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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 July 2014
William Cobbett is a problem figure in English history. Among his several stage credits are his performances as the soldier's friend, the champion of the rural laborers and the parliamentary leader of the common people. During the 1810s and 1820s he took his celebrated rural rides for the purpose of discovering first-hand the wants and needs of the country laborers. He voiced their “cottage charter” in the Political Register, he composed hundreds of tracts disseminating their reform program, and in 1830 he led them in the Captain Swing disturbances—the laborers' militant campaign for improved wages, full employment, and the return to the cottage of bacon, beer, and wheaten bread.
Cobbett's sympathies for the farm workers have long been a subject of observation among historians and literary critics. Matthew Arnold suggested that Cobbett's politics were regulated by the condition of country workers, while Hugh Egerton described Cobbett as “the one eminent author whom the farm labourers of England can claim as their own.” For Leslie Stephen, Cobbett was “the voice of the English peasant,” for J. B. Morton he was “the peasant articulate,” and for G. K. Chesterton he “spoke for those innumerable who are also inarticulate.” The great biographer of Cobbett, G. D. H. Cole, agreed: Cobbett was a politicized peasant “at one in nature and sentiment with the mass which he aspired to lead.” Unlike the previous commentators, Cole developed his argument at some length, but his primary understanding of Cobbett was as a rustic-minded critic of industrialism and high finance—a valid assessment certainly, but one neglectful of Cobbett's self-professed ignorance of industrial labor and of market economy.
1 Arnold, Matthew, “The Future of Liberalism,” in English Literature and Irish Politics, Super, R. H., ed. (Ann Arbor, 1973), p. 136Google Scholar; Egerton, Hugh, “A Scarce Book,” The National Review 5 (May 1885): 427Google Scholar; Stephen, Leslie, “William Cobbett,” The New Review 9 (1893): 488Google Scholar; Morton, J. B., “William Cobbett,” London Mercury 20 (June 1929): 176Google Scholar. See also Heath, Richard, “William Cobbett,” in The English Peasant (1874; reprt, East Ardsley, 1978)Google Scholar. For other nineteenth century comments on Cobbett see Wiener, Martin, “The Changing Image of William Cobbett,” The Journal of British Studies 13 (May 1974): 135–154CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Chesterton, G. K., “Preface” to Cottage Economy (London, 1926)Google Scholar; Cole, G. D. H., “Introduction,” in Life and Adventures of Peter Porcupine, (London, 1927)Google Scholar; idem, The Life of William Cobbett, 3rd ed. (London, 1947).
2 [Hammond, J. L.], “William Cobbett,” The Edinburgh Review, 206 (July 1907): 128–148Google Scholar. For identification of Hammond as author see Wiener, , “William Cobbett,” p. 143, n. 27Google Scholar. See also Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (Harmondsworth, 1968), esp. pp. 249, 820–37Google Scholar; Spater, George, William Cobbett: The Poor Man's Friend, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1982), 2: 441.Google Scholar
3 See Dyck, Ian, “Debts and Liabilities: William Cobbett and Thomas Paine,” in Citizen of the World: Essays on Thomas Paine, Dyck, Ian, ed. (London and New York, 1987), pp. 86–103Google Scholar. Further treatment of these themes can be found in Wilson, David A., Paine and Cobbett: The Transatlantic Connection (Kingston and Montreal, 1988).Google Scholar
4 He would later admit of ideological vacancy in his anti-Jacobinism: “I was activated, perhaps, by no very exalted notions of either loyalty or patriotism; the act was not much an act of refined reasoning, or of reflection; it arose merely from feeling, that jealousy for the honour of my native country, which I am sure … to have been highly meritorious …” (Political Register [hereafter cited as PR], 29 September 1804), p. 451.Google ScholarPubMed
5 Life and Adventures, ed. Cole, , pp. 32–37Google Scholar; Spater, , Cobbett, pp. 30–36Google Scholar; PR, 17 June 1809, pp. 899–915.
6 Cobbett to Rachel Smith, 6 July 1794, Nuffield College, Oxford.
7 Porcupine's Works, 12 vols. (London, 1801), 11: 425.Google Scholar
8 “Chopsticks” was Cobbett's affectionate label for the farm workers of England. Oxford Word and Language Service kindly informs me that Cobbett's use of the word is the earliest on record, and that later usages appear in Akerman, J. K., Wiltshire Tales (1853)Google Scholar and Hardy, Thomas, The Hand of Ethelberta (1876)Google Scholar. The word also appears in a broadside dating from the 1830s, “Money Makes the Mare to Go: Being a Dialogue between Neighbour Tumbleturf and Neighbour Chopstick,” Street Ballads 1, John Johnson Collection of Ephemeral Literature, Bodleian Library, Oxford.
