James Frampton was in fact at the Quarter Sessions at Dorchester when the news came to him, but set off immediately back to Sherborne ‘in full costume’. Tranquillity was eventually restored, although the vicarage of the Revd Mr Parsons was much damaged. Here, according to the Sherborne Journal, ‘the doors were forced, the window-frames torn out, the furniture broken up, hogsheads of beer staved, spirits consumed and wasted, and in fact the most wanton acts of spoliation resorted to’.25 The Revd Parsons, who was an acting magistrate, fared even worse than his house: he was knocked down by the mob, ‘shamefully ill treated’ and only saved by being taken to a neighbour’s, where he lay senseless for some hours. One imagines that it was his attempt to read the Riot Act which provoked this brutality, rather than his role as a member of the Church of England – although the combination of a clergyman and the hated Act was always liable to inflame the populace.
Things were no better in the Midlands. There were riots in Derby on Sunday 9 October and an assault on the gaol to rescue prisoners taken the night before, which failed; one bystander was killed. The next day the Mayor refused permission for a public meeting but set up stalls so the public might organize their petitions to Parliament. Unfortunately matters had gone too far for such peaceful methods: the mob destroyed the stalls and the Riot Act was read. In the ensuing fracas, three more innocent men were killed.26
In Nottingham on 10 October a mob assaulted another castle – this time they were successful in getting inside and burning it down. This was a gleeful development, given that the proprietor was the Ultra Tory and enemy of Reform, the Duke of Newcastle. Several factories were also burnt. On 11 October the magistrates declared the town in a state of insurrections and the Riot Act was read. The Duke himself was not actually there; he admitted that he had to give the manufacturing districts a wide berth: ‘I should either be murdered or raise a riot by appearing.’27 He also accused some of the local magistrates of haranguing the crowds about the Lords and the Bill – in short, of being on the side of the mob rather than of law and order, as they should have been; they had ‘indifferently’ suffered all these things to take place.
In London, where accounts of countrywide violence were not slow in coming in, just as press reports of Parliament were rushed into the provinces, tension in the Government was still further racked up. No one could predict how and when the present effective deadlock would be resolved. On 15 October Sarah, Lady Lyttelton (née Spencer), went to see her brother Althorp: she told their father that he looked ‘fagged and ill’, adding ‘I could fancy myself admitted to the Captain’s cabin on the eve of a hurricane.’ As for her children –‘les petits’ – ironically enough, they had been terrified by crowds shouting and banging on the door of the house; although these were in fact amiable if boisterous salutations from those who admired Lyttelton’s reforming stand.28
Relations between the King and his Prime Minister were clearly entering a delicate stage. The question of creation of peers was so far the unspoken issue between them, although, as the obvious solution to what the Lords had done, it was being widely discussed in both political and Radical circles. John Doyle was not slow to seize upon the subject. In a cartoon issued on 12 October entitled ‘An After Dinner Scene (at Windsor)’ he showed a sinister-looking Brougham, whispering in the King’s ear as he sits with him on a sofa, while the Queen and other ladies and gentlemen are nattering in the background. The bubble of words coming out of Brougham’s mouth tails off with the unfinished phrase: ‘whether in the undoubted exercise of your R–y–l prerogative, you should not. . . .’ William however is stretched out on the sofa fast asleep.29
In real life the King was not able to practise avoidance so easily and was in fact concentrating on establishing his constitutional position (and rights). In correspondence on 17 October – handled as before by Sir Herbert Taylor – William IV chose to quote from Bolingbroke’s The Idea of a Patriot King.30 * This work, originally published in 1738, which had not featured strongly in the concept of kingship in the late eighteenth century, was enjoying a new vogue; it was republished in 1831 after a gap of fifty years (quite apart from being used as the subtitle of that play at the time of the March division on the Reform Bill). It was felt that there was something peculiarly appropriate, even exhilarating in its message with regard to the reign which began in 1830 – or, as Bolingbroke had written, a new King meant a new people.
