The Pentrich Rebellion

In 1815 Britain stood at a crossroads. Behind it lay the victory of Waterloo and the end of a costly war with France; before it lay the beginnings of prosperity driven by entrepreneurs and the full implementation of an industrial revolution that was already well underway in some areas of the country. The system of government through which wealthy landowners sought to keep the poor in their place was coming under pressure from radicals seeking proper representation for working men.

Developments in industry and increased mechanisation were changing the traditional patterns of work for thousands who had started the drift from the land to the towns of the Midlands and north of England. But as the mill and factory owners got wealthier, their workers slogged for long hours and lived in slum conditions. After the war there was a slump as the demand for products such as iron and coal fell and manufacturing picked up on the Continent, thus damaging British exports. Unemployment grew, exacerbated by the demobilisation of 300,000 men from the army and navy. Poverty was widespread, particularly in rural areas. The poor rate (the property tax levied by parishes for relief of the poor) increased from £2 million in 1780 to £8 million in 1812.

Although most people still worked on the land, enclosure, which had accelerated from the mid-18th century, hastened by improvements in agricultural practice and husbandry and the increased use of machinery, had hit hard. Once the land was enclosed and worked by individual farmers, many of them wealthy landowners or better-off tenants, each could introduce whatever changes he saw fit. Yields and the efficient use of the land increased, but fewer labourers were needed, smallholdings and the common lands, on which people could graze their animals freely and from where they collected fuel, disappeared. Commenting at the end of the 18th century, the agricultural writer Arthur Young (1741-1820) wrote of the Enclosure Acts:

The poor in the parishes may say with truth, Parliament may be tender of property. All I know is; I had a cow, and an Act of Parliament has taken it from me.

Many who had previously worked smallholdings, finding themselves dispossessed with little work or money, were forced to the towns to seek a living. Wages fell and prices rose, particularly the price of bread. The Corn Law of 1815, passed to protect the profits of landowners and farmers, prohibited the import of corn until the price on the home market reached 80 shillings a quarter (8 bushels). The situation was made worse in 1816 by almost incessant rain through the summer, resulting in a very poor harvest. In 12 months the price of bread rocketed by 40 per cent.

General unrest in the country increased as hunger set in. Food riots broke out in many areas, from London to Newcastle, from Ely to Bideford. But the riots were symptomatic of a deeper level of discontent. Industrialisation, rising prices and falling wages had resulted in violent disturbances over the price of wheat and the harsh treatment by employers as far back as the middle of the previous century. The Combination Acts of 1799 and 1800 under William Pitt’s government had prohibited trade unions and made it illegal for more than two people together to demand better pay or working conditions. By 1811 Luddite attacks on machinery were widespread. These were by workers from three trades in particular: clothworkers from the West Riding of Yorkshire; cotton weavers from South Lancashire; and framework knitters from Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. All felt threatened by greater mechanisation and, in the case of the framework knitters, by the production of shoddy, inferior goods. Though for a time all of them tried to protect their interests by cooperation, they were denied workers’ rights and eventually turned to machine breaking. In 1812 the government passed the Frame Breaking Act, by which anyone convicted of such activity could be sentenced to death. A number of people in Yorkshire and Lancashire were hanged or transported to Australia. Following this Luddism declined though there was sporadic violence as late as 1817.

The prime minister, Lord Liverpool (1812-27), presiding over an antiquated electoral system, faced overwhelming problems. Growing municipal areas were without representation: Rutland had more MPs in Parliament than the whole of Yorkshire. Radical groups talked openly of reform and were regarded with suspicion by the authorities, especially in the light of the revolutions in America and France. ‘Union’ movements organised among the mill workers of Lancashire in 1816 also made the government nervous, as did the activities of Hampden Clubs, first formed by the political reformer John Cartwright in 1812 and not covered by the Combination Acts. The first club outside London was formed in 1816 at Royden, followed by others at Middleton, Oldham and Manchester. By 1817 the clubs, which advocated  universal suffrage, secret ballots and equal electoral districts and were regularly infiltrated by government agents, numbered 150 in the Midlands and north of England.

