10785 RegHistorian_issue13 - University of the West of England

RHCRHCREGIONAL HISTORY CENTRE

The Regional HistorianThe Newsletter of the Regional History Centre, at the UWE, Bristol

Bristol’s new museum…. Little Wales beyond the Severn…. The killing of Henry Murray…. Sir Richard Berkeley…. Woodtaking and customary practice in Wiltshire…. Bath and the Keppel affair…. John Thelwall’s grave…. PLUS News, Reviews and Letters

Issue No. 13 Spring/Summer 2005

Remembering Mary Rudge: Bristol’s Victorian Chess Champion

http://humanities.uwe.ac.uk/regionalhistoryGraphic Design Team 10785UWE, BRISTOL F.5.05Printing & Stationery Services

10785 RegHistorian_issue13 5/26/05 5:25 PM

The first international women’s chess tournament, held in London in 1897. Bristol’s Mary Rudge won the event.

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The Regional Historian

RHCRHCREGIONAL HISTORY CENTRE

Issue No. 13 Spring/Summer 2005

Contents

Editorial and news 2

The museum of Bristol and its public 6Madge Dresser

Little Wales beyond the Severn? 8The Welsh in early Tudor BristolPeter Fleming

The man who’d have blood for his supper: 11the killing of Henry Murray.Steve Poole

Sir Richard Berkeley: an Elizabethan career 15Tony Nott

Woodtaking and customary practice: 19William Hunt’s justices notebook, 1744 - 49Carl Griffin

‘A silly ridiculous Jack in Office’: 25Bath's town clerk and the Keppel affair, 1779Trevor Fawcett

Sites of memory and neglect: 29John Thelwall and the art of dying quietlySteve Poole

Mary Rudge: Bristol's world chess champion 33John Richards

Learning to live with ‘natural wonders’: 38the forgotten history of Cheddar Gorge Steve Poole

Reviews 40

Letters 46


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In this edition of the RegionalHistorian you’ll find a typically diverseand interesting selection of articles.Along with news of UWE’s excitingImmigrants and Minorities project,and a call for the new museum ofBristol to make the most of thecurrent public appetite for history,there are articles here coveringeverything from the political career ofthe Tudor magnate, Sir RichardBerkeley, to the no less remarkablesporting career of nineteenth centuryBristol chess champion, Mary Rudge.Two articles look at some of the lessfamiliar historical issues of urbanethnicity and remind us of theenormous impact cultural diversity hashad upon the development of the‘second city’; first Tudor citizens whodiscovered themselves in ‘little Walesbeyond the Severn’, and then some oftheir nineteenth century successorswho clashed tragically withPortuguese sailors at a Marsh Streetinn in 1810. Elsewhere we find aneighteenth century JP dispensingsummary justice and exercising thefiner arts of social arbitration as hemediates in cases of wood-stealing inrural Wiltshire, while in Bath we finda Town Clerk in hot water with thetownsfolk over his imperious attitudeto the people’s favourite, AdmiralKeppel; and the last resting place of aprominent reformer falling slowly intodisrepair. We like to think it’s a prettygood mix. But if you feel it doesn’tquite match some of your ownhistorical interests, why not write usan article? We seek to cover allperiods of history and our regionalinterest is in the South Westerncounties of Gloucestershire, Wiltshire,Dorset, Somerset and Devon. Allcontributions to the RegionalHistorian are considered forpublication, but you might like tocontact the editor in advance [email protected]’ll find details of the copy date forRH14 on P4.

UWE to write pioneering historyof Bristol ethnic minoritiesUWE’s School of History has been awarded£120,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund aspart of a £3.3 million project called‘England’s Past for Everyone’, co-ordinated bythe University of London’s Victoria CountyHistory Project, writes Peter Fleming. UWE’scontribution will be a history of immigrationin Bristol from medieval times to the end ofthe twentieth century, provisionally titled‘Immigrants and Ethnic Minorities in Bristolc1000 – 2000’. This will focus on the themesof ethnic diversity and civic identity. Nineother volumes dealing with histories of otherlocalities are planned throughout thecountry, but the Bristol project is the onlyone to look at ethnicity.

The two- year project will begin in June 2005,and will be led by Madge Dresser and PeterFleming of UWE’s Regional History Centre.An expert on medieval England's Jewishcommunity, Joe Hillaby, will produce achapter on Jews and other ethnic minoritiesin Bristol before 1300. As part of the project,an interactive website will be set up toencourage input from members of the public.

The researchers are looking forward toreceiving information and oral histories fromthe public, and are looking for volunteers tohelp research and document the findings.They are hoping to chart the relationshipbetween Bristol’s majority population andthose from ethnic minority groups during thepast millennium; to find out what copingstrategies the different groups used tosurvive; and to consider the way in whichBristol’s particular experience has beenshaped by national and global factors.

The Regional Historian will carry regularreports on the progress of the project, andthe project team can be contacted throughthe Regional History Centre website.

Editorial and News

Editorial and News Round-up

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Partnership with the VCH in WiltshireIn addition to the Immigrants and Minorities project, UWE has also beenmaking great progress with its association with the VCH in Wiltshire. Countyeditor Virginia Bainbridge explains: The successful conclusion of negotiations toincorporate the Victoria County History of Wiltshire into UWE HLSS represents amajor achievement for the future of public history. This important local historyresearch project came to the attention of Madge Dresser and Peter Fleming,through their RHC activities. The VCH team consists of Douglas Crowley, CountyEditor, and Virginia Bainbridge, Assistant Editor, whose appointment was madepossible through UWE funding. The VCH was started in 1899 and dedicated toQueen Victoria. It aims to provide a history of each parish and town in Englandfrom original sources. So far about half the country has been covered. Groupsof parish histories are published together in volumes and are now alsoavailable at www.englandpast.net and www.british-history.ac.uk The VCH isan invaluable resource for local and family historians and for academicresearchers.

Douglas and Virginia are currently completing the last few histories for volumeXVIII in the Wiltshire series, covering Cricklade and surrounding parishes.Virginia and Peter Fleming have also applied for AHRB funding for a three-yearproject on the history of Chippenham 1800 – 2000. This will involve UWEacademics and local history groups and will be modelled on a similar VCHWiltshire project on the village of Codford. Part of this research, ‘Travellingthrough Codford’ is available at www.historyfootsteps.net together withUWE’s ‘Bristol Slavery Trail’. VCH Wiltshire has its own website atwww.wiltshirepast.net

Incorporation into UWE has been a major boost to VCH Wiltshire, enabling thecompletion of volume XVIII and the start of volume XIX, to be centred onLongleat. With further funding for the last few volumes, it is now a realpossibility that the County series will be completed.

We are pleased to announce that we willbe making the results of this long-runningRHC project available to a wider audienceby the end of the summer. There will betwo main forms of data attached to theRegional History Centre Website athttp://humanities.uwe.ac.uk/Regionhistory/index.htm. The first will be in the shapeof interactive web pages givingbiographical information and images ofsome of the key women in Bristolphilanthropic networks.

The second will be a searchable databasecontaining information on a much largernumber of women philanthropists inBristol. Users will be able to search thedatabase under categories such as career,religion, education, family, politics,

interests and organisational affiliations.We hope these resources will be a usefuladdition to the RHC site and that localhistorians may be able to supply us withadditional information in order to expandthis resource still further. If you can helpplease contact [email protected] [email protected]

As well as storing downloadable versionsof past issues of the RH, the Centre’swebpages also host a diary page forforthcoming talks, workshops,conferences and other activities run byrecord offices and history societiesaround the region. If you’d like us to postnews of any events you are organising onthese pages, please e-mail us and we’ll beglad to include them.

News from the RHC on-line teamWomen and Philanthropy in Bristol, 1870 - 1920


Subscriptions to the Regional HistorianAs many of you will have noticed, the RegionalHistorian has not only taken on a moreprofessional design in recent editions, but ithas also grown in size. Since its firstpublication, the RH has been produced andposted without charge to all its readers. Butthe mailing list for the RH has almostdoubled over the last two years and it looksset to continue to grow. This is all verypleasing (!) but the cost is no longersupportable from the modest budget ofthe Regional History Centre. To safeguardthe journal’s future development and to

ensure that we can continue producing it in thecurrent format then, it has become necessary tointroduce a small subscription charge.

Subscriptions will take effect from issue 14 (Autumn2005) at a cost of just £10.00 per annum. Yoursubscription will include associate membership of theRegional History Centre, entitling you to discounts onfuture day conferences and workshops. We hope verymuch that you’ve enjoyed receiving free copies of theRH and that you’ll want to continue receiving it in thefuture. If so, please fill out the form in the back of thisRH and return it to us here at the Centre.

An appeal for help

The Dyrham Park WartimeResidential Nursery, 1939 - 1945 (formerly the Canonbuty Nursery)

Can anyone help this RH reader?I am undertaking research on behalf ofthe National Trust into the DyrhamPark wartime nursery, organised andfinanced by Lady Islington. If anyreader has any information about thenursery, its staff, or its residents, pleasecontact Hyla Holden at 9 Eden Villas,Larkhall, Bath, tel 01225 333409.

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Seminar series 2004-5The Regional History Centre launched a newfortnightly research seminar series in October2005, with papers covering every period inthe region’s history and confirming theCentre’s growing interest in all the countiesof the South West. Speakers were MoiraMartin (women’s philanthropic networks inBristol), Peter Fleming (civic historiographiesin Bristol and Coventry), Carl Griffin (popularprotest and the politics of timber in Wiltshireand Dorset), Michael Hicks (medievallandholdings in Southern England), StevePoole (disorderly houses in London and theSouth West), Richard Williams (street violencein 18th century Exeter), Joanne Parker (theVictorians and King Alfred in Somerset), andGeorge Scott (civil defence planning at Bathin 1964). If you’d like to be kept informedabout next year’s seminar programme, whynot join our growing e-mail contact list? Senda message to [email protected], andwe’ll add you to it.

Editorial and News Round-up

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Three members of UWE’s Regional History Centre (left to right: Dr Raingard Esser, Dr StevePoole and doctoral student James Lee) travelled to Athens in October to take part in theSeventh International Conference on Urban History, organised by the European Association ofUrban Historians. With the conference taking as its theme, ‘The European City in ComparativePerspective’, the UWE team were part of a panel chaired by Raingard and Dr Joachim Eibachon urban stability and civic liberties in the early modern city. Using Bristol as a focus, Steve’spaper considered the impact of sodomy trials on civic consciousness while James’s looked atthe role of oath-taking and oath-breaking. Raingard explored attitudes in other Englishtowns towards migrants from the low countries, and their fellow participants in a veryinternational panel contributed case studies of Goerlitz, Lubeck, Leipzig, Bern, Lyon and thesmall Austrian towns of Zwettl and Scheibbs. The collected papers will all be appearing in afuture edition of Urban History.

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Regional historians on tour!Port Histories: annual conference 2005This year’s RHC day conference takesplace on September 17th 2005. Underthe title Port Histories, the conferencelooks at the social, cultural andeconomic life of port communities inBritish history and seeks to drawparallels and contrasts between thelived experience of people inmaritime towns across the countryand across the ages. You’ll find abooking form in this edition of RHand full details of the conference athttp://humanities.uwe.ac.uk/Regionhistory/index.htm And if you’d like tobe kept up to date withdevelopments, you can [email protected] and ask to beadded to the e-mailing list.

Studying for an MA in history at UWEDid you know that you can study the historyof the South West region for a Mastersdegree at UWE? MA programmes beginevery October, classes are taught in theevenings, and you can study either full time(one year) or part time (two years). Twocompulsory modules in techniques andapproaches for writing and researchinghistory are complemented each year by avariable range of option modules, and youwill also write an 18,000 word dissertationon a topic of your choice. Many of our MAstudents choose a regional subject for theirdissertation and make full use of theexcellent archive materials kept in thelibraries and record offices of the southwestern counties. We are recruiting now for2005-6. If you would like more informationabout studying for a History MA at UWE,please drop a line [email protected]

Deadline forcontributions for RegionalHistorian 14

We welcome shortnotices, letters andarticles ofapproximately 3000words for publication inthe Regional Historian.Please submit all copyfor consideration forRH14, as a microsoftword e-mail attachmentif possible, by Friday23rd September 2005.Copy should be sent tothe editor,[email protected].


with the same programming strategy.‘Dumbing down’ could dampen theenthusiasm and devalue the expertise ofboth core audiences and programmeproviders; yet catering exclusively to the coregroup would not only exclude the bulk ofthe population but also impede the searchfor more creative and imaginative ways ofapproaching a subject. The only answerseemed to be to offer a range ofprogrammes variously targeted at each ofthe respective constituencies.

‘generalists, drama-queens and jugglers’.

What might those leading the Museum ofBristol learn from all this? Certainly one maininsight is that the bid for social inclusivitymust not replace intellectual substance. Bothgoals must somehow be accommodated.Historians as well as curators must combinetheir energies to provide the latest most upto date insights into the city’s history. Thenew Museum must exploit its contacts withuniversities as well as with the widercommunity when determining the content ofits exhibitions and when framing itsnarratives of the city’s past. There arescholars around the world researching intoBristol’s history and we need to enlist theminto the service of this exciting project.

If those less interested in History might bebriefly entranced by a short videodramatisation of say, an eighteenth centurysailor recounting a voyage, the ‘truth seeker’and ‘the generalist’ both might relish thefact that this video was based on an actualaccount which was available in a nearby casewith the former reading with sustainedinterest a label explaining the provenance ofthe log book and related documents. The‘enthusiast’ might find the artifacts of navallife the most gripping complement to thevideo whereas the ‘drama queen’ might besufficiently engaged by the story to pursuethe other stories of sea captains, womenpirates and shipbuilders presented in thesame installation.

If a section on ‘Bristol and the Blitz’ mightbest woo young audiences with evocativemusic sound effects and interactive quizzes,the ‘Core audiences’ and some of the

‘Persuadables’ might well find the accountsof black market activity and racial tensionduring the war stimulating and thoughtprovoking. And of course, these groupingsare mere conceptual constructs, nothermetically sealed realities. An object ordocument might capture the imagination ofa ‘hard to reach’; and a multi-media displaydelight a ‘truth seeker’. At the 1999 SlaveryExhibition in Bristol, a detailed eighteenth-century map of Africa was studied by Afro-Caribbean school children and academichistorians with apparently equal interest. But no matter how superficial the take of aparticular member of the public, the richnessof the exhibition depends on the depth andscope of the research that underpins it.

So, social inclusivity AND careful historicalscholarship; community consultation ANDcutting-edge research; visual flair ANDintellectual stimulation, celebration ANDprovocation.

The Museum of Bristol must pursueinclusivity with style and verve, but it mustalso ensure substance. It must do so bybuilding in formal mechanisms for academicsto interact with artists, curators andplanners. The public deserves no less.

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The Museum of Bristol and its publicMadge Dresser

The Museum of Bristol

The Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery is amuch-loved Bristol institution containingcollections of national status alongside localtreasures. But though its visitors often lingerat Ernest Board’s grand 1930 painting ofSome Who Have Made Bristol Famous, themuseum as a whole does not focus on thecity’s own history. Certainly, the lives ofordinary Bristolians have yet to berepresented and as a buoyant propertymarket rewrites the city’s topography, thereis a real need to historicise Bristol’s urbanspaces.

A new ‘ Museum of Bristol’, scheduled toopen in 2008 on the site of the presentIndustrial Museum, aims to fill these gaps.The proposed museum has the support of theHeritage Lottery Fund and the City Council.The HLF awarded £853,000 in February 2004to develop plans for this major newattraction with match funding from BristolCity Council. They have pledged a further£10.27 million towards the project and a bidto release these funds will be submitted tothe Lottery in June 2005.This ambitiousproject aims to ‘engage, inform and delightvisitors by providing a place where they canlearn and be inspired by the stories that canbe told through Bristol's collection of objects,paintings and historical documents.’

One of the main challenges for this project isto inspire rather than bore its public. It mustexploit the possibilities afforded by newtechnology in order to make visuallyattractive and engaging exhibits. It mustreach out to constituencies who have feltexcluded from the world of museums andgalleries.

But precisely who are these constituencies?Part of the answer at least surfaced at a‘History Away Day’ the BBC organized forinvited historians and Radio 4 producers inBristol last April 26th. There, Clare McGinn,(Editor, Radio and Music-Factual, Bristol) gavea fascinating presentation on History and thepublic. Based on a recent BBC survey thatfocused (for what appears to have been thefirst time) on potential audiences for BBChistory programmes, it became clear thatthere did exist a core audience already avidfor history. This core of mainly but notexclusively, older people were themselvesdivisible into two subgroups: the erudite eliteof highly-educated and proactive ‘truthseekers’ and the more populist ‘enthusiasts’

i.e. the sealed knot participants, the familyhistorians, the industrial archaeology buffs,the stately homes visitors etc who often werevery knowledgeable indeed about their ownparticular historical interest.

Over and above this loyal core (estimated tobe less than 8 million of the UK population)we were told, there existed a second groupof some 24 million souls who might bepersuaded to take an interest in historyprogrammes. These ‘Persuadables’ were avaried lot-characterised in the survey as‘generalists’, ‘drama queens’ and ‘jugglers’.The ‘generalists were the largest sub-group; alargely male cohort who wanted factually-based entertainment which related to theworld around them. The ‘drama queens’were a mainly female audience who wouldtake an interest in history so long as it waspackaged in a great story with characters forwhom they could root. This was the lot whowould listen to a historical drama or docu-drama but who, unlike the ‘generalists’ wereless interested in factually basedprogrammes. The ‘jugglers’ comprised a thirdsub-group, more evenly distributed betweenboth sexes whose ‘members’ liked news-styleor dramatic presentations of history,particularly those that helped them fill in(socially embarrassing) gaps in their historicalknowledge in a painless way.

‘One of the main challenges forthis project is to inspire rather than

bore its public’.

Now, the rest of the UK population wascategorised as harder to enthuse abouthistory. Younger and largely less well-educated than the ‘Core group’ or the‘Persuadables’, this ‘hard to reach’ audiencesaw the past as largely boring and irrelevant.This group might be tempted by highlyentertaining, and undemanding formatswhich appeared at first sight at least to bepresent-oriented. ‘History by stealth’ it wasventured, was perhaps the only way to getthis group to engage at all with anythingvaguely historical.

The discussion that ensued after thepresentation was both heart-felt andreflective. There was a consensus that onecould not cater for these different groups

Madge Dresseris principal lecturer in

History at UWE andauthor of SlaveryObscured (2001).

Formerly a Co-Director ofthe Regional History

Centre, she is nowleading the Lottery-

funded project on theHistory of Ethnic

Minorities in Bristol,1000-2000, with Peter

Fleming. Having servedas historical consultant to

the Bristol Museum andArt Gallery on a numberof initiatives since 1997,

she is currently a member on the steering

committee for theprojected Museum

of Bristol.