A royal biography by John Watkins, published in 1831, emphasized the point: ‘What the masterly hand of BOLINGBROKE sketched as an ideal character and a vision of virtuous excellence, this nation happily enjoys in the reign of William IV,’ he wrote.32 It was a flattering picture of a paternalistic monarch, standing above his Ministers in order to put the interests of his people first, and as such calculated to appeal to William’s image of himself, in contrast to that of his late brother.
Now Bolingbroke was brought to the aid of the current crisis: ‘Every new modification in a scheme of government and of national policy was of great importance,’ he had written. Such modifications required more and deeper consideration than ‘the warmth, and hurry, and rashness of party conduct admit’. So the duty of a prince required that he should use his influence to render the proceedings more orderly and more deliberate, even when he actually approved of the objective at which they were aimed. It was an argument for a king as a well-intentioned arbiter rather than the pawn of his Ministers. As Bolingbroke had put it: ‘To espouse no party, but to govern like the common father of his people, is so essential to the character of a Patriot King.’33
Grey replied the same day: ‘In the quotation from Lord Bolingbroke,’ he wrote, ‘with which Your Majesty concludes your gracious letter, Edward Grey readily acknowledges that there is much wisdom,’ but he hoped that the measures he was putting forward, with the approval of his colleagues, were not actually open to the censure of having been urged with the warmth, hurry and rashness of party conduct, in the King’s words. Of course all proceedings should be orderly and deliberate but public opinion should also be taken into account.34 In short, a policy for the restoration of public confidence should be pursued with consistency and firmness.
Back came the King on 18 October.35 While not intending to apply the words of Bolingbroke to Grey himself, he disapproved strongly of a clash between the two Houses of Parliament. And he drew attention to that particular letter from Lord John Russell with its reference to ‘the whisper of faction’ in the Lords, which was causing scandal. That is, if it had been received with delight by Attwood and the Birmingham Political Union to which it was sent, it was condemned angrily by the Tories. Lord Wharncliffe denounced the letter as being ‘subservient’ to the Birmingham Political Union; to which Lord John Russell replied smoothly that he was merely thanking the Chairman of a meeting, said to be of 150,000 people, for his support. It was true that Russell apologized to the King, describing his letter as having been written ‘in the first moments of disappointment’.36 But the phrase summed up the popular revulsion against the Lords’ behaviour, its numerical weakness versus the national will.
The game continued: the Whigs put forward the popular demonstrations, hopefully non-violent, as evidence of the need for Reform, while the Tories exclaimed furiously that such hooligans were not to be trusted with representation in Parliament. The fundamental question was whether a Whig Government could possibly carry any bill in the existing state of the House of Lords, numerically so weighted in favour of the Tories, against its will. Obviously such a situation might have the effect of arousing scepticism about the whole system. The intelligent reforming journalist Albany Fonblanque had written on the day of the Lords’ rejection: ‘A reverence for a hereditary legislature seems properly contemporary with witches and wizards.’37
On 20 October William IV formally prorogued Parliament; in other words he brought the current session to an end, as opposed to dissolving Parliament, which necessitated a General Election, as had happened in March.38 It was, in a sense, a cooling-off
period, or what the King called ‘an interval of repose’, since MPs were able to return to their constituencies (and peers to their country estates). William, surrounded by the Sovereign’s usual entourage on such occasions, came in person to the House of Lords, the Speaker, Lord Althorp and other MPs being present at the bar.
In his speech, the King referred to ‘a session of unexampled duration and labour’ and went on to say that he was sure it was unnecessary for him to recommend to them the ‘most careful attention to the preservation of tranquillity in your respective counties’. He also referred, beyond touching on the various achievements of the session, to ‘the anxiety which has generally been manifested by my people for the accomplishment of a Constitutional Reform’ in the Commons. He trusted that in the future proceedings would be regulated by a due sense of the necessity of order and moderation. Parliament must of course return again to a consideration of this important question at the next session. The King declared that he himself had an ‘unalterable desire to promote its settlement’.
Ten days later the worst and most influential riots so far broke out in the West Country. Whatever the Lords had intended to do, their massive rejection of the Bill had brought about a crisis which not only scaremongers and the professionally pessimistic saw as leading rapidly towards revolution.