In January 1817 delegates from Hampden Clubs all over England attended a rally calling for reform and securing a petition of half a million signatures at the Crown and Anchor pub at the corner of the Strand in London. But this and other similar petitions had no effect on the government. A few weeks before, a reform meeting in Clerkenwell had ended in a riot, with shops broken into and a man shot. Consequently, in February 1817, the Home Secretary, Lord Sidmouth, suspended Habeas Corpus (it was not reinstated until February 1818) on the grounds that there were people within the country intent on revolution. Dismayed by the government’s increasing repression, radicals began to think violence was their only recourse. Groups of disaffected workers and others seeking reform continued to meet in secret, even at the risk of being arrested.

An unlikely hotbed

Today Pentrich in Derbyshire is a quiet village 14 miles from Nottingham, hardly the place, you would think, which would spawn an insurrection. But it was here in 1817, among the farmyards, quarries and fields, that a small group of stonemasons, labourers, ironworkers and framework-knitters decided to make a stand against a system they felt was unjust. Pentrich lay at the heart of the hosiery and manufacturing counties of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Leicestershire. One of the main employers in the area was the Butterley Ironworks at nearby Ripley (best known for producing the great iron arches at St Pancras station, it closed earlier this year), where output had fallen following the end of the war. After 1815 unemployment in the area increased and the hosiery industry in particular slumped. Many men in Pentrich and the surrounding villages were framework-knitters, working in their own cottages. However, the shaped stockings produced on the Derbyshire Rib machine, on which they had been trained, had become unfashionable. Instead, and to save money, hosiers began to produce ‘cut ups’: cheap stockings made from straight widths that could be produced by apprentices who were paid less than their trained predecessors.

There had been an outbreak of frame-smashing in Pentrich and the surrounding area as early as 1811-12 and the region was looked upon as fertile ground for dissent by those secret committees whose thoughts were turning to direct action. The government was well aware of this. Lacking a police force, it relied on local officers, such as lord lieutenants and sheriffs, and on a network of spies and informers. It knew, for example, in spring 1817, that a parcel of daggers had been delivered to Hinckley in Leicestershire and that about the same time an order for 3,000 pike handles had been placed with a carpenter in Stamford, Lincolnshire. It also knew that trouble was brewing in Derbyshire in the spring of 1817, encouraged and organised by underground groups.

One of these committees, which coordinated insurrection in the area, was based in Nottingham and was chaired by a needle-maker, William Stevens. The delegate from the Pentrich district was the 64-year-old stockinger, founder of the local Hampden Club and Luddite veteran, Thomas Bacon. He had been a thorn in the government’s side for 30 years with his radical activities and his role in coordinating Luddite violence. He was well travelled, good at organising and in touch with radical groups all over the country. In January 1817 he had attended the Crown and Anchor rally in London. Soon after, Bacon began to organise meetings in a barn near Pentrich, telling the disaffected locals that now was their chance to fight for workers’ rights, supported by others in the north, with the plan of marching via Nottingham to London to overthrow the government. According to one of the factory workers, John Cope, who later turned informer, Bacon began questioning men who worked at the nearby Butterley ironworks about the possible manufacture of weapons, including ‘crow’s feet’, spiked objects for throwing in front of advancing horses, and he noted the cannon that stood in front of the factory, wondering aloud how long it would take to drag it to Nottingham.

On June 5th, 1817 Bacon returned from Nottingham to Pentrich, accompanied for the first time by Jeremiah Brandreth, the man appointed by the committee to lead a revolutionary march from Pentrich. Then aged 31, Brandreth was an unemployed Derbyshire rib-stockinger, living in Nottingham with his wife and two children (a third was on the way). Some of the Pentrich men were unconvinced by his appearance: Ormond Booth, a framework-knitter, described him as ‘rather ill looking ... with a thin face and yellowish complexion’. His clothes, a shabby green coat and light trousers, did nothing to enhance his appearance. Imposing or not, Brandreth, or ‘the Captain’ as he soon became known, took charge, inspiring his audience with promises of bread, beef and ale and a thousand guineas for each man when they reached Nottingham, where he claimed 16,000 men would join them.