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10785 RegHistorian_issue13 5/26/05 5:25 PM

the clan to hold high office in Bristol werethe two John Vaughns, bailiffs in 1483/4 and1498/9, who may have been Henry’s son andgrandson. Thomas Vaughn, bailiff in 1496/7,may have been Henry’s brother, or the son ofanother John Vaughn who died in 1491/2,while Richard, bailiff in 1493/4, and WilliamVaughn, bailiff in 1515/6, may have beenbrothers.6 According to local chronicles, in1527 Richard Vaughn was murdered byWilliam Herbert as he was returning fromthe duck hunting and wrestling bouts stagedin the Marsh for the mayor’s entertainment.

Detail from the tomb of Thomas White, afifteenth century Welsh merchant (d. 1482),

in St Mary's Church, Tenby.

Herbert escaped. His attack may have been inrevenge for the execution of one of hisancestors in Bristol after the Wars of theRoses battle of Edgecote in 1469, when

Henry Vaughn was bailiff.7 Henry Vaughndoubtless used his position to open doors forhis prolific family, but he may have done thesame for other Welshmen: from the 1480suntil the 1530s Greffith, Jonys, ap Howell,Morgan, ap Rhys, Walsshe and Williamsmake frequent appearances among Bristol'sbailiffs, sheriffs and mayors. The presence ofa Welshman on the throne of England wouldnot have harmed the prospects of Welshmenseeking fortune and office in Bristol, and atthe start of his reign at least, Henry Tudormade much of his Welsh lineage, but the riseof Henry Vaughn predates Bosworth: theWelsh were clearly not reliant on royalpatronage.

What really seems to have alarmedthe Crown was the prospect, not

of ethnic clashes, but of seditious collaboration’.

As the murders of Richard Vaughn and Johnap Meryk suggest, relations between Welshand English in Bristol were not alwaysharmonious. In 1492 Henry VII’s Council wastold that the mayor had attempted to arrestone Yeuan ap Roger, a tailor who had takensanctuary in St Augustine's abbey, fromwhere he led a criminal gang, whose mostnotorious exploit was a robbery at Westburyparish church.8 However, given the levels ofviolence and lawlessness recorded in latermedieval judicial proceedings, these incidentsdo not necessary demonstrate any particularunderlying antagonism between the twoethnic groups. Rather, the overwhelmingweight of evidence suggests that Welsh andEnglish in early Tudor Bristol traded together,were parties to each other’s propertyarrangements, and often intermarried. This isall the more surprising given how thecentury began.

Owain Glyndwr’s rebellion, erupting in 1400,made a great impact on Bristol’s commercialand political life. The town was a major basefor military operations against rebel forces,its gaol housed rebel prisoners, and it had tocope with deserters from the English armiesand also, probably, with loyalist Welshrefugees.9 From the outset of rebellion theCrown was well aware of Bristol’s strategicimportance. The town had the doubtfulprivilege of receiving a quarter of one of the

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There is a considerable Welsh presence incontemporary Bristol: Welsh accents areoften to be heard in the city's streets, andthat presence has doubtless grown since thebuilding of the two Severn bridges. This isby no means a modern phenomenon,however, and in this article, Peter Flemingexplores the experiences of the Welsh inBristol during the reign of the first Welshking of England, Henry VII.

In Bristol, if nowhere else, Amerigo Vespucci'sright to be regarded as the godfather ofAmerica, the man who lent his name to the‘new’ continent, is hotly contested by thechampions of Richard Amerik, the Bristolcustoms official through whose hands JohnCabot received his pension from Henry VIIafter returning from the 1497 voyage toNewfoundland.1 Had contemporaries optedfor ‘Vespuccia’, this debate would never havegot off the ground, and naming thecontinent 'the Land of the Wasps' woulddoubtless have been thought positivelyprovidential by some White Anglo-SaxonProtestants in the North. But this was not tobe. The form of his name that mostconveniently fits the 'American Godfather'theory conceals a real point of interestregarding the Bristol customs official, for hestarted out being called Richard ap Meryk,and if not born in Wales, was most certainlyof Welsh descent. So, if his proponents arecorrect (which I doubt: naming your new-found continent after the customer whohanded over your pension is rather likenaming your first-born after the registrar ofbirths), America was named after aWelshman. Richard ap Meryk may have beenrelated to either or both Richard Ameryk,importing Spanish iron through Bristol in1437, or Richard ap Meryk, merchant andmercer of Taunton, pardoned in 1472.

He was established as a freeman of Bristol,and an associate of the powerful Canyngesfamily, by 1478. In his property deals he wasaccompanied by Henry and Thomas a Meryk.In 1486, the year after Henry Tudor’saccession, he became a Bristol collector ofcustoms, a post he held until 1498, notwithout controversy: he seems to have beeninvolved in faction fighting within the town,and made frequent appearances before theExchequer court, accused of fraud andcorruption, and was twice pardoned (in 1495and 1499) for these alleged malpractices. Theculmination of his career came in 1503, with

his appointment as a sheriff of Bristol. Hedied in office the following year. Hisdaughter, Joan, married the Bristol serjeant-at-law John Brook (d1522), and theirmagnificent brass is in St Mary Redcliffe.2 Aswe have seen, Richard was not the only apMeryk in early Tudor Bristol, and there wasalso a Robert a Meryk, a Philip ap Meryk,weaver, and a Treheyron a Meryk, while aJohn ap Meryk was stabbed to death in1490.3

‘The presence of a Welshman onthe throne of England would not

have harmed the prospects ofWelshmen seeking fortune and

office in Bristol’.

These ap Meryks, a Meryks, Ameryks, orMeryks, in early Tudor Bristol would have hadno trouble finding other Bristolians of Welshancestry, at least to judge by the evidence offamily names. Of course, using personalnames as evidence of ethnicity is fraughtwith difficulty: for one thing, an Englishcitizen named ‘Fleming’ may have no greaterlink with Flanders than a liking for StellaArtois. However, one need only look to southPembrokeshire, ‘Little England beyondWales’, to see how long lasting can be thecultural impact of population movements inthe distant past. Names can also change,mutating into forms more acceptable -perhaps more pronounceable - to the hostcommunity: hence, Richard described himselfin his pardon of 1495 as Richard Meryk ofBristol, merchant, alias a Meryk, alias apMeryk, and in his 1499 pardon as RichardAmerik.4

Richard was not the most prominentWelshman in early Tudor Bristol. Thatdistinction must go to Henry Vaughn,described by Professor Ralph Griffiths as thetown’s ‘most successful and respectedmerchant’. Henry Vaughn was bailiff in1469/70, sheriff in 1479/80, mayor in 1483/4,1485/6, and 1493/4, constable of the Bristolstaple in 1491, and MP in 1487 and 1497.5

The Vaughns had links with Aberystwyth, St David’s and Cardiff, but a branch of thefamily had been established in Bristol since atleast 1405, interestingly, at the height ofOwain Glyndwr’s rebellion. Other members of

Little Wales Beyond the Severn?

Dr Peter Flemingis Principal Lecturer and

Associate Head of theSchool of History at the

University of the West ofEngland. He is a past

co-director of theRegional History Centre.

Little Wales Beyond the Severn? The Welsh in Early Tudor Bristol Peter Fleming

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If the maintenance of order on the streets ofearly nineteenth century Bristol was never asimple matter, the constantly shiftingpresence of large visiting communities ofseafaring Europeans cannot have made itany easier. With inns, lodging houses, streetsand quays frequently awash with colourfullyvibrant but uncustomary sights and sounds,social tensions and conflicts between hostand ‘outlandish’ communities were rarely farbeneath the surface. Often the detail ofthese cultural tensions went unrecorded but,as Steve Poole shows here, papers from acoroners inquest kept at the Bristol RecordOffice, bring them vividly back to life.

The seven and a half-inch blade that felledHenry Murray entered his body with suchforce that it nearly broke his rib-cage.Penetrating just below the left shoulder-blade, it punctured a lung, pierced his heart,and left a great deal of blood on thepavement. By the time his companions hadcarried him to the infirmary, Henry Murrayhad bled to death.1

It was 9.30pm on an early autumn evening in1810 and Bristol’s Marsh Street was busy withmen and women either entering or leavingthe many cheap lodging houses and inns thatlined each side of the road. There was noshortage of witnesses to the street brawlthat claimed Murray’s life, and theperpetrator, still clutching his bloody dagger,was quickly caught. But although the case ishardly remarkable for its complexity, itnevertheless offers a tantalising glimpse ofsome of the tensions to be found incosmopolitan ports like Bristol at this time.

Bristol’s streets had played host to a rich anddiverse community of temporary visitors fromoverseas for centuries. This was particularlytrue of the cramped streets and alleys closestto the quay, and Marsh Street, at the heartof Bristol’s Irish migrant enclave, was noexception. But of course, the drinking densof Marsh Street and its vicinity were not usedby Irishmen alone, but by seafarers from arange of European and transatlantic ports.The Portuguese, sometimes called Britain’s‘oldest allies’, were just one example.

At the time of Murray’s death in 1810,Britain was deeply embroiled in the waragainst Napoleon, and Wellington’s forceswere ejecting the French from the Iberianpeninsular. By 1809, Napoleon had been

pushedout of Portugal. In thelanguage of government and loyalistpropaganda, the ‘liberated’ Portuguese werefrequently represented as heroic fightersagainst French oppression, and Bristolianmerchants already enjoyed strong trading tieswith Lisbon and Opporto. Consequently,Portuguese sailors were a common sight onBristol’s streets in these years and theyenjoyed unusual public sympathy. ‘LordWellington has defended Portugal’, assertedFelix Farley’s Bristol Journal, and it urgedBristolians to contribute to the national relieffund for its ‘brave and injured’ citizens. ‘Theconduct and condition of the Portugueseafford to Englishmen the best opportunity ofconnecting all that is amiable and all that isgreat’, it declared, and was quick to publicisethe lowly background of contributors likeMary Walker, a patriotic seller of orangesoutside the Exchange, who reportedlydonated 5 hard-earned shillings to the cause.2

It was one of these victims of Napoleonicoppression, a 23-year old seaman namedJohan Desanto, that killed Henry Murray.

The man who’d have blood for his supper

Steve Poole is Director of the RegionalHistory Centre and aPrincipal Lecturer inHistory at the Universityof the West of England.His current research isconcerned with publicorder, crime and sexualityamongst the labouringpoor of South WestEngland.

The man who’d have blood for his supper: the killing of Henry Murray Steve Poole

11

first of Glyndwr’s followers to be executed,Gronw ap Tudur: on 26 September 1400 thesheriff was ordered to display the quarter onthe town gates facing Wales.10 Henry IVanticipated that Anglo-Welsh relations alongthe border might turn sour, and in Octoberthe sheriff was ordered to proclaim that,while North Wales may have risen, the SouthWelsh were still loyal, and so should beallowed to go about their businessunmolested.11 Nevertheless, Gronw ap Tudur’sdecomposing quarter would have been aconstant reminder of Welsh ‘treachery’. Whatreally seems to have alarmed the Crown,however, was the prospect not of ethnicclashes in Bristol, but of seditiouscollaboration between English and Welsh. InAugust 1402 a royal commission of enquiryinto treasons within the town was given aremit that specified both groups as potentialtraitors.12 Relations between Welsh andEnglish seem to have returned to normalsoon after the rebellion passed its zenith in1408. In 1411/12 a Welshman held high civicoffice in Bristol, possibly for the first time,that is if we are to assume that the name ofone of the bailiffs for that year (and sheriffin 1419/20), David Ruddok, was anAnglicisation of Dafydd ap Rhydderch.

If the story of the Welsh in fifteenth andearly sixteenth-century Bristol is one largelyof harmony and assimilation, then it isinteresting to compare it with theexperiences of the town’s Irish population, atleast as recorded in the mid-fifteenthcentury. From the 1430s to the 1450s, as theEnglish were facing serious problemsmaintaining their lordship of Ireland, BristolIrish faced discrimination: they were bannedfrom membership of the common counciland from some craft guilds, and Irishapprentices were charged higher fees forcompleting their training.13 To judge by theirfamily names, these Irish were not Gaelic,and probably not even from among the oldAnglo-Irish, but instead originated from the‘new English’, who had recently settled inDublin and the other English towns alongthe east coast. Hence, they would have beenEnglish speakers and - at least from thisdistance - it is hard to imagine whatdistinguished them, aside, perhaps, fromaccent, from their Bristol-born neighbours.On the other hand, the likes of the apMeryks, ap Howells, ap Rhydderchs, apIorwerths, and ap Rhyses very probably hadWelsh as their first language, and when they

opened their mouths would doubtless havebeen immediately identifiable. Yet this doesnot seem to have been a major problem fortheir hosts. This raises interesting questionsabout contemporary conceptions of race andethnicity. Perhaps, in later medieval England'smulti-lingual culture (English, Latin, French),language was not the major determinant ofnational identity it often is today. Perhaps,while Ireland and its peoples, of whateverethnicity, were regarded as irredeemably'foreign', Wales, after two centuries ofEnglish rule, was already being elided intoEngland in English minds.

1. I. Wilson, The Columbus Myth (Simon &Schuster, London, 1991), pp. 151-70.

2. Calendar of Patent Rolls (CPR), 1485-1494, p.33; Calendar of Fine Rolls, 1494-1509, nos. 121-3, 195-7; National Archives (NA), E122/176/10,20/10-11, E159/270, 271 passim, C1/231/24,64/181, Bristol Record Office (BRO), AC/D1/76,86-7, 90a-b, 93a-b, 95, 101a, 110.

3. NA CP40/924, 57, KB9/391, 96-7, C1/49/44, STAC2/1.

4. CPR, 1494-1509, pp. 43, 171.5. Details of civic office are taken from J. Latimer,

‘The Maire of Bristowe is Kalendar: its list ofcivic officers collated with contemporary legalMSS’, Transactions of the Bristol andGloucestershire Archaeological Society, 26, pp.130-7; The Maire of Bristowe is Kalendar, ed. L.T. Smith, Camden Society (1872), BRO 04720/1(Maire of Bristowe is Kalendar).

6. NA PROB 11/9/9, 11/38, 13/24, 22/22; C1/126/50,406/6, 452/29, 33, 530/12-14, 586/50, 587/6, 7a-b; C67/48, 23.

7. See P. Fleming, ‘Murder, alchemy and the Warsof the Roses’, in the last issue of The RegionalHistorian and idem, Bristol During the Wars ofthe Roses (Bristol Branch of the HistoricalAssociation, 2005), pp.15-7.

8. P. Fleming, ‘Sanctuary and authority in Pre-Reformation Bristol’, in Historic Churches andChurch Life in Bristol, ed. J.H. Bettey (Bristoland Gloucestershire Archaeological Society,2001), pp. 74-5.

9. CPR, 1401-5, pp.292, 434.10. CPR, 1399-1401, p.359.11. CPR, 1399-1401, p.555.12. CPR, 1401-5, p.135.13. P. Fleming, ‘Telling tales of oligarchy in the

late medieval town’, in Revolution andConsumption in Late Medieval England, ed. M.Hicks (Boydell, Woodbridge, 2001), pp. 182-4.

Little Wales Beyond the Severn? continued

10

A page from theCoroners’ inquestinto the death ofHenry Murray(reproduced by kindpermission of BristolRecord Office).


against Desanto.12 The suspect wascommitted to Newgate gaol and tried thefollowing Spring when, surprisingly perhaps,he was cleared of Murray’s murder. For this,he had to thank the attorney general andcity Recorder, Sir Vicary Gibbs. The Recorder’sunpopularity amongst Bristol’s labouringpoor had been heightened in 1810 not onlyby the leading part he played in governmentefforts to silence and imprison the radicalMP, sir Francis Burdett, but by his vicepresidency of the city’s oppressive Society forthe Prevention of Vice. As a man who hadbeen attacked and insulted by a Bristolcrowd at the opening of the previous year’sassize, Gibbs was in no mood now for theprotestations of Murray’s disreputablecomrades. He consequently spent much ofthe trial barracking witnesses and accusedthe Hope & Anchor’s landlady ofembellishing her evidence in a vain attemptto make her disorderly establishment appearrespectable.

More pertinently however, as Gibbs wasundoubtedly aware, not a single Portuguese

witness had been examined by the coroner inOctober when the case against Desanto wasconstructed. Nor was it possible now becausethey had all long since gone back to sea. Itwas only at his trial therefore that Desantowas able to establish for the first time thathe had not actually been at the inn prior tothe stabbing. He had spent the eveningelsewhere with the family of an Irish sailornamed Malone, and simply had themisfortune to be walking back with thempast the Hope & Anchor to his own lodgingswhen Murray emerged onto the pavementlooking for a fight. Gibbs thereforeinstructed the jury that since no malice ormotive can have moved Desanto to attack aman he had clearly never previously met, acharge of murder could not stand. Convictedinstead of manslaughter in his own self-defence, Desanto was returned to Newgatefor six months only and then released.13

‘Do not heave stones at me - give me English play!’

As Bob Shoemaker has argued, althoughstreet culture was anything but polite, it hadbecome unusual by the end of theeighteenth century for Englishmen to carryweapons. The most unacceptable levels ofstreet violence had therefore becomepopularly associated with ‘foreigners andsocial outcasts’14. Certainly, the Portuguesewere strongly associated with knife-carrying;indeed their reputation preceded them. Infact, a strikingly similar case to Desanto’s hadcome before the London courts a few weeksbefore the Marsh Street affray, when a sailornamed Jones lost his life during a brawl withPortuguese seamen at Wapping. When threePortuguese mariners threw rocks at him andJones retorted, ‘do not heave stones at me;give me English play’, he was asking them tofight ‘fairly’ and without weapons. Withinminutes however, Jones had been stabbed inthe belly, causing the deep wound from whichhe later died. Like Desanto, the defendantwas convicted of manslaughter and gaoled fora year. Following a number of other cases inthe capital during these years, the reputationof Portuguese seamen for knife-work becameso firmly established that in 1814 anEnglishman arrested for petty theft by twoLondon watchmen ‘swore if he got clear hewould act Portuguese fashion with us’.15

13

Arriving in Bristol on a brig fromWhitehaven, Murray was an Americanseaman who had recently taken lodgings inMarsh Street. Enmity between ‘local’ and‘foreign’ seamen was characteristically highhowever, and a poor reflection of theinternational solidarity promoted in thepress. The Iberian public image cannot havebeen much enhanced for instance, by thepopular characterisation of two Englishmen,pelted in the pillory for attempted sodomy atBristol six months earlier, as ‘signor andsignora’.3 In these years, notwithstanding the‘united front’ against Napoleon, Catholicism,otherness and effeminacy were closelyassociated repertoires of public prejudice.

‘Some had painted their faceswhite; others had blacked their

upper lips to disguise themselves’.

