewhillbe a largecompany and cornwhenyouare all abade and asleepand yourcornehouses measher
stacks and you along with them .....87
to the Annalsof Agriculture A Hampshire contributor explainedin theprice an idea that conceived that the "have erroneously 1795 poor a nine-gallon from bushelto ofgrain is increased bythelatealteration
the the Stamford had 16 gallons, bushelof 8 gallons, theWinchester against
et Commerciale, xxvi (1796), p. 327; MuseumRusticum "5 Annals ofAgriculture, in bushels could be very considerable: as iv (1765), p. 198. The difference Carlisle 24, and the Chester 32: see J. Houghton, A Collection for Improvement of Husbandryand Trade (London, 1727), no. xlvi, 23 June 1693. 86 London Gazette, March 1767, no. 10710. 8 November 1793, in P.R.O., H.O. 42/27. The measures concerned
wereformalt.
I03
the Winchester, from its happening to takeplace at a moment of a the same money was paid foreightas used market, rising by which, to be paid forninegallons". "I confess", he continues,
I have a decidedpredeliction forthe nine-gallon forthe reason measure, thatit is the measurewhichnearest the yieldsa bushelof flour;whence, poorman is enabledto judgeofwhathe oughtto payfora bushelof flour, in thepresent morearithmetic thancomesto his which, measure, requires shareto ascertain.88
Even so, the arithmetical notionsof the poor maynot have been so erroneous. Changesin measures, likechangesto decimalcurrency, tendby somemagicto disadvantage theconsumer. If less cornwas beingbought in theopen (at theend ofthecentury) market theriseto greater by thepoor,thisalso indicated importance of themiller. The miller over occupiesa place in popularfolk-lore, which is both enviableand unenviable. On one many centuries, handhe was notedas a fabulously successful whoseprowess is lecher, still perhaps perpetuated in a vernacularmeaning of the word of the village mill, tucked "grinding". Perhaps the convenience arounda secludedcorner ofthestream, to which thevillage wivesand maidensbrought theircornforgrinding; perhapsalso his command overthe meansof life; perhapshis statusin thevillage, whichmade - all mayhave contributed himan eligiblematch to thelegend:
A brisk lass so brisk and gay young She wentuntothemillone day... There'sa peckofcornall forto grind I can butstaya little time. Come sityoudownmysweet dear pretty I cannot grind yourcornI fear is highand mywater low My stones I cannot forthemillwon'tgo. grind Then she sat downall on a sack ofthisand they talked ofthat They talked oflove,ofloveproved kind They talked She soonfound out themillwouldgrind ....89
On theother was less enviable. "Loving!", hand,themiller's repute Nellie Dean in Wuthering exclaims Heights: "Loving! Did anybody everhearthelike? I might as welltalkofloving themiller whocomes oncea yearto buyourcorn". If we areto believeall thatwas written
British maidshe to the Museum,Place MSS., Add. MS. 27825for"A pretty miller wouldgo", verse2: Then themiller he laid heragainst themillhopper a soul so wantonly Merry and he putin thestopper He pulledup hercloaths, For saysshe I'll havemycornground smalland free.
88 89
xxiv (1795), PP. 51-2. Annals of Agriculture, James Reeves, The Idiom of the People (London, 1958), p. 156. See also
104
PAST AND PRESENT
NUMBER 50
about him in theseyears, the miller's had changedlittlesince story Chaucer's Reeve's Tale. But wherethe small country millerwas medievalcustoms- over-size toll dishes,flour accused of quaintly concealed in thecasingofthestones, was etc.- hislarger counterpart accusedof addingnew,and greatly moreenterprising, peculations:
For ther-biforn he stalbutcurteisly, But nowhe was a thief outrageously.
At one extreme toll we stillhave the littlecountry mill,exacting accordingto its own custom. The toll mightbe taken in flour thefiner flour thatis in "the bestofthemealand from (alwaysfrom remained the the centreof the hopper"); and since the proportion in price,it was to themiller's samewithwhatever fluctuation advantoll thesmalltoll-mills (evenwhere tageifpriceswerehigh. Around and formoney had been commuted multiplied, grievances payments) therewere fitful at theirregulation."9Since the millers attempts own cornon their intodealing, and intogrinding entered increasingly customers accountforthe bakers, theyhad littletimeforthe petty (witha sackor twoofgleanedcorn);henceendlessdelay;hencealso, ofother, be theproduct it might whentheflour was returned inferior, at half-price thatsomemillers purchased grain. (It was complained damaged corn which they then mixed with the corn of their ofmanymills woreon, thetranslation customers.91)As thecentury a more corn-mills to the to industrial surviving petty purposesgave were sufficiently advantageous position. In 1796 these grievances feltto enable Sir Francis Bassettto carrythe Miller's Toll Bill, intendedto regulatetheirpractices, weightsand measures,more But these pettymillerswere, of course, the small fryof the of the ThamesValleyand of century. The greatmillers eighteenth who traded orderof entrepreneurs, the largetownswerea different in flour and malt. MillerswerequiteoutsidetheAssize extensively of Bread, and theycould immediately pass on any increasein the of corn to the consumer. England also had its unsung price in the includingthose extraordinary century, eighteenth banalitds ofthe an absolute exercised thesoke-mills, which survivals, monopoly of in substantial of sale the manufacturing flour) grinding grain(and
90 See P. Markham, Syhoroc (London, 1758), ii, p. 15; Bennett and Elton, of JohnSpyryagainstthe Miller of Millbrig op. cit.,iii, pp. 150-65; information Mill, I1740, for taking sometimes *th., sometimes 4th., and sometimes ith part as mulcture: West Riding Sessions papers, County Hall, Wakefield. 91See e.g. Girdler,op. cit., pp. 102-6, 212. xxiii (1795), PP. 179-91; Bennettand Elton, op. cit., 92 Annals of Agriculture,
strictly.92
iii,p. 166; 36 Geo. III, c. 85.
105
Leeds.93 In mostcases centres, Bradford, amongthemManchester, sold or leasedtheseto private thefeoffees whoownedthesoke-rights of the School Mills at was the history speculators. Most stormy as a charitable whosesoke-rights wereintended endowManchester, ment to support the grammar school. Two unpopular lesseesof the in 1737,Dr. Byrom's rhyme: rights inspired,
Bone and Skin, two millersthin, Would starvethe town, or near it; But be it known,to Skin and Bone, That Flesh and Blood can't bear it.
offlour to prohibit theimportation When,in 1757,newlesseessought while at the same time their mills to thegrowing town, managing (it and blood could indeed was alleged)withextortion and delay,flesh bear it no longer. In thefamous "Shude-hillFight"of thatyearat but the soke-rights least fourmen were killedby musketry, were But no even where actual one broken.94 obtained, soke-right finally and could provoke the millmight command a populouscommunity, or an evident by a suddenadvancein thepriceofflour peopleto fury in its quality. Mills werethe visible,tangible deterioration targets of someof the mostseriousurbanriotsofthe century. The Albion Mills at Blackfriars steammills)weregoverned Bridge(London'sfirst yetwhentheyburneddown in by a quasi-philanthropic syndicate; in thestreets.95 1791 Londonersdancedand sangballadsofrejoicing The first steammill at Birmingham (Snow Hill) faredlittlebetter, ofa massive in 1795. attack beingthetarget It mayappearat first as curious thatbothdealersand millers sight to be amongthe objectives of riotat the end of the shouldcontinue timein many oftheMidlandsand South(and century, bywhich parts in urbanareas)working to certainly peoplehad become accustomed bread at the than or flour in the bakers' rather buying shops grain to chart thechange-over with enough market-place.We do notknow much home-baking accuracy,and certainly survived.96 But even
9" See Bennettand Elton, op. cit.,iii, pp. 204 if; W. Cudworth,"The Bradford Soke", The BradfordAntiquary(Bradford,I888), i, pp. 74 ff. 94 See note 68 above and Bennettand Elton, op. cit., iii, pp. 274 ff. 95Ibid., iii, pp. 204-6. 96 Replies fromtowns to Privy Council enquiry, 1796, in P.R.O., P.C.I/33/ A.88: e.g. mayor of York, 16 April 1796, "the poor here can get their bread baked at common ovens . . ."; mayor of Lancaster, Io April, "each family buys theirown flourand makes theirown bread"; mayor of Leeds, 4 April, it is the custom "to buy corn or meal, and to mix up their own bread, and to bake it themselvesor to get it baked forhire". A surveyof bakers in the hundred of Corby (Northants.) in 1757 shows that out of 31 parishes, one parish (Wilbarston) had fourbakers,one had three,threehad two, eighthad one, and fourteenhad no resident baker (four gave no return): Northants. Rec. Off., H (K) 170o.
io6
PAST AND PRESENT
NUMBER 50
wherethe change-over was complete, one shouldnot underestimate the sophistication of the situation and of the crowd's objectives. There were,of course,scoresof petty riotsoutsidebreadshops,and thecrowdvery often "set theprice"ofbread. But thebaker(whose tradein timesof highpricescan scarcely havebeen an enviableone) was,alone ofall thosewho dealtin thepeople'snecessities (landlord, in dailycontact theconsumer; with and farmer, factor, carrier, miller), he was, morethanany of the others, the visible protected by paraof paternalism. The Assize of Bread clearly and publicly phernalia limitedtheir lawfulprofits also tending to leavethebaking (thereby tradein the handsofnumerous smalltraders withlittle capital),and thus protected them,to some degree,frompopularwrath. Even CharlesSmith, theable exponent offree thecontinuatrade, thought tionoftheAssizeto be expedient: "in largeTowns and Citiesit will be necessary to settheAssize,in order to satisfy thepeoplethat always the pricewhichthe Bakersdemandis no morethanwhatis thought reasonable by the Magistrates".97 The psychological effect of the Assizewas,therefore, considerable. The bakercould hope to enhancehis profit beyondthe allowance calculated in the Assize onlyby smallstratagems, some of whichin of cheap and spoiled the mixing bread,adulteration, short-weight flour- were subject eitherto legal redressor to instantcrowd retaliation. Indeed, the bakerhad sometimes to attendto his own evento theextent ofenlisting thecrowdon hisside: publicrelations, whenHannahPain of Kettering to thejusticesof shortcomplained weightbread,the baker"raised a mob upon her... and said she to be whipped, deserved there ofsuchscambling wereenough scumof the earth".98 Many corporations, the century, made throughout a greatshowof supervising and of and measures, weights punishing Ben Jonson's"JusticeOverdo" was still busy in the offenders.99 streets of Reading, or London: Coventry,