The following night the men met at the White Horse Inn in the village (now demolished) to finalise their plans. Thomas Bacon’s sister, known as Nanny Weightman, was the landlady. A fanatical supporter of the workers’ cause, she was later described by an unnamed observer as ‘a bitch of a mother who deserves hanging worse than those condemned’. All four of her sons took part in the rebellion, one of them at risk of a beating with a poker from his mother when he expressed reluctance to join the others. Brandreth discussed the route of the march and distributed some stirring verses:

Every man his skill must try,
He must turn out and not deny;
No bloody soldier must he dread,
He must turn out and fight for bread.
The time is come, you plainly see,
The Government opposed must be.

The other two ringleaders were local men, Isaac Ludlam and William Turner. Ludlum had owned a small farm, but like many others it had failed and instead he had purchased a little quarry between Pentrich and the village of South Wingfield, two miles away, turning to stone production. Here he had stored a number of pikes with which to arm the revolutionaries. William Turner was a stonemason from South Wingfield, where he lived with his elderly parents. Apart from gathering weapons with Ludlum, Turner’s contribution was to suggest the murder of the local magistrate and squire, Colonel Wingfield Halton. Turner’s plan was to lure Halton out of his house by setting fire to some straw on his doorstep and then to shoot him when he came out to investigate.

Unbeknown to Brandreth and the men of Pentrich, the government was aware of from as early as March 1817 exactly what they were planning and even the date set for the uprising. Lord Sidmouth, the Home Secretary, was kept abreast of events by an informer who was to play a critical role in what happened at Pentrich. William Oliver, a Londoner whose real name was William Richard, had been employed to infiltrate the secret societies of the north. He later became known as Oliver the Spy. When he turned his attention to the secret committee in Nottingham and met Thomas Bacon and his colleagues, he far exceeded his government brief by deliberately encouraging the men to believe that there were 70,000 radicals in London ready to support an uprising, though there was no such support. He also alerted the local authorities. On June 8th, Henry Enfield, the clerk of Nottingham, wrote to Sidmouth:

We have Scouts out – my confidential clerk is on the lookout near Pentridge watching the result of Old Bacon’s movements.

June 9th, 1817

Unaware of this, Brandreth and his group finalised their plans to march through the countryside, rallying others to join them, collecting guns and other weapons on the way. The group numbered around 50 when they finally set out at 10pm on the night of June 9th. Brandreth was armed with a shotgun and a pistol and threatened to shoot anyone who refused to join them. They went from house to house, hammering on doors, forcing at gunpoint men and boys to join them and seizing any weapons that they had. At one small farmhouse, a widow named Mary Hepworth, who lived there with her two sons, stood up to Brandreth’s threats and refused him entry. A window was broken at the back of the house and, infuriated, Brandreth fired a shot through it, killing Robert Walters, a servant, as he bent to lace his boots. Some of the Pentrich men remonstrated with Brandreth at the taking of an innocent life, but his response was to threaten them with the same if they did not fall into line.

Gradually, the group, now of several hundred men, made its way to the Butterley ironworks, where their loud demands for weapons and men were met by an officer of the company, George Goodwin, and several special constables armed with pikes. Undeterred by Brandreth’s threats, Goodwin stood his ground and told the crowd they should go home or face hanging. He recognised Isaac Ludlam and told him: ‘Go home; you’ve got a halter about your neck’. Some of the reluctant marchers seized their chance at this point and stepped forward to stand with Goodwin. Meanwhile Brandreth led his group away, moving off to continue terrorising the neighbourhood. It began to pour with rain and a number of men, soaked and dispirited and disturbed by talk of hanging, began to slip off back to their homes. The revolution was beginning to unravel less than 12 hours after it had begun.

The remaining group trudged on towards Nottingham, stopping to demand ale at several inns on the way. Just beyond Eastwood, at Kimberley, the bedraggled rabble encountered 22 soldiers of the Light Dragoons coming towards them. Brandreth and the rest fled, flinging away their weapons, hiding in ditches and barns to escape. Forty men were captured the same morning; by mid-June, 85 were in custody, though it was mid-July before Brandreth and Ludlam were caught. Last to be tracked down was Thomas Bacon. Although he had taken no part in the events of June 9th, as a warrant for his arrest had already been issued, he was finally picked up on August 15th at St Ives in Huntingdonshire by authorities determined to put an end to his radical plotting once and for all.