Murray apparently believed that aPortuguese sailor had insulted and punchedhim as he walked alone on the quay onSeptember 30th, and by October 4th he wasout for revenge. Private ethnic vendettas ofthis kind were not unusual. As one lawyerput it in a London courtroom just five weeksearlier, ‘the American sailors and thePortuguese sailors are always fighting’.4

Entering the Hope and Anchor in MarshStreet with a shipmate, two Bristol Irishmen,and three girls of the town, Murraydemanded to know whether the landlady,Elizabeth Watkins, was harbouring any‘bloody foreigners’ for he was ‘determined tohave blood for his supper that night’.Perhaps he already knew that a party ofPortuguese sailors had tried to book aprivate room there that morning and beenrefused by Mrs Watkins. Either way, thePortuguese having returned that evening touse the public bar instead, Mrs Watkinsreadily told Murray about them and servedhim with drink.5

The American, Irish and English arrivals wentstraight upstairs in search of their quarry.Murray seemed agitated and wouldn’t sitdown but ‘walked about smoking a pipe’.When another party of Portuguese sailorsarrived, he pointed them out and jokedloudly, ‘Here come some Greeks!’ (that is, anunintelligible body of indeterminateforeigners).6 According to one of Murray’s

friends, the newcomers responded by‘strutting about the room, shovingthemselves and others about from side toside’. This was a common enough complaintabout Portuguese sailors who werefrequently represented as men who ‘strutted’and ‘shoved’ Englishmen in the street.7

According to two witnesses on this occasionhowever, some had painted their faces white,and others ‘had blacked their upper lips todisguise themselves’.8 Matters came to a headwhen Murray’s shipmate Johnson beganarguing with one of the girls and aPortuguese seaman threatened to hit him ifhe struck her. Murray intervened, saying thatJohnson was ‘only a boy’ and so he wouldfight the foreigner in his stead. Punches werethrown but the affray was broken up by thelandlady and the foreign seamen retreateddownstairs.

When the English and Irishmen followed afew minutes later, they were met at the footof the stairs by ‘ten or twelve Portuguesesailors with their jackets off and thrownacross the left arm with their hands in theirbosoms or in their breeches pockets’. Murrayappears to have run to his lodgings justdown the street to raise somereinforcements, else, as he told a room-mate,‘we shall be beat by a parcel of foreigners’ .He then returned to the crowd gatheredoutside the Hope and Anchor. The parties fellupon one another and several witnessesreported seeing Johnson take a beating.Murray picked out Desanto and thumpedhim several times. According to a blackseaman standing close by, Desanto first triedto save himself by shouting ‘that he was nota Spaniard’, but it curried little favour withMurray.10 It was then that Desanto produceda knife and stabbed his assailant to death.

Brandishing the weapon again as the crowdfell back, Desanto shouted ‘stand off, standoff’, then ran to another Marsh Street inn,the Ship. But he was pursued and the bloodyknife wrestled from his grasp. ThreeEnglishmen marched him to bridewell andleft him with the turnkey. Asked what he wasdoing walking the streets with such a daggerin his possession, he answered simply ‘that itwas his Country fashion’.11

The coroner’s inquest that sat on Murray’sbody the following day examined witnessesfor eight hours but needed little time at theend to record a verdict of wilful murder

12

A Marsh Street inn c.1820. Lying parallel tothe quay and surrounded by warehousing,inns and cheap lodgings, the street hadbecome closely associated with the city’s Irishenclave by the time of Murray’s death.(reproduced by kind permission of BristolPublic Library).


Sir Richard Berkeley, a harasser of smugglersat home and a schemer at court, wasarguably one of the most politically astutelandowners of the Elizabethan age. Here,Tony Nott profiles the complex political anddiplomatic career of the first builder of StokeHouse.

Driving northwards out of Bristol on the M32,one cannot fail to be impressed by theimposing sight of the newly renovated StokeHouse. Although extensively remodelled sinceit was first built in the 16th century by RichardBerkeley (1531-1604), it still stands as amonument to the political ambition of this16th century gentlemen of ancient lineagebut initially modest means.

Richard Berkeley was a member of a cadetbranch of one of the most prestigious familiesin Gloucestershire – the Berkeley family ofBerkeley Castle. Although his branch had leftthe main stem in the 14th century, LordBerkeley was still his most obvious politicalpatron if Richard wished to play a major rolein county politics. His own family backgroundalmost certainly gave him a desire for a careernot just in county society but in the moreelevated circle of the royal court. His father,Sir John Berkeley (1510-1545) had gained thefavour of Thomas Cromwell, becoming theKing’s standard-bearer in 1539 with a pensionof £40 per annum while his uncle Maurice hadbecome a gentleman usher of the PrivyChamber in 1541. Unfortunately, Sir John’scareer came to a premature end when he

was killed in an accident in a navalengagement against the French in June 1545.A cannon being fired “brake all to pieces,and standing himself at the recoile of thesame, one piece not so much as haulf thequarter of a hazel nut shell, strake himbesides the pappe and out at toppe of thesholder.” Sir John was taken back toPortsmouth where he died. Thus ended anyhopes that the young Richard may have hadof an easy entry into court circles.

For any aspiring gentleman, an adequateincome was a necessity and unfortunatelyRichard in 1552 inherited only five mainmanors well scattered throughout thecounty: Stoke Gifford, Kingsweston, andRockhampton in the south, Uley in the centreand Marsden in the north east. A marriagethat would bring him some much-neededcash was a necessity and at some time duringthe mid 1550s he married Elizabeth Rededaughter of William Rede of Bristol. Little isknown of Rede except for some propertytransactions which show him to have been aman of means.

An entry into county government for Richardwas relatively assured because of his nameand family connections but the Redemarriage brought him connections withinthe City of Bristol that became useful in hisearly career. There was certainly someimprovement in financial liquidity possiblybecause of the marriage, because in 1559Richard extended the Stoke Gifford estate

Sir Richard Berkeley

Tony Nottis a retired teacher. He is

currently a freelancelecturer and researcher inlocal history. His latestpublished work, which heco-edited with JoanHasler, is WellsConvocation Act Books1589-1665, volumes 90 &91 in the Somerset RecordSociety Series..

Sir Richard Berkeley: An Elizabethan CareerTony Nott

15

It would be wrong to suggest that thehistorical mingling of nations on Bristol’squays was always more productive ofantagonism than multi-cultural integration,and UWE’s current Immigrants and Minoritiesresearch initiative will surely turn up plentyof evidence to prove it. Today indeed, Bristolcelebrates its historic trading links withPortugal’s own second city, through atwinning arrangement with Opporto. Butthe trial of Johan Desanto and the records ofthe inquest that preceded it are valuable forthe rare and fascinating insight they offer usof some of the social tensions underlyingdaily life on the streets and quays ofplebeian Bristol.

1 Bristol Record Office (BRO), Coroners inquestinto the death of Henry Murray, QuarterSessions Papers, JQS/P/271, information ofNathaniel Smith, surgeon, 5 October 1810.

2 Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal (FFBJ) 27 April 1811, 25 May 1811

3 FFBJ, 5 May 1810.4 Old Bailey Proceedings Online

(www.oldbaileyonline.org, 26 April 2005),September 1810, trial of Emanuel Joseph,t18100919-32

5 FFBJ, 20 April 1811; BRO Coroners inquest,informations of Elizabeth Watkins and JohnJohnson.

6 BRO Coroner’s inquest, information of JohnJohnson. The slang use of the term ‘Greeks’ inthis context may be found in M. Harris (ed)., The1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (London,1994 edition)

7 Such language is a feature, for example, inevidence offered in a number of cases heard atthe Old Bailey in 1810-11. See footnote xvbelow for full references.

8 BRO Coroners inquest, information of JohnJohnson, Patrick Sullivan and Henry Towley.

9 Bristol Gazette, 25 April 1811.10 BRO Coroners inquest, information of

Henry Towley11 BRO Coroners inquest, information of

Patrick Sullivan.12 FFBJ, 13 October 1810.13 Bristol Gazette 25 April 1811. The account of the

trial given in FFBJ (20 April 1811) is morecursory.

14 Robert Shoemaker, The London Mob: Violenceand Disorder in Eighteenth Century England(London, 2004), p.174.

15 Old Bailey Proceedings Online(www.oldbaileyonline.org, 26 April 2005),September 1810, trial of Emanuel Joseph,t18100919-32. Another Londoner, Thomas Davis,was stabbed during a fight with Portugueseseamen in December 1810, and a third, JohnDouglas, in October 1811. In the latter twocases, the accused Portuguese were bothacquitted. In January and April 1811 however,two Portuguese seamen, Antonio Cordosa andJuan Baptista Peniza, were separately andcapitally convicted for stabbing English sailorson the streets of London, the former formurder, the latter for assault with intent tomurder: see t18110109-31 & t18110403-53. ForMason’s case see t18141026-34.

14

The house that Berkeley built: Stoke House and its park in the late 17th century as drawn byJohannes Kip for Sir Robert Atkyns’s The Ancient And Present State of Gloucestershire (1712)Photo: Tony Nott


Burleigh felt that Richard would be useful tohim as part of his network of clients and sodisregarded any slurs on Richard’s reputation.His confidence was not misplaced and thenewly knighted Sir Richard, was to remainloyal to the Cecils for the rest of his life. TheCecil connection soon proved advantageousand for the rest of the 1570s Sir Richardreceived a number of local commissions fromthe Privy Council to investigate variousmatters in the port of Bristol. It is possiblethat he was also given a commission toinvestigate trade matters abroad in 1580. Hisnew friendship with the Cecils however didnot stop him from keeping links with moreconservatively religious families inGloucestershire and Warwickshire who wereimportant in local politics. His son Henry anddaughter Elizabeth married into theimportant Throgmorton family and hisdaughter Mary married a Hungerford.

‘The massive plinth on which thehouse was built still exists today as

a monument to his ambition’.

By the mid 1580s it would have seemed tomost observers that Sir Richard’s career couldnot develop any further. He was now in hismid fifties and his activities were mostly localbut Burleigh nevertheless still considered himas a useful servant and by the later 1580s SirRichard, now a widower, was regularlyvisiting London for consultations on localaffairs with Burleigh at Ely House.

It was then that he made the important stepof becoming one of the gentleman membersof the Privy Chamber with direct access tothe Queen. The means to pay for aprolonged presence in London was achievedby his second marriage c. 1590 to EleanorRowe, widow of Robert Rowe the son of thelate Lord Mayor of London, Sir ThomasRowe, which brought him an estate atLeyton in Essex, a London residence andconnections with the London commercialelite – the Rowes were related to Sir ThomasGresham the founder of the Royal Exchange.In 1590 he was made by the Queen, amember of the Council of Wales and nowregularly waited on the Queen whohonoured him with a visit to Rendcombe onher summer progress in September 1592.

Besides success, the 1590s also broughtfamily strains. His son Henry had become adisappointment to Sir Richard. He wasobviously not possessed of his father’s energyand ability and his behaviour may have beenembarrassing to his father especially whencontrasted with that of Thomas Rowe, SirRichard’s new stepson, destined to become acelebrated traveller, diplomatist and friendof the poet John Donne. One possibility isthat Henry may have embraced the Catholicfaith of his wife which could have beenpolitically embarrassing for his father had hecome to London. Whatever the reason, hisfather refused permission for him to come. In1592, Henry decided to try to flee thecountry and was detained in Southampton.On being brought back to London, he wasinterrogated by the Privy Council who foundhim to be possessed of a “very melancholyhumour” and sent him back to his fatherwith the friendly advice to “ bear a mildehand over him … for the better preventionof mischief likely to ensue”; it could havebeen that Henry was suffering from adepressive illness possibly brought on by hisfather’s refusal to let him live in London.

Whatever the state of his mental health,Henry was to play no further part in SirRichard’s life and from then on Henry’s son,Richard, became his heir and the focus of hisgrandfather’s life. The Berkeley/Rowealliance was sealed by the marriage in 1598between the younger Richard and MaryRowe the daughter of Sir Richard’s secondwife Eleanor. Elizabeth Throgmorton wasalso an embarrassment to her father when in1593 her adherence to the catholic faithcame to the notice of the Privy Council andshe was separated from her children andplaced under house arrest.

Despite these family problems, Sir Richardwas still considered by the Privy Council to bea “safe pair of hands” and was entrustedwith various difficult tasks. In 1596 he wasmade Lieutenant of the Tower of Londonwhere he was part of the group whointerrogated the Jesuit John Gerard. Gerardrevealed in his autobiography that SirRichard, with his catholic sympathies, foundthe torture that Gerard was subjected to verydistasteful and it was clear from hiscorrespondence with Robert Cecil that hewas glad to be relieved of his post in 1597.

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southwards towards Bristol by buying fromNicholas Thorne land in Stapleton, Horfieldand Barton which had belonged to thedissolved St Bartholomew’s Hospital andfollowed this up in 1564 with the purchase ofthe manor of Stapleton from his uncle SirWalter Denys of Syston. Leland hadcommented in 1546 that the manor house atStoke Gifford was in a dilapidated conditionso Richard was able, after 1564, toconcentrate on building a new house muchgrander than that at Stoke Gifford and themassive plinth on which the house was builtstill exists today as a monument to hisambition. The building was partly financedby the sale of the manors of Rockhampton,Uley and Kingsweston between the years1566 and 1571.

Having established himself at the extremesouthern edge of the county, it was essentialif he were to play an important part incounty politics that he had a base in theprosperous north of the county as well. Fromhis father he had inherited the small manorof Marsden and in 1564 he bought thereversion of the neighbouring manors ofRendcombe and Calmsdon from SirHumphrey Stafford, leasing them from hiscousin Roger Lygon in 1566. His public lifecommenced when he became a county JP in1562 and sheriff of Gloucestershire in 1565.His involvement with Bristol also began atthis time. As sheriff he sat on a commissionwith the mayor to inquire into the extent ofcorruption and smuggling in Bristol andGloucestershire. His family life was alsoprospering with the birth of his son and heirHenry c 1560 and all seemed set fair. Then in1568 things began to go wrong.

Richard’s patron Lord Henry Berkeley hadbecome involved in a dangerous politicalgame when he secretly supported hisbrother-in-law the Duke of Norfolk’s plan tomarry the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots, theheir to the English crown who had recentlyfled from Scotland and was in custody in thenorth of England. Lord Henry and hisrelations the Denys and Lygon families, whowere also involved, were very conservative inmatters of religion and although confessingadherence to the Church of England secretlyfavoured the old religion. If the variousinformers are to be believed, this group,including Richard, plotted to raise troops insupport of Norfolk. One hostile witness laterclaimed that Richard himself assaulted the

High Sheriff of Gloucestershire at the 1569assizes and was forced to flee to Italy.Whatever the truth of these rumours, it soonbecame evident to Richard that if he was topursue a successful career at court as hisfather had done, he would need a newpatron, because the disgrace and executionof the Duke of Norfolk in 1572 had erodedany political influence that Richard’s patronLord Berkeley might have had.

A further blow came in 1573 when LordBerkeley finally rejected a double marriagealliance between his family and that ofRobert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, the currentroyal favourite which Richard had advisedhim to accept. Lord Berkeley’s absence fromhome when Queen Elizabeth visited BerkeleyCastle in 1574 finally destroyed any influencehe might have had at court. By that timehowever, Richard, a political realist, hadsought another patron, William Cecil LordBurleigh the Lord Treasurer, who wasinstrumental in securing a knighthood forhim in 1574.

Despite numerous accusations about his“treasonous” activities in 1568 which weresent to Burleigh at this time by men whoresented his adoption of Richard as a client,

16

The title page to Berkeley’s The Felicity ofMan (1598): a ‘homespun and amateurishwork’?


The surviving notebooks of eighteenthcentury magistrates can often be used byhistorians to investigate the extent to whichcustomary culture was constrained andregulated by law. Wood-gathering may havebeen essential to the economy of the ruralpoor, but it remained theft in the eyes of thelaw. Carl Griffin opens the notebook ofWilliam Hunt of West Lavington in Wiltshireand finds it was a crime that kept themagistrate peculiarly busy.

The period between the mid seventeenth-century and the mid eighteenth-centurywitnessed a dramatic redefining of propertyrights and the nature of the commodity inrural England. The needs of acommercialising agriculture well-representedin the legislature to clearly demarcateownership of the natural world and theconcomitant increase in momentum of theenclosure movement meant that thecustomary practices of the rural poorsurrounding the gathering of wood for fuelincreasingly came into conflict with the rulersof rural England.1

Whilst wood taking had been carefullyrationed by manorial customs and village by-laws from as early as the seventh-century

with later Yorkist and Tudor legislationreflecting Naval fears that wood was beingwasted,2 it was not until a Statute of 1663(15 Charles II c.2 ‘An Act for the punishmentof unlawful cutting or stealing or spoiling ofwood and underwood and destroyers ofyoung trees’) that powers were given to,firstly, issue warrants against suspectedwood-takers, and, secondly, to prosecute thetaking of wood in all contexts.3 This statute,as Bob Bushaway has suggested, representeda major departure from manorial customs,effectively shifting responsibilities away frommanorial and forest courts to magistrateswho were empowered to apprehend ‘all andevery person or persons they shall suspect,having or carrying, or any ways conveying,any burthern or bundles of wood,underwood, poles, or young trees, or bark orbast of trees, or any gates, stiles, posts, pales,rails, or hedgewood, broom or furze’. A firstoffence under this Statute was punishable bya 10/- fine, plus damages, whilst a secondoffence led to a month’s incarceration withhard labour.4

As with all legislation, whilst it responded toa perceived universal need, it was enacted inreaction to earlier localised enclosuredisputes, not least in the villages adjoining

Wood-taking and customary practice

Dr Carl Griffin gained his PhD at theUniversity of Bristolwhere he also held anESRC post-doctoralfellowship. More recentlyhe has been working atthe University ofSouthampton where hehas continued hisresearch interests inpopular protest,criminality, welfare andsocial policy, and thesocial enrolments ofplants, animals andmachines. Recentpublications includepapers examining thegenesis of the so-called‘Swing Riots’ in SouthernHistory and Rural History,and examinations of thehistoriography of ruralprotest in the Journal ofHistorical Geography.

Wood-taking and customary practice: William Hunt’sJustices Notebook, 1744-49 Carl Griffin

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At the age of nearly 70 in March 1600, SirRichard undertook his most sensitive politicalassignment, that of the supervision of thedisgraced Earl of Essex in Essex House. Hewas obviously very assiduous in his duties forcourt gossip observed: “Sir Richard Berkeleyhas so straight a charge to be ever with himand observe his doings, that it is a questionwhich holds the other prisoner.” His fourmonths careful guardianship of Essex and hisconstant communication with SecretaryRobert Cecil paid dividends when in 1601 hewas made Deputy Lieutenant ofGloucestershire but he was disappointed atnot being made Vice Chamberlain at Court.At Christmas 1603, the rift with his erstwhilepatron was finally healed when both elderlymen spent Christmas together at BerkeleyCastle and it was no coincidence that SirRichard was elected as one of the MPs forGloucestershire in the 1604 Parliament. Hetook his seat in March 1604 but soon becameill and died in April 1604.

