The East Anglian Agrarian Riots of 1822
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
/ / The East Anglian Agrarian Riots of 822 By PAUL MUSKETT ~'~ TEARS like 1816, 183o--32, I835-36 in 1843-45 when 250 fires were reported in Vwere exceptional only in the Norfolk and Suffolk, had some of the JL amount of violence that took place. features of a concerted campaign of intimida- No year in the first half of the nineteenth tion, but an examination of those brought century was a quiet year in the east. Every before the Suffolk assizes shows that perso- year was violent, and the amount of violence nal revenge, exhibitionism and juvenile that took place was very great indeed." A J vandalism lay behind the fire raising as much Peacock provides a necessary corrective to as any desire for social justice. It should be the sentimental picture of the agricultural noted that culprits in these categories were labourer stoically enduring his lot until more likely to be caught, and that the fires driven to the point of desperate revolt, but in provided a pretext for bringing in the village emphasizing the general level of violence ne'er-do-wells. Convictions were often there is a danger that the particular features of obtained on circumstantial evidence, and agrarian riots, as opposed to other forms of great exertions in extinguishing a blaze was rural protest, are obscured. Distinctions looked on as highly suspicious. 3 The up- have to be made between the various forms surge of incendiarism in the years of the of violence and care taken when attempting major riots cannot be discounted, but the to correlate them. reservations over the motives of the arsonists Food riots, machine breaking and the have to be kept in mind. Poaching also protests over tithes, wages and the Poor presents problems as 'an index of growing Laws were all public activities; the partici- poverty and social tension'. 4 The Game pants believed they were acting in a just Laws were resented, and their maintenance cause, and sometimes deliberately intro- by the squires and parsons on the magisterial duced an element of spectacle. One group of bench must have furthered a sense of machine breakers in 1822 was accompanied injustice, but the Laws also created the by a small band, and when they found a poachers' market, by prohibiting the sale of machine near Attleborough removed it to birds shot with proper authorization. the town centre before breaking it up. In a Poaching was not simply a matter of finding !atcr incident a machine was loaded on to its meat for the pot, it was a business interprise carriage and then dragged triumphantly carried out by large armed gangs, ready to from Winfarthing to Shelfanger where it was maim and murder to avoid capture and sunk in I4 feet of water. 2 protect their catches. Other types of social protest, such as There was a correlation between poacher arson, poaching, sheep stealing and cattle and arsonist in I843-45, but a connection maiming, need to be looked at with circum- between open protest and clandestine prac- spection. The great outburst of incendiarism tices cannot be presumed, except in so far as 'AJ Peacock, 'Village Radicalism m East Anglia', inJ p Dunbabin (ed), Rural Discontent in Nit,eteenth Century Britain, x975, p 39. 3D Jones, Crime, Protest, Community and Police in Nhteteenth Century ~Norwid, Mercury (NM), 9 March z8:~2; Bury Gazette (BG), 25 Britait,, x982, p 46. September x822. 4E J Hobsbawm and G Rud6, Captain Swing, 197o, pp 359-60. THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW they are responses to poverty, unemploy- conform to a pattern of deprivation and ment and exploitation. The I822 disturb- seems to have owed more to established ances differed from those o f 1816 and 183 o in precedents. Norwich, Ipswich, Bury and being more concentrated geographically, Colchester had a long history of food riots, and less diffuse in their objectives. and close examination of the coincident The 1816 risings had assumed three main troubles in the surrounding villages shows forms; traditional food riots at Brandon, that the agricultural labourers were taking Downham Market, Littleport and Ely; independent action. 