9 Cobbett wrote much on this matter. For some collected passages regarding the relative prosperity of the 1760s and 1770s, see The Progress of a Ploughboy to a Seat in Parliament, Reitzel, William, ed. (London, 1935), chs. 1–2.Google Scholar
10 The ballad collections which best document this theme are the Madden Collection of Ballads, Cambridge University Library; the British Museum Collection of Ballads; and the John Johnson Collection of Ephemeral Literature, Bodleian Library, Oxford.
11 For examples, see Young, Arthur, A Six Weeks' Tour Through the Southern Counties of England and Wales (London, 1769), pp. 222–23Google Scholar; Bernard, Thomas, “Introductory Letter … to William Wilberforce,” in Reports of the Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor, 5 vols. (London, 1797–1808), 5: 24–27Google Scholar. Similar remarks appear frequently in Annals of Agriculture (1787–1808); Communications to the Board of Agriculture (1782–1800); and the county agricultural surveys commissioned by the Board of Agriculture, most of which were published between 1793 and 1808.
12 Thorold-Rogers, J. E., A History of Agriculture and Prices in England, 7 vols. (Oxford, 1902), 7: 493–528Google Scholar; J. L., and Hammond, Barbara, The Village Labourer (London, 1911), chs. 1–5Google Scholar; Hobsbawm, E. J. and Rudé, GeorgeCaptain Swing (New York, 1968), part IGoogle Scholar; Snell, K. D. M., Annals of the Labouring Poor (Cambridge, 1985), chs. 1–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Contemporary testimony to the laborers' prosperity in the mid-eighteenth century appears frequently in the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Poor Laws, 6 (1817); Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Poor Laws, 5 (1818); Select Committee on Agricultural Labourers' Wages, 6 (1824); First, Second and Third Reports of the Select Committee on Emigration, 5 (1826–27); Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Poor Law, 8 (1830–31).
13 On this sudden reversal see Annals of Agriculture 19 (1793): 225–42, 255–58Google Scholar; Strickland, William, “Observations on the State of England,” in Communications to the Board of Agriculture 2 (1798): 136–66Google Scholar; Tatham, William, “Communications Concerning the Agriculture and Commerce of the United States” (London, 1800), p. 52.Google Scholar
14 Cobbett to Edward Thornton, 18 July 1800, Letters from William Cobbett to Edward Thornton, Cole, G. D. H., ed. (London, 1937), p. 111Google Scholar; PR, 16 December 1815, pp. 329, 331.
15 The Porcupine, 31 October 1800, 5 November 1800, 10 November 1800, 20 November 1800, 3 December 1800, 13 December 1800, 29 December 1800, 4 July 1801, 11 July 1801; PR, 1 May 1802, p. 509, 8 May 1802, p. 542, 22 May 1802, p. 602. See also Cobbett to William Windham, 7 October 1801, BL, Add. MSS 37,853, ff. 12–13.
16 Spater, , Cobbett, 1:195.Google Scholar
17 Misson, M., Memoirs and Observations in his Travels over England (London, 1719), pp. 74, 304–08Google Scholar; “The English Cock and the Jovial Cockers,” in Freeth, J., A Touch on the Times (London, 1803), pp. 16–19Google Scholar; Blaine, Delabere, An Encyclopaedia of Rural Sports (London, 1840), pp. 1213–18Google Scholar; “The Courageous Plow-Man,” in The Roxburghe Ballads, 8 vols. (Hertford, 1873–1890), 3: 613.Google Scholar
18 Chamberlayne, John, Magnae Britanniae (London, 1755), p. 40.Google Scholar
19 See Malcolmson, Robert W., Popular Recreations in English Society, 1700–1850 (London, 1973)Google Scholar; Cunningham, Hugh, Leisure in the Industrial Revolution (London, 1980).Google Scholar
20 Perkin, Harold, The Origins of Modern English Society London, 1969), p. 280.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
21 Egan, Pierce, Book of Sports (London, 1832), pp. 11–12Google Scholar; Howitt, William, The Rural Life of England (London, 1838), pp. 495, 515, 523–27, 531, 541Google Scholar; Bamford, Samuel, Early Days, Chaloner, W. H., ed. (1848–1849; reprt, London, 1967), pp. 132–39Google Scholar; Crabbe, George, “The Village” (1783), in Selected Poems of George Crabbe, Grigson, Geoffrey, ed. (London, 1950), p. 24Google Scholar; The Sporting Magazine 28 (September 1806): 261–62Google ScholarPubMed; Brewer, J. N., “Some Thoughts on the Present State of the English Peasantry” (1807), pp. 32–33.Google Scholar
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24 Quoted in The Sporting Magazine 30 (August 1807): 210–11Google Scholar; Cobbett to Windham, 6 October 1805, BL, Add. MSS 37,853, f. 184.