‘Bear a milde hand over him … for the better prevention ofmischief likely to ensue…

Sir Richard Berkeley’s career shows how askilful selection of the right patron couldbring about advancement. His energy, abilityand loyalty were recognised by the Cecils asbeing valuable despite any reservations theymight have had about his religioussensitivities. His humanity was oftenexpressed in his care about what happenedto his faithful servants and in his care of theprisoners in his charge. He was also a well-educated man. In 1598 his The Felicity ofMan, recently described as a ‘homespun andamateurish’ work of philosophy and religion,was published by William Ponsonby, thepublisher of Sir Philip Sidney and EdmundSpenser. Its anecdotal style and accessibilitymade it so popular that two more editionswere published in the next 25 years, both ofwhich are in Wells Cathedral Library. SirRichard like many busy ambitious men wrotein his book that the happy life was achievedby having “a quiet life and meane estate,voide of worldly cares”, an aspiration that hedid not pursue in his own life.

Besides his other qualities, Sir Richard alsolearned to be tactful and deferent and in thedangerous world of Tudor politics to keep hismind to himself. His epitaph is fitting, heprobably composed it himself: “Though allmen may desire to know my name and face,yet no man may desire to know my mind. Ifanyone wishes to know who I am, reply Iknow not, but let that man be advised toknow himself”; a salutary warning foranyone researching Sir Richard’s career.

Selected sourcesDetails of Sir Richard Berkeley’s estates are inthe Gloucester Record Office in the Beaufortpapers D 2700, and in the Patent Rolls Seriesin the Public Record Office. His survivingcorrespondence may be found in HistoricalManuscripts Commission Salisbury PapersVols. 1 & 2 and in The Calendar of theCorrespondence of the Smyth Family ofAshton Court 1548-1642, Bristol RecordSociety Vol. XXXV. A short biography of SirRichard can be found in John Smyth’s Lives ofthe Berkeleys, Vol. 1. Details of Sir Richard’spublic life appear in the Calendar of StatePapers Domestic and in the Acts of the PrivyCouncil. A critical account of Sir Richard’sbook “The Felicity of Man” may be found inThe Dictionary of Seventeenth Century BritishPhilosphers ed Andrew Pyle, Bristol 2000, pp 55-56.

18

William Hunt’s home territory. West Lavington and surrounding area from Andrews and Dury’s map of Wiltshire (1773).


the forests of the Dorset, Somerset andWiltshire borders which were both moredensely populated than other English forestsand also more chronically pauperised.5 Thesedisputes were motivated both by attempts torestrict common-pasture rights and the moregeneral loss of common of est’overs, fireboteand housebote through enclosure, increasedrestrictions over how rights could beexercised, the increasing cost of ‘licenses’ toexercise use-rights and the general erosion ofthe value of such rights.6 The most commonway in which these disputes were played outwas not through overt protests, but ratherthrough the day-to-day taking of woodregardless of such restrictions and, so itwould seem, the Statute of 1663. This takingof wood was, therefore, imbued with apolitical edge: it was not simply a matter oftaking fuel but rather an attempt by virtueof practice to imbue their claims with the airof legitimacy. As such, it is important to notethat even such supposedly ‘everyday’practices could be minor epiphanies ofresistance, though the law regarded such actsas thefts rather than acts of a maliciousnature.

The protest element in wood-taking wasrecognised by a further Statute enactedunder Charles II which separated maliciousdamage to timber trees from the lesser‘offence’ of wood-stealing,7 but it was notuntil the passing of the so-called ‘Black Act’in 1723 that malicious intent was effectivelylegislated for. This Act, which in a singlepiece of ambiguously worded legislationmade capital offences of the many acts ofrural protest thereby creating more capitaloffences overnight than any other Europeancountry had in their entire penal codes. Ifinvoked, a person now found guilty ofhaving cut down a tree ‘planted in anyavenue, or growing in any garden, orchardor plantation’ was liable to be hung.8

Before the 1766 legislation, the lawregarding the taking of timber onlyrecognised the difference between timbertrees and non-timber trees, indeed it was notuntil then that the taking of dead wood wasunambiguously criminalized.9 Thisstrengthening of the law was, in a sense,only partial in that it was a move towardsoffering a range of differing punishmentsdepending upon the use-value of the timbertaken, and whilst this list of trees wasexpanded seven years later it still did not

encompass underwood, hedgewood, hollies,thorns, or orchard trees which were insteadpunished by a 40/- fine or a month’s hardlabour.10

It is clear therefore that the legislaturebetween the mid seventeenth-century andthe mid eighteenth-century constantlysought to redefine the relationship betweenthose with capital and those without, shiftingfrom a self-regulating rural England whichrationed access to the ‘accidental’ bounties ofnature through manorial courts, to a ruralEngland where the commodity was theuniversal language and was enforced andupheld through the twin pillars of themarket and the law. In practice though itremains unclear as to how these new toolswere actually used by both ‘victims’ oftimber-taking and magistrates let alonewhether the criminalisation of customarypractices actually led to a shift in plebeianpractices, drawing them into fuel markets.

Whilst all major studies of crime andcriminality in eighteenth-century Englandmake reference to wood-stealing it wouldappear that it was no more common placethan other acquisitive crimes. However, it isclear that a total reliance hitherto upon thesystematic series of quarter sessions andassize records totally masks the scale of thenumber of cases which the judicial systemdealt with.11 Indeed, relatively few cases ofwood-taking ever reached the higher courts.For instance, of the 37 cases presented to theEpiphany, Easter and Midsummer HampshireQuarter Sessions in 1789 only two related towood-taking and neither of these were caseswere actually tried by the quarter sessionsbut rather sentences of six months wereimposed outside of the sessions.

In a sense, this is not that surprising as if the1766 legislation was invoked, the quartersessions would only ever deal with thirdoffences, whilst if the Statute of 1663 wasused the quarter sessions would, in allprobability, not try any cases of wood-taking.12 As such, part of the problem inattempting to offer a more detailed, morenuanced understanding is the fact that until1822 petty convictions for wood theft werenot returned to the Quarter Sessions.13 Theonly possible way in which we can analysethe usage and impact of the shift inlegislation is through justices’ papers, whichare both very rare and rarely systematic. The

20

notebook kept by Wiltshire magistrateWilliam Hunt is a notable exception.14

Hunt lived at West Lavington on thenorthern fringes of the immense, and largelyuncultivated, Salisbury Plain, and acted asmagistrate in the division comprised of intheory, if not in practice, the Hundreds ofSwanborough, and Potterne and Cannings.15

In his magisterial duties Hunt meticulousrecorded every case in which he actedsummarily between 1744 and 1749, though itdoes not explicitly state that in all cases Huntacted as a single justice. In total, Hunt madeadjudications on 358 separate occasions, andas Crittal, the editor of Hunt’s notebook,suggests it was those acquisitive acts ‘thathad once been accepted as common rightsthat made up the vast majority of all cases inwhich Hunt had to act including wood-taking and poaching.16 Other acquisitive actsranged from the relatively common –robbing fields, gardens and orchards – to therather more obscure, including the theft ofwell chains, flints and perukes, some ofwhich were obviously consumed within thehousehold with other stolen goodspresumably disposed of either through urbanfences or the many higglers that traversedrural England.

‘The most common way in whichthese disputes were played outwas not through overt protests,

but rather through the day-to-daytaking of wood’.

Hunt also had to deal with many casesinvolving poor law disputes, either inrelation to non-relief of paupers, the refusalof individuals to support their families,settlement disputes or bastardy. Exciseevasion, most commonly through sellingliquor without a license; fraud; failure to paywages, poor rates and tithes; leaving service;abuse of character; swearing and cursing;failing to obey the Sabbath; and, detaininggoods all occasionally required Hunt’sjurisdiction, as did failures to obey hissummons and false accusations. But otherthan for acquisitive crimes, Hunt was mostfrequently called upon to judge upon caseswhich involved some element of protest:most commonly, assault (of which, excluding

sexual assault, Hunt adjudicated in 80 cases),malicious damage to windows and waterbays, and, more unusually, cases of ‘pissing’in a hat and throwing bricks down achimney.17

Of all these acts it was the taking of woodwhich kept Hunt busiest: of the 358 cases 95(26.5%) involved the taking of wood orhedge and fence-breaking. In the vastmajority of these cases no reference wasmade to the quantity of wood taken, thoughin all cases of shrouding it was stated thatonly one tree had been shrouded, whilstoccasionally adverbs other than ‘some’ and‘quantities’ were deployed. For instance, on28 January 1745 Hunt granted a convictionwarrant against two West Lavingtonlabourers for cutting and carrying away onestump belonging to the Earl of Abingdon(171) for which they were fined sevenshillings each, whilst on 5 December 1746 aWedhampton labourer was fined fiveshillings and bound to recognizances of £10for carrying away ‘large’ quantities ofhedgewood belonging to a yeoman of thesame parish (371).

Wood-taking could take a wide variety ofdifferent forms, though in 43 cases Huntsimply noted that the defendants werecharged with stealing ‘wood’. The shroudingof maiden trees (elms, ashes, oaks and fourcases involving unnamed trees) was commonas was the cutting of willow setts.Conversely, the taking of already processedwood was relatively rare with only sevencases involving the taking of pails or hurdlesfrom fences; two cases involving the takingof knitches; and two cases sawn timber.Clearly, whilst necessity was the motive,wood-takers rarely extended their activitiesto taking processed timber and insteadalmost always confined their actions totaking wood straight from hedges, copsesand woodlands. It is worth noting thoughthe vague phrase ‘wood stealing’ couldpossibly cover not only thefts from woodsand hedges but also thefts from sheds ofothers’ fuel supplies.18

As already noted, the area around WestLavington was not particularly well woodedand this meant that many parishes sufferedan imbalance between supply and demand.Moreover, being removed from the coast anddistant from the towns of Marlborough,Salisbury, Warminster and Westbury meant

21


occasions when the defendants wereacquitted (in all cases for a lack of evidence)indeed, nobody was found not guilty on theevidence provided. Some defendants thoughfound guilty were either pardoned, as in thecase of the Urchfont female labourers;respited; or excused by Hunt, in one case ofwillow shrouding because it ‘[a]ppeared sofrivolous’ (273). More importantly, not onecase was passed on to a higher court andonly one person was committed to theBridewell for a second offence. It is cleartherefore that, as Crittal has suggested, inevery case of wood-taking Hunt used theStatute of 1663 rather than any of the morerecently passed legislation.21

‘The nature of wood as commoditywas constantly being tested byboth the poor and landownerswith Hunt acting as arbitrator’.

As such, in the mid-eighteenth-century everycase of wood-taking that was tried at thequarter sessions represented the peak of avery deep iceberg. Whilst many cases couldhave been sent to the higher courts, Hunt’snotebook clearly demonstrates theimportance, as Peter King has recently noted,of the single magistrate acting as anarbitrator.22 Hunt’s discretion and hiswillingness to find defendants guilty butthen only levying a small fine meant thatprosecutors could avoid the potentiallylengthy delay of waiting for the sessions andthe costs of the prosecution whilst thecounty did not have to meet the costs ofsecuring the defendant(s) in custody and theparish the potential expense of keeping thedefendant’s family relieved. Indeed, fivecases of wood-taking were ‘agreed’ withoutthe need to appear before Hunt, and in afurther four cases the defendants wereforgiven by the complainants without Hunthaving to adjudicate.

What does Hunt’s notebook tell us about theprocess of commodification in the Englishcountryside? Simply put, through the lens ofwood-taking, the key tenets of capitalism –the commodity and the law – were never agiven but were always being contested at avariety of different levels. Whilst Hunt wasready to prosecute and in the vast majority ofcases found in favour of the prosecutor, he

also sometimes occasionally questioned thestatus of timber as commodity: the shroudingof a willow was deemed too ‘frivolous’ (273)to concern the law, whilst, presumably, othercases were presented to and subsequentlythrown out by Hunt. As such, the nature ofwood as commodity was constantly beingtested by both the poor and farmers andlandowners with Hunt acting as arbitrator.Similarly, even though the law between 1744and 1749 could be used to prosecute thetakers of fallen timber there is no evidence tosuggest that Hunt prosecuted anyone forsuch an act. As Bushaway has suggested,fallen timber was the ‘flotsam and jetsam’ ofthe countryside and was deemed to be acustomary windfall.23

The concept of the commodity necessitatesthat everybody pays the same price for thesame good, and therefore the system of finesshould mirror this offering a proportionatepunishment according to the value of theproperty ‘stolen’. In practice though, it is clearthat Hunt’s fines were levied not in relationto the value of timber taken, but rather tothe circumstances of the individual. Whilstsuch a brief analysis does not fully permit the‘moral’ dimensions of this important aspect ofEnglish law as practiced and the practices ofthe poor, it would appear that to someextent E.P. Thompson’s concept of the ‘moraleconomy’ can be applied to wood-taking ineighteenth-century West Lavington.24 Herewas a ‘particular historical formation’, adownland community defined by the sharedpractices and values associated withpastoralism and subjected to the vicissitudesof an agrarian capitalism that was becomingincreasingly intensive but still uneven in itslocal scope. The taking of wood was clearlydefined in the context of West Lavington asan illegal practice, as too were E.P.Thompson’s food riots, but whilst the lawmay have offered potentially clear guidance,landowners, farmers and Justice Hunt’scomplex practices of discretion combinedwith the customary practices and beliefs ofthe poor regarding the ownership andallowable usages of wood suggest that aprofound countryside moral economy existedin relation to wood. Indeed, it is worthconsidering, in light of Roger Wells’ recentidentification of a cornland moral economy inthe south-east wherein issues of access toland were paramount, whether naturalresources represented the most profound andimportant moral economy of all.25

23

that coals were expensive, and as such duringthe winter the need to somehow procurefuel was potentially chronic. It is notsurprising therefore that the seasonality ofthe cases brought before Hunt matches thatfound by Timothy Shakesheff for nineteenth-century Herefordshire, therebydemonstrating that the taking of wood wasmotivated primarily by the need to heatlabouring dwellings (see figure 1). However,the concentration in the work of Shakesheffand others upon the use of quarter sessionsrecords for analysing the seasonality ofspecific crimes has resulted in a ratherdistorted picture, as the date of the sessionsor the date of the commitment of thedefendant has been used as a proxy for thedate of the offence rather than analysingindividual indictments. Moreover, the relativepaucity of cases tried before the quartersessions means that it is impossible to makeany conclusions about short-term fluctuationsin crime rates.19 Detailed and extensivemagistrates notes however allow for a muchmore sustained and detailed analysis. Forinstance, in December 1746 Hunt dealt withten cases of wood-taking alone, a rate farhigher than any of the other years which thenotebook covers, whilst the figures relatingto the summer months suggests that wood-taking was even less of a problem tomagistrates at that time of year than ananalysis of quarter sessions records suggests.

Figure 1: Seasonality of wood-stealing casesbrought before Justice Hunt, Wiltshire, 1744-49.

In 73% of cases men were the soledefendants, whilst women were the soledefendants in only 19% of cases, with afurther 6% involving both men and women.In the final 2% of cases the gender was notmentioned. Clearly, if 80% of wood takingcases involved men and only 25% women,we have been rather hasty in assuming therole of women in subsistence relatedactivities remained static both over time andbetween different areas. Whilst Hunt did notrecord the ages of the defendants, it wouldappear that people at all stages of the life-cycle took wood. For instance, in February1745 Hunt prosecuted widow Betty Draper ofMarket Lavington by the sum of one shilling(166) whilst in May 1744 the sons of RobertLane along with William Wilson the youngerof Market Lavington were fined five shillingseach (99). Two of the major groupings ofwood takers were collectives of oftenunrelated young men and collectives ofyoung women, though, perhapsunsurprisingly, the former grouping was farmore frequent.

There is some evidence to suggest thatwomen acting without the assistance of menwere treated more leniently by Hunt. In April1746 a search warrant was issued againstthree female labourers of Urchfont who,when they came before Hunt, werepardoned ‘out of regard of their greatpoverty and their promises of not offendingin the like again’ (322). Even in a case wheretwo female brick-makers of MarketLavington not only cut down a plum tree butalso destroyed a quantity of mustard seed –clearly an act of plant maiming (see Griffin,forthcoming) where the Black Act could havebeen invoked – the punishment was fiveshillings for damages (447).20 Hunt, to someextent, adjusted the fines levied according tocircumstances, though the fifteen shillingfine made against West Lavington labourerWilliam Gough for stealing willow setts (228)despite his willingly confessing suggests Huntwas either occasionally inconsistent, perhapsdue to pressure from the prosecutor, or thatthis policy was only de facto one even inHunt’s own mind.

By far the most common punishment was thelevying of a crown fine (21 cases), followedby eight cases of a half crown fine, though inseveral cases fines of other amounts betweenone shilling and fifteen shillings were handeddown. Few and far between were the

22

As a prominentlandowner, Hunthad a well-developed sense ofhis own historicalidentity. This is hisbookplate.(Reproduced fromWiltshire Notes &Queries, Volume 2,1896-98)


Admiral Keppel’s trial for cowardice in 1779made him one of the most talked-aboutnaval figures of the age. The politicalramifications of his recovery and re-instatement as a popular Whig hero arewell-known; much less familiar however, isthe enormous impact the affair had uponGeorgian Bath. Trevor Fawcett probes thelocal angle.

By late 1778, with the American War goingbadly, Lord North’s administration wasincreasingly under fire from its political foes,the Rockingham Whigs. Its decision to court-martial the popular Admiral Keppel onlymade matters worse. The charge that Keppelhad failed properly to engage a French fleet,brought by Vice-Admiral Sir Hugh Palliser,was both ill-founded and blatantly political,for Palliser sat on Lord Sandwich’s Board ofAdmiralty which the Whig opposition, ofwhom Keppel was an active member, wasconstantly harrying. The ensuing five-week-long court-martial, held at Portsmouth andattended by many Whig leaders, gripped thenation’s imagination and was reported inevery detail by the press, the Bath Chronicleand Bath Journal not excepted.1 Many navalcolleagues testified in Keppel’s favour and inthe end he won his case with ease, wasacquitted with honour, and found himself aninstant hero. Celebrations eruptedthroughout the country, while North,Sandwich and Palliser were vilified forbringing the prosecution and had theirhouses ransacked by rioters.

‘Why did it misrepresent thecelebration as a riotous occasion

and claim that it was all got up bya set of 'patriotic banditti'?

The news from Portsmouth reached Bath at 6a.m. on Friday 12 February 1779, delivered byexpress to the Royal Crescent house of C.C.Crespigny, Receiver-General for the Admiraltybut a fervent Keppel supporter.2 As the wordspread and the church bells began a joyouspeal, the Corporation flag was raised on thetower of the Abbey Church on theinstruction of churchwarden RichardAtwood. This encouraged the other parishchurches to follow suit. Already there wasgeneral expectation that the city would‘illuminate’ with a celebratory display of

lights that same evening, yet the magistrateshesitated before giving assent, partly itseems from political scruple, partly from fearof street disorder.

