Local Government in Gloucestershire 1775-1800
A Study of the Justices of the Peace
Esther Moir 1969
Sometimes we can let the text and the tone speak for themselves:
‘Potatoes were found throughout the county for they were beginning to form a staple item in the diet of the workers. But there was a special concentration in the south of the county where the demands of Bristol led to a steady expansion of their cultivation. Similarly with peas and beans, which were used as provender in the Bristol inns or as food for the negroes in the Guinea ships making the passage from Africa to the West Indies.’
Now on to Enclosure:
There were only three enclosure acts passed ‘affecting Gloucestershire parishes’ between 1700 and 1750 but ‘on only three occasions between 1760 and 1830 was there an interval of as much as three years without the passing of a single Act.’ Sometimes, five or six a year were passed: ‘It is impossible to estimate exactly the area finally enclosed, but it may well have amounted to one fifth of the total of the county, and it was certainly not less than 12,000 acres.’
And the commentary:
‘With enclosure came a general improvement in agricultural methods … drainage … rotation of crops … In 1794 Turner estimated that rents on the Cotswolds were doubled … Thomas Rudge in 1807 commented on the great increase in rents and crops in the vale following enclosure … in fact even without the stimulus of enclosure the county had been attempting to improve the slovenly methods which had drawn forth such scorn from agricultural writers.’
The Stroudwater Canal
‘With handsome mills the craggy dell doth teem,
Where engines work by water and by steam,
High on the mountain cliffs, large houses stand,
Appearing awful, yet secure and grand;
The poor mechanic, from his low built cot,
Looks up, contented with his humble lot.’
W. Lawrence Stroudwater, A Poem, 1824
The Picturesque! The Cult of the Sublime! The poetic licence! The Toryism!
The Lower Orders
‘The spontaneous rioting which marks these years reflects the economic distress of the workers, their protests, whatever their outward form (the workers in the cloth industry for example always protested against the introduction of machinery) must be seen as an attempt to draw attention to the hardship they suffered in times of high prices and food shortage. The years 1756 and 1802-6 saw really bitter struggles between masters and men in the Stroud Valley. 1795 was a year of widespread disturbance throughout the county. These were only the more dramatic reminders of the unrest smouldering beneath the surface. When harvests were bad and grain scarce the poor simply took the law into their own hands, attacking houses and intimidating farmers, seizing barges laden with corn, selling bread belonging to millers and bakers at reduced prices. On such occasions the powers of the Justices had to be reinforced by the military.’
High Society
At the top: absentee aristocracy; followed by local county resident aristocracy … ‘Three great families, however, have dominated the Gloucestershire scene: Berkeleys, Beauforts and Bathursts. Most illustrious … were the Berkeleys … Their wealth came mainly from landed property, although both the first earl and his son had been connected with the East India and the Levant companies … The Bathursts played a more active political role than either the Berkeleys or the Beauforts.’
The Clothiers
‘At any time of crisis in the industry the clothiers never failed to present a united front … a habit which can be traced back to the early eighteenth century of concerted action in any emergency. In 1727, when the weavers had been rioting and threatening anyone who worked for lower wages, thirty clothiers had engaged “by all lawfull ways and means to discountenance and suppress the said riotous and unlawful Assembly” and decreed that any of their number who paid increased wages should forfeit £100. In 1756 the Parliamentary committee which considered the petition of the weavers about wages was forced to recognise that they had been at the mercy of their masters who had “entered into an Association not to pay by that order”.
The Landscape
‘As he travelled the length and breadth of the county collecting materials for his history, Rudder found widespread rebuilding and improvement and he laying out of parks and gardens. Allen, the first Lord Bathurst, had led the way at the beginning of the century, and the grounds of Cirencester Park remained unrivalled. But before long others were following his example. The Codringtons employed James Wyatt at Dodington, and John Nash built the fantastic Blaise Hamlet for the Harfords. Some were devotees of the romantic movement: at Newland, Charles Wyndham “has a very handsome house, built by his father in the Gothic stile, with a large estate and fine plantations”, and at Addlestrop Rudder found James Leigh “hath greatly repaired and enlarged the old family seat in the Gothick taste”.
The style chosen by the clothiers varied while Gatcombe Park, built by Edward Sheppard was severely classical, a well-proportioned and spacious house, his neighbour, George Hawker, with a great show of spirit erected a folly, the Fort – a “pleasure house” as Rudder called it – standing high on Rodborough Hill. But, Rudder complained, many of the seats “ in
complaisance with the taste of the present age are left by their owners for the greater part of the year, to partake more of the pleasures of the metropolis, and other places of public entertainment.”’