"9C. Smith, op. cit., p. 30. 98Examination of Hannah Pain, 12 Aug. 1757, Northants.Rec. Off.,H (K) 167 (I). were most frequentin 99It is notable that punishmentsfor these offences years of dearth, and doubtless these were intended to have symbolic force: for false or short weight at Bury St. Edmunds sessions, thus 6 presentments May 1740: Bury St. Edmunds and West SuffolkRec. Off.,D8/I/8(5); 6 fined for deficient weight in Maidenhead, October 1766: Berkshire Rec. Off., M/JMI. At Reading, however, surveillanceappears to be fairlyconstant,in good years as well as bad: Central Public Library, Reading, R/MJ Acc. 167, Court Leet and View of Frankpledge. At Manchester the market officials were vigilantuntil the 1750s, more casual thereafter, but very active in April 1796: Earwaker, Court Leet Records,ix, pp. 113-4.
107
... children in 1795who,coming on In thistradition a Londonmagistrate we find in the thesceneof a riotin SevenDials wherethecrowdwas already theshopofa bakeraccusedofselling act of demolishing light-weight seized the baker'sstock, bread,intervened, weighedthe loaves,and them indeed deficient, distributed the loaves among the finding 100 crowd. sometimes No doubt the bakers, who knew their customers, to reduceprices, and diverted of their the powerlessness complained crowd to the mill or the corn-market."Afterransacking many of Snow Hill, Birmingham, related of the bakers'shops",the miller in came numbers .. But in us attack, ."o01 great against "they 1795 deliberately manycases the crowdclearlyselectedits own targets, the bakers. Thus in 1740 at Norwichthe people "went by-passing a Note on his Door in these to everyBakerin the City,and affix'd a Comb". In the same year at words,Wheat at SixteenShillings to sell Wheatat 4d perBushel Wisbeach they obliged"theMerchants where butalso to theBakers, the ... notonlyto them, regulated they of & Price Weight Bread".a02 But it is clear at this pointthatwe are dealingwitha farmore complex patternof action than one which can be satisfactorily betweenthe populace and encounter explainedby a face-to-face It or bakers. to takea larger dealers is necessary millers, particular view of the actionsof the crowd. V thattheterm "riot"is a blunttoolofanalysis It has beensuggested for so many particular grievancesand occasions. It is also an term fordescribing for popularactions. If we are looking imprecise thecharacteristic form ofdirect we should not action, take, squabbles nor even the greataffrays outside London bakeries, provokedby
Gentleman's Magazine, lxv (1795), p. 697. notebookof Edward Pickering,BirminghamCity Ref. Lib., M 22. Ipswich Journal, 12 and 26 July 1740o. (I am indebted to Dr. R. M. Malcolmson of Queen's University, Ontario, for these references). The crowd by no means mistook the bakers for their main opponents, and forms of pressure were often of considerable complexity: thus "incendiary" papers set up around Tenterden (1768) incited people to rise and forcethe farmersto sell their wheat to the millers or the poor at ?Io a load, and threatenedto destroy the mills of those millers who gave to the farmersa higher price: Shelburne, 25 May 1768, P.R.O., S.P. 44/199.
100
Marry, go you into everyalehouse, and down into everycellar; measure the length of puddings ... weigh the loaves of bread on his middle finger... give the puddings to the poor, the bread to the hungry,the custards to his
101 MS.
102
Io8
PAST AND PRESENT
NUMBER 50
discontent with the large millers, but the "risingsof the people" in 1740, 1756,1766,1795 and I800) in whichcolliers, (mostnotably weavers and hosieryworkerswere prominent. What is tinners, remarkable aboutthese"insurrections" theirdiscipline, is, first, and, a pattern of behaviour forwhose second,the factthattheyexhibit we mustlook back severalhundreds of years:whichbecomes origin in the eighteenth more, ratherthan less, sophisticated century; whichrepeatsitself, in different seemingly spontaneously, partsof thecountry and after thepassageof manyquiet years. The central actionin thispattern is notthesackof granaries and thepilfering of or the flour but actionof "setting theprice". grain about this patternis that it reproduces, What is extraordinary withgreatprecision, sometimes the emergency in timeof measures whoseoperation, in the yearsbetween1580 and 1630, were scarcity codified in the Book of Orders. These emergency measureswere in timesof scarcity in thelast yearsof Elizabeth,and put employed in a somewhat in the reignof CharlesI, into effect, revisedform, in 1630. In Elizabeth's reign the magistrates were required to attend thelocal markets,
and where you shall fyndethat there is insufficiente quantities broughteto fill and serve the said markettsand speciallie the poorer sorte, you shall thereuponresorteto the houses of the Farmers and othersusing tyllage... and viewe what store and provision of graine theye have remayningeeither thrashedor unthrashed....
103 "A Coppie of the Councells her[e] for graine delyvrdat Bodmyn the xith of May 1586": Bodleian Library,Rawlinson MS. B 285, fos. 66-7. 104 There is some account of the operation of the Book of Orders in E. M. Leonard, Early History of English Poor Relief (Cambridge, 19oo); Gras, op. cit., pp. 236-42; Lipson, op. cit., iii, pp. 440-50; B. E. Supple, Commercial Crisis and Change in England, 1600-42 (Cambridge, 1964), p. 117. Papers illustrative of theiroperationare in Official Papers ofNathanielBacon of Stiffkey, Norfolk(Camden Society, 3rd ser., xxvi, 1915), pp. 130-57. 105 For an example, see Victoria County History, Oxfordshire, ii, ed. W. Page (London, 1907), pp. 193-4.
to send "convenient thenorderthe farmers They might quantities" to market to be sold "and thatat reasonable price". The justices were further to "sett downe a certenprice upon the empowered bushellof everye kyndeof graine".103 The queen and her Council in partto the opinedthathighpriceswerein partdue to engrossers, who "bee not contentwth anie "greedie desier" of corn-growers moderate butseeke& devisewaiesto kepeup thepricesto the gayne, manifest of the poorersort". The Orderswere to be oppression all parciality in sparing anie man".'04 enforced "wthout In essence,then,theBook of Orders magistrates (with empowered the aid of local juries) to surveythe corn stocks in barns and to be sentto market; and to enforce ;105 to order granaries quantities
109
withseverity and forestalling everypartof the marketing, licensing "unlesse legislation. No cornwas to be sold exceptin open market, thesamebe to someporehandicrafts within Men, or Day-Labourers the parishwherein cometo you doe dwell,thatcannotconveniently the Market Townes". The Orders of 1630 did not explicitly empowerjusticesto set the price,but orderedthemto attendthe market and ensurethatthe poor were"providedof necessary Corne theJustices can be obtained". The powerto set a priceupon grain or flourrested,in emergency, betweenenforcement and half-way persuasion. 106 This emergency into disrepair was falling legislation duringthe Civil Wars.107 But the popularmemory, in a pre-literate especially society,is extraordinarily long. There can be littledoubt that a from direct tradition extends theBookofOrders of 1630 to theactions of clothing workers in East Angliaand the West in the eighteenth had long memories also: the Book of Orders century. (The literate itself was republished, in 1662,and againin 1758,with unofficially, a prefatory addressto the readerreferring to the present"wicked to makescarcity".)108 combination
106 By an Act of 1534 (25 Henry VIII, c. 2) the PrivyCouncil had the power to set prices on corn in emergency. In a somewhat misleading note, Gras (op. cit., pp. 132-3) opines that after 1550 the power was never used. It was in any case not forgotten: a proclamationof 1603 appears to set prices (Seligman Collection, Columbia Univ. Lib., Proclamations,James I, 1603); the Book of Orders of 1630 concludes with the warning that "if the Come-masters and other Owners of Victuall ... shall not willinglyperformethese Orders", His Majesty will "give Order thatreasonable Prices shall be set"; the PrivyCouncil attemptedto restrainprices by Proclamation in 1709, Liverpool Papers, Brit. Mus., Add. MS. 38353, fo. 195; and the matterwas activelycanvassed in 1757 - see Smith, Three Tracts on the Corn Trade, pp. 29, 35. And (apart from the Assize of Bread) otherprice-fixing powers lingeredon. In 1681 at Oxford market(controlledby the University)prices were set forbutter, cheese, poultry, meat, bacon, candles, oats, and beans: "The Oxford Market", Collectanea, 2nd ser. (Oxford, 1890), pp. 127-8. It seems that the Assize of Ale lapsed in Middlesex in 1692 (Lipson, op. cit., ii, p. 5oi), and in 1762 brewers were authorized (by 2 Geo III, c. 14) to raise the price in a reasonable manner; but when in 1773 it was proposed to raise the price by Yd.a quart Sir JohnFielding wrote to the earl of Suffolkthat the increase "cannot be thoughtreasonable; nor will the subject submit to it": Calendar of Home Office Papers, 1773, PP. 9-14; P. Mathias, The Brewing Industryin England, z700-z830 (Cambridge,
S..
with as much favourin the Prices, as by the earnestPerswasion of
107 See G. D. Ramsay, "Industrial Laisser-Faireand the Policy of Cromwell", Econ. Hist. Rev. Ist ser., xvi (1946), esp. pp. 103-4; M. James, Social Problems and Policy duringthePuritan Revolution(London, 1930), pp. 264-71. 108 Seasonable Orders Offered fromformerPrecedentsWherebythe Price of Corn ... may be muchabated (London, 1662) - a reprintof the Elizabethan Orders; J. Massie, OrdersAppointedby His Majestie King Charles I (London, 1758).
1959), P. 360.
IIO
PAST AND PRESENT
NUMBER 50
to the pressure The Orderswerethemselves in parta response of thepoor:

The Corneis so dear I doutmaniwillstarve thisyeare
noticeaffixed in the church So ran a doggerel porchin the parishof in Wye(Kent) 163o:
If you see not to this
For ourbodyshavesumeceare Before we arise Less willsafise .... You thatare setin place See that youre profesion you
doe not disgrace ....1109
Our souls theyare dear,
Sum ofyouwillspeedamis.
later(1768)incendiary andthirty One hundred years paperswereonce doors(as wellas to inn-signs) in parishes againbeingnailedto church the poor to rise.110 within the same latheof Scrayin Kent,inciting the continuities can be observed, although undoubtedly Manysimilar action in the of direct to new districts eighteenth pattern spread century. In many actions, especiallyin the old manufacturing regionsof the East and West, the crowd claimed that since the mustenforce themfor refused "the laws" they authorities to enforce themselves. In 1693 at Banburyand ChippingNortonthe crowd out ofthewaggons, "tookawaythe corneby force as it was carrying thatthey to putthelaw wereresolved saying awaybytheingrossers, it"."'x in execution,since the magistrates During the neglected in theWestin 1766thesheriff of Gloucestershire, disorders extensive therioters who couldnotdisguise hisrespect for a gentleman clothier,
out and and civilly desired wou'd thresh went... to a farmhouse thatthey their wheatand sell it forfiveshillings per bushel,which bringto market and someprovisions unasked for, they departed beingpromised, giventhem or offence. without theleastviolence
accountswe may If we follow other passages of the sheriff's mostofthefeatures in theseactions: encounter found
ofHorns&c On Friday lasta Mobb was rais'din theseparts bytheblowing of thelowestof the peoplesuch as weavers, mecanicks, entirely consisting and boys, &c... labourers, prentices,
to a gristmill nearthetown... cutting open Baggs "They proceeded it away & destroying corn &c". of Flower and giving& carrying at the the then attended main markets, setting priceof grain. They Three dayslaterhe senta further report:
110 Calendar
'09Calendar State Papers (Domestic), 1630, p. 387. of Home Ofice Papers, 1768, p. 342. op. cit., p. 148. 1x Westerfield,
III
They visited Farmers, Millers, Bakers and Hucksters shops, selling corn, flower, bread, cheese, butter,and bacon, at theirown prices. They returned in generalthe produce [i.e. the money] to the proprietors or in theirabsence left the money for them; and behaved with great regularityand decency where they were not opposed, with outrage and violence where they was: but pilferdvery little,which to prevent,they will not now sufferWomen and boys to go with them.
After the millsand markets aroundGloucester, Stroudand visiting and a hundredand Cirencester, they divided into partiesof fifty visited thevillages and farms, thatcornbe brought at fair requesting to market, in on granaries. A largeparty and breaking ofthem prices attendedon the sheriff downed their cudgels while he himself, addressedthem on their misdemeanours, listenedwith patience, shoutedGod Save the King", and thenpickedup their "chearfully cudgels and resumedthe good work of settingthe price. The of the character movement of a generalstrike of the whole partook "the rioters district: comeintoour workshops ... and force clothing or unwilling out all themenwilling to join them".112 This was an unusually and disciplined action. But the large-scale account directsus to features encountered. Thus the repeatedly movement of thecrowdfrom the market-place to the mills outwards and thence(as in the Book of Orders) to farms, wherestockswere orderedto send grainto market at the inspectedand the farmers found. This price dictatedby the crowd- all this is commonly was sometimes roundof visitsto the accompanied by thetraditional houses of the great,for contributions, forcedor voluntary. At in 1740thecrowd, Norwich after downpricesin thecity, and forcing seizing a keel loaded with wheat and rye on the river,solicited contributions from therichofthecity:
Early on Thursday Morning, by Sound of Horns, theymet again; and after a short Confabulation, divided into Parties, and march'd out of Town at different Gates, with a long Streamer carried before them, purposing to visit the Gentlemen and Farmers in the neighbouringVillages, in order to extort Money, Strong Ale, &c. from them. At many places, where the Generosityof People answer'd not their Expectation, 'tis said they shew'd theirResentmentby treadingdown the Corn in the Fields ....
crowdswere activein thisyear,notably in Durham Perambulating and Northumberland, the West Riding,and severalpartsof North Wales. Anti-exportdemonstrators, commencingat Dewsbury and "a sortofensign or colours"; (April1740)wereled bya drummer a regular circuit of the local mills, destroying they performed and carrying and meal. In 1766 sacks, machinery, cutting awaygrain
112Letters of W. Dalloway, Brimscomb, 17 and 20 September 1766, in P.R.O., P.C.I/8/41.
112
PAST AND PRESENT
NUMBER 50
a perambulating crowdin the Thames valleycalledthemselves "the a terrified farmer allowedthemto sleepin thestraw in Regulators"; hisyard, hisChamber and "could hearfrom that weretelling one they whomtheyhad mostfrightened, another & wheretheyhad the best continues in the 1790s: at Ellesmere success". The pattern (Salop.) thecornas it goesto themillsand threatening thecrowdstopping the in the Forestof Dean the miners farmers mills individually; visiting and farmers' "from meetin houses,and exacting money they persons the road"; in West Cornwall thetinners farms witha noose visiting in one hand and an agreement to bringcorn at reducedpricesto market in theother. 113 It is therestraint, rather thanthedisorder, is remarkable; which and therecan be no doubtthatthe actionswere approvedby an overconviction that whelming popularconsensus. Thereis a deeply-felt in timesofdearth, to be regulated, and thattheprofiteer pricesought, outsideof society. On occasionthe crowdattempted to put himself or some enlist,by suasion or force,a magistrate, parishconstable, of authority to presideover the taxation figure populaire. In 1766 of the crowdwent to JohnLyford's at Drayton (Oxon.) members - uponhis saying house "and askedhimifhe werea Constable 'yes' Cheersaid he sho'd go withthemto the Cross& receive the money for3 sacksof flour whichtheyhad takenfrom one BettySmithand whichtheyw'd sell for5s a Bushel"; the same crowdenlistedthe constableof Abingdonfor the same service. The constableof in a similar was enlisted Handborough (also in Oxfordshire) way,in whichhad been intercepted, and the money upon a waggonof flour thanfifteen forno fewer sackswas paid intohis hands. In the Isle of Ely,in the same year,"the mob insisted meatat 4d upon buying to superintend the sale, per lb, & desiredMr Gardnera Magistrate on Saturday as theMayorhad doneat Cambridge sennight". Again in 1795 therewere a numberof occasionswhen militiaor regular at bayonet-point, their troops supervisedforcedsales, sometimes the other officers of looking steadfastly way. A combined operation and of crowd forced the to in Chichester accede soldiery mayor
113Norwich, 1740 - Ipswich Journal,26 July 1740; Dewsbury, 1740 J. L. Kaye and five magistrates,Wakefield, 30 Apr. 1740, in P.R.O., S.P. of BartholomewFreeman of Bisham 36/50; Thames Valley, 1766 - testimony Farm, 2 Oct. 1766, in P.R.O., T.S.II/995/3707; Ellesmere, 1795 - P.R.O., W.O. I/Io89 fo. 359; Forest of Dean - John Turner, Mayor of Gloucester, 24 June 1795, P.R.O., W.O.I/Io87; Cornwall - see John G. Rule, "Some Social Aspects of the Cornish Industrial Revolution", Industryand Society in the South-West,ed. Roger Burt (Universityof Exeter, 1970), pp. 90-I.
1795; the crowd set a price - and a substantialone -
of 4os a sack
113
the price of bread. At Wells men of the 122nd Regiment setting began
or jobbersof butter, who they thosetheyterm'dforestallers by hooting - collected it huntedin different partsof the town- seized the butter in - placed sentinels overit - thenthrew it, & mix'tit together together it in scales,sellingit retail'dthe same,weighing a tub - & afterwards thecommon after therateof8d perlb ... though pricegivenbythejobbers morethanIod.114 was rather
to suggest was made whenso largea breach It wouldbe foolish that, of deference, to in the outworks manydid not takethe opportunity is abundant the off evidence goodswithout carry payment. Butthere otherway,and some of it is striking. There are the Honitonlacetakencornfrom thefarmers in 1766,who,having and sold workers, back to thefarmers not it at thepopularpricein themarket, brought only the moneybut also the sacks; the Oldham crowd,in I8OO, each purchaser to two pecksa head; and the many whichrationed occasionswhencartswerestoppedon theroads,theircontents sold, to the carter.115 and the moneyentrusted in thosecaseswhere without Moreover, goodsweretaken payment, it is wise to enquirewhether or whereviolencewas committed, any of circumstances entersinto the case. The aggravation particular distinction is made in an accountof an actionin Portsea(Hants.) in werefirst offered by the crowdthe 1795. The bakersand butchers "those that in those werepaid with demands complied popularprice: had theirshopsrifled, "without exactness". But thosewho refused thanthemob choseto leave". Again,the anymoremoney receiving at Port Isaac (Cornwall)in the same yearseized barley quarrymen warehoused forexport,payingthe reasonably high price of I Is. a theowner to ship that"if he offer'd bushel,at thesametimewarning the Remainder him any theywould come & takeit without making or revenge recompence". Very oftenthe motiveof punishment comes in. The greatriotin Newcastlein 174o, when pitmenand keelmenswept into the Guildhall,destroyed the town books and sharedout the town's hutch,and pelted aldermenwith mud and
114 Drayton, Oxon brief Wm Denleyand three in P.R.O., others, against of Robert Prior, constable, T.S. 1/995/3707; Handborough - information 6 Aug. 1795, P.R.O., Assizes 5/II6; Isle of Ely - Lord Hardwicke,Wimpole, 27 July1795, P.R.O., H.O. 42/35 and H. Gunning, Reminiscences of Cambridge (London, I854), ii, PP. 5-7; Chichester - duke of Richmond, Goodwood, Wells "Verax", 28 Apr. 1795, P.R.O., 13 Apr. 1795, P.R.O., W.O. /o1092; W.O. I/Io82 and the Rev. J. Turner, 28 Apr., H.O. 42/34. For an example of
a constable whowas executed for hispartin a tinners' riotin St. Austell, 1729,
see Rule, op. cit., p. 9o. 116 Historical Sketches See R. B. Rose, op cit., p. 435; Edwin Butterworth, of Oldham (Oldham, 1856), pp. 137-9, 144-5.
114
PAST AND PRESENT
NUMBER 50
when an stones,came only aftertwo phases of aggravation: first, between the pitmen's leadersand the merchants agreement (withan alderman actingas arbitrator) settingthe pricesof grainhad been authorities into the crowd had fired broken;second,whenpanicky from the Guildhallsteps. At one house in Gloucestershire in 1766 shotswerefired at thecrowdwhich(writes thesheriff)--
resented intothehouse,and destroying all thefurnithey highly byforceing &c and partly untiled have given out sincethatthey ture, windows, it; they of thisact because'twasnot the master of the house (he greatly repented beingfrom home)thatfired uponthem.
In 1795 the tinners mountedan attackupon a Penryn(Cornwall) merchant who was contracted to sendthembarley, but who had sent themspoiledand sprouting and grain. When millswereattacked, theirmachinery of a longdamaged,it was oftenin furtherance or as punishment forsomenotorious standing warning, practice."'s theunilinear and spasmodic Indeed,ifwe wishto call in question view of food riots,we need onlypointto this continuing motif of when men and women near to starvation popular intimidation, nevertheless millsand granaries, attacked notto stealthefood,but to cornor flour was strewn punishthe proprietors.Repeatedly along the roads and hedges; dumpedinto the river;mill machinery was let off. To examples the of such behaviour damagedand mill-dams authorities reactedbothwithindignation and astonishment.It was and distempered symptomatic (as it seemedto them)ofthe"frantic" humours of a peoplewhosebrainwas inflamed by hunger. In 1795 boththe Lord ChiefJustice and Arthur lectures to Young delivered the poor,pointing out thatthe destruction of grainwas notthe best the supplyof bread. Hannah More added a Halfway to improve of S8oogives us a rather versifier pennyHomily. An anonymous morelively to thelowerorders: exampleoftheseadmonitions
Whenwith Friends yourcountry yourhours youpass, Andtake,as oftyou're thecopiousglass, wont, Whenall grow ifperchance mellow, youhear "That 'tisth' Engrossers makethecornso dear; had enough "They mustand willhavebread:they've "Of Rice and Soup,and all suchsquashy stuff: and strive and main "They'llhelpthemselves: bymight "To be reveng'd on all suchrogues in grain": he'llfight swears as longas he has breath, John " 'Twerebetter to be hang'dthanstarv'd to death:
116Portsea - Gentleman's Magazine, lxv (1795), P. 343; Port Isaac - Sir W. Molesworth,23 March 1795, P.R.O., H.O. 42/34; Newcastle - Gentleman's Magazine, x (1740), p. 355, and various sources in P.R.O., S.P. 36/51, in NorthumberlandRec. Off.and Newcastle City ArchivesOff.; Gloucestershire, 1766 - P.R.O., P.C. 1/8/41;Penryn,1795 - P.R.O., H.O. 42/34.
115
so he will, "He'll burnSquireHoardum's garner, and pull downhis mill". "Tuck up old Filchbag, and Pitchfork Now whentheProng prepare they war... And all theimplements ofrustick unlawful them what ills deeds Tell attend, and sorrow in wrath end, Deeds, which begun, down a mill, and That burning barns, pulling cornproduce, norbelliesfill."'11 Willneither
But werethe poor reallyso silly? One suspectsthatthe millers on the whokeptone wary and dealers, eyeon thepeopleand theother at their thanthepoetasters knew better oftheir maximization profits, of information. ownsources Forthepoorhadtheir escritoires. They on thedocks. They movedthebargeson thecanals. They worked drove the carts and mannedthe toll-gates. They workedin the knewthe local factsfarbetter and the mills. They often granaries to hidden in manyactionstheywent unerringly than the gentry; in existence the whose denied. of faith, J.P.s, good supplies grain werealways in rooted often If rumours grewbeyondall bounds,they soiloffact. The poorknewthattheone wayto at leastsomeshallow arms. their maketherichyieldwas to twist VI the women. In 1693 we of the riotswere,veryoften, Initiators learn of a greatnumberof womengoingto Northampton market, to forcecornat theirown rates". "withknivesstuckin theirgirdles In an exportriotin 1737 at Poole (Dorset) it was reported:"The Numbersconsistin so manyWomen,& the Men supporting them, to molestany of the Women in their & Swear, if any one offers both theywillraisea GreatNumberof Men & destroy Proceedings Ships & Cargoes". The mob was raised in Stockton(Durham) in 1740 by a "Lady witha stickand a horn". At Haverfordwest withthe in 1795 an old-fashioned J.P. who attempted, (Pembroke) that"the to do battlewiththecolliers, complained helpofhis curate, theMen on, & wereperfect womenwereputting furies. I had some from someofthemon myBack.. .". A Birmingham strokes paper the Snow Hill riotsas the workof "a rabble,urgedon by described furious women". In dozens of cases it is the same - the women peltingan unpopulardealer with his own potatoes,or cunningly thattheyhad slightly greater combining furywiththe calculation the retaliation of theauthorities: "the thanthe menfrom immunity said of womentoldthecommon men",theHaverfordwest magistrate
117 Anon., Contentment: or Hints to Servants,on thePresentScarcity(broadsheet, I8oo).
116
PAST AND PRESENT
NUMBER 50
the soldiers, "thattheyknewtheywerein theirHeartsforthem& woulddo themno hurt".11"8 These women appear to have belongedto some pre-history of theirsex before its Fall, and to have been unawarethattheyshould have waited for some two hundred years for their Liberation. could write as a commonplace, in 1807: "Womenare more (Southey from disposedto be mutinous; theystandless in fearof law, partly because theypresumeupon the privilege of their ignorance, partly in all publictumults in violence sex, and therefore theyare foremost and ferocity".)119 of were those most in involved also, course, They face-to-face most sensitive to price significancies, most marketing, or inferior experiencedin detectingshort-weight quality. It is that the women most the probable frequently precipitated spontaneous actions. Butother actions were more carefully prepared. Sometimes noticeswere nailed to churchor inn doors. In 1740 "a Mach of Futtball was Criedat Ketring offive HundredMen ofa side,butthe was to Pull Down Mills". At the desighn Lady BeteyJesmaine's end of the century the distribution of hand-written notices mayhave becomemorecommon. FromWakefield (Yorks.),1795:
To Give Notice To all Women & inhabitance of Wakefield theyare desired to meet at the New Church ... on Friday next at Nine O'Clock ... to state the price of corn... By desire of the inhabitantsof Halifax Who will meet them there
From Stratton (Cornwall),I8oI:

To all the labouring Men and Tradesmen in the Hundred of Strattonthat are willing to save their Wifes and Children fromthe Dreadfull condition of being STARVED to DEATH by the unfeelingand Griping Farmer .... Assemble all emeadiatelyand march in Dreadfull Array to the Habitations - Calendar State Papers, Domestic,1693, p. 397; Poole 118 Northampton memorial of Chitty and Lefebare, merchants,enclosed in Holles Newcastle, 26 May 1737, P.R.O., S.P. 41/o0; Stockton- Edward Goddard, 24 May 1740, P.R.O., S.P. 36/50 ("We met a Lady with a Stick and a horn going towards Norton to raise the people . . tookthe hornfromher,She usingveryill language all the while and followed into the Town, raisingall the People she could ... Ordered the Woman to be taken up ... She all the way Cryingout, Damn you - P.R.O., or be sent to Gaol"?); Haverfordwest all, Will You See me Suffer, H.O. 42/35; Birmingham- J. A. Langford, A Centuryof Birmingham Life (Birmingham,1868), ii, p. 52. 119 Letters women had The from England (London, 1814 edn.), ii, p. 47. otherresourcesthan ferocity:a colonel of Volunteerslamented that "the Devil in the shape of Women is now using all his influenceto induce the Privatesto brake their attachments to their Officers": Lt.-Col. J. Entwisle, Rochdale, 5 Aug. 1795, P.R.O., W.O. I/Io86.
THE ENGLISHCROWDIN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
117
and Compellthemto sell their Cornin theMarket, of the Griping Farmer, Price....120 and reasonable at a fair
actionmight a kindof The small-scale, developfrom spontaneous outsideretailers' ritualized hootingor groaning shops;121 fromthe ofgrainor flour a populous ofa waggon passingthrough interception of a menacingcrowd. Very centre; or fromthe mere gathering would develop: the owner of the quickly a bargaining-situation with knewverywell thatifhe did not comply voluntarily provisions the price imposed by the crowd (and his compliancemade any oflosing he stoodin danger his very difficult) subsequent prosecution was stockaltogether. Whena waggonwithsacksof wheatand flour at Handborough (Oxon.) in 1795,some womenclimbed intercepted thesackson theroadside. "Some ofthepersons aboardand pitched said theywouldgiveFortyShillings a Sack forthe Flour, assembled and theywouldhave it at that,and wouldnotgivemore,and ifthat wouldhaveitbyforce". The owner wouldnotdo,they (a "yeoman") at length agreed: "If thatmustbe the price,it mustbe the price". The procedure can be seenequallyclearly in the offorced bargaining depositionof Thomas Smith, a baker, who rode into Hadstock or more women and children. One of the villagestreetby forty women(a labourer's wife)held his horse
(Essex) with bread on his panniers (1795). He was stopped in the
in his priceof Bread,he toldher, he had fallen and having askedwhether he had no Ordersto fall fromthe Millers,& she thensaid, "By God if you don'tfallyoushallnotleaveanyBreadin theTown" ....
Several in the crowd then offered 9d. a quarternloaf, while he have demanded 19d. Theythen"sworethatifhe wouldnotletthem it at 9d a Loaf, theywouldtakeit away,& before he could giveany otherAnswer,severalPersonsthen about him took severalof the
Loaves offhis Pads .. .".
- P.R.O., S.P. 36/50: forotherexamples of the use of football 120 Kettering to assemble a crowd, see R. M. Malcolmson, "Popular Recreationsin English Society, 1700-1850", (WarwickUniv. Ph.D. thesis, 1970), pp. 89-9o; Wakefield - P.R.O., H.O. 42/35; Stratton - handwritten notice,dated 8 April and signed "Cato", in P.R.O., H.O. 42/61 fo. 718. 121 A fromRosemary Lane (London), 2 July1795,complained correspondent of being awoken at 5 a.m. "by a most dreadfulGroaning (as the Mob call it) but what I should call Squealing": P.R.O., W.O. I/Io89 fo. 719. 122 Handborough - informationsof J. Townsend, Thomas Higgins, and of Thomas Robert Prior in P.R.O., Assizes 5/II6; Hadstock - information Smith, i8 Nov. I795, Essex Rec. Off.,Q/SB b 362/84.
turbulence.122
sale at 9d. the loaf. The bargaining was well understood on both in thefat who had to hold on to theircustomers sides; and retailers, at the first yearsas well as the lean, often signof crowd capitulated
Only at this point did Smith agree to the
11 8
PAST AND PRESENT
NUMBER 50
123 BroseleyT. Whitmore,II Nov. 1756, P.R.O., S.P. 36/136; Gateshead - information of John Todd in Newcastle City Archives; Haverfordwest P.R.O., H.O. 42/35. informationof Thomas Hudson, Io Aug. 1795, P.R.O., 124 Witney Assizes 5/II6; SaffronWalden - indictmentsfor offenceson 27 July 1795, P.R.O., Assizes 35/236; Devonshire - calendar of Summer Circuit, 1795, of James Stevens,tythingP.R.O., Assizes 24/43; Handborough - information man, 6 Aug. 1795, P.R.O., Assizes 5/116. All 13 of the Berkshireriotersof 1766 triedby Special Commissionwere describedas "labourers"; of 66 persons broughtbeforethe Special Commissionat Gloucesterin 1766, 51 were described as "labourers", Io were wives of "labourers", 3 were spinsters:the descriptions reveal little: G. B. Deputy Keeper of Public Records,5th Report(1844), App. ii, pp. 198-9, 202-4. For Wales, 1793-I8o0 see Jones, "Corn Riots in Wales", op. cit.,App. III, p. 350. For Dundee, 1772, see S. G. E. Lythe, "The Tayside Meal Mobs", Scot. Hist. Rev., xlvi (1967), p. 34: a porter,a quarryman, three weavers, and a sailor were indicted.
In larger-scale once thenucleusof a crowdhad been disturbances, the remainder was oftenraised by horn or drums. "On formed, from a Shropshire commences in Monday last", a letter magistrate from &c assembled withhorns & Broseley 1756,"the colliers blowing, proceeded to Wenlock Market...". What was criticalwas the of the determined nucleus. Not onlythe "virility" of the gathering colliers, and their particularexposure to consumer-exploitation, but also their numbers and thenatural explaintheir prominent r61e, disciplineof the miningcommunity."On Thursday morning", at HeatonColliery, John Todd, a pitman Gateshead, deposed(1740), "at thetimeofthenight shift "about60o goingon", hisfellow pitmen, or 80 in number theginat thepit ... and it was proposed to stopped come to Newcastleto settlethe prices of corn. . .". When they intoHaverfordwest camefrom Nook Colliery in 1795(themagistrate thathis curatesaid: "Doctor,hereare the colliers relates ... coming I lookedup & sawa great crowd ofmenwomen& children with oaken downthe street bludgeons coming bawlingout, 'One & all - one & laterthatthey had comeat therequest of all' ") thecolliers explained the poor townspeople, who had not the moraleto set the price on theirown.123 The occupational make-upof the crowdprovidesfew surprises. It was (it seems)fairly oftheoccupations ofthe"lower representative orders"in the rioting areas. At Witney(Oxon.) we findinformationsagainsta blanket-weaver, a tailor, the wifeof a victualler, and a Walden (Essex) indictments servant;at Saffron againsttwo collara cordwainer, a bricklayer, a carpenter, a sawyer, a worstedmakers, and ninelabourers; in severalDevonshire maker, villages(Sampford we finda spinster, two weavers, Peverell,Burlescomb, Culmstock) a cordwainer, a woolcomber, a thatcher, and ten labourers indicted; a carpenter, a mason,a sawyer, and seven in the Handborough affair in one information.124 There werefewer labourers werementioned
119
of personsin a superior accusationsas to the alleged incitement station in life than Rude and others have noted in France,125 althoughit was more often suggestedthat the labourerswere a tone hostileto farmers towards and encouraged by theirsuperiors in theSouth-West in ISoi arguedthatthe middlemen. An observer riotswere"certainly directed Tradesmen, Woolcombers, by inferior & Dissenters, who keep aloof but by theirlanguage& immediate influence thelower classes".126 Occasionally, govern largeemployers theirown workers of labourers were allegedto have encouraged to act.127 as comparedwithFrance,was the Another difference, important in Englandas contrasted withthe of farm labourers relative inactivity of the vignerons and petty activity peasantry. Many cerealfarmers, of course,continued the customof sellingcheap grainto theirown labourers. Butthisappliedonlyto regular, labourers, annually-hired districts. Rurallabourers did participate and to certain elsewhere in riots,when some other group (like colliers)formedthe original themtogether in sufficient nucleus,or wheresome activity brought numbers. When a large band of labourerstoured the Thames withgangs at workon Valley in 1766, the actionhad commenced a turnpike-road, who said "with one Voice, Come one & all to Newburyin a Body to Make the Bread cheaper". Once in town, in thetownsquareand giving raisedfurther they support byparading threehuzzas. In East Angliain 1795 a similar nucleuswas found in cleansing from out Drains amongthe"bankers"(gangs"employed & in embanking"). The bankersalso were less subjectto instant and punishment, or to the revenges of villagepateridentification thanwerefieldlabourers, nalism, being"forthe mostpartstrangers fromdifferent countries [who]are not so easily quietedas thosewho liveon thespot".128 a highdegree In truth, thefoodriotdid notrequire oforganization. It required a consensus ofsupport in thecommunity, and an inherited of action withits own objectives and restraints.And the pattern of thisform of actionraisesan interesting persistence question:how farwas it, in anysense,successful? Would it have continued, over so many indeedhundreds, ofyears, ifit had consistently failed scores,
See Rude, The Crowd in History,p. 38. Lt.-Gen. J. G. Simcoe, 27 Mar. 18oi, PR.O., H.O. 42/61. 127 Thus in an export riot in Flint (1740) there were allegations that the steward of Sir Thomas Mostyn had found arms for his own colliers: various depositionsin P.R.O., S.P. 36/51. 128 East Anglia - B. Clayton, Newbury - briefin P.R.O., T.S. 11/995/3707; Boston, II Aug. 1795, P.R.O., H.O. 42/35.
125 126
120
PAST AND PRESENT
NUMBER 50
to achieveits objectives, and had leftnothing but a fewruinedmills and victims on the gallows? It is a questionpeculiarly difficult to answer;but one whichmustbe asked. VII In theshort-term itwouldseemprobable that riotand price-setting their defeated own objects. Farmers weresometimes intimidated so farthattheyrefused forseveral to bringgoodsto afterwards, weeks, market. The interdiction of the movementof grain withinthe countrywas likely only to aggravateshortagein otherregions. can be foundwhereriotappearedto resultin a instances Although can be found fallin prices, and instances oftheopposite, and,further, can be foundwherethereappearsto be littledifference instances in the movement of pricesin riotand non-riot none of these markets, instances- howeveraggregated or averaged- need necessarily of the expectation disclosethe effect of riot upon the totalmarket129 situation. We maytakean analogy from benefits war. The actualimmediate of war are rarely eitherto victoror defeated. But the significant, ofwarmaybe considerable: benefits which bythethreat maybe gained and yetthe threat carries no terrors if the sanction of war is never was as muchan arenaof classwar as the used. If themarket-place and minebecamein theindustrial thenthethreat revolution, factory of theentire notonlyin years ofriotwouldaffect situation, marketing dearthbut also in years of moderateharvest, not only in towns fortheirsusceptibility to riotbut also in townswherethe notorious authoritieswished to preservea traditionof peace. However we quantify theavailabledatathesecannot showus to what carefully of riothad been altogether levelpriceswouldhaverisenifthethreat removed. in riot-prone areaswereoften The authorities cool and competent that in handling disturbance. This allowsone sometimes to forget in a profound riotwas a calamity, often dislocation ofsocial resulting in the community, on foryears. relations whoseresults could linger The provincial were often in extreme isolation. Troops, magistracy if theyweresentfor,might taketwo,threeor moredaysto arrive,
129 Undoubtedly detailed investigationof short-term price-movementsin relation to riot, which several scholars are now attemptingwith the aid of computers,will help to refinethe question; but the variables are many, and evidence as to some (anticipation of riot,persuasion broughtto bear on tenants, dealers, etc., charitable subscriptions,application of poor rates, etc.) is often elusive and difficult to quantify.
121
of Gloucestershire and the crowdknewthisverywell. The sheriff in thefirst could do nothing daysof the "rising"of 1766 but attend in at Stroudmarket withhis "javelin men". A Suffolk magistrate the refrained from leaders of the crowd because imprisoning 1709 "the Mobb threatened to pull bothhis houseand theBridewell down if he punishedanyof theirfellows". Another who led a magistrate to NorthYorkshire raggedand unmartial possecommitatus through on the way,was dismayed to Durham in 1740, capturing prisoners at find thecitizens ofDurhamturn outandreleasetwoofhisprisoners the gate of the gaol. (Such rescueswere common.) A Flintgrain in thesame year. had an even moreunpleasant exporter experience entered his house,drank thebeerand winein his vaults, and Rioters stooda DrawnSwordpointed in Laws breast with .... They uponmyDaughter have a greatmanyFire Arms,Pikesand Broadswords.Five of the Pikes declare that four of them shall do to Four and my they Carry Quarters the
othermy head in triumphabout with them .... 130
The questionoforderwas by no meanssimple. The inadequacy to employmilitary of civil forceswas combinedwitha reluctance force. The officers and were themselves had sufficient humanity, surrounded as to their by sufficient ambiguity powersin civilaffrays, in this"Odious to showa marked lackofenthusiasm foremployment calledin the troops, or authorized Service".131 If local magistrates the use of fire-arms, in the district after the theyhad to go on living had of the local the odium left, incurring troops population, perhaps ofbroken and beingthevictims windows letters, receiving threatening or evenarson. Troopsbilleted in a townquickly becameunpopular, even with those who had firstcalled them in. With uncanny in Home Office fortheaid oftroopsare followed, regularity requests or WarOffice an interval orsixweeks, after offive bypetitions papers, fortheir removal. A pitiful from theinhabitants of Sunderpetition land in I8oo, headedby their ofthe asked for the withdrawal Rector, 68thRegiment:
Their principal aim is robbery. Several have been knockeddown and oftheir it has beendonein themostviolent butalways watches, plundered and brutal manner.
One youngmanhad had his skullfractured, another his upperlip cut off. Inhabitants of Wantage,Farringdon and Abingdonpetitioned
Gloucester - W. Dalloway, 20 Sept. 1766, P.R.O., P.C. 1/8/41;Suffolk letter of 29 May 1709, P.C. 1/2/165; Durham - J. Williamson, 15 June 1740, S.P. 36/51; Flint - G. Colley, 25 May 1740, S.P. 36/50. a most Odious Service which nothing but Necessity can justify", 131"...
180
Viscount toWeymouth, fos.316-7. Barrington I8 Apr.1768,P.R.O.,W.O. 4/83,
122
PAST AND PRESENT
NUMBER 50
in thenameof God ... remove the partof Lord Landaff's from regiment thisplace,or elseMurder be theconsequence, must for sucha sett ofVillains never entered thisTown before.
A local magistrate, the petition, added thatthe "savage supporting of the military behaviour . .. exasperates the populaceto the highest of the husbandmenat fairs and degree. The usual intercourse markets is muchinterrupted".132 Riot was a calamity. The "order" whichmight followafter riot couldbe an evengreater Hence the of authorities, calamity. anxiety either to anticipate the event, in its earlystages, or to cut it short by and concession. In a letter of1773 personal byexhortation presence, themayor ofPenryn, writes thatthetown tinners, besiegedby angry was visited hundred "of thoseBanditti, withwhomwe were by three forced to beata Parley and cometo an agreement to letthemhavethe Corn for one-third less than the Prime Cost to the Proprietors". Such parleys, moreor lessreluctant, werecommon. An experienced notedin his diary Warwickshire Sir RichardNewdigate, magistrate,
on 27 September 1766: At ii rodeto Nuneaton ... and withtheprincipal peopleof thetownmet and mob who camehallowing and armed withsticks, theBedworth colliers all their demands demanded what to satisfy reasonable wanted, they promised ifthey which all ofthem then wouldbe peacableandthrow sticks awaytheir did intothe Meadow,thenwalkedwiththemto all the houseswhichthey the had engrossed and let 5 or 6 go in to searchand persuaded expected owners to sellwhatwas found ofcheese....
The colliers thenleftthetownquietly, after Sir RichardNewdigate and two othershad each giventhemhalfa guinea. They had, in actedaccording to theBookofOrders. 133 effect, in the first of riot,often This kindof bargaining, commencement secured concessions forthe crowd. But we should also note the in anticipation ofriot. Thus exertions and landowners bymagistrates a Shropshire in 1756describes howthecolliers "say ifthe magistrate farmers do not bringtheircornto the markets, theywill go to their houses& thresh forthemselves":
I havesentto myTenants somecornto themto takeeachofthem to order the market ofto prevent on Saturday as theonlymeansI can think greater outrages.
In the same year we may observemagistrates in Devon exerting in a similar at Ottery, farmers' themselves way. Riotshad occurred
- petition in P.R.O., W.O. 40/17; Wantage Sunderland and Abingdon petitionto Sir G. Yonge, and C. Dundas, 6 Apr. 1795, ibid. S13 Penryn P.R.O., W.O. 40/17; Warwickshire- H. C. Wood, "The ArchaeoDiaries of Sir Richard Newdigate, 175I-I806", Trans. Birmingham logical Soc., lxxviii (1962), p. 43. 132
THE ENGLISHCROWDIN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
123
corn seized and sold offat 5s. a bushel,and severalmillsattacked. to affix an admonitory and conciliaSir GeorgeYongesenthisservant torypaper in the market-place:
and intimidated The mob gather'd, insulted the Cryer.... my Servant,
On reading [the paper] they declared It would not do, the Gentlemen need not trouble themselves,for Theywould fixthe Price at 4s 9d next Market must be people and the bettersort,that if thingswere not quiet the military sent for ....
and toldboththeCommon Day: uponthisI rodeintotheTown yesterday,
owncornintothe had thensenttheir He and twoneighbouring gentry local markets:

I have ordered mine to be sold at 5s 3d and 5s 6d per bushell to the poorer sort,as we have resolved to keep ratherabove the Price dictatedby the Mob. I shall send to the Millers to know if they can part with any Flour ....
had The mayorof Exeterrepliedto Yonge thatthe cityauthorities was quietimmediately ordered cornto be sold at 5s. 6d.: "Everything the farmers fellthe price . . .". Similarmeasureswere stillbeing of the mostrespectable takenin Devon in I801, "some Gentlemen of Exeter... directing... their charactersin the neighbourhood thepenalty under ofnothaving to bring CorntotheMarket, Tenantry theirleases renewed". In 1795 and 18oo-I such ordersby tradito their tenants were frequent in other tionalist landowners farming and an advocate counties. The earl of Warwick (an arch-paternalist ofthelegislation rodein person forestallers in itsfullest against rigour) suchdirections to histenants.134 aroundhis estates giving Such pressures as these, in anticipation ofriot, mayhavebeenmore effective than has been supposed: in gettingcorn to market;in certain kinds of restraining rising prices; and in intimidating effective to riotwas certainly a disposition Moreover, profiteering. of parishrelief and of as a signalto the richto put the machinery - subsidized cornand breadforthepoor- intogoodrepair. charity In January agreed: 1757 ReadingCorporation
that a Subscription be set on foot for Raising money to Buy Bread to be Distributed to the Poor ... at a Price to be fixed much below the present price of Bread ....
134 ShropshireT. Whitmore,II Nov. 1756, P.R.O., S.P. 36/136; Devon - Hist. Manuscripts Comm., City of Exeter, Series lxxiii (London, 1916), pp. 255-7; Devon, 18oi - Lt.-Gen. J. G. Simcoe, 27 Mar. ISoi, P.R.O., H.O. 42/61; Warwick - T. W. Whitley, The ParliamentaryRepresentation of the City of Coventry (Coventry,1894), p. 214. 135 MS. diary of Reading Corporation, Central Public Library, Reading: for entry 24 January1757. ?30 was disbursed "towards reducingthe present high price of Bread" on 12 July1795.
The Corporation itselfdonated?21.'13 Such measureswere very a corporafrom theinitiative sometimes followed, coming commonly
124
PAST AND PRESENT
NUMBER 50
fromindividualgentry, sometimes fromQuarter tion, sometimes Sessions, sometimes from parish authorities,sometimes from - especially whoemployed those a substantial labour-force employers in isolated districts. (such as lead-miners) The measures takenin 1795 wereespecially variousand extensive, well-documented.They rangedfrom direct to reduce subscriptions the priceof bread(the parishes sometimes their own agents sending direct to theports topurchase subsidies from imported grain), through the poor rates,to the Speenhamland of system. The examination suchmeasures wouldtakeus toofarintothehistory ofthePoor Laws than we intendto go.136 But the effects were sometimes curious. whilequieting one area,might riotin an adjaSubscriptions, provoke centone,through a sharp senseofinequality. An agreement arousing in Newcastle in 1740to reduce reached between merchants and prices, a deputation of demonstrating pitmen(with aldermenmediating), in "country resulted intothe villagesflooding people" from outlying an unsuccessful was to limit the sale to made city; attempt persons witha written from "a Fitter, Ton Tail Man, or certificate Staithman, Churchwarden". Participation riotsin by soldiersin price-setting as arisingfroma 1795 was explained,by the duke of Richmond, similarinequality:it was alleged by the soldiers"that while the Parishes and Subscriptions, the People are relieved Country bytheir Soldiersreceiveno such Benefit". Moreover,such subscriptions, whilebeingintended to buyoff riot(actualor potential), often might havetheeffect ofraising thepriceofbreadto thoseoutside thebenefit of subscription. theauthorities werestill 137 In SouthDevon,where in I8oi in thetradition of 1757,theprocesscan be seen. The acting Exetercrowddemonstrated in themarket forwheatat Ios. a bushel:
The Gentlemen and Farmers met, & the People waited their decision .... They were informedthat no Price they shou'd name or fixwould be agreed to, & principallybecause the principleof fixinga Price wou'd be resisted. The Farmers then agreed at I2s and everyInhabitantto have it in proportion to theirFamilies .... The Argumentsof the discontentedat Exmouth are very cogent. "Give us whatever quantity the Stock in Hand will afford, & at a price by which 136 in Annals ofAgriculture, Especially usefulare repliesfromcorrespondents vols. xxiv and xxv (1795). See also S. and B. Webb, "The Assize of Bread", L. and B. ch. Hammond, op. cit., op. cit.,pp. 208-9; J. vi; W. M. Stem, op. cit., pp. 181-6. 137 A point to be watched in any quantified analysis: the price officially returned from a market in the aftermathof riot might rise, although, as a consequence of riot or threatof riot,the poor mightbe receivingcorn at subsidized rates.
125
we can attain we will notacceptanySubscription it, & we shall be satisfied; from theGentry becauseit enhances thePrice,& is a hardship on them".138
The pointhere is not just thatprices,in time of scarcity, were determined thanmeremarket-forces: by manyotherfactors anyone witheven a scantyknowledge of much-maligned sources "literary" mustbe awareof that. It is moreimportant to notethetotalsocioeconomiccontext withinwhichthe market and the logic operated, of crowdpressure. One otherexample,this timefroma hitherto riot-free is thatof market, mayshowthislogicat work. The account a substantial farmer, JohnToogood, in Sherborne (Dorset). 1757 commenced with"generalcomplaint" at highprices,and frequent ofriots accounts elsewhere:
On the3othofApril, ofouridleand insolent Poor beingMarket-Day, many Men and Womenassembled and beguna Riot in the MarketHouse, went to ObornMill and brought off several Bags of Flourand dividedthe Spoil herein Triumph.
On the next Monday an anonymous directed to Toogood's letter, brother of wheatat 14s. iod. - "a great (whohadjustsold 10 bushels was foundin theabbey: "Sir, If you do priceindeed"- to a miller), notbring Wheat into the and sellitat a reasonable Market, your price, yourBarnsshallbe pulleddown...".
Parishes seemedripeforjoining in thisSport,I thought there was no Time to be lost,and thatit was proper to crushthisEvil in it's Bud, in Orderto which we tookthefollowing Measures. it was agreedthatMr. Jeffrey Havingcalleda Meetingat the Almshouse, and I shouldtakea Survey of all themostnecessitous intheTown, Families this done, We raised about ?Ioo by Subscriptions, and beforethe next Market of thePeace and someoftheprincipal Inhabitants Day, our Justice madea Procession theTown and published ofthe throughout by theCryer Town thefollowing Notice. "That thePoorFamilies ofthisTown willbe supplied with a Quantity of Wheatsufficient fortheir Week'tillHarvest at theRateof Support every after thispublicNotice 8s p. Busheland thatif any personwhatsoever shalluse anythreatening or commit in Expressions, anyRiotor Disorder thisTown,theOffender be shall forthwith committed to Prison".
As Rioting is quite a new Thing in Sherborne ... and as the neighbouring
for at Ios. and 12s. thebushel, wheat, Theythencontracted supplying itto a "List ofthePoor" at 8s. until harvest. (6o bushels over weekly thisperiodwillhave involved a subsidy of between ?Ioo and ?200.) Peace, and disappointed "By theseMeans we restored manyloose, Fellows of the Neighbouring disorderly Parishes,who appearedin theMarket with their to havehad Cornwithout empty Bags,expecting
138 Newcastle - advertisement 24 June 174o in City ArchivesOff.; Duke of Richmond, 13 Apr. 1795, P.R.O., W.O. 1/1092; Devon - James Coleridge, 29 Mar. 80oi,H.O. 42/61.
126
PAST AND PRESENT
NUMBER 50
downthisaccount fortheguidance Toogood,setting Money". John it withtheadvice: ofhis sons,concluded