But at least the Town Clerk knew where hisduty lay. Professing outrage at the flying ofthe Corporation flag without properauthorisation and on a non-royal occasion,he complained to the Archdeacon,demanded explanations from the variouschurchwardens, and had the flag hauleddown and the bells silenced. It was a futilegesture, as well as foolhardy, given the city'sexcited mood. The Abbey at once retaliatedby hoisting a Union Jack and a flag of StGeorge, and that evening the illumination,clearly in preparation for days by the pro-Keppel faction, made a splendid show.

Many buildings exhibited lamps andtransparencies with naval themes, andthough Bath’s new Guildhall was notilluminated, Council members showed somepartisanship by meeting to toast Keppel’ssuccess. Crespigny’s house in Royal Crescentwas bedecked with lights, but the TownClerk’s, only three doors away remained darkand was lucky in the circumstances to avoidbroken windows. Elsewhere ‘the names ofSir Hugh (Palliser) and a certain Lawyer werewritten on pieces of paper and unanimoulycondemned to the Jordan (i.e. thechamberpot)’.

The lawyer in question, Town Clerk since1776, was John Jefferys. Settled in Bath byc.1740 and taking advantage of Bath's urbangrowth, he soon built up a strong legalpractice in land deals, mortgages, loans andinvestments. Not only did this bring himconsiderable business with private developerssuch as Richard Marchant (a fellow Quaker)and the younger John Wood,3 his expertisealso recommended him to the Corporation.As early as 1748-9 we find him busy aboutthe city’s water rentals and in surveying cityproperty,4 and under Lewis Clutterbuck(Town Clerk 1757-76) he seems to have actedas part-time deputy.5 When in 1776 (havingpointedly deserted the Quakers for theChurch of England) he succeeded as fullTown Clerk he must have understoodperfectly how the Corporation worked.Meanwhile, through moneylendingoperations and attorney’s work, he hadbecome a rich man, held land, occupied aprestigious house, and lived in comfort.6

‘A silly, ridiculous Jack in Office’

Trevor Fawcettis a former editor of BathHistory and a founder ofthe History of BathResearch Group. His mostrecent publications, BathAdminister’d (2001) andBath Commercialis’d(2002) are published byRuton Press.

‘A silly, ridiculous Jack in Office’: Bath’s Town Clerk and the Keppel Affair of 1779 Trevor Fawcett

25

1 M. Overton, Agricultural Revolution inEngland: The Transformation of theAgrarian Economy 1500-1850 (CambridgeUniversity Press, Cambridge, 1996); J.Chapman and S. Seeliger, Enclosure,Environment and Landscape in SouthernEngland (Tempus, Stroud, 2001). Forconsiderations of wood-taking see: B.Bushaway, ‘From Custom to Crime: Wood-Gathering in Eighteenth and earlyNineteenth-Century England: A Focus forConflict in Hampshire, Wiltshire and theSouth’, in J. Rule (ed.) Outside the Law:Studies in Crime and Order 1650-1850(Exeter University Press, Exeter, 1982), pp.65-101; T. Shakesheff, ‘Wood and Crop Theftin Rural Herefordshire, 1800-60’, RuralHistory, 13 (2002), pp. 1-18.

2 K. Thomas, Man and the Natural World:Changing Attitudes in England, 1500-1800(Allen Lane, London, 1983), p.198.

3 E. Crittal, The Justicing Notebook of WilliamHunt 1744-1749 (Wiltshire Record Society,Devizies, 1982), p.15.

4 Bushaway, op. cit., 77-78.5 R. Manning, Village Revolts: Social Protest

and Popular Disturbances in England, 1509-1640 (Clarendon, Oxford, 1989), pp.98, 101-2, 262-3.

6 Bushaway, op. cit., pp.74-5; Manning, op.cit., p.270.

7 Bushaway, op. cit., p.79.8 E.P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters: The

Origins of the Black Act (Allen Lane,London, 1975) p.23; L. Radzinowicz, AHistory of English Criminal Law and itsAdministration from 1750: Volume I Stevensand Son, London, 1948).

9 This Act allowed for the summarypunishment before a single magistrate byup to a £20 fine or between six and twelvemonths imprisonment for ‘wilfully cut orbreak down, bark, burn, pluck up, lop, top,crop, or otherwise deface, damage, spoil ordestroy or carry away any Timber tree’. Asecond such offence the fine or gaolsentence increased, whilst a third offencewas punishable by seven yearstransportation.

10 13 Geo III c.33 and 9 Geo. III c.41. A furtherstatute added that if the offence wascommitted by night, an offender could betransported for 7 years as the crime wasthen a felony: 6 George III c.36.

11 For the reliance upon easily quantifiableand comparable judicial sources see: J. Innesand J. Styles, ‘The crime wave: recentwriting on crime and criminal justice ineighteenth-century England’, in A. Wilson(ed.) Rethinking Social History: EnglishSociety 1570-1920 and its Interpretation(Manchester University Press, Manchester,1993), pp.203-4.

12 Hampshire Quarter Sessions Calendars, allsessions 1789, Hampshire County RecordOffice Q9/1/436-9.

13 Shakesheff, op. cit, pp.14-5.14 Wiltshire County Record Office A1/1/19. All

subsequent references to Hunt’s notebookrelate to Crittall’s edited version.

15 Crittall, op. cit., p.4.16 Ibid., p.14. These figures do not relate to

the number of separate cases which Huntpresided over, rather the total number oftimes on which Hunt had to adjudicate, thisis an important distinction as it clearlyindicates what took up Hunt’s time as wellas the relative amount of the different typesof civil and criminal business he had topreside over.

17 Ibid., various cases.18 An analysis of the less comprehensive from

more detailed justices’ papers from theJervoise estate records from Herriard inHampshire shows that wood thefts werefrequently of already felled timber eitherstacked and awaiting being carted or fromwood sheds: Hampshire County RecordOffice 44M69/G3/various.

19 Shakesheff, op. cit., p.4.20 C. Griffin, ‘The Many Place(s) of Trees in

Rural Society; or, the strange case of ‘PlantMaiming’ in Eighteenth-Century England’,forthcoming.

21 Crittall, op. cit., p.15.22 P. King, ‘The Summary Courts and Social

Relations in Eighteenth-Century England’,Past and Present 183 (2004), pp.125-172.

23 Bushaway, op. cit., p.101, n.1.24 E.P. Thompson, ‘The Moral Economy of the

English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century’,Past and Present 50 (1971), pp. 76-136;Idem., ‘The Moral Economy Reviewed’, inIdem., Customs in Common (Penguin,London, 1992), pp.242-3.

25 R. Wells, ‘The Moral Economy of the EnglishCountryside’, in A. Randall and A.Charlesworth (eds.) Moral Economy andPopular Protest: Crowds, Conflict andAuthority (Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2000),pp. 209-272.

24


much the Town Clerk had done on his behalf- ‘taking the trouble... of serving the Officeof Chamberlain for him [in 1776-7] and nowthat of Mayor, for both of which Mr. Crookallows himself utterly ignorant andincapable’.

There may have been some truth in it.Although he had served on Council fortwenty-five years, Crook, an apothecary,seems not to have been cut out for theonerous post of Chamberlain (the city'sfinancial officer) or the role of decisiveMayor. The current Chamberlain too, the ex-silk merchant James Ferry, had beenoverwhelmed by his duties and imprudentlytrusted the city financial affairs to deputies.7

The trouble was that by electing its Mayorand other key executive officers for quiteshort terms and mainly on grounds ofseniority, the Corporation’s competencevaried from year to year. Moreover, anyMayor depended heavily on the advice andprofessional skills of the Guildhall’s éminencegrise, the Town Clerk. If he came underpublic scrutiny, as Jefferys did in 1779, so didthe ways of the Corporation.

Despite pressure to reveal the authorship ofthe now notorious letter to the MorningPost, the Corporation said nothing, butneither did they leap to the Town Clerk’sdefence. When in mid-March Keppel himselfvisited Bath on his triumphal progress, thecelebrations broke out anew with bells, thefiring of cannon, acclamations, and anotherillumination at which several hundred peopleaccompanied an effigy of Jeffreys(represented as half-Quaker, half-lawyer, andlabelled ‘John the Scrub’) and tossed it ontoa bonfire in front of the Royal Crescent toloud hisses and groans. And there wasfurther ridicule of ‘John the Scrub’ inpopular ditties and in a mock playbill for TheMayor of Bath and The Double Dealerdirected by ‘Black Jack‘. More serious,however, was the accusation that theCorporation had allowed its Town Clerk’s‘Vanity and Avarice... Insolence and Tyranny’far too much scope:

the most alarming circumstance of allis... the amazing ascendancy he hasgained over the Corporation.... [and]the implicit faith, passive obedience,and non-resistance, of the Majority ofthem; at the rate that matters go on,we may in a short time reasonablyexpect the Mayor reduced to a mereCaput Mortuum, and the two Justices[to] little or no better than Non-entities... [while] the whole Bodytaken together deserves a secondtime [the first occasion being duringRalph Allen's dominance in the early1760s] the appellation of THE ONE-HEADED CORPORATION8 .

All this was separately corroborated in acontemporary Bath weekly, Salmon’sMercury, which over many months fromNovember 1778 to July 1779 exposed allJefferys’ dealings with linen draper TobiasSalmon and his printer son John Salmon,whom Jefferys had prosecuted for libel andobliged to serve a three-month gaolsentence. Here little is spared in the damningaccount of Jeffery’s confrontational style(even over a private conveyancing issue), his‘tyranny’ over the Corporation, hisusurpation of powers, and his abysmalreputation among his fellow lawyers andformer Quaker brethren.

Nevertheless the record of Council meetingsin 1779 fails to mention any official rebuketo Jefferys or any obvious curb on hisactivities. He was soon at work again onmunicipal business, including the time-consuming and costly Chancery case againstSt Michael’s parish that the Corporation wascurrently fighting. Yet perhaps he had beenchastened. In 1782 the astute HenryHarington, a councilman himself, went outof his way to praise Jefferys as anincorruptibly honest Town Clerk,knowledgeable in law and moderate in fees.9

There are no more accusations of his lordingit over the Corporation and he continuedactively in post until his retirement in 1800.

27

The Keppel celebration put all this - and hisrole within the Corporation - under anunwelcome spotlight.

The Bath press led the personal criticismdirected against him. In opposing thefestivities Jeffreys had acted like an officious,impertinent fool, ‘a silly ridiculous Jack inOffice’ with a freak in his head, a‘blockhead... absurd enough to suppose thatpublic rejoicings for the Honour of the Navyof England... and the King's own Admiral,should be considered an insult to the King’.And along with this came nastier insinuationsabout his Anglican conversion, claiming hehad been christened out of expediency -'more from interest than principle, and thathe was not a servant of God but ofMammon’.

An affair that was the talk of Bath (‘from theBarber's Boy up to the profound Politician’)now reached a wider audience through aletter printed in the London Morning Post of17 February. This purported to be astatement of facts signed by the Mayor ofBath and two Justices, and witnessed byJefferys as Town Clerk, and while it offeredsome explanation for the Corporation’s, andJeffery’s, actions on the day of theillumination, it contained obviousinaccuracies and in any case seemed a curious

way for the Bath authorities to justifythemselves. Why a letter to the Londonrather than the Bath press? Why was theMayor's name spelled wrongly? Why theneed for the Town Clerk to witness theaccount? Why did it misrepresent the Bathcelebration as a riotous occasion and claimthat it was all got up by a set of ‘patrioticbanditti’? People smelled a rat. Had Jefferysdreamed up the letter himself?

‘Jeffreys’s effigy was tossedonto a bonfire in front of theRoyal Crescent to loud hisses

and groans’.

This notion was far from absurd, judgingfrom the opinions being ventilated in theBath newspapers. One ironic contributionsuggested that to save further dispute withinthe Corporation the Mayor and J.P.s shouldsimply hand over their powers to ‘our mostexcellent Town Clerk’ whose extrememodesty would surely not stop him fillingthree offices at once. A letter from ‘Justice’ostensibly defending Jefferys hinted thatsomething of the sort had taken placealready, and that the friends of the currentMayor, Simon Crook, were well aware how

26

Jerkem’s empire: Bath’sGeorgian Guildhall, picturedhere in 1794, was completed in1779, the year of the Keppelaffair. The impressiveneoclassical façade epitomisedthe grandiloquence of the city’sgoverning corporation andmade a fine setting for theexercise of Jefferys’sauthority.(Reproduced by kindpermission of Bath CentralLibrary)


The burial fields around St Swithin’s Churchat the top of Walcot Street in Bath containsome pretty impressive mortal remains.There’s Fanny Burney for instance, and JaneAusten’s dad. And Sir Edward Berry, one ofNelson’s captains, a veteran of the Nile andTrafalgar. These three eminent visitors toBath all have more in common thanapproximation in death however, for theirmonuments are also the subject ofexpensive recent facelifts.

This is money well spent of course. Funeralmonuments are the furniture of memory andmourning, markers that remind us not onlyof human mortality but of theimpetus to leave behind a goodimpression. Like statues,they’re memorials not justto past times but to theindividuals whose wordsand deeds still lendthe past a characterand make historypersonal. Butcelebrity is a fluidstate and itsattribution issometimescontentious.

It’s easy to reflectupon the irony of allthis if you stand for amoment on anovergrown concretepath on the south side ofthe mortuary chapel infront of the inscribed stonethat marks burial plot 1002.Since 1834, successive winter frostshave worked away at the surface of thestone to destabilise the lettering, but at themoment it remains perfectly legible. Itappears to be an epitaph not only to a manbut to language itself and to the abstractionsof liberty. Heady stuff? Here’s a sample: ‘Inhis utterances Englishmen experienced thefull beauty and energy of their nativespeech. His oratorical powers were onlysurpassed by his devoted zeal andunflinching efforts to promote the bestliberties of his fellow men’. And here’s wherehe parts company with Burney, Austen andBerry, though he lived through the sameturbulent times as they. For he cannot afforda facelift himself and there are no crowds ofheritage-hunters beating a path to his

headstone to pay their respects or organise awhip round. He is John Thelwall.

If the name doesn’t mean very much now,perhaps it’s because the ‘best liberties of hisfellow men’ were won long ago in distantbattles of which we have since grown weary.Thelwall argued for universal suffrage at atime when to do so was not onlyunfashionable but downright dangerous. In1794, as a platform speaker and pamphleteerfor the London Corresponding Society, hehad found himself in the dock of the OldBailey with eleven other fledgling democrats,arraigned by the government for High

Treason. Although platform oratorywas not yet the highly developed

popular art it would laterbecome, Thelwall was not

only a pioneer butreputedly one of the

ablest masscommunicators of theage. Governmentfeared him lessbecause of what hesaid than because ofhis ability to make itpersuasive. Tosuggest, as they did,that a publiccampaign for the

right of adult malesto vote in

parliamentary electionsmight undermine the

constitution and endangerthe life of the King may

sound a little far-fetched tous. To the British government in

the decade of the French Revolutionhowever, it did not. Thelwall and his ‘co-conspirators’ were only acquitted of treasonand spared a grisly public hanging becausethe trial jury refused to play ball withprosecuting counsel.

And as Thelwall never forgot, he owed hisliberty not just to the logic of his case but tothe unparalleled eloquence of his defenceattorney, Thomas Erskine. Unbridled byprosecution, Thelwall’s intoxication with thepower of verbal expression continued todevelop. No sooner was he out of jail thanhe returned to public speaking, risking hisneck once again in the struggle for thesuffrage, his footsteps dogged by HomeOffice spies and informers. Had he not

Sites of memory and neglect

Dr Steve Poole is Directorof the Regional HistoryCentre and still feels anirrational attachment tothe Romantic enthusiasmof the English Jacobins.

If any readers areinterested in helping toconserve Thelwall’smonument, pleasecontact the RegionalHistory Centre, UWE.

Sites of memory and neglect: John Thelwall and the art of dying quietly. Steve Poole

29

1 In addition, two pamphlets on the court-martialcame out at Bath in weekly numbers as it was inprogress.

2 The local repercussions of the Keppel acquittalcan be followed in issues of Bath Chronicle andBath Journal Feb-Mar 1779, usefully reprinted inLetters, Extracts, &c. taken from the Bath News-Papers, &c. respecting the Conduct of JefferyJerk’em, Esquire (Bath?, 1779).

3 R.S.Neale, Bath 1680-1850: a Social History(London, 1981), 163-8.

4 Bath Chamberlain’s Accounts (Bath RecordOffice) 6 Apr, 27 Aug and 6 Sep 1748, 5 Dec1749.

5 Thus in 1765 it was Jefferys, not Clutterbuck,who prosecuted market forestallers on theCouncil's behalf (Bath Chronicle 18 Apr 1765).Later Clutterbuck had a second deputy inCouncilman Thomas Harford and in 1775 had toapologise for allowing his deputies to inflatetheir importance by wearing gowns (BathJournal 16 Oct 1775).

6 John Jefferys’ personal accounts, covering 1762-90, are held at Somerset Record Office,DD/WLM/Box 1. He held a plot of the Riversestate on Lansdown (shown on Bath Plan 47 inBath Central Library) by which he later blockedan important road scheme.

7 For Ferry’s incompetence see especiallyScorpion’s letter in Bath Journal 8 Mar 1779.Ferry, though, was one of the Corporation'smore zealous Keppelites, displaying thatallegiance in a spectacular private display at theillumination.

8 Introduction to Letters, Extracts... cited in note 2above.

9 Bath Anecdotes and Characters, by the GeniusLoci [Henry Harington] (London, 1782), 134-5.

28

John Thelwall at thetime of his trial forHigh Treason in 1794(Reproduced by kindpermission of BristolPublic Library)


parliamentary reformers in 1794 werecharged with high treason.’4 Promulgatingthe memory of 1794 was crucial to both ofthem and the Whig reformers of 1832 tookthe Jacobin legacy to their hearts. This ismore than may be said for their attitude tothe future Chartists, Lovett and Cleave, whowere booed and jeered when they tried tomove a universal suffragist amendment atthe very same NPU meeting that hadwelcomed Thelwall.

‘Successive winter frosts haveworked away at the surface of thestone to destabilise the lettering’.