Thirty-five men were finally brought to trial in Derby in October, accused of numerous offences. Jeremiah Brandreth, Isaac Ludlam and William Turner were charged with high treason. All were charged with attempting ‘by force of arms to subvert and destroy the Government and Constitution’. Brandreth’s shooting of Robert Walters was described in detail as one after another of the press-ganged former marchers came forward to give evidence. Thomas Turner, a relative of William, was questioned about the events at Mrs Hepworth’s farmhouse:

Who went first to the door?
I cannot say. I heard the prisoner rapping and calling for arms out.
Was any window got open at last?
The window was broken.
Was that the kitchen window?
Yes. A back window. The prisoner asked the persons within to give the arms or open the door.
Did the persons within do either?
No. Some person refused him and he immediately fired in at the window...
Did that firing do any mischief?
Yes. I went to the window and saw a man lying on the floor. I told the captain [Brandreth] he should not have shot a poor innocent man.
What was his answer?
He said it was his duty and if I said anything more about it he would blow my brains out.

In Brandreth’s defence, his counsel Lord Denman, tried to play down the significance of the events of June 9th, describing it as ‘one of those mad and needless riots which were occasionally excited by hunger in all countries and in all ages’; the men, he opined, should be allowed to return to their families, not ‘offered up as victims on the altar of public justice’. But the Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer, Sir Richard Richards, was having none of it:

That these people were in a low situation in life is no excuse at all. A crime is no less a crime because the man who commits it is poor.

Twelve of those on trial were found not guilty and were allowed to go free, with a strict admonishment to learn a lesson from their foolishness and to live sober lives in the future. Twenty-three men were convicted: three were transported to Australia for 14 years; 11, including Thomas Bacon, for life. Brandreth, Ludlam and Turner were sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. For all of them, Sir Richard had hard words:

Your insurrection, thank God, did not last long, but whilst it continued it was marked with violence and with the murder of an innocent man who did not offer the least provocation. That conduct has shown the ferocity of your hearts. Your object was to wade through blood of your countrymen, to extinguish the law and constitution of the country, and to substitute for the liberty of your fellow subjects anarchy and the most complete ruin. God be praised, your purpose failed.

The harsh sentences were later transmuted by the Prince Regent but the three were still hanged and then beheaded on November 7th outside Derby Gaol.

The Agent Oliver

William Turner’s bitter comment on the scaffold – ‘This is the work of the Government and Oliver’ – caused some embarrassment in government circles. Lord Liverpool felt obliged to comment later that although spies and informers were necessary to government and always would be, some of them, ‘from zeal in their business go further than they ought’. Oliver had been more of an agent provocateur than a spy and they knew it. There was no attempt to hide the fact that the authorities allowed the unsuspecting members of the rebellion to play out their little drama to the end. Three days after the events in and around Pentrich, the Lord Lieutenant of Nottinghamshire, the Duke of Newcastle, informed Lord Sidmouth that:

As your Lordship is aware, the plot had been hatching for some time, which we knew, and were prepared accordingly. We thought it much more desirable to let the matter come to a Crisis, than to endeavour to crush it before the Designs were openly disclosed.

Fourteen years later the Government was still uneasy about the role Oliver had played in the affair. In 1831, the Home Secretary, Lord Melbourne, reflected that:

The transactions of the year 1817, when there is too much reason to suspect that the rising in Derbyshire, which cost the lives of three men upon the scaffold and the transportation of many more, was stimulated, if not produced, by the artificers of Oliver, a spy employed by the Government of that day.

Today the ‘revolutionaries’ of Pentrich are, literally, a footnote in history: in the margin of the baptism register of the parish church a sympathetic vicar, Reverend Hugh Wolstenholme, scribbled at the time:

On the evening of the 9th June an insurrection broke out in Pentrich, South Wingfield, Swanwick and Ripley which was quelled the next day in the region of Kimberley.

Significantly, of the 23 men who were convicted in Derby no less than eight were framework knitters, perhaps the group who felt that they had lost the most by what was happening in their industry. Summing up their despair, Jeremiah Brandreth, advised that he would probably hang for what he had done, commented: ‘I need not care whether I live or die, for there are no Derbyshire Ribs now.’

Susan Hibbins is a writer and editor.