25 The Sporting Magazine 30 (September 1807): 287Google Scholar; 28 (September 1806): 273–74.
26 Cobbett to Windham, 6 October 1805, BL, Add. MSS 37,853, f. 184.
27 The Sporting Magazine 27 (October 1805): 6–7Google Scholar. See also the report in the Morning Chronicle, 16 October 1805.
28 Cobbett to Windham, 6 October 1805, BL, Add. MSS 37, 853, f. 184.
29 The Sporting Magazine 28 (September 1806): 275.Google Scholar
30 See The Sporting Magazine 33 (October 1808): 14–15Google Scholar. This particular defense of martial games bears Cobbett's distinctive prose style. He was an amateur single-stick player himself, and encouraged his sons to play. See The Sporting Magazine 30 (August 1807): 210Google Scholar; Cobbett to John Hooke Greene, 12 January 1807, Yale University; Cobbett to Windham, 6 December 1805, BL, Add. MSS 37,853, f. 191.
31 The Sporting Magazine 27 (October 1805): 7.Google Scholar
32 Hansard's Parliamentary History 36 (1802): 829–31Google Scholar. For the attack upon popular recreations at this time see Malcolmson, , Popular Recreations, pp. 106–07, 147, 149.Google Scholar
33 Parliamentary History 36 (1802): 831–41.Google Scholar
34 Ibid., 35 (1800–01): 204.
35 There is a large song literature on bull-baits, cock-fights and boxing. On Windham's efforts, see Freeth, , “Bull-Baiting,” in Touch on the Times, pp. 26–27.Google Scholar
36 For his attack on an anti-bait sermon reviewed in the British Critic, see PR, 5 June 1802, pp. 652–57. Also see ibid., 27 February 1802, p. 176; 22 May 1802, pp. 603–04; 29 May 1802, pp. 626–28; 29 January 1803, p. 99; February 1803, pp. 287–88; 14 January 1804, pp. 54–55; Cobbett to Windham, 28 July 1805, BL, Add. MSS 37,853, f. 175; Cobbett to Mr. Dickins, 30 January 1804, Boston Public Library.
37 Quoted in Egan, , Book of Sports, p. 55.Google Scholar
38 PR, 29 January 1803, p. 99. Cobbett disliked excessive popular dependence upon patronage. See Cobbett to Windham, 6 December 1805, BL, Add. MSS 37,853, f. 191.
39 Cobbett's reflections on his experiences in the army appear in his Life and Adventures, ed. Cole; PR, 17 June 1809, pp. 899–915. Early in 1791 Cobbett wrote and had published a pamphlet entitled The Soldier's Friend (BL, Add. MSS 8135 b. 15), in which he criticized the government's tolerance of financial abuses by military officers. See Spater, , Cobbett, 1: 36–37Google Scholar. For a perceptive treatment of the evolution of “patriotism” see Cunningham, Hugh, “The Language of Patriotism, 1750–1914,” History Workshop 21 (Autumn, 1981): 8–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
40 For examples see Loyal and Patriotic Hand-Bills, Songs, Addresses, etc. on the Threatened Invasion of Great Britain (London, 1803), (BL, Add. MSS 650 a. 12)Google Scholar; and Klingberg, Frank J. and Hustuedt, Siguard B., eds. The Warning Drum: The British Home Front Faces Napoleon (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1944)Google Scholar; Wheeler, H. F. B. and Broadley, A. M., Napoleon and the Invasion of England, 2 vols. (London, 1908), 2: 272–326.Google Scholar
41 Warning Drum, pp. 177–79 (Wilberforce); Loyal and Patriotic Hand-Bills, f. 106 (Sheridan) and f. 34 (More).
42 “Freedom and Loyalty: With a New Song,” in ibid., f. 73.
43 “Serious Considerations addressed to British Labourers and Mechanics, at the Present Crisis” (London, 1803), p. 13.Google Scholar
44 Cobbett had much to say on the dispossession of the cottage, but he was not alone. The laborers' songs of the early 1800s dwell at length on the same theme—see Howkins, Alun and Dyck, Ian, “Popular Ballads, Rural Radicalism and William Cobbett,” History Workshop 23 (Spring 1987): 20–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
45 “Men of England,” in Warning Drum, pp. 208–09.