William IV by Sir Martin Archer Shee, who came to the throne in July 1830, aged 65.
Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, wife of William IV, who was twenty-seven years his junior.
Mary Countess Grey with two of her daughters; Lord and Lady Grey believed in the education of daughters as well as sons.
Charles 2nd Earl Grey; his aristocrat appearance and demeanour made a marked impression on all his contemporaries, whether friends or foes.
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington: the Hero of the Nation. Prime Minister at the accession of William IV in 1830.
Sir Robert Peel: the Tory Leader of the House of Commons during the period of the Reform Bill.
Old Sarum by John Constable: the famous ‘green mound’ which was represented in Parliament by two MPs, despite a total lack of inhabitants; it became a symbol of the corruption of the old electoral system.
High-street market, Birmingham; this bustling scene represents the extraordinary growth in the city’s population although in 1830 Birmingham had no MPs.
Thomas Attwood, founder of the Birmingham Political Union, and a charismatic orator in the cause of Reform.
Captain Swing, c. December 1830, the mythical figure said to be behind the agricultural riots, made out of the materials for arson, including ‘portable gas’, gunpowder, pitch and tar, with lighted matches for fingers. The body is a corn-stack and the head a sheaf of corn.
Cartoon showing Henry Hunt, the radical politician and MP for Preston, firing shoe-blacking at his opponents; this played on the fact that Hunt tried to sell shoe-blacking among other products to restore his fortunes.
Lord John Russell, nicknamed ‘Lord John Reformer’ by Sydney Smith, and Lord Holland; both prominent Whigs.
Lord and Lady Holland in the library at Holland House; Macaulay compared the imperious Lady Holland to Queen Elizabeth I.
William Cobbett, the Radical; etching by Daniel Maclise, 1835, when he was in his seventies.
Thomas Babington Macaulay at the time of his election for Leeds, aged 32; he dominated by his brilliance, not his appearance—Sydney Smith called him ‘a book in breeches’.
Lord Brougham mutters, out of hearing of the Court ladies and gentlemen, that ‘for various and manifold reasons’ the King may need to create new peers by the exercise of his royal prerogative; William IV slumbers.
William IV asks, ‘Does that mean me?’ when he sees the words ‘Reform Bill!’ on the wall. This play upon his nickname delighted contemporaries.
A view of the interior of the House of Commons, 1821.
A cartoon in favour of Reform, showing a tree being cut down, with ‘nests’ on its branches which represent the rotten boroughs; May 1831. Brougham, in wig and gown with an axe, is prominent in the foreground.
Bristol was the scene of riots over three days in October 1831, in which the centre of the city was set on fire. A number of people, including rioters, perished; subsequently many rioters were hung or transported abroad.
A cartoon of the storming of Apsley House (home of the Duke of Wellington) by rioters in favour of Reform. The Duke of Wellington, supported by a Bishop in a mitre, has his arms extended as he repels them; the rioters flourish tricoloured flags in reference to the French Revolution.
John Doyle caricatures the Duke of Wellington, in a bonnet as Dame Partington, who thought she could sweep back the Atlantic Ocean with her housewife’s mop; 1831.
A fearful William IV looks out of The Reform coach while a series of politicians comment; O’Connell wishes ‘I could set up such a Coach in Old Ireland’; Wellington, outside the coach, remonstrates: ‘You are pretty felons to throw away your drag chain when you ought to have your wheels locked’ while the Whigs rejoice: ‘We’ll make you a present of it old Boy, we want no drags nor clogs of any sort upon our wheels.’
Satirical print of King William IV as ‘the dog Billy’ being led astray by ‘a German b----’; one of the many attacks on Queen Adelaide, focussing on her German origin.
A banner of the Shoemakers celebrating the passing of the Great Reform Bill; St Crispin was the patron saint of the Shoemakers.
William IV depicted by John Doyle as John Gilpin on a runaway horse. John Bull cries out: ‘Go to it my Lads never mind the Turnpike’. Other spectators exclaim in distress (‘Don’t you know your old friends’) or encouragement (‘Go along never mind the Geese and old women!’). Lord Grey wields a hat on the far right. Behind him a man exclaims: ‘I think the Grey is evidently running away with him.’
