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The Role of Local Authorities in the Provincial Hunger Riots of 1766*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2017

Walter J. Shelton
Walter J. Shelton*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Waterloo Lutheran University, Ontario
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Extract

The hunger riots which spread across most of southern England in the summer and autumn of 1766 were the most extensive rural disorders in a century when food riots became chronic. More serious in their threat to the social order than the violent protests against the high cost of “necessaries” and the new Militia Act in 1756-57, the disturbances of 1766 placed a heavy strain upon the forces of order. They foreshadowed the more serious agrarian riots of the next century.

While the War Office in September, 1766 moved its detachments across the countryside in a vain effort to parry the rapidly-shifting threats from militant labourers, colliers, tinners, weavers, and others of the provincial dispossessed, the rioters becamer bolder and seized control of large tracts of the countryside almost in the manner of an occupying army. As the crisis developed, demands for military protection from market towns and isolated country estates poured into the War Office. By late September the pattern of events had unfolded to the point where Lord Barrington, the Secretary-at-War, apprehended a threat of general insurrection. Striving to mobilise his limited resources, he ordered the commanders of both active troops and “invalides” to assist the civil magistrates “upon requisition,” while at the same time he urged the leaders of rural society, the aristocracy and the gentry to abandon their lethargy and use initiative in arming their servants to suppress less serious disturbances.

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 5 , Issue 1: Special Issue: Violence and Social Control , Spring 1973 , pp. 50 - 66
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1973

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Footnotes

*

Read at the Pacific Northwest Section of the Conference on British Studies, Eugene, Oregon, March 1973.

References

1 The Journal of the Reverend John Wesley, A.M., ed. Curnock, Nehemiah, Standard Edition, 2nd ed. (London, 1781), v. 250 Google Scholar. See also Rude, George, The Crowd in History, A Study of Popular Disturbances in France and England, 1730-1848 (New York, 1964). p. 262 Google Scholar; Darvall, Frank Ongley, Popular Disturbances and Public Order in Regency England (London, 1934), pp. 244-5Google Scholar; and Mather, Frederiek Clare, Public Order in the Age of the Chartists (Manchester, 1959), pp. 60-1Google Scholar.

2 Barrington to Shelburne, 2 October 1766, Shelburne Papers, vol. 132, fol. 13-14, William L. Clement Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

3 Public Record Office [P.R.O.], Domestic Entry Book, vol. 142, fol. 12-14.

4 Ibid.

5 James Harris lo Hardwicke, 3 October 1766, British Museum [B.M.], Add. MSS., 35607, fol. 295.

6 John Pitt to Hardwicke, 18 December 1766, B.M., Add. MSS., 35607, fol. 335.

7 John Pitt to Harkwicke, 29 September 1766, B.M., Add. MSS., 35607, fol. 290. Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 8 October 1766, B.M.

8 Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 4 October 1766. B.M.

9 Mayor of Norwich to Town Clerk, Norwich, 20 October 1766. Norwich City Record Office, Norwich, Depositions.

10 Both these magistrates were valued by the poor and the Ministry, who paid them an annual salary.

11 Treasury Solicitor's Papers, P. R. O., T.S.11/5956/Bx1128.

12 Evidence against Brown, a leader of a riot in the market on 27 September 1766, Norwich City Record Office, Norwich, Depositions and Case Papers.

13 A correspondent who urged the opening of the ports for importation to convince the public in January, 1757 whether the scarcity was natural or artificial anticipated the opposition of factors and rich farmers. Gentleman's Magazine, XXVII (1757):32.

14 John Pitt to Lord Hardwicke, 20 December 1766, B.M., Add. MSS., 35607, fol. 340.

15 Ibid.

16 Victoria County History, Wiltshire, IV:64, et seq.

17 John Pitt to Hardwicke, 21 December 1766, B.M., Add. MSS., 33607. fol. 341.

18 Edmund Burke warned of the danger of implying that conditions of scarcity were not inevitable. He believed that dangerous riots were possible if the poor came to believe “man's ingenuity could improve things.” He asserted that the government in 1767 had raised the hopes of the distressed poor without doing anything in the spring and summer of that year Parliamentary History of England [1765-1771] (London, 1813), XVI:390.

19 St. James's Chronicle, 12-14 May 1768, B.M.

20 Thompson, P., The Making of the English Working Class (London, 1963), p. 74 Google Scholar.

21 Rockingham to Newcastle, September, 1757, Rockingham MSS., R1-105, Sheffield Central Library.

22 Westminster Journal and London Political Miscellany. 11 June 1768, B.M.

23 See instructions to army commanders to assist magistrates suppress disorders, P.R.O., Marching Orders, W05-54, passim.

24 “It is certainly necessary to encourage the Civil Magistrates, and support this Authority; for if that is not done, we must either be governed by a mad, lawless mob, or the peace be preserved, only by military force,” Newcastle to Rockingham, 13 May 1768, Rockingham MSS., R I-1052, Sheffield Central Library. See also Newcastle to Mansfield, 13 May 1768, B.M., Add. MSS., 32990.

25 P.R.O., Marching Orders, W05-54, pp. 53-8 and passim.

26 Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida.

27 Mr. Grenville to Earl Temple, 18 November 1766. Grenville Papers. 111:341-3, B.M.

28 Rude, George, Wilkes and Liberty (Oxford, 1962), Appendices III-VGoogle Scholar.

29 Considerations on the Exportation of Corn, p. 56, Goldsmith Library, University of London.

30 Rose, R. B., “Eighteenth Century Price Riots and Public Policy in England,” International Review of Social History, VI, No. 2 (1961):277-92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 R. Wright, Town Clerk of Warwick, to the Right Honourable, the Earl of Abercorn, 9 March 1765, Committee on High Prices of Provisions, House of Lurds Record Office.

32 Hill, Christopher, Reformation to Industrial Revolution; The Making of Modern English Society, 1530-1780, 2 vols. (New York, 1967), 1:220 Google Scholar.

33 Country magistrates rarely set the assize at all. It was assumed rural households baked their own bread. The Webbs cite a correspondent of the London Chronicle (24 December 1761) who petitioned the House “in the name of the many thousand rural housekeepers in England…for some law respecting the bakers in the country, who are now almost unregulated,” (S. and B. Webb, “The Assize of Bread,” Economic Journal XIV [1904]:196-218). The assize of bread was a “source of constant friction in the eighteenth century. It was abandoned in the metropolis in 1815 and in the rest of the country in 1836.” The chief problems were threefold: (I) Bakers did not purchase on the same basis across the country, e.g., London bakers bought flour not corn, other bakers bought corn and had it ground. Prices of flour did not vary directly with those of corn. (2) Corn and flour prices fluctuated, making it difficult for magistrates to keep the assize up to date. (3) Errors in assize prices could seriously affect supplies, e.g., too low prices would discourage imports, say, into London, Observations and Examples to Assist Magistrates in Setting the Assize of Bread Made of Wheat under the Statute of the 31st George II (anonymous pamphlet, London, 1759):viii, et seq.

34 Sir John Fielding to Lord Abcrcorn, 5 February 1765, Committee on High Prices of Provisions, House of Lords Record Office.

35 Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, p. 68 and passim. R. B. Rose (“Eighteenth Century Price Riots and Public Policy in England”) relates the price-fixing riot to the mediaeval doctrine of a ‘just price’. See also E. P. Thompson, “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present, No. 50 (February, 1971):76-136.

36 The 1760's saw the last sustained effort by rural authorities to apply the outmoded regulations of the Tudor and Stuart era in the face of economic reality.

37 The distilling and starch-making industries were particularly provocative to the poor in times of scarcity because they produced luxury goods at the expense of the food supply.

38 Gentleman's Magazine. XXVIII (1758):565.

39 Western, John R., The English Militia in the Eighteenth Century, Studies in Political History (London, 1965), pp. 291-94Google Scholar.

40 Gloucester Journal, 6 September 1757, Gloucester Record Office.

41 Ibid., 8 November 1757.

42 Western, p. 293.

43 Ibid., p. 300.

44 Ibid, p. 299.

45 Gentleman's Magazine, XXVII (1757):431.

46 Gloucester Journal, 20 September 1757.

47 Gentleman's Magazine, XXVII (1757):430.

48 B.M., Add. MSS., 32875, fol. 285-6, 411. Western cites various evidence to support connection of food and militia riots in 1757 (p. 300).

49 Calendar of Home Office Papers (1766-69) No. 1230, B.M.

50 S. and B. Webb, “The Assize of Bread.”

51 Rockingham to Newcastle, 17 May 1768, B.M., Add. MSS., 32990, fol. 83-6.

52 State Papers, SP 37/6, fol. 7/15, P. R. O.

53 Gentleman's Magazine, X (1740):355.