46 Testimony to this effect emerges in the evidence taken before the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Poor Laws, 6 (1817); Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Poor Laws, 5 (1818); and the Select Committee on Agricultural Labourers' Wages, 6 (1824); Select Committee on the Relief of Abie-Bodied Persons from the Poor-Rates, 4 (1828).
47 Loyal and Patriotic Hand-Bills, f. 20.
48 More to Elizabeth Montagu, 1794, quoted in Wheeler, and Broadley, , Napoleon and the Invasion of England, 1: 210.Google Scholar
49 Warning Drum, pp. 188–89.
50 The “Considerations” appeared as a pamphlet (BL, Add. MSS 9220 b. 17) and as a broadside (Loyal and Patriotic Hand-Bills, f. 107). Cobbett, without noting the author, printed it as a lead article in PR, 30 July 1803.
51 PR, 17 June 1809, pp. 916–17 and 15 January 1831, p. 157.
52 PR, 27 October 1804, p. 617, 10 August 1805, p. 198.
53 Life and Adventures, ed. Cole, , p. 25.Google Scholar
54 PR, 27 October 1804, p. 616. On Cobbett's love for military honors and pageantry, see ibid., 23 July 1803, pp. 123–25.
55 Emsley, Clive, British Society and the French Wars, 1793–1815 (London, 1979), pp. 53–55, 102–03CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Carrington Diary, p. 161; “The Autobiography of a Suffolk Farm Labourer,” in Suffolk Times and Mercury, 2 November 1894–1816 August 1895Google Scholar; Clare, John, “The Autobiography 1793–1824,” in The Prose of John Clare, eds. J. W., and Tibbie, Anne (London, 1951), pp. 46–50.Google Scholar
56 “A Good Wish for Old England,” Madden Collection of Broadsides 4.1, Cambridge University Library.
57 PR, 23 June 1804, pp. 984–35, 24 September 1803, p. 433, 23 June 1804, p. 986.
58 PR, 23 July 1803, p. 126, 24 September 1803, p. 433, 27 October 1804, pp. 615–16, 1 September 1804, p. 350.
59 PR, 21 May 1803; p. 737. See also ibid., 1 September 1804, p. 350, 8 September 1804, pp. 376, 380, 384.
60 PR, 15 September 1804, p. 412, 8 September 1804, p. 380. See also Cobbett to John Wright, 31 August 1804, BL, Add. MSS 22,906, f. 20; PR 21 May 1803, p. 737.
61 PR, 18 August 1804, p. 236, 12 June 1802, pp. 700–01.
62 PR, 30 July 1803, p. 153, 18 June 1803, p. 919.
63 The Porcupine, 5 November 1800; 16–17 December 1800; PR, 6 February 1802, p. 94.
64 Cobbett to Windham, 15 August 1804, BL, Add. MSS 37,853, f. 132. There is evidence that the war did increase prices. See Stern, Walter, “The Bread Crisis in Britain, 1795–96,” in Economica 31 (May 1964): 183CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Flinn, M. W., An Economic and Social History of Britain since 1700 (London, 1963), p. 103Google Scholar; Waithman, Robert, “War proved to be the Real Cause of the Present Scarcity” (London, 1801).Google Scholar
65 Cobbett to Windham, 15 August 1804, BL, Add. MSS 37853, f. 132. PR, 18 August 1804, pp. 238–43, 8 September 1804, pp. 370–76, 13 October 1804, pp. 545–54, 559–70, 23 February 1805, pp. 289–309.
66 PR, 29 September 1804, p. 457.
67 “Price of Bread and Labour,” by “Rumsey” in PR 24 November 1804, pp. 814–15; ibid., 13 October 1804, p. 569, 8 December 1804, p. 882, 11 October 1806, pp. 562–63.
68 Cobbett sent Windham a copy of his findings at Horton Heath, but it appears not to have survived. The account given here is based upon the address “To Mr. Coke,” in PR, 26 May 1821, pp. 518–22Google Scholar; Two-Penny Trash, 1 October 1830, p. 86Google Scholar; Cobbett, Anne, “Account of the Family,” f. 21, Nuffield College, Oxford.Google Scholar
69 See Turner, Michael, Enclosures in Britain, 1750–1830 (London, 1984), pp. 39–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Snell, , Labouring Poor, pp. 178–84Google Scholar. For an example of contemporary misgivings on the same question, see Third Report of the Select Committee on Emigration, 5 (1827), pp. 362–65.
70 Snell, , Labouring Poor, pp. 194–227.Google Scholar
71 PR, 19 May 1821, pp. 479–80. The Register reads 1814 instead of 1804. But internal clues, such as the reference to “having so recently witnessed laborers in America,” indicate a printing error.
72 “The Life and Adventures of Peter Porcupine” (1796), reprinted in Life and Adventures, ed. Cole, , pp. 19–22, 27, 93Google Scholar; Progress of a Ploughboy, ed. Reitzel, ch. 1.
73 Abstract of Answers and Returns … Relative to the Expense and Maintenance of the Poor, VIII (1803–04). This report was ordered to be printed on 15 May 1804.
74 PR, 9 February 1805, p. 220, 13 October 1804, p. 560, 27 October 1804, p. 610, 26 January 1805, p. 115, 9 May 1805, p. 372, 20 September 1806, p. 449, 6 December 1806, p. 872, 17 January 1807, pp. 80–81, 20 February 1808, p. 280, 16 July 1808, p. 83.
75 See Himmelfarb, Gertrude, The Idea of Poverty: England in the Early Industrial Age (New York, 1985), pp. 64–73.Google Scholar
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77 Treatise on Corn, para. 159; PR 29 September 1804, p. 457, 28 February 1807, p. 336.
78 PR, 8 February 1806, motto.
79 Ibid., p. 169.
80 See Furniss, Edgar, The Position of the Laborer in a System of Nationalism: A Study in the Labor Theories of the Later English Mercantilists (Boston, 1920), chs. 2–5Google Scholar; Coats, A. W., “Changing Attitudes to Labour in the Mid-Eighteenth Century,” Economic History Review 2nd. ser., vol. 2 (1958): 35–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
81 See the response to Young's, Arthur questionnaire on agricultural economics, in Annals of Agriculture 25 (1796)Google Scholar. The majority of responses, mainly by farmers and landlords, declare support for laissez-faire without regard for the impoverishment of the laborers.
82 PR, 8 February 1806, pp. 169–70, 15 February 1805, p. 200, 9 March 1805, p. 372.
83 PR, 9 February 1805, pp. 220–22. The quoted part is from a Portsmouth newspaper for 7 December 1804.
84 PR, 6 December 1806, pp. 872–73, 8 December 1804, motto.
85 See Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, 1st ser., 8 (19 February 1807): 865, 876–79, 885–97, 905–10.Google Scholar
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87 PR, 28 February 1807, p. 324. In some parishes, paupers continued to be distinguished by a badge. See the Rev.Dudley, H. B., “A Few Observations Respecting the Present State of the Poor …” (London, 1802), p. 15.Google Scholar
88 Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, 1st sen, 8 (19 February 1807): 897Google Scholar; PR, 29 August 1807, pp. 328–29, 16 July 1808, pp. 77–78, 21 September 1805, p. 424.
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90 PR, 16 July 1808, pp. 73–74.
91 Ibid., p. 78, 8 February 1806, p. 169, 16 July 1808, p. 78.
92 Cobbett's farm accounts, including records of the wages paid to his laborers, are among the Cobbett Papers at Nuffield College.
93 PR, 21 October 1809, pp. 577–83. On the Jubilee see ibid., 10 April 1830, p. 464; History of the Regency and Reign of King George the Fourth (London, 1830–1834), paras. 276–81.Google Scholar
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105 Ibid., 19 May 1821, p. 463. For further treatment of the themes considered here see Snell, Labouring Poor, chs. 1–4. A more optimistic interpretation of the laborers' wartime experiences is rendered in Armstrong, Alan, Farmworkers: A Social and Economic History, 1770–1980 (London, 1988), ch. 2Google Scholar. Armstrong vastly underestimates retail price inflation during the war years. Nor does he take account of the enormous increases in excise duties (especially on malt, hops, leather, candles and salt) which undermined the traditional cottage economy of rural workers by compelling them to purchase more of their food and drink from the shopkeeper and publican.
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112 PR, 18 January 1817, pp. 79–80.
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120 Cobbett to John Dean, 27 May 1834, Lockwood Memorial Library, S.U.N.Y. Buffalo.
121 Cobbett to his wife, 10 February 1812, Nuffield College, Oxford; PR, 16 October 1824, p. 146.
122 Cobbett to J. Swain, 4 May 1835, Yale University.
123 Cobbett to James Gutsell, 17 May 1835, Yale University.
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