When Hardy died in October 1832, Thelwallwas the last surviving veteran of the trials,and the only guest of honour at the GoldenLion commemoration a month later. In an‘emphatic’ speech, he ‘dwelt upon thehistory of the dangerous times when suchattempts were made to extinguish theliberties of the people’ and ‘said thatperhaps this would be the last occasion onwhich he would ever address that assembly’.In this, he was right5. Thelwall delivered hisfinal great public oration over Hardy’s gravein London to a crowd 20-40,000 strong.‘Apparently under the influence of strongand excited feelings’, Thelwall held up to hisaudience an engraved memorial tabletrecording the names of the 1794 trial jurypicked out in gold against a purplebackground. Conflating one historic act ofclosure with another, he recalled Hardy’s firstact of liberty on release from gaol – a firstvisit to the grave of his wife who died whilehe was still in captivity. Then he completedthe circle: ‘My tears must here drop onto thegrave of the last of my associates andperhaps the time is not distant when asimilar close shall be put to my existencealso’6.

But it was Thelwall’s misfortune not only tobe the sole surviving veteran of 1794, but todie quietly and obscurely on the provinciallecture circuit rather than in the capital. Hisfuneral, unnoticed by either the national orlocal press, was recorded only in the burialrecords of St Swithins Church. It seemsunlikely there was anybody there who knewhim, nobody to invoke his memory with‘strong and excited feelings’ as his casket was

lowered, and certainly no crowds ofmourners. Thelwall would not perhaps havewanted a hero’s farewell. Beyond the realmsof rhetoric and oratory after all, the libertieshe eulogised were no more obviously securethan they had ever been. Even as the earthsettled on his grave, six Tolpuddle farmlabourers were awaiting trial andtransportation in Dorchester for forming atrades union, and in Bath the newsvendorJohn Cogswell and his wife were awaitingtrial for selling Richard Carlile’s unstampedradical newspapers. Cogswell, who regardedhimself as a ‘consistent republican’, hademerged from a six month prison sentencefor exactly the same offence in October 1833.Opening a new shop in Chandos Buildings,he returned to selling titles like the Gauntlet,Cosmopolite, Reformer, the Destructive andthe Poor Mans Guardian, but was re-arrestedin March. At the assize, he received anothersix months and his wife was fined7.

Thelwall’s grave remained unmarked forseven months. Then, thanks to the efforts ofhis widow and some friends in London, thepresent memorial was paid for and put intoplace. It was originally intended as atemporary marker, to be replaced by ahandsome ‘mural monument’ by publicsubscription at a later date. But it neverhappened. Thelwall would probably not havewelcomed material flamboyance as asignifier for memory in any case. At Hardy’sfuneral four months earlier, he had urgedmourners to understand that his was ‘not agrave to demand pompous monument orcolossal effigies’, for Hardy’s monumentshould be memory itself8.

Which leaves us with a conundrum.Thelwall’s headstone will soon requirerestoration if it is to continue promptingmemory in the future. Its inscribed words willflake and fall. Thelwall himself believedwords of little consequence until animatedby expressive oratory, which is precisely whyhe devoted his life in equal measures topolitics, elocution and poetry. The purpose ofcommemoration, he might tell us, is toinspire action and without it, we may as wellsurrender all such sites of memory to neglect.One has only to recite some of the obscurenames adorning the commemorative plaquesplaced on Bath’s buildings a century ago tobe reminded that celebrity is a historicalphenomenon. But perhaps Thelwall deservesbetter than this. In an advanced liberal

3130

resorted to firearms to foil a cynicalconspiracy to impress him into the Navy in1797, he may even have ended up on theAgamemnon with Captain Berry of the Nile.But instead, he befriended fellow wordsmithsColeridge and Wordsworth and attachedhimself to them at Alfoxton to writeliberatory poetry.

Thelwall spent the rest of his life in pursuit ofhis two greatest passions, the Englishlanguage and political justice, convincedthroughout that the key to the latter lay inmastery of the former. He realised in otherwords, that words are weapons and the penis mightier. In 1817, he was editing his ownradical newspaper, the Champion. In 1831 hewas doing his bit in the successful strugglefor the Reform Bill. And in 1834, at the ageof 68, he was still travelling the country,practicing the art of oratory by lecturing onits historical origins and arguing its place asan agent of change. This is why Thelwall wasin Bath. Mid way through a course of eightevening lectures at the Literary Institution,his weakening heart gave way and he diedquietly in his bed. The previous evening he

had closed by tracing the history of politicaloratory from classical Rome to its finest hour– the defence performance of ThomasErskine in1794. On his last night on earththen, with what the local press called ‘acopiousness of historical illustration which wecannot attempt to follow’, he was still payinghis dues.1

The fact that historical memory was clearly soimportant to Thelwall only makes the neglectof his own ‘memorial’ more poignant. Ascustom dictates, its inscription begins withthe somewhat ironic phrase, ‘To the memoryof John Thelwall’. At the time of his death,the Bath Journal believed he had ‘madehimself distinguished on occasions which willform the subject of History2. The Treasontrials of 1794 were certainly fixed in thehistorical memory of English radicals. Theacquittal of the twelve Corresponding Societymembers had been marked bycommemorative junkets in the Golden Liontavern in Smithfield every November 5thuntil 1833. The principal defendants werereunited annually at these events until, by1829 there were only three of them left alive,Thomas Hardy (the society’s secretary andfounder), John Richter, and Thelwall. Richterdied in the summer of 1830, his last publicutterance a speech in support of the secondFrench Revolution, an event which ensuredthat ‘I shall die happy’3

‘Beyond the realms of rhetoric and oratory, Liberty was no more

obviously secure than it had ever been’.

Hardy and Thelwall both lived to see theGreat Reform Act pass into law and for bothof them it was a matter of the deepesthistorical significance. Sharing a platform forthe reformist National Political Union with SirFrancis Burdett in 1831, Thelwall recalled hisown prosecution for ‘advocating that verycause which our patriot king and hisenlightened ministers were at present doingtheir utmost to carry to a successfulconsummation’, while in 1832 Hardy wrote toLafayette in Paris, of the ‘revolution that hastaken place in this country – for revolution itis. The King and his ministers have nowturned reformers! They are guilty of the verysame crime (if crime it is) for which

John Thelwall’sfrost-damagedheadstone at StSwithin’s burialground, Bath; asite of memory andneglect. (photo:Steve Poole)


democracy like our own, in which a universalfranchise has produced an electorate that islargely indifferent to politics, wary ofideology and disdainful of rhetoric, JohnThelwall might yet have something relevantto say to us.

Further reading on John ThelwallThelwall’s best historian is certainly GregClaeys, whose The Politics of EnglishJacobinism: The Writings of John Thelwall(Pennsylvania, 1995) provides an excellentannotated selection of Thelwall’s politicaland rhetorical writings, but see also E. P.Thompson’s last academic essay, ‘Hunting theJacobin Fox’, Past & Present, 142 (1994),which traces the post-1794 years in typicallyquirky style. For a solid analysis of Thelwall’scontribution to political thought, see IainHampsher-Monk, ‘John Thelwall and theeighteenth century radical response topolitical economy’, Historical Journal, 34, 1(1991). Fittingly enough however, the mostprolific Thelwall scholar of recent years hasbeen a professor of English, MichaelScrivenor. See his current monograph,Seditious Allegories: John Thelwall andJacobin Writing (Pennsylvania, 2001), and anumber or related essays, the most recent ofwhich is ‘John Thelwall and the Revolution of1649’ in T. Morton and N. Smith (eds.),Radicalism in British Literary Culture, 1750 -1830: From Revolution to Revolution(Cambridge, 2002).

1 Bath and Cheltenham Gazette, 11 & 18 February1834.

2 Bath Journal, 24 February 1834.3 Times, 7 November 1829, 23 August 1830.4 Times, 6 December 1831, 19 October 1832.5 Times, 6 November 1832.6 Times, 20 October, 1832.7 Gauntlet, 10 November 1833, Bath Chronicle,

21 March and 18 April 1834. Carlile came toBristol and Bath himself for eighteen days inJanuary 1834 to lecture on ‘political, domesticand individual economy’ (socialism), and becameembroiled in an acrimonious debate with aChristian lecturer, G. B. Orchard. The city presswas unremittingly hostile. See his account in theGauntlet, 5 and 12 January 1834.

8 Times, 20 October 1832.

32

She was “the leading lady player of theworld”1 and “known throughout the lengthand breadth of the land”2 in the last quarterof the nineteenth century. The pinnacle ofher career was winning the firstinternational women’s chess tournament in1897, but she lived a life of genteel povertyand died almost forgotten. John Richardsuncovers the extraordinary career of MaryRudge and argues the case for a blue plaqueto mark her achievements.

Mary Rudge was born in Leominster on the6th February 1842 to Henry and Eliza Rudge.Henry was a surgeon and “very fond of chessand played a fairly strong game, though henever took part in public chess. He taughtthe moves to his elder daughters, and they inturn taught Miss Mary.”4 Leominster was asmall town and could not have providedmuch in the way of serious competition, so itis unsurprising that the first record of Maryplaying chess is in a correspondencetournament in 1872.5 The first mention ofover the board competition is in August 1874when Mary played in Class II at the Meetingof the Counties’ Chess Association, atBirmingham.6

Two months later Dr Rudge died, leavingMary, 32, and her sister, Caroline, 41, to fendfor themselves. Both women were unmarriedand they went to live with their brotherHenry in Bristol. Henry was 37, alsounmarried, and had been a curate at St JohnEvangelist, Whiteladies Road, Clifton since1870.7

Mary started playing chess seriously and, forher, the move to Bristol was particularlyfortuitous. Bristol had a long chess history;the Bristol Chess Club was formed in 1829 or1830 and is thought to be the first Englishclub outside London. More importantly forthis story, in 1872, the new Bristol andClifton Chess Club Association voted to admitwomen: “During the year the vice-presidentproposed that ladies should be admitted tothe Club as associates, at an annualsubscription of 5s., which was agreed to. Webelieve that no members of the softer sexwere admitted as subscribers, by any chessclub in this country, prior to this date.”8

Although Burt’s claim is very doubtful – thereare examples going back to the eighteenthcentury9 – Mary had ended up in a placethat was going to give her the opportunityto play competitive chess.

The first mention of Mary in Bristol is in 1875when she played Blackburne - who gave ablindfold simultaneous display against tenopponents. The following year she played inanother blindfold simultaneous display givenby Zukertort.10 At this stage Mary had notmade much of an impact on the chess world.When John Burt wrote his history of theBristol Chess Club in 1883, Mary wasconsidered worth just two very briefmentions. If she had been recognized as aleading woman player at this time then Burtwould surely have recorded it.

‘Mary must have really made themen sit up and take notice’.

The arrival of Henry’s sisters must havecaused a major upheaval in his life and, inparticular, a need for new accommodation.Before 1876, Henry does not appear in theresidents’ lists. In 1876-77, he was living atWalmer Villa, 48 Wellington Park, Clifton.This house may have been owned by StJohn’s, because when he moved to becomecurate of another church, St Thomas, Bristol,in 1878, he also moved house to 8 BurlingtonBuildings (now Burlington Road) Clifton.Perhaps Henry’s new post at St Thomas stilldid not bring in enough money because theRudges had a new plan. The following yearthey took over the new Luccombe HousePreparatory School on Redland Green; Henrybecame the schoolmaster and we can assumehis sisters helped with the teaching.11 Theschool was described as providing “'highclass education for boys, 7-11. Efficientmasters providing a thorough grounding forpublic schools.”12 The venture may havestarted successfully because Henry gave uphis curate’s post in 1881, but by 1885 thingswere going wrong. In January, the schoolwas advertising for pupils13, but by August itseems the school closed and the Rudges left14 .

Henry moved to become curate at NorthMeols15, near Southport, but Mary stayed inBristol. What happened immediately afterthe school closure is not clear – Mary did notappear in two matches that autumn that shewould normally have played in16. But sheeventually reappeared on the chess sceneand this time she quickly began to make areal impact. This is all the more remarkable

Mary Rudge

John Richards has been achess player for over 40years. He has beenGeneral Secretary andChairman of the Bristol &District Chess League andthe editor of the BristolChess Times. He used tomanage the Bristol teamin the national chessleague. He is also aqualified chess arbiter. Hehas a day job as an ITproject manager at theUniversity of Bristol.

Mary Rudge: Bristol’s World Chess ChampionJohn Richards

33


as she was already 45 years old. On 12thMarch 1887 she played on board six forBristol against Bath at the Imperial Hotel,Bristol, and she got a draw against a Mr W EHill. At the beginning of 1888, Rudge playedand won on board six for Bristol & Cliftonagainst City Chess & Draughts Club17, andthen drew with Blackburne in a simultaneousdisplay on 1st March.18 The following yearMary must have really made the men sit upand take notice as she won the challenge cupof Bristol & Clifton Chess Club.19 However, thevery same month (June 1889), Mary was indire financial straits.

‘Our readers will be sorry to hear thatMiss M. Rudge, of Clifton, is atpresent in very depressed pecuniarycircumstances; so much so that she hasfelt obliged (though most reluctantly)to give her consent to an appealbeing made on her behalf. We aresure English chessplayers will notallow one of their best lady players toremain in actual, though it is to behoped only temporary, want, andcontributions for its relief, howeversmall, will be thankfully received bythe Rev. C.E. Ranken, St Ronan’s,Malvern, and acknowledged by himprivately to the donors.’20

Perhaps the school venture had wiped outany funds or legacy that had once existed.Mary was reduced to relying on a form ofcharity, as she became a companion tovarious ladies. The most important of theseladies was Mrs FF Rowland, who lived atClontarf, near Dublin, and also Kingstown.Frideswide Rowland was a significant figurein late nineteenth-century chess, both as aproblemist and, with her husband, Thomas BRowland, as a chess journalist and writer ofchess books. And so Mary started alternatingbetween living in Bristol and Ireland.

By September 1889, Mary was living inClontarf where, possibly inspired by MrsRowland, she composed and published achess problem (in the Clontarf ParochialMagazine)21. She also gave a simultaneousdisplay - she won all six games22 - and it ispossible that she was the first woman in theworld to perform a ‘simul’. By NovemberMary was being hailed as “the leading ladyplayer in the world”.23

Meanwhile, brother Henry was still in

Lancashire. By 1889 he had moved a shortdistance to Church Town, Southport.24 Thesame year he succeeded in getting a newpost, as Curate and then Rector of St Mary,Newent, Gloucestershire.25 It appears thatMary decided not, or was not invited, tomove to Newent. In any case, Henry wasdestined not to enjoy his new post for long;he died in September 1891.

Over the next few years, Mary took part invarious competitions, playing for Bristol &Clifton,26 and for Gloucestershire,27 and alsomoving to Dublin for several months at atime. She won the Ladies’ Challenge Cup inCambridge in 1890 and was third in Class II.By now, the British Chess Magazine coulddescribe Mary as “known throughout thelength and breadth of the land”.28

In 1896, Mary won Class II at the SouthernCounties' tournament, at the Imperial Hotel.Mr Stevenson tied for first place, with a scoreof 61/2. The latter beat Mary in their game,

then waived his right to play off, giving Marythe first prize of £5.29

‘By November Mary was beinghailed as the leading lady player

in the world’.

The following year, 1897, the firstinternational women’s chess tournament washeld at the Ladies’ Club in London. Twentyplayers entered. Two rounds per day wereplayed, with a time limit of twenty moves inone hour. Some expressed concern that theevent would be too taxing for the ladies.

It is likely that Mary was urged to enter andher supporters may have raised money toenable her to stay for a couple of weeks inLondon. If so, it was worthwhile as Marysailed through the event undefeated witheighteen wins and one draw.

“Miss Mary Rudge, of Clifton, won hergames in the eighteenth and finalrounds of the International ChessTournament, played in London, at theLadies’ Chess Club, on Saturday. MissRudge came out as first prize winner of£60, her full score being 181/2 points.”30

34

The British Chess Magazine commented herplay was marked by a lack of risk taking andpublished only highlights of her games, butthey did confirm the status of the event:"Rudge in capital form, … displayed thosequalities of steadiness and tenacity for whichshe is renowned. … Her play was markedthroughout by care, exactitude and patience.Someone said of her, 'She doesn't seem tocare so much to win a game as to make heropponent lose it.' She risked nothing, shenever indulged in fireworks for the purposeof startling the gallery; if she got a Pawn shekept it and won, if she got a piece she kept itand won, if she got a "grip" she kept it andwon, if she got a winning position she kept itand won. Not that she always outplayed heropponents in the openings, or even in themid-games, for the reverse was sometimesthe case; but risking nothing she alwaysmanaged to hold her game together, andthen in the end her experience as atournament player and her skill in endpositions came in with powerful effect.'”

“Miss Mary Rudge has for long enjoyed thereputation of being the strongest ladychessplayer in the world, and the fact thatshe has carried off the first prize in thepresent tournament, thereby becoming

entitled to style herself lady chess championof the world, is very satisfactory to her manyfriends.”31

At the age of 55, Mary had reached thepinnacle of her career. It is certain that the£60 prize money was also very welcome.Afterwards it was back to the more mundanelife of playing in Bristol and Dublin.

In 1898 Mary played against the men’s worldchampion, Emanuel Lasker, in a simultaneousdisplay at the Imperial Hotel. Lasker wasunable to finish all the games in the timeavailable32 and Mary’s was one of thoseunfinished. Mrs Rowland described howLasker had been winning but made a mistake.He graciously conceded defeat in this gamewhen it was unfinished at the call of timebecause he would be lost with best play.33 Shecontinued to play for Bristol and forGloucestershire.34 The following year, Marywas playing in Dublin “with great success”.35

Mary’s health deteriorated sometime in thenext few years. Her sister Caroline died in1900 leaving her on her own. In 1912, therewas a new appeal for funds. The CorkWeekly News published the followingannouncement by Mrs F.F. Rowland:

35

Mary Rudge at the first international women’s chess tournament in London, 1897. Aftereighteen wins and a single draw, she won the event together with prize money totalling £60(picture: author’s collection)


1 Colombia Chess Chronicle, 1 November 1889, pp92-93, quoted in Winter, E, Chess Note 3281

2 British Chess Magazine (BCM), 1890, p264.3 General Register Office, reference March 1842

Leominster XXVI/194. The date of birth is oftengiven, erroneously, as 1845.

4 BCM, 1897, p289. 5 Personal e-mail from C.P.Ravilious, saying Tim

Harding has record of Mary playing in the firstcorrespondence tournament of The AmateurChess Magazine (Ed James T.C.Chatto) whichbegan in the summer of 1872.

6 Burt J, The Bristol Chess Club, 1883.7 Crockford’s Clergy List, 1889.8 Burt, J, op cit.9 BCM, 2004, p666.

10 Burt, J, op cit.11 1881 Census, RG11, 2504 / 23, 39.12 Web site: bristolinformation.co.uk/schools/13 Clifton Chronicle & Directory (CCD),

14 January 1885.14 CCD, Rev H Rudge is listed at Luccombe House

up to 12 August 1885, but no one is listed atthat address for the rest of the year.

15 Clergy List for 1886.16 CCD, 18 November 1885. The two matches were

an internal club match over twelve boards andan 8-board match against Oxford University.