7 machine breaking in Suffolk and Essex; and The most distinctive characteristic of the incendiarism to the south and east of Bury. riots in Suffolk and Essex was the destruction There were also wages riots at Swaft'ham of machinery, and threshing machines were Bulbeck and Wattisham, attacks on over- the targets of incendiary attacks at Cockfield seers at Ramsay and Warboys and a number and Clare. Threshing machines had been in of riotous assemblies in the Norfolk Fens. At use since 1786 , and as early as 18oo the Bury the machine breakers' target was a Norwich Mercury was recommending their spinning jenny and in Ipswich the trials of adoption as a means of preventing waste, rioters were the catalyst for violent protests reducing labour and checking fraud. over the Corn Laws.5 Machines did not come into general use in East Anglia until after I8O5, when a trans- II portable model, worked by one or two The Board of Agriculture's report on horses, was developed and the smaller conditions in I816 presented a sombre farmers could either invest in one or hire it. picture of the situation in East Anglia. There were entrepreneurs who leased Tenants were quitting their holdings in the machines on a fairly large scale, and men who face of high rents, mortgages and loans would spend a lifetime's savings on a single which could not be met as grain prices machine which they would rely on as a dropped. 6 Diversification and the intensive source of income when they were past being application of new techniques were even- able to perform heavier work. s tually to enable producers to take advantage The machines could be operated by of urban expansion and industrial growth, women and children, and so saved on wages, but in the immediate post-war years only but they were first brought into use to those with adequate capital could afford to compensate for a labour shortage, and the take the long-term view. Most farmers direct financial advantage over hand thought in terms of rate and tax reductions, a threshing was slight. A letter to the Norwich moratorium on rents, increased protection Mercury questioned the continued use of the against imports, and cutting of labour costs. machines at a time of high unemployment, Moves towards retrenchment coincided and claimed that 'corn may be thrashed as With the return of men from the war and the cheap by hand as by machine'. James Buck rise in the labour force resulting from thought that 'the threshing machine ought population increase. Witnesses to the Board not to be found in populous places amidst a drew attention to the plight of the labourers numerous poor'. 9 on parish relief and anticipated the troubles, VOutwell, Cambridge Chronicle (CC), 31 August 1793; Home Office (HO), 42135 25 July 1795; Halstead, Cambridge Intell(~,encer(CI), 15 but the actual locations of the riots did not August t795; Ramsay, HO 42/35 25 July; Wisbech, HO 42/35 3 August; Stowmarket, Bury Post (BP), 25 July 1795; Melton, SRO 5A J Peacock, Bread or Blood, t965, pp 09-82. Norfolk Chronicle HA 365/2 5 December 1792; Clare, London Gazette, t5 November (NC), I8, 25 May 18t6; NM 2oJanuary, 3 August 18t6; Su.~lk x8oo; Great Bardfield, London Gazette, 8 July t8oo, HO 42/50, Chronicle (SC), 27 April 18t6; NM 4 March 1815. Suffolk RO Swaffilam Bulbeck, HO 42/51 24 September x8oo. (SRO), HA 247/5/48. SNM x8 October x8oo; Hobsbawm & Rud6, op cit, pp 359-63; SC 6G E Mingay (ed), The Agricultural State of the Kingdom, 1816, 197o, 27 April 1816; NM IO August I816; NC aoJuly 1816. pp I9o-2, I97, 3oi, 325. 9NM 15 June 18x6; Agricultural State qf the Kingdom, p 193. EAST ANGLIAN RIOTS I822 Despite the doubts and the riots, machines distressed, men labouring for ninepence or a were kept on, the farmers believing it was shilling a day'. Rodwell spoke of 'a great essential to put their grain on sale before the number of hands, in consequence of the markets became satiated. times, thrown out of employment and Small owners and occupiers on the heavy maintained by the parish at a very small clay loams of the Norfolk-Suffolk border, pittance indeed'. There were 480 in the local especially those in the Waveney valley, were workhouse: ten years earlier there had been under particular pressure. The soil needed 200. ~i deep ploughing and good drainage ifit was to produce competitive yields, and this meant III capitalinvestment. Landowners and farmers Overt protests after 1816 were few, but there persisted with improvements, but when was a fierce gleaning disputein 1820 between grain prices fell to their lowest level so far in the poor of Hoxne and Eye hundreds, both 1821 even the most optimistic lost heart. areas much involved in the 1822 troubles, Average prices can be misleading, for the and in Loddon there was a riot directed price varied markedly according to quality against the overseers and churchwardens. and area. In November I82I wheat was on This happened soon after the introduction of sale at Woodbridge, Sudbury and Ipswich at new scales of relief for men working on the between 5I/- and 56/- a quarter, while at roads, which gave married men with three Stowmarket it ranged from 3o/- to 60/-. children I/4d a day and single men Iod. t2 These figures are of limited use, since there The total crime figures were rising steeply: might well have been no buyers for the committals for Suffolk rose by 73.3 per cent poorer quality grains.