If thelikeCircumstances of you in yourTime and either happenhereafter are engaged in Farmering let nota covetous Business, Eye tempt you to be in advancing thePriceof Corn,butrather foremost letyourBehaviour shew someCompassion and Charity towards theCondition ofthePoor ... .139
It is within such a context as thisthatthefunction of riotmaybe disclosed. Riot may have been, in the short term, counterthishas notyetbeen proved. But,once again, although productive, and one to be avoided,evenat a highcost. riotwas a socialcalamity, The cost mightbe to achieve some medium,betweena soaring and a traditional "economic"pricein the market, "moral" priceset of be foundby theintervention might by thecrowd. That medium of farmers and dealers, self-restraint by the prudential paternalists, a portionof the crowd throughcharitiesand or by buying-off in the personaof the sentensubsidies. As Hannah More carolled, Tom Hod from riot: whendissuading tiousJack Anvil,
I'll seek So I'll work thewholeday,and on Sundays oftheweek. At Church howto bearall thewants us supplies, The gentlefolks, too,willafford - and they'll and pies. giveup their puddings They'llsubscribe
Derry down.140
Derry down, indeed, and even Tra-la-dee-bum-deeay!However, thenature ofgentlefolks beingwhatitis, a thundering goodriotin the thanthesight to oil thewheelsofcharity was morelikely nextparish on theoutside Anvilon his kneesin church. As thedoggerel ofJack in 1630: doorin Kenthad putitsuccinctly ofthechurch
Before we arise Less willsafise.
VIII whichderives a pattern of socialprotest We have been examining in of the commonweal froma consensusas to the moraleconomy to examineit forovert, timesof dearth. It is not usuallyhelpful thesesometimes arosethrough articulate intentions, although political be found, chancecoincidence. Rebelliousphrasescan often usually (one suspects)to chill the blood of the rich withtheirtheatrical effect. It was said that the Newcastlepitmen,flushedwith the in practice oftheGuildhall, "wereforputting successoftheir capture theold levelling theydid at leastteardowntheportraits principles";
More,Works (London,1830),ii, pp. 86-8.
140
139 MS.
diaryof JohnToogood, Dorset Rec. Off.,D 170/I. thanno bread,&c", 1795, in Hannah "The Riot: or,halfa loafis better
127
of CharlesII and JamesII and smashtheirframes. By contrast, bargees at Henley (Oxon.) in 1743 called out "Long Live the in 1766 nailedup and someonein Woodbridge Pretender"; (Suffolk) a noticein the market-place whichthe local magistrate foundto be bold and seditious and of and delicate "peculiarly high import": "We are wishing[it said] thatour exiled King could come over or send some Officers". Perhaps the same menacewas intended, in in 1753, by threats the South-West that "the Frenchw'd be here Most common are general "levelling" threats,imprecations of againstthe rich. A letterat Witney(1767) assuredthe Bailiffs the townthatthe people would not suffer "such damnedwheesing fatgutedRoguesto Starve thePoorbysuchHellishWayson purpose thattheymayfollow etc. and to maintain their hunting horse-racing in Pride and extravagance". A letter on the Gold Cross at familys Snow Hill (1766), signed "Kidderminster & StourBirmingham's in the modeofrhyming bridge",was perhaps doggerel
is a smallArmy ofus upwards ofthree thousand all ready to fight ... there & I'll be dam'difwe don'tmaketheKing'sArmy to shite If so be theKing& Parliment don'torder better we willturn Englandintoa Litter & ifso be as things don'tgetcheaper I'll be damdifwe don'tburndowntheParliament House & makeall better ....
soon".141
A letterin Colchesterin 1772 addressedto all farmers, millers, and corn merchants, warnedall the "damd butchers, shopkeepers Rogues" to takecare,
forthisis november and we haveabouttwoor three hundred bum shellsa in Readiness forthe Mellers[millers] and all no kingno parliment getting buta powder nothing plotall overthenation.
The gentlemen of Fareham(Hants.)werewarned in 1766to prepare "fora Mob or Sivelwar",whichwould"pull Georgefrom histhrone beat downthe house of rougs[rougues] and destroy the Sets [seats] ofthe Law makers". "Tis better to Undergoa forrieghn Yoke than to be used thus", wrotea villager near Hereford in the nextyear. And so on, and frommost parts of Britain. It is, in the main, rhetoric whichqualifies in a devastating rhetoric, although way the
- MS. account - D. G. D. 141 Newcastle ofriots in CityArchives; Henley Isaac, op. cit., p. 186; Woodbridge - P.R.O., W.O. 1/873: 1753 - Newcastle MSS., Brit. Mus., Add. MS. 32732, fo. 343. Earl Poulet, Lord Lieutenant of Somerset,reportedin anotherletterto the duke of Newcastle that some of the be rich & otherspoor": ibid., fos. 214-5.
mob "came to talka Levellinglanguage, viz. theydid not see whysome sh'd
128
PAST AND PRESENT
NUMBER 50
of historians as to the deference and social solidarities of rhetoric Georgian England.142 in such Onlyin 1795and 18oo-I, whena Jacobin tingeis frequent do we havetheimpression ofa genuine underletters and handbills, of articulate current politicalmotivation.A trenchant exampleof addressedto "the BrothMakers & Flower these is some doggerel Risers"whichgave a Maldon (Essex) magistrate cause foralarm:
On Swill& Grainsyouwishthepoorto be fed And underneath theGullintine we couldwishto see yourheads it is a great For I think shameto serve thepoorso And I think a fewofyourheadswillmakea pretty show.
circulated in theseyears. From Scores upon scoresof such letters down down down O Uley (Glos.), "no King but a Constitution fatalldownhighcaps and proudhatsforever downdown.. .". At fortheir severalmilitiamen had been executed Lewes (Sussex), after a noticewas posted:"Soldiersto Arms"! partin price-setting,
Ariseand revenge yourcause On thosebloody Pittand George, numskulls, no longer can sendyouto France For sincethey likeSwine,or pierc'dbytheLance, To be murdered You are sentforbyExpress to makea speedy Return To be shotlikea Crow,or hang'din yourTurn ....
At Ramsbury to a tree: (Wilts.)in I8oo a noticewas affixed
But thesecrisisyearsof thewars(I8oo-I) would demandseparate to theend of one tradition, and the new treatment.We are coming In theseyears of tradition has scarcely thealternative form emerged. economicpressure- pressureupon wages - is becomingmore more than rhetoric behind the vigorous;thereis also something - underground union organization, oaths,the languageof sedition In "United food riots traditional Englishmen". shadowy I812
1'S Witney - London Gazette, Nov. 1767, no. 10779; Birmingham P.R.O., W.O. 1/873; Colchester - London Gazette, Nov. 1772, no. 11304; Fareham - ibid., Jan. 1767, no. Io69o; Hereford - ibid., Apr. 1767, no. 10717. 143Maldon- P.R.O., W.O. 40/17; Uley - W. G. Baker, Oct. 1795, H.O. 42/36; Lewes - H.O. 42/35; Ramsbury - enclosure in the Rev. E. Meyrick, 12 June 18oo, H.O. 42/50.
both spirital& temperal Downe withYour Luxzuaras Government Or withHunger. theyhave stripp you of breadChees Meate &c you starve on their &c &c &c &c. Nay even yourLives have theyTaken thousands lettheBurbon defend their owneCause and let us true Family Expeditions lookto Our Selveslet us banishSome to Hanover Britons where theycame from Downe withyourConstitution Arecta republick Or you and your are to starve of our Days dearBrothers willyou the Remainder offsprings underthat lay downand die underMan eatersand Lave youroppspring thatBlackguard is noweatainyouup. Burden Government which God Save thePoor& downwithGeorgeIII.143
129
do not overlapwithLuddism. In 1816 the East Anglianlabourers wage and an end onlyset the prices,theyalso demanda minimum to the verydifferent relief. They look forward to Speenhamland revoltof labourersin 1830. The older formof action lingerson intothe 184os and even later:it was especially deeplyrootedin the revolution oftheindustrial Butin thenewterritories South-West.144 of action. The breakin wheat it passed by stagesintootherforms towns pricesafterthe wars eased the transition. In the northern the fight againstthe againstthe cornjobbersgave way to the fight Corn Laws. There was anotherreason why 1795 and 18oo-i bringus into historical different territory.The formsof actionwhichwe have set of socialrelations, a been examining dependedupon a particular between and the crowd. paternalist authority equilibrium particular was dislodgedin the wars,fortwo reasons.First, This equilibrium ofthegentry led to a newfearofanyform theacuteanti-Jacobinism were willingto see signs of of popular self-activity; magistrates actionsevenwhereno such sedition in price-setting sedition existed; raisedthe Volunteers, and thusgave to the civil the fearof invasion means for meeting the crowd,not powersmuch more immediate but withrepression.'14 Second, such withparleyand concession, was legitimized, in the minds of centraland of many repression of the new ideologyof political local authorities, by the triumph economy. theHome Secretary, thedukeofPortland, Ofthiscelestial triumph, in 18oo-I, a quite new servedas TemporalDeputy. He displayed, not onlyin handlingdisturbance, but in overruling and firmness, withthoselocal authorities who stillespousedthe old remonstrating in episode occurred paternalism. In SeptemberI8oo a significant of setting the priceof butter Oxford. There had been some affair and cavalry in the market, appearedin the town(at the request- of the Vice-Chancellor). The Town Clerk,on as it transpired of themayor wrote to the Secretary at thedirection and magistrates, their thata military War,expressing "surprise bodyof horsesoldiers shouldhave madetheir earlythismorning": appearance
I inform It is withgreat havehitherto pleasure youthatthepeopleofOxford to be riotous thebringing intothemarket shewnno disposition except [of] 144 See A. Rowe, "The Food Riotsof the Fortiesin Cornwall", Report of
Society, 1942, pp. 51-67. There were food riots Royal Cornwall Polytechnic i886.
in I847; in Teignmouth and Exeterin November in the Scottish Highlands a curious episode(the"Battleof Ham Run") as lateas I867; and in Norwich
145 See J. R. Western,"The Volunteer Movement as an Anti-Revolutionary Force, 1793-1801", Eng. Hist. Rev., lxxi (1956).
I30
PAST AND PRESENT
NUMBER 50
somehampers and selling a poundand accounting of butter it at a shilling for themoney totheowner ofthebutter be reckoned ofthat .... description
the extremepressureof the times", the City "Notwithstanding authorities wereof"the decidedopinion"thatthere was "no occasion in this Cityforthe presence of a regular since Soldiery", especially were being most activein suppressing the magistrates "what they to be one oftheprincipal conceive causesofthedearness, theoffences of forestalling, . ..". and regrating ingrossing, The Town Clerk'sletter was passed overto the dukeof Portland, and drewfrom hima weighty reproof:
official situation enableshimin a moreparticular manner to appreciate the ofthepublick extent mischief ensuefrom a continuance must which inevitably of the riotous whichhave takenplace in several proceedings partsof the inconsequence ofthepresent ofProvisions, so heconsiders Kingdom scarcity calledupontoexercise himself tobe more hisownjudgement and immediately in directing discretion adequatemeasuresto be takenforthe immediate and effectual of such dangerous as proceedings.For greatly suppression His Grace laments the cause of theseRiots,nothing is morecertain than can be productive ofno other effect thanto increase theevilbeyond that they
all power of calculation. His Grace, therefore,cannot allow himself to His Grace ... desires you to informthe Mayor and Magistrates,that as his
whichstates"thatthe People pass overin silencethatpartof yourletter forthe money to the Ownerof the Butter, can be pound,and accounting thiscircumstance, reckoned of thatdescription".So farfrom considering in whichit is represented in yourletter in thetrivial (evensupposing light of a similar and a stillmoredangerous withothers it to standunconnected it is to be feared which is notthecase) His Graceseesit in theview nature, of a violentand unjustifiable withthe most attackon property pregnant of every fatalconsequences to the Cityof Oxford and to it's Inhabitants and which it for theMayorand MagisHis Gracetakes granted description; boundendutyto suppress and punishby trates musthavethought it their and committal oftheOffenders.14' theimmediate apprehension
of Oxford have hitherto shewn no disposition to be riotous, except the bringinginto Market some Hampers of Butter,and selling it at a Shilling a
Throughout I8oo and I8oi the duke of Portlandbusied himself fordisturbance the same doctrines. The remedy was the enforcing for liberal or even Volunteers; subscriptions military cheap corn were to be discouraged,as exhaustingstocks; persuasionupon farmers or dealersto lowerpriceswas an offence againstpolitical to Earl MountEdgcumbe, economy. In AprilI8oI he wrote
Your Lordship must excuse the libertyI take in not passing unnoticed the at reduced Prices ....
entered intobytheFarmers to havebeenvoluntarily youmention agreement ofProvision withCornand other Articles in Cornwall to supply theMarkets
146W. Taunton, 6 Sept. I8oo; I. King to Taunton, 7 Sept. 18oo: P.R.O., W.O. 40/17 and H.O. 43/12. In privatelettersPortlandexerted to Dr. Hughesof JesusCollege,Oxford evenmoreforcefully, himself writing of yourfoolish proceedings (12 Sept.) of the "unjust& injudicious CorporPortland ation": Univ.ofNottingham, MSS., PwV III.
131
thatthe farmers had been subjectedto The duke had information authorities: by the county pressure
and mustunavoidably be justified of things the kindcannotin the nature whichit pretends to alleviate, add to and aggravate thedistress and shortly it couldbe rendered thatthemoregeneral also to assert and I willventure mustbe the consequences themoreinjurious by whichit could not failto the Employment of Capitalin be attended becauseit necessarily prevents
the Farming Line of ... the experienceI have ... calls upon me to say that everyundertaking
in The "nature of things" which had once made imperative, rulers the between at leastsome symbolic timesof dearth, solidarity betweenthe rulersand "the and the poor, now dictatedsolidarity that it was of Capital". It is, perhaps,appropriate Employment an hysteric with the ideologistwho synthesized anti-jacobinism of that the new politicaleconomywho signed the death-warrant of which,in his more specious passages of rhetoric, paternalism he was the celebrant. "The LabouringPoor", exclaimedBurke: "Let compassion be shewnin action",
of theircondition. It is no relief to ... but let therebe no lamentation it is onlyan insult to their their miserable miserable undercircumstances; and religion, shouldbe .... Patience, labour, standings frugality, sobriety, recommended to them;all therestis downright fraud'48