17 CCD, 18 January 1888.18 BCM, 1888, pp186-7.19 CCD, 5 June 1889.20 BCM, 1889, p231.21 CCD, 11 September 1889.22 CCD, 30 October 1889.23 Colombia Chess Chronicle, op cit.24 Crockford’s Clergy List, 1889.25 Crockford’s Clergy List, 1890.26 BCM, 1894, p48; BCM, 1895, pp 17, 68, 511.27 BCM 1895, p220.28 BCM, 1890, p264.29 BCM, 1896, p389.30 CCD, 7 July 1897.31 BCM, 1897, p285-296.32 CCD, 30 November 1898, gives the story of

Lasker not finishing but does not mention Maryby name.

33 Weekly Irish Times, 14 January 1899.34 BCM, 1898, p200.35 BCM, 1899, p454.36 Source: American Chess Bulletin, May 1912,

page 112, quoted in Winter, E, Chess Note 3281.37 London Gazette, 2 August 1918.38 London Gazette, 8 November 1918.39 British Chess Magazine, 1920, p13, quoted in

Winter, E, Chess Note 3281.40 Personal e-mail from G Nichols,

17 January 2004.

37

‘Miss Mary Rudge is the daughter ofthe late Dr Rudge, and after his deathshe resided with her brother, whokept a school, but since his deceaseshe is quite unprovided for, her sistersare also dead, and she is without anyincome of any kind. She lived ascompanion with various ladies, andwas for some years resident with MrsRowland, both at Clontarf andKingstown. Whilst at Clontarf, sheplayed in the Clontarf team in theArmstrong Cup matches, and proved atough opponent, drawing with J.Howard Parnell and winning many afine game. She was also engaged atthe DBC to teach and play in theafternoons. At the Ladies’International Congress, London, shetook first prize (£60), making the finescore of 19_ in 20, the maximum [18_from 19, in fact]. Miss Rudge held theChampion Cup of the Bristol ChessClub, prior to Messrs H.J. Cole and F.U.Beamish. Miss Rudge is now quitehelpless from rheumatism and isseeking admission into a home or (ifpossible) the Dublin Hospital forIncurables. A fund is being collectedfor present expenses, pending heradmission, and chessplayers are askedto help – either by influence ormoney. Donations may be sent to MrsRowland, 3 Loretto Terrace, Bray, Co.Wicklow, or to Mrs Talboys, 20Southfield Park, Cotham, Bristol.’36

The next few years must have been verydifficult indeed. In 1918, Mary attempted tosolve her financial problems when a cousin,James Barrett, died intestate. Mary claimedto be sole next of kin, but another Barrettclaimed to be the grandson of the deceased’suncle and hence sole heir.37 Mary’s claimappears to have failed.38

Mary moved, at some point, to Truro andthen to the British Home for Incurables,Streatham. She died in Guys Hospital,London, on 22 November 1919. The BritishChess Magazine accorded her just three lines:

“As we go to press we learn withgreat sorrow of the death, atStreatham last month, of Miss MaryRudge, winner of the InternationalLadies’ Tournament in 1897.”39

So how good a player was Mary Rudge?Although she was considered the bestwoman player in the world it is doubtful thatshe was all that strong. A reasonableindicator of her strength is that she playedaround boards 4 to 8 for both Bristol &Clifton and for Gloucestershire, and that sheplayed in the second strongest section (ClassII) of tournaments at regional and nationallevel. So, relative to her malecontemporaries, she was not as strong as atop female player of today, but this is not tobelittle her achievements. She played chess ata time when women were not encouraged toplay, in fact often positively discouraged. Shealso started at a late age for a chess playerand had her greatest success at 55. Incontrast, when the first official women’sworld championship tournament was held, itwas a 21 year old, Vera Menchik, who wasvictorious. By coincidence, the tournamentwas also in London, almost exactly thirtyyears after Mary’s triumph, and Vera won bya similar score: ten wins, one draw, no losses.

Mary deserves to be better recognised andremembered as a pioneer of women’s chess.A blue plaque in Bristol would be a goodstart, but we need to find a building to placeit on. Her only definite address in Bristol,Luccombe House, no longer exists.40 Perhapsa good alternative would be the ImperialHotel where she played on many occasions,and the venue for her near-win againstLasker. The Hotel is now named Canynge Halland it is the home of the University ofBristol’s Department of Social Medicine.

Very few detailed records of Mary’s gamesseem to have survived and I have found justnine so far. They are the games against W.Berry (Birmingham, 1874), J. H. Blackburn(1875), Harsant (1883), R. Fedden (twice)(Bristol, 1885), Charles Drury (Dublin, 1889),W Cook (Dublin, 1890), Louisa Fagan(London, 1897), and Emanuel Lasker (1898).Doubtless more remain to be found in oldnewspapers and magazines and I would behappy to receive any that turn up.

AcknowledgmentsGerry Nichols provided a lot of assistance andinformation on the Rudges in Bristol. Severalothers have helped with information,including Harrie Grondijs, ChristopherRavilious, Mike Truran, and Edward Winter.

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Every so often, a routine request for helpfrom the media turns up somethingunexpected. UWE’s Regional History Centrewas recently asked by Channel Fivetelevision for help with a forthcomingprogramme called Britain’s Finest NaturalWonders. In common with its forbears,Britain’s Finest Stately Homes and Britain’sFinest Ancient Monuments, the makers ofthis new addition to the heritage canonasked a panel of ‘experts’ to identify twelvecontenders for the title. The list wassubsequently whittled down to a ‘top ten’by the votes of TV viewers and Radio Timesreaders, and the resulting programme willtake us to each site in ascending order until,at the end, ‘Britain’s Most Popular NaturalWonder’ is revealed. Unsurprisingly perhaps,the world famous limestone chasm ofCheddar Gorge is one of the places thatmade the top ten.

Cheddar is, of course, one of Britain’s biggesttourist attractions. More than half a millionpeople visit the place every year, and fourfifths of them pay good money to theproprietor, Lord Bath, to see Gough’s andCox’s show caves as well. What theprogramme makers wanted from us wassome historical data on the gorge’spopularity. More than anything, and perhapsbecause some good archive footage wasreadily to hand, they wanted to hear aboutEdwardian holiday crowds, brimmingcharabancs of merrymakers, chuffing steamtrains on the Cheddar Valley line and famouscheeses ripening in caves. This is, of course,one of the happy stories one can tell. ButCheddar’s historic encounter with tourism isactually a good deal older than that and thegorge has not always enjoyed such a positiveimage. In fact, its history as a touristattraction is somewhat chequered.

Although Henry of Huntingdon found hisway to Cheddar cliffs as early as 1150 anddeclared them one of the four wonders ofEngland, their attractions were slow to catchon. This was partly because for manycenturies prior to the conceptual invention of‘leisure time’, Britain’s wildest upland areaswere more likely to be regarded as desolateand unproductive wastes than aestheticpleasure grounds. Yet, even when the thirstfor picturesque travel was at its heightduring the later eighteenth century, the best-known tourists constructed itineraries thatwent around or past the gorge rather than

through it. The omission is both odd andunfortunate. The view from the top of thecliffs permits some pretty unrivalled aestheticpleasures; indeed, travellers could use thespot to identify landscapes fitting all three ofthe Romantic period’s favourite ‘ways ofseeing’: the beautiful, the picturesque andthe sublime. Yet early travel guides did littleto promote it. William Gilpin, for instance,barely noticed the gorge at all as he madehis way through Somerset from Bath to theantiquarian gothic splendours of Wellscathedral.

How should we understand such apparentindifference? Somerset’s first historian, JohnCollinson, was certainly impressed with theplace when he put pen to paper in 1792. Its‘awful scenery’ made it ‘the most strikingscene of its kind in Great Britain’; the‘winding passage’ of the chasm ‘in manyplaces very narrow and scattered over withrude loose fragments of fallen rocks’1.Exciting though this may sound, a number offactors may be said to have influencedpoliter visitors to keep away.

To begin with, by Collinson’s time theCheddar district was dreadfully poor.Although many gentlemen of sensibility hadlearned to look upon the ragged poor asquaintly picturesque, the labouring classesaround proto-industrial Cheddar had a lessrustic reputation. The calamine miners forinstance, struck Hannah and Martha More as‘savage and depraved… brutal in theirnatures and ferocious in their manners’. Afterhaving mud thrown at his carriage as hewent through the village in 1789, their friendWilliam Wilberforce willingly bankrolled theirendeavours to ‘civilise’ the miners inCheddar’s fledgling Sunday schools. Yetwhatever results their philanthropy may haveproduced, the people of Mendip continuedto be represented not just as coarse, but ascriminals too. ‘Many were thieves’ wroteHannah More, ‘all ignorant, profane andvicious beyond belief’. As late as the 1840s, adisappointed visiting cleric who had run thegauntlet of villagers trying to sell him wildflower seeds and mineral rocks, found ‘sometraces of former barbarism still in existence’not the least of which was the discovery ofone ragged woman still living in a ‘wild andsqualid’ cave2.

Learning to live with ‘natural wonders’

Dr Steve Poole is Director of the

Regional History Centre

Learning to live with ‘natural wonders’: the forgotten history of Cheddar Gorge Steve Poole

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Until the present B3151 was cut throughCheddar village in 1827, it remained anisolated community. The new road directlyconnected Cheddar to Bristol for the firsttime, the economic benefits of which, itsarchitects hoped, would be ‘the means ofcultivating and civilising the miners’. Noteveryone saw the benefits however. Somefavoured diverting the road through thesafer self-governing borough of Axbridge,for ‘upon production of the plan, a youngman asked, who, in the name of all that iscourageous, would venture upon a road cutthrough cheddar wood?’3

Popular conceptions like these will not haveencouraged many tourists to make a closeinspection of Cheddar cliffs. A rough roadhad been laid through the gorge itself sometime previously, but in the mid nineteenthcentury it remained ‘seldom passed bycarriages’. The newspaper press consideredthat the ‘loneliness, as well as the windingnature of the road, which prevents the viewof objects approaching until they are verynear, points out this spot as too favourablefor the commission of crime’. Local bandittiwere imagined behind the rocks in everybend of the road, especially after a farmernamed Baker was robbed and battered todeath in the gorge in broad daylight as hemade his way back from an upland flour millin 18414.

The decline of the mining industry togetherwith improvements in rural policing didmuch to spruce up the district’s image by theend of the nineteenth century, and thearrival of the Cheddar Valley railway in 1869made public access a good deal easier.Additionally, the discovery of archaeologicalremains in Cox’s and Gough’s caves in the1830s and 1890s created a more educationalrationale for serious tourism. The cavesystems, then as now, proved a far greaterattraction than the gorge. In fact, visits tothe cliffs had become even more hazardousby the early twentieth century becauseWalter Long, landowner on the western side,had sold them off to a rapacious company ofmineral extractors. The destruction of thecentral area of the gorge by unrestrictedquarrying was already underway in 1895,and by 1903 it was noted, ‘a large surface ofthe cliff has been skinned, a steam crusherhas been established and carting goes onbriskly throughout the day’. Assuming theywere not deafened by the steam crusher,visitors in these conditions were as likely to

be felled by avalanches. In 1906, about half a million tons of unstable rock fell into thegorge during storms on one winter’s night,happily killing nobody but leaving bouldersall over the road ‘in picturesque confusion’.The accident strengthened calls for allquarrying to stop, and for the cliffs to bepreserved for future generations but thatwas only achieved in 1910 when the NationalTrust bought out the mineral company5.

What all this helps to remind us of then, isthat the attitude of the public to the ‘naturalwonders’ of the British Isles has a less thanstraightforward history. The bank holidaycrowds that make their way throughCheddar Gorge today to congregate amongstthe ice-cream and trinket shops at thesouthern end are a relatively modernphenomenon. Tourism, we might recall, has afascinating history; something to think aboutperhaps next time you find yourself stuck inan Easter Monday traffic jam on the Mendip Hills.

Britain’s Finest Natural Wonders will bebroadcast on Channel 5 at a later date.

1 John Collinson, The History and Antiquities ofthe County of Somerset (1793), pp. 573-4.

2 Quoted in V. Waite, ‘Something must be donefor Cheddar’ in A. W. Coysh, E. J. Mason and V.Waite (eds), The Mendips (London 1954), pp.95-104.

3 The Times, 26 November 18264 The Times, 6 November 18415 The Times, 16 July 1896, 26 December 1903,

6 February 1906, 23 July 1910.

A charabanc outingfrom Coleford aboutto set off forCheddar, c.1920. Oneof the partyremembers theimpact as they drovethrough the Gorge,‘Of course, in thosedays you’d neverseen anything like itin your life. One oldlady said, ‘stop it,stop it!’ to the mandriving and he said,‘What for missus?’She said, ‘I don’t likeit down here, it isn’tsafe!’ So he stoppedthe coach and shewalked down…’Reprinted withpermission from‘Coleford as t’were:Memories ofColeford, Somersetfrom 1900-45’(Coleford OralHistory Group, 2000).

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Andy Worthington, Stonehenge: Celebrationand Subversion, (Alternative Albion, June2004), paperback 290pp £14.95. ISNB 1 872883 76 1

If the official book is an enthusiast’s accountby a professional, then this next book couldbe considered a professional account by anenthusiast. Stonehenge: Celebration andSubversion is a vibrant account propelled bya lively but easy read, and the subject tackledby Andy Worthington is one on whichhistories emanating from the site haveremained silent.

Reading this book after focusing on themedium of photography, it was surprisinghow challenging this account is to the officialhistory just through what is presented in thevisual. Worthington’s written account couldstand alone and offers very much more thanits supporting illustrations, but that thesebooks arise from opposing views is no moreobvious than in the photographs. Acomparison on this basis is furtherencouraged, as surprisingly the number ofimages included in support of the text ofCelebration and Subversion are in excess ofthat included in the photographic history.

Evidently one of the differences behind thetwo sets of images, beyond the standpoint ofeach author and respective publishers,extends from the official professional andunofficial bystander nature of thephotographers. Beyond the obvious contrastregarding confrontation, in Worthington’sbook there are clothes-abandoned peopledancing, bathing, and performing choresseemingly unaware of the camera or thepeople around them. This draws attention tothe stance of the photographs in the officialhistory that, aside the smiley womensheltering under stone 60, by comparisonappear somewhat staged and posed.Worthington’s book includes many happysmiling people and spontaneous laughter,where in all the photographs included offestival gatherers in the official history itappears no-one is smiling, and other thanMorris dancers, two workers saying ‘cheese’,VIPs on walkabout and the Stone 60 women,it was as if there were few smiles about.

The history of celebration and subversionmay not appeal to some sections of society,to whom I would say the story appears not atall dislocated when viewed from outside the

barbed wire. This account also makes plainthat there are two ingredients you will beunlikely to find in any official guide - aquestioning attitude and an outside view ofofficialdom. To criticise this book would belike John Mills complaining about the lagerin J Lee Thompson’s Ice Cold in Alex (1958).A champagne Celebration it isn’t, but it isjust what was required and provedmemorably satisfying.

Mark Gillings and Joshua Pollard, Avebury,(Duckworth 2004), paperback 212pp, £16.99.ISBN 0 7156 3240 X

Gillings and Pollard, are two of the directorsof the Negotiating Avebury Project who havedone much to keep the public informed oftheir work. From guided tours of the digsthrough to comprehensive website pagesthat include interim reports(http://www.arch.soton.ac.uk/Research/Avebury/), they also give talks in village and townhalls, and publish accessible as well aslearned texts. Their dedication to publichistory is reflected in Avebury, one of theparticular plus points of which is the numberof pages reflecting the history of the sitematching the number dedicated toprehistory. This book incorporates evidencefrom recent research, but more importantlydiscusses traditional interpretations andresultant understandings in relation to thesite. This book was written to be read byanyone, and it provides as good a start tothe history of this site as it does anextension.

Rosamund Cleal and Joshua Pollard (editors),Monuments and Material Culture: papers inhonour of an Avebury archaeologist – IsobelSmith, (Hobnob Press 2004) £25. ISBN 0 946418 19 5

Amongst so many fascinating and usefulpapers in this book for broader interest,worth reading are ‘East of Avebury: ancientfields in a local context’ by Peter Fowler, and‘Monuments that made the World:performing the henge’ by Aaron Watson.Bruce Eagles and David Field also supplymuch insight in ‘William Cunnington and theLong Barrows of the River Wylye’. Anyoneinterested by ‘Changing Avebury’, asappeared in 3rd Stone 47 (2003) andreprinted in the previous edition of RegionalHistorian 12 (Autumn 2004), will beinterested in a very good paper in this book

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Julian Richards, Stonehenge: A Photographic History, (English Heritage August 2004), hardback 240pp £17.99. ISBN 1 85074 895 0

Julian Richards is a highly respectedarchaeologist and widely appreciatedpresenter, and the majority that buyStonehenge: a history in photographs willprobably be very pleased with this wellproduced overview that provides them with aphotographic spread covering the last 150years. As a memento of a heritage visit itpresents good value and on a broader basismany of the photographs will be of interestto those that have not seen them before, butin terms of being an official history whatproves most interesting is what is notincluded.

Many of the photographs selected torepresent this history are as expected: theearliest known, the first and others from theair, some early turnstiles, the approach byroad from the east in the 1930s, and Druidsand festivals are featured in an accessibleofficial history of the site for the first time. Aphotograph of the protest at the fencing ofthe monument in 1901 is also included, andthere is an interesting sequence starting withan enigmatic shot of women shelteringunder Stone 60 in 1958. The same stone isthen shown a year later being shuttered inorder to fill that particular hideaway withconcrete, then the opposite page displays athird shot in the sequence of the resultingfilled-in stone. Of the unexpected, sevenphotographs featuring graffiti, all but one ofwhich were large and spread over five pages,more than reminded and went beyondmaking a point. The book includes oneparticularly amazing photograph, taken byLes Wilson of Lebaya Ol Dinyo Laetoli ofTanzania amongst the stones at the winter

solstice, but outstanding in quite anothersense is an apotheosised mug-shot ofProfessor Richard Atkinson ‘in pensive mood’.Whilst Atkinson is of course important to thehistory of Stonehenge he is identified in anumber of other photographs, and given thelimitation on the total number of images inthe book there are other inclusions thatwould have been preferable. What shouldhave filled this page is immediately to hand,as the portrait overwhelms a photograph ofthe restoration in 1964.

This photographic history was an idealopportunity for English Heritage to make therestoration story readily accessible andunderstood, but sadly whilst it does indeedfeature, the extent and level of interferencehave not been made obvious. A sequencesimilar to those featuring Stone 60, couldeasily have been included. An example wouldbe a staged sequence of the restoration of1901, from which the height and protrudingtenon of the former leaning stone came todominate the site. Not only is this interestingfrom the viewpoint of public history, it isimportant to make such contrasts plainbecause Stonehenge’s time elapsed state andiconographic character was utterlytransformed by the restorations, and unlessmade evident the public remain misled as tothe historic state of the monument. In 1901,a local vicar stated that the future wouldremain confused about the past unless therestorations were made plain on aninformation plaque. A century on, and giventhe incredible range of photographsavailable to official sources, it isdisappointing that more wasn’t made of thisopportunity.