Villagers rejoice at the passing of the Reform Bill, Scorton Green, North Yorkshire.
The banquet given in the Guildhall, 7 July 1832, to celebrate the passing of the Bill. Lord Grey is on his feet, speaking.
A memento of the Great Public Question of Reform: William IV is in the centre, surrounded by politicians, with Britannia below (right).
* This was an early version of the so-called Bedchamber Crisis which would plague the young Queen Victoria; once again the personal predilection of a royal personage clashed with the notion of official responsibility. But Victoria was of course a Queen Regnant, whereas Adelaide was only a Queen Consort.
* The point has been made that of the Hanoverian monarchs William IV was probably the only one who actually read The Idea of a Patriot King.31
CHAPTER TEN
A SCENE OF DESOLATION
‘Then away to Bristol he quickly walked
T’indulge in meditation
And he gaily laughed as he slowly stalked
O’er a scene of desolation’ –
Charles Dickens, ‘The Devil’s Walk’, November 1831
On Saturday 29 October, nine days after the prorogation of Parliament, the lawyer Sir Charles Wetherell, in his judicial capacity as Recorder of Bristol, set out for the West Country to perform his official functions. Later there were many found to assert that the presence of such a notorious Ultra Tory – remembering his fulmination about ‘a dose of Russell’s Purge’ in the House of Commons in March – was provocative. Bristol was not a naturally pliant city: there had been riots in 1793 over the removal of houses for an access road to a new bridge in which eleven people were killed. In fairness to Wetherell, one of the MPs for Bristol, the young Whig Edward Protheroe, held a different view. Descended from a prominent Bristol family of merchants and bankers, he believed that his own solid support for the subject of Reform had not so much allayed the local fever as calmed the inhabitants.1
Wetherell was speedily undeceived about the state of Bristol. Even before he reached the city itself, he was greeted by hostile demonstrators among whom, it was remarked, ‘not a few were women of abandoned character, whose violent language seemed well fitt
ed to urge on the desperate population’. He entered Bristol at eleven o’clock in the morning escorted by a large force of special constables and police. He found himself immediately ‘amid the groans, hisses and execrations of thousands’. At Temple Street, his carriage was showered with stones and rotten eggs; the unfortunate Wetherell was ‘screwed up in one corner’ with an air of complete terror on his face. At the Bristol Bridge, large stones were flung; one policeman was struck and fell to the ground, apparently dead. All the time, the loud and continuous groaning of the crowd was ‘enough to shake the stoutest heart’. When Wetherell’s presence was made known, a huge and menacing group gathered round his lodging at the Mansion House. Then they proceeded to attack, not with guns but with bars, stones and sheer physical force – and, of course, fire, the undiscriminating weapon of the mob down the ages. Gradually, a change occurred in the personnel of the attack: what had been a body of working men and artisans turned into something manned by what a contemporary called ‘the lower grades of society’, some dressed in smocks, others in ‘generally mean attire’.2
There was another interesting social contrast when some of the shopkeepers who went to chase their stolen goods penetrated the quarters inhabited by the Irish labourers: hitherto a world away from their comfortable lives – if not literally so. An accumulation of dirt a foot deep was reported, including dead cats, dogs and rabbits, pig dung and pools of stagnant water containing rotting vegetables. At least 100 houses were burnt including the Bishop’s Palace, the toll house, the excise house, the customs house and three prisons. (Charles Kingsley, the celebrated Victorian novelist, then a schoolboy in Clifton, remembered for the rest of his life the devastation, including charred corpses, in Queen Square.)3 The Mansion House itself was sacked before being burnt and Wetherell himself only escaped, like some Mozartian character, by dressing as a postilion and fleeing over the roof. When the cooks were driven out of the kitchen the feast they had prepared was left behind; so the rioters were able to enjoy turtle soup, turkeys and joints of venison, an interesting variation on their usual meagre diet. Other rioters, enjoying the involuntary hospitality of the Mansion House and elsewhere, were not so lucky: many fell to the ground blind drunk and were consumed by the fire they had created.