....
.17
Againstthat tone the notice at Ramsburywas the only possible reply. different fromthis I hope thata somewhat picturehas emerged not an accountthan the customary one. I have triedto describe, of behaviour of whicha Trobriand involuntary spasm,but a pattern islander need nothavebeen ashamed. to re-imagine themoralassumptions ofanother It is difficult social thattheremayhave It is not easyforus to conceive configuration. been a time,within a smaller and moreintegrated when community, it appearedto be "unnatural" thatany man shouldprofit from the necessities ofothers, and whenit was assumedthat, in timeofdearth,
wrote to theVice-Chancellor ofOxford (Dr. Marlow) University I8oo Portland of their as to the dangers of thepeople "giving difficulties wayto thenotion to the avariceand rapacity of those,who insteadof being beingimputable denominated are correctly the purveyors and provident Engrossers speaking Stewards ofthePublic": Univ.ofNottingham Portland MSS., PwV III.
148E. Burke, Thoughts and Details on Scarcity,originally to the Rt. presented Hon. WilliamPitt in ... November, i795 (London, I8oo), p. 4. Undoubtedly
147
IX
Portland, 25 Apr. 18oi, P.R.O., H.O. 43/13, pp. 24-7.
On 4 October
thispamphlet wasinfluential andmayhavecontriwith bothPittandPortland, butedto thetougher of I8oo. policies
132
PAST AND PRESENT
NUMBER 50
level, even prices of "necessities"should remainat a customary be less all round. theremight though "The economy of the mediaeval wroteR. H. Tawney, borough", in one which held somewhat thesameprimacy in consumption "was the publicmind,as theundisputed of economic arbiter as the effort, nineteenthcenturyattached to profits".14"These assumptions were understrongchallenge, of course,long beforethe eighteenth we foreshorten the great century. But too oftenin our histories transitions.We leave forestalling and the doctrine of a fairpricein the seventeenth of the freemarket century. We take up the story in the But the death of the old nineteenth. moraleconomy economy of provisionwas as long-drawn-out as the death of paternalist in industry and trade. The consumerdefendedhis intervention as stubbornly as (perhaps ofright thesamemanin another old notions his status as an he defended craft artisan. r8le) These notionsof rightwere clearlyarticulated. They carried for a long timethe church'simprimatur.The Book of Ordersof 163o envisagedmoral preceptand exampleas an integral part of measures: emergency
bee used by the Justices That all good Means and Perswasions in their severall and by Admonitions and Exhortations in Sermons in the Divisions, Churches and ... thatthe Poore may bee servedof Come at convenient charitable that the richerSort Prices. And to the furtherance thereof, bee earnestly moovedby Christian to cause theirGraineto be Charitie, PricesoftheMarket to thepoorer sort:A deed of sold underthecommon thatwilldoubtlesse be rewarded ofAlmighty God. mercy,
At leastone suchsermon, at Bodminand Fowey(Cornwall) delivered was (beforethe Sessions)in 163o by the Rev. CharlesFitz-Geffrey, readers. Hoardersof corn were still knownto eighteenth-century denounced as
They are "enemiesboth to God and man,oppositebothto Grace and Nature". As forthe dealer,exporting cornin timeof scarcity, "the savourof lucreis sweetto him,though rakedout ofthepuddle ofthe mostfilthy in Europe .. .".10 profession As the seventeenth centurydrew on, this kind of exhortation became muted,especiallyamong the Puritans. With Baxterone and one partof moralpreceptis dilutedwithone partof casuistry
149 R. H. Tawney, Religionand the Rise of Capitalism(London, 1926), p. 33. God's Blessingupon the Providersof Corne: and God's 150 C. Fitz-Geffrey, Curse upon theHoarders (London, 1631; repr. 1648), PP. 7, 8, 13.
to theCommon weremade theseMan-haters, good,as iftheworld opposite wouldappropriate theearth, and thefruits thereof, onelyforthem, wholly whichis poison to themselves As Quailes growfatwithHemlocke, .... so thesegrowfullbyDearth.... to other creatures,
133
part of businessprudence: "charitymust be exercisedas well as in theexpectation of justice", and, while goods mightbe withheld risingprices,this mustnot be done "to the hurtof the Commonas if... keeping it in be the cause of the dearth".151The wealth, old moral thepaterndividedbetween became,increasingly, teaching alist gentry on one hand, and the rebelliousplebs on the other. There is an epitaph in the churchat Stoneleigh(Warwicks.)to to Lady Leigh,who died in 1688: How, theporter Humphrey
Here Lyes a Faithful FrienduntothePoore Who dealtLargeAlmesoutofhis LordPaStore Dead WeepeNot PoorePeopleTho' ye Servat's The Lord himselfe Will Give You DaylyBreade If Markets Rise Raile Not Against TheireRates The Priceis StiltheSame at StoneLeighGates152
The old preceptsresoundedthroughout the eighteenth century. stillbe heardfrom thepulpit: Occasionally theymight
Kind. It fallsheaviest thembecause they upon the Poor, It is robbing are so .... It is murdering them whomtheyfindhalfdead,and outright the wreck'd Vessel .... These are the Murderers accusedby plundering the Son of Sirach, wherehe saith,TheBreadof theNeedyis their Life: he that them is a Man ofBlood.... defraudeth thereof maysuchOppresJustly sors be calledMen ofBlood; and surely will the Blood of those,who thus be required at their means, Hands.153 bytheir perish
Exaction of any kind is base; but this in the Matter of Corn is of the basest
More often or newspaper: theywereheardin pamphlet Sometimes in broadsheet and ballad:
To keepup thePriceof theveryStaff of Life at such an extravagent Sale, as thatthe Poor ... cannotpurchase it, is the greatest Iniquity any Man can be guilty of; it is no lessthanMurder, nay,themostcruelMurder.15' Go nowyouhard-hearted richmen, In your miseries weepand howl, Your canker'd goldwillriseagainst you,
And Witness be against your souls ...1
55r
in anonymous and frequently letters. "Donte makea god of your of Newbury werewarned in 1772: mony",thegentlemen
butthink oftheporyougreat mendo youthink to heaven ofgohing or hell. of the Sarmonwichpreachon I5 of March fordam we if we dont think make you do you thinkto starvethe pore quite you dam sons of wors
[whores] .... .1
"A SeriousCall to the Gentlemen on the present exorbitant Farmers, Pricesof Provisions", Collection broadside, n.d., in Seligman (Broadsides Univ. Prices),Columbia
155
1>1 Tawney,op. cit., p. 222. See also C. Hill, Society and Puritanismin Pre-Revolutionary (London,1964),esp. pp. 277-8. England 152 I am indebted to Professor David Montgomery forthisevidence. Anon. in theCountry"], Dearth:or,the ["A Clergyman Artificial 111 Iniquity and Danger Corn(London,1756), pp. 20-1. of Withholding 151
Letter to Sherborne Mercury,5 Sept. 1757.
156London Gazette, Mar. 1772, no. 11233.
134
PAST AND PRESENT
NUMBER 50
in Cornwall "Averishes was addressed in Woman!", a corn-hoarder to assembleand 1795 by Cornishtinners:"We are ... determined to marchtill we come to your Idol, or your God or immediately yourMows [Moses?], whomeyou esteemas such and pull it down and likewise yourHouse ...,". 57 theextortionate off mechanisms ofan unregulated Today we shrug market economybecause it causes most of us only inconvenience, In the eighteenth unostentatious thiswas notthe century hardships. case. Dearthswererealdearths. High pricesmeantswollen bellies and sick children whosefoodwas coarsebread made up fromstale likea flour. No evidencehas yetbeen published to show anything in Englandin the eighteenth classiccrisedes subsistances century:'58 the mortality did not approachthatin France in of 1795 certainly as a distress thesameyear. Butthere was whatthegentry described "have the thatwas "truly stript painful":risingprices(wroteone) fromtheir cloathsfromtheirbacks,tornthe shoes and stockings theirmouths".159The risings of the foodfrom feet,and snatched men scenes: fainted the Cornish tinners werepreceded by harrowing fellows in scarcely homeby their workand had to be carried at their described better state. The dearth was accompanied byan epidemic as "Yellow Fever", very possibly the jaundice associated with near-starvation.'10 In sucha yearWordsworth's "pedlar"wandered and saw amongthecottages
rich The hardships ofthatseason;many thepoor, Sankdownas in a dream among ceaseto be, And ofthepoordid many
And theirplace knew them not .....
.161
was the point at whichworking But if the market people most it was also the point oftenfelttheirexposureto exploitation, - at which districts in ruralor dispersed manufacturing especially becomeorganized. Marketing couldmost (or "shopping") easily they becomesin matureindustrial societyincreasingly impersonal. In
Herring,ibid., 1796, p. 45.
and dreadnot", from Fortitude, Audacious, Presumption "Captins 157Letter dated 28 Dec. 1795, "Polgoothand othermines",and addressedto Mrs.
29 Mar. 1795, H.O. 42/34. 161 W. and Helen DarbiPoetical Works,ed. E. de Selincourt Wordsworth, shire (Oxford, 1959) v, P. 391.
as This is notto arguethatsuchevidence maynotbe soon forthcoming 158 of theresults to local or regional crisis;one awaitswithinterest demographic in Warwickshire research (from Cambridge), (1727-9) nationally beingpursued G. Rule. and inCornish mining villages (1795)byMr. John byDr. A. Gooder, ~ xxiv (1795), P. 159 (evidence from Dunmow, of Agriculture, 59Annals Essex). of 24 June1795 in P.R.O., P.C.I/27/A.54; variousletters, esp. l60 Letter
135
Britainor France (and in parts of Southern eighteenth-century remained a Italyor Haiti or ruralIndia or Africa today)the market social as well as an economicnexus. It was the place whereonesocial and personaltransactions went on; where hundred-and-one news was passed, rumourand gossip flewaround,politicswas (if roundthe market-square. ever) discussedin the inns or wine-shops The marketwas the place where the people, because they were feltfora moment thattheywerestrong.162 numerous, of the market in a "pre-industrial" The confrontations society are of coursemoreuniversal thanany nationalexperience. And the moral preceptsof the "reasonableprice" are equally elementary universal. Indeed, one may suggestin Britainthe survivalof a whichreachesto levelsmoreobscurethan Christian pagan imagery Few folkritualssurvived withsuch vigourto the end symbolism. oftheeighteenth as all theparaphernalia oftheharvest-home, century its fairsand festivals. Even in manuwithits charms and suppers, to therhythm areastheyearstillturned oftheseasonsand facturing notto thatofthebanks. Dearthalwayscomesto suchcommunities as a profound shock. Whenit is accompanied psychic by theknowledge of inequalities,and the suspicion of manipulatedscarcity, shockpassesintofury. as thenewcentury One is struck, symbolism opens,bythegrowing of blood, and by its assimilation to the demand for bread. In in 1812 the womenparaded witha loaf upon a pole, Nottingham streaked withredand tiedwithblackcrepe,emblematic of "bleeding famine deckedin Sackecloth". At Yeovil (Somerset)in 1816 there was an anonymous "Blood and Blood and Blood, a General letter, blood. In the East Anglianriotsof the same year such dripping "a phrasesas, "We will have blood beforedinner". In Plymouth in blood, witha heartby it, was found Loaf whichhad been dipped in thestreets". In thegreat of1831 a calf riots was sacrificed Merthyr and a loafsoakedin itsblood,impaledon a flagpole, served as emblem of revolt.163 This fury forcornis a curious oftheage ofagricultural culmination
162 See Sidney Mintz, "Internal Market Systems as Mechanisms of Social Articulation", Intermediate Societies, Social Mobility and Communication (American Ethnological Society, 1959); and the same author's "Peasant Markets", Scientific American,cciii (1960), pp. II12-22. 163 Nottingham- J. F. Sutton, The Date-book of Nottingham (Nottingham, 188o edn.), p. 286; Yeovil - P.R.O., H.O. 42/150o; East Anglia - A. J. Peacock, Bread or Blood (London, 1965), passim; Merthyr - G. A. Williams, "The Insurrectionat MerthyrTydfil in 1831", Trans. Hon. Soc. of Cymmrodorion, Session 1965, 2, pp. 227-8.
Revolution their mus be .. .", the letter signed with a crude heart
I36
PAST AND PRESENT
NUMBER 50
were somewhat themselves improvement.In the 1790s the gentry the perplexed. Sometimes crippledby an excess of rich food,L64 from timeto timeput asidetheir industrious magistrates compilation of archives forthe disciplesof Sir Lewis Namier,and peereddown fromtheir parklandsat the corn-fields in which their labourers in to the Home Office, wrote hungered. (More thanone magistrate at this criticaljuncture, the measureswhich he would describing if onlyhe werenot confined takeagainst the rioters to his house by wrotethe Lord gout). The countywill not be secureat harvest, Lieutenantof Cambridgeshire, "withoutsome soldiers,as he had heard thatthe People intended to help themselves when the Corn was ripe". He foundthis "a veryseriousapprehension indeed" and "in this open country most likelyto be effected, at least by stealth". 16ss "Thout shalt not muzzle the ox that treadethout the corn". The breakthrough of the new politicaleconomy of the freemarket of the old moral economyof provision. was also the breakdown - and Speenhamland. ofit was charity After thewarsall thatwas left of the crowdtooklonger to die: it is pickedup The moraleconomy flourmills,by some Owenitesocialists, by the earlyco-operative in the bowels of the Coand it lingeredon for yearssomewhere is that ofitsfinal demise Wholesale One operative Society. symptom and "econwe have been able to acceptforso long an abbreviated irrational omistic"pictureof the food riot,as a direct, spasmodic, to a which is itself a of a picture political response hunger product whichdiminished humanreciprocities to the wages-nexus. economy of but also moreauthoritative, was the assessment More generous, the sheriff of Gloucestershire in 1766. The mobs of thatyear(he wrote)had committed manyacts of violence,
and excess;and in other someactsof courage, someofwantoness instances to towardsthatwhichtheyprofess prudence, justice,and a consistency
obtain."6
E. P. Thompson
his own parish, ParsonWoodforde did notflinch before his continuing duty and to hisowndinner: March6th,". .. forDinnera CoupleofboiledChicken a prodigious fine, Pigs Face, very goodPeas Soup,a boiledRumpofBeefvery and fat Batter PuddCustard fine, rosted, Maccaroni, large very Cock-Turkey Parson,ed. J. Beresford ing", etc.: JamesWoodforde, Diary of a Country Classics edn.,London,1963),pp. 483,485. (World's
266
16"
164
In 1795, when subsidized brown bread was being given to the poor of
Lord Hardwicke, 27 July1795, P.R.O., H.O. 42/35. W. Dalloway, 2o Sept. 1766,P.R.O., P.C. 1/8/41.