Prior to restoration Stonehenge had a wildroughness that visitors could ‘feel’. It wasevident to even the casual Stonehenge visitorthrough the unevenness of the stone setting,the bumpiness of the soil, and thejaggedness around the footings. The site isnow kept in trim and having robbedStonehenge of its natural time honouredobjectivity, the twentieth-centurytransformed it into a modern manufacturedand manicured exhibition. The EnglishHeritage photographic history does notdetract from this state, and this is perhapsthe crux betwixt official and unofficialhistories. The former attempts to smooth andtuck away rough edges, whereas unofficialhistory exists because of them.

Book reviews

Book reviews

Official and not Unofficial Stone StoriesBrian Edwards looks at recent books on Avebury and Stonehenge

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importance and there are strong indications,too, of a powerful anti-government factionoperating in the town. This is not toodifficult to explain. Both the crown'sfinancial demands in the l450s and Bristol'sworsening economic prospects (resulting, inpart, from Lancastrianmilitary failures) werehardly likely to inspireloyalty to Lancaster;Richard Neville, earl ofWarwick, a successfulnaval commander andincreasingly prominentYorkist, had lands inthe vicinity; and thereseems to have beenno love lost betweenBristol and Henry VI’sformidable queen,Margaret of Anjou.

Soon after seizingthe throne in1461, the newYorkist kingEdward IV visitedBristol, perhaps out of realgratitude for the town's role in his success.Yet, within a decade, a significant proportionof its ruling elite had become implicated inmounting Lancastrian resistance and,apparently, accepted Henry VI's restorationto the throne without demur. Why? PerhapsEdward IV had promised more than he coulddeliver to Bristol’s mercantile community; theking's preference for a Burgundian ratherthan French alliance hardly suited its bestinterests; and, most importantly, onceWarwick the Kingmaker fell out with Edwardin the later l460s, his consistent championingof a pro-French policy (much morefavourable to Bristol's trading interests) maywell have proved pivotal in explaining thetown’s acquiescence in the short-livedreademption of Lancaster, in 1470/1. As aresult, however, Bristol found itself at thecentre of the Lancastrian regime’s last gaspin 1471: a contingent from the town foughtfor Margaret of Anjou at Tewkesbury;Edward IV won the battle and regained histhrone; and, perhaps, Bristol’s political elitewas fortunate not to suffer more than it didby way of retribution. Instead, the townreceived an early pardon in January 1472,maybe because of the ‘good lordship’ of theking’s brother George Duke of Clarence. Inthe sense that the Wars of the Roses weredynastic struggles between the houses of

Lancaster and York, moreover, they werenow at an end.

Throughout the wars, Peter Flemingconcludes, the main determinant of Bristol’spolitical behaviour had probably beeneconomic; calculation rather than consciencehad, as likely as not, explained why men

reacted as they did to the turbulentevents of these decades; and, inthis, Bristolians seem to have-beenno different to most people infifteenth-century England. He mustsurely be right.

Keith Dockray

Sue Hardiman, The 1832 CholeraEpidemic and its Impact on the City ofBristol (Bristol Branch of the HistoricalAssociation Pamphlet, 2005) ISSN 13627759 £2.50

The European cholera epidemics werelargely the product of empire. Soldiersand traders carried it from its Asianhomelands. The disease reached Englandin 1831. Informed observers had tracked its

progress across continental Europe, butbeing forewarned was not to be forearmed.The disease was not properly understooduntil much later in the century, andignorance combined with the appalling stateof public health - crucially with regard towater supplies and sewerage, the primarymeans of transmission, and particularly inworking-class urban areas - left fewdefences. Bristol was especially vulnerable; itwas, as one visitor noted in 1830, ‘a vast anddirty city’, its poor huddled into filthy hovelswithout access to clean water. The city’s tworivers, the Frome and the Avon, togetherwith the Cut, were little better than opensewers. The first Bristol case was reported inJuly 1832 and the epidemic lasted untilNovember. This was not to be the end, andcholera returned to Bristol’s streetsintermittently, but as the century progressedlessons were learnt, thanks in part to thework of a Bristol doctor, William Budd, whoargued the case nationally for clean watersupplies and effective sewerage, and theseverity of the attacks diminished. WhileBristol was slow to respond, by the 1860s itspublic health reforms had made it a modelfor action in other cities, and the choleraoutbreaks of that decade made relativelylittle impact.

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by Rick Peterson with Josh Pollard and MarkGillings: ‘Destruction of the AveburyMonuments’.

Christopher Chippindale, StonehengeComplete, (Thames and Hudson 2004),paperback 312 pp £12.95. ISBN 0 500 28467 9

First published in 1983, this new andexpanded edition of this classic is worthevery penny of the cover price.

Other ReviewsTony Scrase, Somerset Towns:Changing Fortunes, 800-1800 (Tempus, 2005) ISBN 0-7524-3423-3 £17.99

For those with a serious interest in thehistorical geography of the South West, andparticularly of Wells, Tony Scrase needs nointroduction, despite the fact that much ofhis work has been published as UWE workingpapers or journal articles. However, this, andhis 1999 book, Streets and Market Places inSouth West England: Encroachments andImprovements (Edwin Mellen Press), shouldbring him a still wider audience. That bookexamined the development of streets andopen spaces, with particular reference toBath and Wells, and offered a critique of thecommon public-private space dichotomy. Thisbook shifts the focus from that relatively'micro' level to take in the urbandevelopment of an entire county, while atthe same time drawing comparisons withother counties within and without theregion. Over a period of a thousand years,Tony Scrase charts the contrasting fortunes ofSomerset towns, drawing heavily on taxationrecords to do so. Somerset is an intriguingchoice for such an exercise, since, while it hasan unusually large number of towns -depending on one’s definition of the term,an issue carefully explored in this work -none of these are of any great size: none ofits largest - Taunton, Bath, Frome,Bridgwater, Shepton Mallet, Yeovil or Wells -would be classed as cities on any other basisthan being cathedral towns, and are easilydwarfed by Bristol. The presence of the‘Metropolis of the West’ is one of the factorsconsidered as a possible explanation for thissituation, and while it is concluded thatBristol probably has had an inhibiting effecton urban growth in the north of the county,

its influence further south is harder tomeasure. Landscape is another obvious factorgiven its due weight, but others, both lessobvious and more thought-provoking, aresuggested. The large number of royal manorsmay have been a factor in the proliferationof towns, as may the efforts at townfoundation by local lords - including thebishops of Bath and Wells; trade cycles, warand natural disasters are also discussed. Thestory is complex, and this book demonstratesthat urban development is often not a simplelinear process: prosperity, and sometimestowns themselves, come and go. It alsodemonstrates the value of taking the longview. The dispersal of urban functions, andhence the nature of settlement in present-day Somerset, is attributed to developmentsbefore the Conquest: ‘Ethelred II is probablylargely responsible for the situation inSomerset’, a factor probably not mentionedin current media discussion of the reasons forthe recent Lib-Dem takeover of the county!

Peter Fleming

Peter Fleming, Bristol and the Wars of theRoses, 1451-1471 (Bristol Branch of theHistorical Association, 2005), ISSN 1362 7759,£3.00

Previously, in the splendid series of localhistory pamphlets published by the Bristolbranch of the Historical Association, PeterFleming has written about women in latermedieval Bristol (pamphlet 103) and Bristolcastle (110). Now he has turned his attentionto the town's role in the Wars of the Roses(113), a subject on which he has unrivalledknowledge. Source material is sparse,unfortunately, but Fleming certainly makesthe most of what there is, including hithertounfamiliar evidence to be found in both theBristol Record Office and the NationalArchives at Kew.

Traditionally, the first battle of St. Albans inMay 1455 is regarded as the beginning of theWars of the Roses. It was a Yorkist victoryand, by then, several members of Bristol'sruling elite had already begun to showenthusiastic support for Richard of York (whoheld substantial estates nearby) and hismounting criticisms of Henry VI’s Lancastriangovernment. When civil war erupted with avengeance between 1459 and 1461, theYorkists clearly recognised Bristol's strategic

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defensive measures taken against graverobbers (bodies were regularly snatched formedical dissection) and on oddities such asthe tomb of Thomas Humpage, who died in1938; he was an engineer, and his tomb isadorned with pipework, complete with bolts,faithfully rendered in stone. Another, that ofa navy cook who died shortly after 1918,declares, ‘We have whacked the Huns’! WhileArnos Vale cannot compete with Highgate orPere Lachaise for celebrity occupants - evenits most famous burials would come someway behind Marx and Jim Morrison in anytest of public recognition - it still has its shareof memorials to the local great and good:Drs John Addington Symonds and WilliamBudd (for whom, once again, see SueHardiman’s pamphlet); Mary Carpenter andGeorge Muller, social reformers, and, from avery different milieu, Raja Ram Mohun Roy,the Bengali reformer and writer.

Peter Fleming

Helen Reid, Bristol Under Siege: Survivingthe Wartime Blitz. (Bristol: Redcliffe Press2005) ISBN 1 904537 25 1 £8.95

From June 1940 until April 1941 Bristolsuffered from saturation bombing at regularintervals and was the fourth most bombedcity in Britain. Bristol’s Blitz is far less wellknown, however, than that of London andLiverpool. Helen Reid’s book seeks to redressthe balance by exploring in detail the waysin which Bristolians coped for almost a yearwith the constant air raids. Drawing onpersonal testimony written at the time indiaries, Mass Observation surveys ornewspapers and on oral interviews recordedover fifty years later she provides graphicdescriptions of the destruction of buildings,physical privations endured by thepopulation and the varied emotionalreactions of those affected. Photographstaken by the Bristol photo-journalist JimFacey provide an added dimension to ourunderstanding of the ways in which the Blitzwas experienced. For the most part thechapters are organized chronologically, buttwo, ‘Morale’ and ‘Heroes- and Cowards?’,explore a particular theme. These areperhaps the most challenging parts of thebook since they raise questions about theconventional wisdom that everyone pulledtogether during the Blitz and demonstratethat reactions varied from fear and

defeatism to bravery and self sacrifice. Aninteresting point is made that MassObservation’s special investigation teamfound that Bristol was suffering from poormorale and unimaginative leadership andthat Bristolians were coping less well thanother parts of the country. No satisfactoryexplanation for this was given.

The strength of the book lie in the wealth ofdetail about the different ways in which menand women experienced the Blitz andreacted to it, and in particular thepsychological and social consequences of thebombing. I was less convinced by the use ofthe term siege and the comparisons madewith Leningrad, since Bristolians were not cutoff from food supplies or access to theoutside world. It would have also been usefulto have had further comparisons with otherBritish cities and an analysis of how best touse different types of personal testimony.Nonetheless, this is an accessible book withplenty of interest for the general reader andfor students. It provides a starting point foranyone interested in the way in which a localstudy can enhance our understanding of therelationship between war and social changeand in particular the myths that havedeveloped around the spirit of the Blitz.

June Hannam

John Lyes, Bristol, 1934-1939 (Bristol Branchof the Historical Association Pamphlet, 2004)ISSN 1362 7759 £3.00

This is the fifth in John Lyes’ series ofpamphlets chronicling events in Bristol from1901 to 1939, inspired by the Victorian JohnLatimer’s Annals, which charted Bristol’shistory from the Middle Ages to his present.Those familiar with Latimer’s works, or withthe previous pamphlets in this series, willknow what to expect: a chronological listingof events in the public life of the city. Thus,for January 1935 we have, successively,notices of the Medical Officer of Health’stestimony on cancer deaths, the amount ofunpaid overtime worked by Council clericalstaff, the visit of the Belgian ambassador, alecture given by Winston Churchill, and anincident in the County Court where thejudge rebuked a female witness for notwearing a hat. There is no interpretation ordiscussion, just ‘facts’, unsorted, presented inthe order in which they occurred. Now, there

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Sue Hardiman’s pamphlet began life as adissertation written as part of her MA degreeat the University of the West of England.Dissertations, unfairly or not, may have the

reputation of being dull and stodgy -‘solid’ is the euphemistic epithetoften ascribed to them - but this iscertainly not the case with thiswork. After explaining thebackground, in terms of thenature of the disease, its originsand contemporaryunderstanding, the authorpresents a vivid and at timesshocking picture of the Bristolepidemic. There are severalstriking vignettes, such as themob attacking the funeralprocession of a choleravictim, believing that hewas about to be buriedalive (cholera, we aretold, can induce a statehard to distinguish from

death, from which some mayhave awoken in their graves). Against the

general picture, there are grimly fascinatingdetailed accounts of cholera ‘hot spots’, suchas St Peter’s Hospital, the gaol, and St JamesBarton, whose annual fair was cancelledamid debates that reached as far as thePrime Minister. Good use is made of localnewspapers of the period, together with arange of other documents. The Bristolexperience is presented in the contexts oflocal initiatives - such as the establishment ofArnos Vale cemetery and the local board ofhealth - as well as national and internationaldevelopments. While it is a pity that a clearerindication of the scale of the 1832 mortalitycould not have been given, this is still acompelling and very useful account of thisgrim episode in Bristol’s nineteenth-centuryhistory. It is also a work that inevitablysuggests parallels with our present century:when reading of the hysteria, ignorance andfatalism (middle-class altruists distributingprayer tracts rather than clean water or foodto the afflicted poor) that attended theepidemic of 1831-2 it is impossible not toreflect upon modern attitudes towardsHIV/AIDS.(Bristol HA pamphlets can be purchased fromPeter Harris, 74 Bell Barn Rd, Bristol BS9 2DG;please add 35p postage for one pamphletand 15p for each additional one.)

Peter Fleming

Barb Drummond, The New Eden: An Introduction to Arnos Vale Cemetery,Bristol (2005), available from the author, atPO Box 2460 Bristol BS3 9WP, £5 + SAE.

Arnos Vale owes its origins in part to thepressing necessities of nineteenth-centurypopulation growth and urbanisation: inshort, the parish churchyards were full, andthe death toll resulting from epidemics, suchas the cholera of 1831-2 (see the review ofSue Hardiman’s pamphlet in this issue)pushed the situation to crisis point. ArnosVale was opened in 1839. However, it wasalso the product of changing fashion. It canbe seen as an Anglicised version of thepioneer cemetery of Pere Lachaise in Paris,itself modelled on the English landscapegarden, and which in 1813 inspired thecomment, ‘For the home of death hasbecome the new Eden’. As Barb Drummondpoints out, high burial fees (as insisted uponby the Anglican Bishop Monk) meant that itwas only from the 1850s, when the bulk ofthe city’s other burial sites were closed, thatArnos Vale began to develop into anecropolis on the scale of its Frenchprototype, or indeed, of Highgate. Increasingpressure on space inevitably changed itscharacter, and the original conception, oftombs standing in splendid isolation besidesinuous paths winding between judiciouslyplanted oaks and poplars, was replaced byregimented graves and ‘municipal planting’.As if in reaction to this, grave plots becameincreasingly ‘suburban’ in character, withtight little fences and trim, self-containedgardens. The cemetery today has been thesubject of much controversy, and, prone totheft and vandalism of various kinds, it mightbe described as exhibiting faded glory. Evenso, it is still a peaceful enclave, and a havenfor wildlife. Following its take over by BristolCity Council in 2003 a charitable trust wasestablished to maintain and repair it, andsome of the profits from the sale of thispamphlet go towards this worthy cause.

Barb Drummond’s introduction will proveinvaluable to those tempted to explore thisintriguing survival. In addition to its history,she provides a guide to the architecture andbuilding materials of its tombs, and noticesof some of the more notable individuals whofound their last resting place there. Noteveryone may think tomb architecture aparticularly engaging subject, but one cannotfail to be diverted by passages on the

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Port Histories:British Society and Maritime CultureAnnual Conference of the Regional History Centre,University of the West of England, Bristol

Saturday September 17th 2005St Matthias Campus, UWEFor further details see RHC webpages

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Letters

PostbagEnglish broadcloth

are doubtless many, particularly professionalhistorians, who deplore such an approach asan uncritical regurgitation of the ‘mere drossof history’; but there are many others -probably outnumbering the doubters - whowill find this pamphlet hugely enjoyable, andthat enjoyment will result from the very‘deficiencies’ just listed. Whether or not thisis ‘History’, this work is stuffed full ofintriguing anecdotal snippets. For instance,there is the meeting, at Redland in 1935,calling for the abolition of all blood ‘sports’,whose speakers were drowned out by thebaying, catcalls and, finally, fireworksemanating from the pro-hunting lobby; in1938 four shoplifters from Knowle West wereconvicted on the evidence of a detectiveconstable who had improvised theforerunner to CCTV, in the form of an eight

foot ladder and a spy hole the size of asixpence bored into the wall of aRedcliffe Hill shop; and the licensee ofthe White Horse Hotel prosecuted forallowing bagatelle to be played on aSunday. Given the period, there arealso many local echoes of ominousevents on the wider stage: Moseley’sFascist boot boys on the march, andthe demagogue himself addressingthe Bristol Round Table; SirStafford Cripps, MP for BristolEast, expelled from the Labourparty for supporting the anti-warmovement. As war loomed,Bristolians’ reactions rangedfrom prayer to taking deliveryof air raid shelters, but life -that is, what with hindsightlooks like an endless cycle of

trivia - went on: on 12 September 1939the same Council meeting that noted thedeclaration of war and the measures takenby the Emergency Committee also noted withapproval that the Prevention of Damage byRabbits Act had received the royal assent.Whatever threats would be posed by theLuftwaffe in the years to come, at least thegood people of Bristol would have the meansto defend themselves against rodents.

Peter Fleming

Dear Editor,

I read the letter printed in RH 11 aboutEnglish Broadcloth with interest, having justmoved to Trowbridge, a former cloth townin Wiltshire. I thought other readers mightlike to know that Wiltshire and SwindonRecord Office contains many records of thecloth industry, including pattern books ofsamples. Trowbridge Museum has aworking loom which reproduces the clothand has just produced a video about it.Ken Rogers, the retired County Archivist isan expert on the West Country woollenindustry and author of several books on it.I followed up the subject with him andfound that he has seen no examples of the‘rainbow selvedges’ mentioned in TomLeonard’s letter in local weaving, andsuggested that the cloth from this regionwas possibly too expensive for bulk-export.However, he is happy to help with furtherenquiries and may be contacted via theCounty Record Office.

Yours sincerely,

Dr. Virginia BainbridgeAssistant EditorVictoria County History of WiltshireUniversity of the West of England

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Please return to: Dr Steve Poole, Regional History Centre, St Matthias Campus, University of the West of England, Oldbury Court Rd, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 2JP


10785 RegHistorian_issue13 - University of the West of England

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Transcript of 10785 RegHistorian_issue13 - University of the West of England