High Society Again
Now there was Bath as well as Cheltenham: ‘The lists published in the pages of the Gloucester Journal of visitors to Cheltenham record its growing popularity after the visit of George the Third and Queen Charlotte in 1788. Here the small country squire or prosperous clothier would rub shoulders with the elite of London society and would try to talk of finer things than crops or the prospects of the East India Company markets. A few undoubtedly went to extremes. George Augustus Selwyn, the London wit, was amused at the sight of a nouveau-riche clothier trying to cut the dash at Bath: “Sir Onesiphorous Paul and his lady are the finest couple that has ever been seen here since Bath was built. They have bespoke two whole length pictures which some time or other will divert us. His dress and manner are beyond my painting; however, they may come within Mr. Gainsborough’s”.
‘Race-Meetings were equally important social occasions. Tetbury always announced: “Balls and Publick Breakfasts as usual”’ Race-meetings also took place at Cirencester and ‘The racecourse became a common rendez-vous; almost as important as the Bench for settling the affairs of the county. The Earl of Berkeley would summon the neighbouring gentry to attend him there: “… I can venture to assure you that Lord Berkeley wishes to confer with you about County Matters, and wishes it may be at Gloucester Races. I had not resolved upon going to the Races, but I will certainly come to have the pleasure of meeting you there.”’
The same thing would happen at the races at Tewkesbury too.
Discussions would obviously be about how to keep the lower orders in place but also broached would be the matter of who would represent which constituencies in Parliament. Thus, Sir George Onesiphorous Paul, ‘Chairman of the Reform Association of 1780’, wrote of the Berkeleys and the Beauforts: “In the County the Public Sense of Political Questions can scarcely be taken pure and unmixed with the influence of provincial parties … Two great interests … opposed from generation to generation, have almost equally divided the county into opposite factions.” For example, the 1776 election, when a Berkeley lost after an eleven day poll, saw election expenses reach £100,000. But eight years later, the factions were at peace: “My Master is desired by the Duke of Beaufort to inform you that his Grace and Lord Berkeley have settled the Peace of the County of Gloucestershire as far as in their power, by Mutually Agreeing to One and One, so that Mr. Geo. Berkeley is to come in without any opposition.”
But it wasn’t all just County high society; for example: ‘Peter Moore, a ‘Bengal Nabob’, twice spent over £20,000 in an attempt to win a seat at Tewkesbury. Or perhaps his defeat shows it was …
But on the other hand … to take the Codringtons as just one example, there were those powerful plantocratic families with vast estates in the West Indies …
So where did this all leave the ‘clothier merchant’ class of person?
The Pauls of Woodchester are an interesting example: ‘The easy transition from trade to land is seen particularly clearly with reference to Sir George Onesiphorous Paul. His father, Onesiphorous Paul, had been a well-known clothier, taking a keen personal interest in the management of his mill at Woodchester … He built a handsome house at Rodborough; in 1750 entertained the Prince of Wales; ten years later as High Sheriff of the county, he presented a loyal address to George the Third, which brought him a knighthood, and in 1762, he was created a baronet. His son, having inherited a large fortune and having received one of the best educations of the day, could put trade behind him, hand over the Woodchester Mill to a cousin, Obadiah Paul, and settle down to play the part of a country gentleman. On his return from the Grand Tour in 1768 he divided his time between London (where he kept a town house and was a member of Boodle’s and the Dilettante Society), Bath, and Gloucestershire. He kept a stable of about a dozen horses, and was a regular supporter of all the local races. Enjoying an annual income of about £2,500, he continued to live extravagantly until 1780, the year in which he was pricked as High Sheriff and was called on to serve the county to which he afterwards devoted the rest of his life.’ (Btw, he lost about £300 p.a. betting before his Pauline conversion.)
‘The other clothiers sat more rarely upon the Bench … in the Shepphard family … it was not Edward Shepphard, the head of the firm, and one of the leading clothiers in the county, who appeared on the Bench but Philip, easy-going and extravagant, who raised and equipped at great expense his own troop of yeomanry in 1795, kept a pack of hounds, on his own confession spent £100,000 in thirteen years, and ended up by fleeing to Dunkirk to escape his creditors, after selling off portions of the estate in a vain attempt to prevent the crash.’