Thomspon, The Moral Economy of The English Crowd in The Eighteenth Century

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Thomspon, The Moral Economy of The English Crowd in The Eighteenth Century

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Past and Present Society

THE MORAL ECONOMY OF THE ENGLISH CROWD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY*

THE ENGLISH CROWD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

PAST AND PRESENT

THE ENGLISH CROWD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

PAST AND PRESENT

THE ENGLISH CROWD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

PAST AND PRESENT

and thatthemanufacturing and labouring required byauthority, poor withlargefamilies

in similar terms: The Bailiff of Reigate reported

of the meal according to the directions withwhichhe was thendressing

THE ENGLISH CROWD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

PAST AND PRESENT

THE ENGLISH CROWD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

PAST AND PRESENT

THE ENGLISH CROWD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

PAST AND PRESENT

THE ENGLISH CROWD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

PAST AND PRESENT

THE ENGLISH CROWD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

PAST AND PRESENT

THE ENGLISH CROWD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

PAST AND PRESENT

to thePoorand goodto me. I bought 320 Quarters.60

on thistransaction was above ?1,ooo. The profit

(Cambridge, 1934),P. 211.

E. M. Hampson, The Treatment of Povertyin Cambridgeshire, 1597-1834

THE ENGLISH CROWD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

PAST AND PRESENT

THE ENGLISH CROWD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

PAST AND PRESENT

and E. Axon,"The Hatfield (Manchester, 1891), iii,pp. 359-61; F. Nicholson

CENTURY THE ENGLISHCROWDIN THE EIGHTEENTH

7 P.R.O., S.P. 36/50.

1783, no. 12422.

PAST AND PRESENT

THE ENGLISH CROWD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

PAST AND PRESENT

in Northiam Lettersto farmers (Sussex) warned:

THE ENGLISH CROWD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

PAST AND PRESENT

iii,p. 166; 36 Geo. III, c. 85.

THE ENGLISH CROWD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

PAST AND PRESENT

THE ENGLISH CROWD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

PAST AND PRESENT

THE ENGLISH CROWD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

with as much favourin the Prices, as by the earnestPerswasion of

PAST AND PRESENT

to the pressure The Orderswerethemselves in parta response of thepoor:

Our souls theyare dear,

THE ENGLISH CROWD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

PAST AND PRESENT

1795; the crowd set a price - and a substantialone -

THE ENGLISH CROWD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

PAST AND PRESENT

THE ENGLISH CROWD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

PAST AND PRESENT

From Stratton (Cornwall),I8oI:

THE ENGLISHCROWDIN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Only at this point did Smith agree to the

PAST AND PRESENT

THE ENGLISH CROWD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY