January 2021 Volume 1, Issue 7 Inside this issue The Swing Riots and the Pre-Raphaelites………………………. 1—6 Rolvenden shops remembered from Rolvenden History the early 1950s………………………...6—8 Special points of interest • 1152 Henry of Anjou lands in England to claim the English Group throne after the death of King Stephen in accordance with the Treaty of Wallingford. • 1315-1322 millions die in the The Swing Riots and the Pre-Raphaelites Great Famine—bad weather conditions thought to be caused by the Little Ice Age. Having read Peter Southgate’s excellent article about the railways through Rolvenden, my thoughts became focussed on the Pre Raphaelites, the Industrial • 1 January 1502, Portuguese explorers landed at Guanabara Revolution, and the impact on Kent in these changes in society. Bay on the coast of South America and named it Rio de In my last article I quoted the British Dictionary stating that History was a Janeiro (River of January). continuous narrative and I added that it also recorded human endeavour; • 4 January 1642 Charles I attempts to arrest five however, on reflection, I would like to amend this statement to say that members of Parliament as he historians’ main preoccupations are the documentation of human conflict, feared they were trying to seize agitation, reform and revolution! We do not seem particularly interested to power and impeach his catholic wife—they were forewarned by record everyday events but select life challenging occasions, focussing on a one of the ladies in Henrietta particular fashionable impression and embellishing that impression to a fixed Maria’s household and fact. escaped. • 30 January 1649 Charles I is Now in the twenty-first century, the World Wide Web gives us access to instant executed. global information, and we can record every single incident we choose to • 1 January 1651 Charles II is crowned King of Scotland. (whether life changing or trivial) and I’m not sure this surfeit of information is ever going to help with the recording of our human narrative. I never thought • 1 January 1660 Samuel Pepys starts his diary. that I would be concerned with the presentation of truth or ‘fake news’ but that does seem to be the current quandary! This aside I would like to steer the • 1 January 1788 the first edition of The Times is published. Rolvenden time machine from the sixteenth century, to another time of agitation • 1 January 1801 the Act of Union - but still in the relative calm of what is currently accepted as ‘known truths’ - to creates the United Kingdom. the nineteenth century. • 10 January 1840 a uniform rate of one penny for postage In 1779 a group of English textile workers in Manchester rebelled against the established. introduction of machinery which threatened their skilled craft. This was the first • 30 January 1858 Britain’s first of many Luddite riots that took place involving mainly weavers and textile permanent symphony orchestra was founded by workers. It was supposedly named after a young apprentice who took matters Charles Hallé and was based in into his own hands and destroyed textile apparatus. This reaction against the Manchester. introduction of machinery spread into agriculture, and the agricultural workers in • 17 January 1881 William the southern counties took matters into their own hands and their own rebellion Armstrong’s house becomes took place through the ‘Swing Riots’. the first to use electric light. Water powered electricity. Poor harvests, low wages and high unemployment between 1829 and 1830 led to hunger amongst poor agricultural workers and their families, To add to their troubles the Agricultural Revolution had introduced new technology such as threshing machines which further dispensed with the need to employ farm workers. This situation resulted in protests that started in Kent and later spread to surrounding counties. In the northern parts of England the Luddites and Chartists held sway, hoping to change working conditions and to effect electoral reform whilst in the southern counties the Swing Riots took place. They were called the ‘Swing Riots’ after a mysterious Captain Swing. This made up name symbolised the anger of the poor labourers in rural England who wanted a return to the pre-machine age when human labour was used. Threatening letters were sent to farmers and landowners which demanded that their wages be increased and told the farmers to stop using threshing machines. As a result of this anger from the workers some farm buildings and hayricks were set alight. Swing apparently put his name to a threatening letter to a farmer in Dover in October 1830 stating, ‘You are advised that if you don’t put away your threshing machine against Monday next, you shall have a SWING’ (on the gallows). The first actual riot attributed to Captain Swing occurred on 28th August 1830 with the destruction of a threshing machine in Lower Hardes near Canterbury. Riots escalated with fires in north-west Kent reaching into neighbouring Surrey. Wrecking of more threshing machines occurred in East Kent around Dover, Sandwich and Canterbury. Late in October 1830 wages meetings accompanied by radical agitation against rents and tithes occurred around Maidstone. In early November it was recorded that wage meetings and further machine breaking took place in West Kent reaching into the Sussex Weald. Finally, in mid- November there were further rounds of fires, tithe riots and machine breaking in East Kent. At first magistrates tried to be lenient with those arrested. In Canterbury, Sir Edward Knatchbull imposed a mere three day prison sentence on seven of the machine breakers but as the actions persisted sentences became more severe and on Christmas eve 1830, William Packman (twenty years of age), Henry Packman (eighteen years of age) and John Dyke were hanged for arson to a barn belonging to William Wraight of Blean. They were hanged at Penenden Heath Maidstone, despite pleas for clemency being made to Mr. Justice Bosanquet. Altogether nineteen people were executed, 505 people were transported to Australia and 644 people were placed in prison. The troubles did not end there! Two years later in 1832 a man called John Tom (a maltster from Truro) turned up in Canterbury posing as a Sir William Courtenay. He fooled many people as to his true identity and managed to win votes in a parliamentary election. After a conviction for perjury he was deemed insane and detained at Barming Asylum in 1833. After his release he settled in Boughton and set about convincing the locals he could rescue them from their poverty. As a consequence of the Swing Riots and the Poor Law of 1834 feelings were raw and Courtenay quickly convinced the locals to protest. On May 29th 1838 (Oakapple Day) Courtenay led his followers on a march around the local countryside waving a flag and a traditional symbol of protest (bread on a pole). The local landowners became concerned and a warrant for Courtenay’s arrest was issued. When a constable and his assistant attempted to arrest Courtenay, Courtenay shot the assistant (Nicholas Mears) dead. The army was called in to intervene. In Bossenden Woods on 31 May 1838 a group of around forty agricultural labourers were confronted by the army and quickly subdued but not before Courtenay killed Lieutenant Bennet of the 45th Infantry Regiment. Courtenay and ten of his followers were subsequently killed in the melee. Around thirty of Courtenay’s followers were arrested, ten stood trial at Maidstone Assizes whilst the grand jury discharged the others. Two men (Thomas Mears and William 2 Price) were charged with the murder of Nicholas Mears and nine others were charged with the murder of Lieutenant Bennett. This was truly an ‘Age of Revolution’. The French Revolution had occurred at the end of the eighteenth century with all its horror and intrigue; it had been followed by the rise of Napoleon and many had taken part in the war against him. Europe had been destabilised. Fears of insurrection were high. Some reforms were undertaken in Britain — the abolition of Slavery in 1833, the Reform Act of 1832, where the vote had been given to small landowners, tenant farmers, shopkeepers and householders who paid an annual rent of £10, but categorically no votes for women! Countries around the world were breaking away from Empires to create their own independent states (Greece, Bolivia, Belgium...) The revolution in mechanisation was unfolding with the building of the railways, and Hargreaves ‘Spinning Jenny’ in the textile industry. Transport, factories, agriculture and social reform were evolving at a breakneck speed and so it was not surprising that the arts responded to this age of change by being caught up in this emotional maelstrom . Some artists embraced the changes (Wright of Derby, Turner), others wanted a return to an age that they considered to be of calm and order, developing from this whirlpool of changing ideals the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was formed. This Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood began as a social reform rebellion amidst the heat of social uprisings across Europe. The establishment of the group came at a time when England was experiencing mass industrialisation and significant political and social upheaval. Initially they hoped to develop their ideals through a journal called ‘The Germ’ but this was a dismal failure and due to the diverse and strong personalities they in fact became a loosely knit group of artists who banded together in 1848 to reflect on the society they found themselves in and as a reaction against what they conceived to be the unimaginative and artificial historical painting of the Royal Academy. They purportedly sought to express a new moral seriousness and sincerity in their works. The Pre-Raphaelites took their inspiration from the artists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as they considered these artworks to be a direct, and uncomplicated depiction of nature, in fact they wished to turn away from industrialisation back to an ideal ‘Golden Age’.