The Transatlantic Slave Trade
In the book, descriptions of the transatlantic slave trade and all it entailed are devoid of description unless description be positive. For example: ‘A great part of the wealth of the Codrington family came from their estates in Antigua and Barbuda in the Barbadoes, those “Islands, Plantations, Castles, Lands and Tenements, Negroes, Slaves, Plantation Utensils, Cattle, Stock, Heriditaments and Premises” recorded so splendidly in Sir William Codrington’s will. The family took a great personal interest in the management of the estates and one member at least was always out there … correspondence shows their acquaintance with the problems of running a sugar plantation, the difficulties of slave labour, the frauds practised by the managers and attorneys, the shortage of English servants … Others with trading interests, in addition to the group of Bristol merchants, include Joseph Cripps who was an East India Company proprietor. John Webb whose father had commanded a London East Indiaman and who represented the East India Company interest in Parliament, and Sir Charles Barrow who was born, according to his own statement … on the island of St Kitts where his father was a West India merchant.’
Condescension
‘As the Rev. William Baker explained to Mr Nicholas: “You know me situated in a populous clothing country and you also know that where the lower class of people can get money they will spend it in liquor, and play off every manoeuvre to check the laws,” the dangers lying, as he knew only too well, not so much in drunkenness as in “the riotous and illegal meetings” held at these small beer-houses.’
In Tetbury, in 1787, there was a proposal to close ‘six small alehouses. In consequence, the Vicar’s wife received a letter warning her that her husband “be not forward to put the Publick Houses down, as a friend I write this for I was at a place and heard that if he was the only Person that desired of it it is life and property should soon be at an end …” In the end, however, nothing worse occurred than the burning down of his barns. One is tempted to wonder how much such men were moved by the flood of oratory with which Paul, as a veteran of forty years’ standing, addressed them in 1819: “A cautious and respectable Publican, who has a pride in the good order of his House – and who possesses a spirit to enforce it - is a Character useful to the community … whilst, on the other hand, the keeper of a Public House, who – from sordid views – either negligently tolerates, or wilfully and wickedly encourages, the rogue and vagabond – the idle and dissolute – the seditious and the disaffected – to congregate in his house; there to PLAN and thence to ISSUE TO COMMIT – their misdeeds, has to answer to the Magistrate and to his country, for the evil consequences which ensue.”’
‘The Rev. William Lloyd Baker and his family were often forced to live in a state of emergency at Uley for it was not uncommon to see the house of a neighbouring clothier burned or pulled to the ground. “I have a bell to ring,” he declared, “the rope of which communicates with every staircase in the house, and which in a calm day is within the hearing of more than 6,000 people, including all ages and sexes. Nay, with a proper current of wind, it is occasionally heard at Frocester, which is five miles distant.”’
The Militia
The experience of Thomas Estcourt at Tetbury shows how powerless a magistrate might be without this support. He failed in an attempt to “collect a number of the stoutest and most discreet active men in the town to be sworn in as constables” for he found “that either from fear, or from coinciding in opinion with the populace” no-one was prepared to act. Only when he had called out the troops, and “had paraded them a few minutes in the Market Place, and then sent them to the guard room to be ready if necessary” was he able to collect any constables “that at last had the courage to show their faces under the protection of the military.” And, he concluded, although the worst of the rising was over, “their Resentment remains unabated”, adding, “I believe all will now go on very quietly provided the Soldiers remain at Tetbury, but from the present disposition of the town I am persuaded that nothing but Military force will be sufficient to preserve the peace of the town.”
The Unrest
‘The unrest and rioting of 1795, due to the shortage of corn in that year, were the most severe and prolonged disturbances that the county had to face in the latter years of the 18th century. The distress of this year later became proverbial:
“In last hard winter – who forgets
The frost of ninety-five.
Then all was dismal, scarce and dear
And no poor men could thrive
And husbandry long time stood still
And work was at a stand.”
Hence the trouble at Uley
At Tewkesbury, flour was “liberated” from barges; there was similar action in the Forest of Dean; ‘depredation” threatened at Kingswood and Coalpit Heath. The response was
Charity
‘Meat and soup’ at Dursley from ‘money subscribed by local clothiers.’ There was charity at Uley too, while ‘Thomas Estcourt could tell Lord Verulam that attempted acts of outrage “have been defeated of their intended effects as well by the county being prepared to repel them as by the liberality of the several parishes who universally have supplied the poor with 8lbs. of brown bread for 13 shillings, which has taken away all pretence of complaints.”’