Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T06:01:49.489Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Waltham Blacks and the Black Act

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Pat Rogers
Pat Rogers
Affiliation:
University College of North Wales
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The measure of 1723 known as the ‘Waldiam Black Act’ (9 Geo. I, c. 22) has acquired a lasting notoriety. Lecky called it ‘a special and most sanguinary law’, and even Sir Leon Radzinowicz finds it ‘remarkable’ as the most severe legislation of the eighteenth century, its comprehensive nature making it an ‘ideological index’ to the capital laws at large. The Act was extended for five years in 1725 (12 Geo. I, c. 30), amended in 1754 (27 Geo. II, c. 15) and made permanent in 1758 (31 Geo. II, c. 42). Effectively it survived for a century, until Peel took it off the statute book despite opposition from the Quarterly Review. Its main provisions were directed against ‘wicked and evil-disposed Persons going armed in Disguise, and doing Injuries and Violences to die Persons and Properties of his Majesty's Subjects’. It became a felony without benefit of clergy to go abroad into woods in any form of disguise or with a blackened face. Commission of a specific act of destruction or larceny was not necessary for a prosecution to lie.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , September 1974 , pp. 465 - 486
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 It is usually dated 1722, when the regnal year began: but the Act did not receive the royal assent until almost the end of the parliamentary session, on 27 May. It was operative from 1 June 1723. The King left London on 3 June and did not return until 18 Dec, which meant that legislative activity was at a standstill throughout the latter part of 1723. Plumb, J. H. wrongly states that the Act became law in 1726: Sir Robert Walpole: The King's Minister (London, 1960), p. 237.Google Scholar

2 Lecky, W. E. H., A History of England in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1888), I, 488;Google ScholarRadzinowicz, Leon, A History of English Criminal Law (London, 1948-), I, 49–79.Google Scholar

3 The Statutes at Large (London, 1763), V, 459.Google Scholar

4 See Gentleman's Magazine, LXLL (1802), 304, cited by Radzinowicz, I, 50, and other authorities mentioned there.

5 See A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain, ed. Rogers, Pat (Harmondsworth, 1971), pp. 155–6. This section was probably written around the end of 1722. The ascription of the pamphlet to Defoe rests on a variety of evidence, bibliographical, textual and inferential.Google Scholar

6 For White's reference to the ‘severe and sanguinary act’, see Letter VII in The Natural History of Selborne (1789). White, of course, was a mere infant when the Blacks were at work. For the Political State, see issue for Sept. 1723 (XXVI, 315–16). Popular accounts are found in The Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals (London, 1735), 1, 334–57,Google Scholar and Select and Impartial Accounts of the … Most Remarkable Convicts (London, 1745), 11, 25–34.Google Scholar The former includes a notably fanci- ful description of the convivial and facetious antics of the Blacks, with ‘Prince Oroonoko’ at their head.

7 Blackstone, William, Commentaries on the Laws of England (Oxford, 1778), IV, 255. The parallel was originally suggested by Mist's Weekly Journal on 26 Jan. 1723.Google Scholar

8 Public Record Office, T 1/255/33: T 1/257/32: T 1/258/16: SP 44/80. See also Mist's Weekly Journal, 14 Sept. 1723.

9 Radzinowicz, II, 95–6. For warm tributes by Delafaye's superiors, see Craggs to Sunderland, SP 44/121/118: and Newcastle to Delafaye, SP 35/58/69.

10 References are to The History of the Blacks of Waltham in Hampshire (London, 1723): pages are not indicated, as the treatment in this 32-page pamphlet is chronological. The publisher, A. Moore, is listed in handbooks of the book trade (e.g. that of H. R. Plomer), but was probably a fictitious ‘A. N. Other’ device. Publication is recorded in the Monthly Catalogue for Dec. 1723, p. 10.Google Scholar

11 Unfortunately many of the relevant Assize documents at the P.R.O. are either unfit for production, mislaid or destroyed. I have therefore been able to make little use of what would otherwise be a primary source.

12 For Cope, see Sedgwick, Romney, The House of Commons 1715–54 (London, 1970), I, 575–6.Google Scholar

13 See Rudé, GeorgeThe Crowd in History 1730–1848 (New York, 1964), pp. 149–63:Google ScholarParis and London in the 18th Century (London, 1970), p. 20.Google Scholar There are few points of resemblance otherwise to ‘the English country riot of the eighteenth century’ as described by Rudé. The story got about that Shorter, leader of the Berkshire Blacks, called himself King John also (e.g. Daily Journal, 9 May 1723), but this was denied by the Daily Post on 14 May and the London Journal on 11 May 1723. The London Journal also asserted that the two gangs were separate though ‘of the same species’.

14 Possibly William Smith, a licentiate of the College of Physicians, and an alderman of Ports-mouth, listed in Munk's Roll.

15 Perhaps Nicholas Brady, D.D., well known for his collaboration with Nahum Tate on a metrical version of the Psalms. He held the living of Richmond at this time.

16 The History says that it was a son of the churchwarden, Freind; but other accounts agree that it was the son of the keeper Miles. Other victims of raids, not named by the pamphlet, include Lord Cadogan at Caversham Park; Sir Robert Rich; Lord Cobham; and a Mr Hancock.

17 Power was the son of John Power, Rector of Easthampstead since 1698. He himself had been admitted to Christ Church in 1710. According to William Stratford of that college, writing to Lord Harley, he had a bad reputation locally and had incurred the dislike of Lady Trumbull, the owner of Easthampstead Park. Stratford was uncertain whether to believe Power's claim of having a dispensation from the ministry, and inclined to take the side of the three Blacks who accused him of enlisting men for the Pretender. See letters of 30 Apr., 3 May and 18 June 1723, in HMC Portland (London, 1901), VII, 357–8, 362.Google Scholar But a draft of the indemnification to Power can be found in SP 35/32/24 (21 July 1722) and it clearly bears out Power's claims in every material respect. For his arrest on 29 Apr., see SP 35/43/40; for his accusations against Stevens, Cooke and other Blacks, made in Feb. 1723, SP 44/81/237. See also Victoria County History of Berkshire (Folkestone, 1972), III, 80.Google Scholar

18 This is the story found in the History and also in most press reports, allegedly deriving from the messenger, Elias Chalk. An alternative story in the Daily Post of 6 May has it that Chalk and Cooper pretended to join the gang and thus infiltrated the Blacks. This is not altogether impossible, particularly as Power had been employed as an agent provocateur; but there is no hard evidence to support the Post's version.

19 Daily Journal, 9 May 1723.

20 Daily Post, 14 May 1723. Shorter's son (also named William) was a Black, but an unimportant one.

21 PRO, SP 35/43/18.

22 Daily Journal, 7 June 1723.

23 For Charles Rackett (d.1728), see The Correspondence of Alexander Pope, ed. Sherburn, George (Oxford, 1956), II, 29;Google Scholar and for his eldest son Michael, later forced to leave the country, IV, 160. The original charge against Rackett had been lodged by Thomas Sawyer of Swinley in Oct. 1722 (PRO, SP 35/33/192). Appended to this information is a list of Blacks, including all those subsequently named by Stedman in the following May. For a fuller review of Rackett's involvement, see my article, ‘A Pope Family Scandal’, Times Literary Supplement, 31 Aug. 1973, and the reply by E. P. Thompson, ibid. 7 Sept. 1973.

24 PRO, SP 35/43/23: SP 44/81/236. See also Freeholder's Journal, 18 May 1723.

25 PRO, SP 35/43/30, 31: SP 35/75/308. For Negus see DNB. Other lists of Blacks in custody can be found in SP 35/43/40, 898. Seventeen are named, including Thomas Power.

26 For details of bail, see PRO, SP 44/81: Rackett, Barlow and Cooke were admitted to bail on 25 May (p. 258), the first two on recognizances of §500.

27 PRO, SP 35/43/44–46, 48. Information on Rackett is filed separately (SP 35/47/72), but this undated sheet obviously belongs with the documents of 21 May. The bill was introduced on 30 Apr., had its second reading on 1 May, the committee stage on 4–9 May, the report stage on 13 May, and the third reading on 18 May: Journals of the House of Commons, XX, 200–17.Google Scholar See a1so Journal of the House of Lords, XXII, 204–18.Google Scholar

28 London Journal, 22 June; Daily Journal, 18 May 1723. According to the Daily Journal of 22 May, among those arrested were ‘three of considerable Substance’; and one ‘now in Newgate’ was ‘of a very reputable Family in Berkshire, and Heir at Law to a valuable Fortune; and great Application is making to Men in Power in his Favour’.

29 PRO, SP 44/289/18: SP 35/43/119- As well as Wynne, one of the less important members of the gang, John Symmons, was discharged.

30 HMC Portland, VII, 362.Google Scholar According to the Daily Journal of 15 June 1723, and the British Journal a week later, Wild had been on his way to the assizes when he ‘accidentally’ met a well-known footpad called Humphrey Angier, and caused Angier to be arrested. The robber was executed in Sept. He was the brother-in-law of James Butler, who was himself concerned in rob- beries in the Farnham area during this summer. Wild went down to Winchester gaol to see Butler early in July, a few weeks before the Hampshire Blacks found their way to prison. See also Howson, Gerald, Thief-Taker General (London, 1970), pp. 197–8, though Howson is mistaken in describing the Blacks as ‘a gang of horse-and-cattle stealers’.Google Scholar

31 Delafaye, for instance, wrote to Townshend on 14 June that the proceedings would ‘cure the distemper’, and avert an epidemic: PRO, SP 43/66. Incidentally one of those convicted, Joseph Magner, along with Robert Shorter - presumably a relative of William - died in prison before 17 June: SP 35/43/130.

32 Daily Journal, 9 Aug.: British Journal, 10 Aug. 1723.

33 PRO, SP 44/81/271, 290.

34 PRO, SP 35/47/7: SP 43/68. None of the five surviving Blacks sentenced to transportation had been dispatched by 5 Dec. 1723. Reginald Fellow of Reading complained to the transportation agent, Jonathan Forward, of the conduct of his fellow justices, including the Tory MPs Sir John Stonhouse, Clement Kent and Anthony Blagrave. For these men, see Sedgwick, 1, 477; II, 186–87, 451. For the presentment, see PRO, Assizes 4/18.

35 PRO, SP 35/43/106: SP 44/81/278. The letter dated 26 Apr. 1724 from Power to Delafaye (SP 35/49/32) might possibly be a mistake for 1723: but Power was certainly in the custody of a messenger as late as February 1724 (SP 35/48/53).

36 PRO, SP 44/81/298, 335: Assizes 2/8. On 12 Mar. 1724 Negus wrote to Delafaye, urging that a move for a nolle prosequi on behalf of Perryman be resisted; SP 35/48/82.

37 PRO, SP 44/81/304, 334. The sureties on this occasion included Baptist Nun. A reward of § 14s. 2d. was paid to Charles Saunderson for his expenses in prosecuting Shorter and Cooke (p. 317).

38 PRO, SP 44/81/356: Assizes 2/8: British Journal, 1 Aug. 1728.

39 PRO, T 1/244/309–316: Assizes 2/8. Nun's claim covers the period 17 May 1722 (when he confiscated a greyhound used by Shorter) to 24 Sept. 1723. On Lord Cobham's recommendation he was appointed a Porter of Windsor Castle on 25 June 1723 (PRO, SP 44/290/21). Cobham had got the ministry to defend Nun in a suit brought against him in 1718.

40 For Pitt (d.1735), sometime MP for Hampshire, and South Sea, Company director, see Carswell, John, The South Sea Bubble (London, 1960),Google Scholar and Sedgwick, II, 348–9. According to the Political State (XXVI, 316) Edward Pink escaped after capture but was re-arrested. For the identity of the keepers killed and injured, see Whitehall Evening Post, 5 Sept. 1723.Google Scholar

41 He had been diligent in sending information of an intercepted letter at the height of the Jacobite scare, when a leading suspect had escaped: PRO, SP 35/32/101. A few years earlier he had acted against a member of the Caryll family of Ladyholt, just over the Sussex border from Petersfield. This was the Catholic family so closely allied to Alexander Pope. See Erskine-Hill, Howard, Times Literary Supplement, 14 Sept. 1973. The justices involved in committing the Holt Forest gang were Ellis St John; Sir John Cope; and Monoux Cope (SP 43/67, minute of 1 Oct. 1723).Google Scholar

42 PRO, SP 35/45/34.

43 PRO, SP 35/45/56, 74: SP 35/46/45. Colonel Peter Hawker had been appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Portsmouth in 1717: Dalton, Charles, George The First's Army (London, 1910), I, 249.Google Scholar The story that James Barton, a highwayman executed in 1725, had been one of the Blacks, and had turned evidence against them, is found in ‘Captain Alexander Smith’, Memoirs of the Life and Times of Jonathan Wild (London, 1726), pp. 99–110,Google Scholar and more plausibly in Mist's Weekly Journal for 13 Mar. 1725. Barton was convicted at Winchester on 6 Mar. Barton certainly haled from Hampshire and had contacts in the Portsmouth area. But other sources (including Defoe) give no hint of Barton's involvement with the Blacks.

44 PRO, SP 44/81/313, 324. Similar views are expressed in a letter from Walpole to James Hayes of Holyport, Berkshire, p. 316. Rackett's servants were brought before Hayes by Nun in June (PRO, T 1/244).

45 PRO, T 1/246/99: London Journal, 14 Sept.: PRO, SP 43/67, letter of 11 Oct. 1723.

46 PRO, SP 35/45/101: SP 43/67, no foliation. Delafaye emphasized to Townshend in a letter of 1 Oct. ‘what care the Lords Justices take for suppressing the Blacks’.

47 Paxton had told Delafaye on 26 Oct. that there might be an attempt to free the prisoners on their way to London. The prudent Delafaye immediately got in touch with the Secretary of War to arrange for a full guard: PRO, SP 44/122/196–7.

48 Daily Journal, 14 Oct. 1723.

49 PRO, SP 44/81/312: SP 44/289/184–5, 191–3. On 10 Oct. Delafaye referred the matter of the Holt Forest raid to the law officers, as the first major trial of the Act. Evidently the Reading assizes had not been considered a satisfactory test.

50 PRO SP 44/81/340–1. This must be Edward Turner, convicted at Berkshire assizes on 2 Mar. 1724 for horse-stealing; the sentence was remitted to transportation on the recommendation of the Oxford circuit judges in July of that year (SP 35/50/105).

51 See Read's Weekly Journal, 16 Nov.: Mist's Weekly Journal, 16 Nov.: British Journal, 9 and 16 Nov.: Daily Journal, 9, 13 and 14 Nov.

52 Daily Journal, 20 Nov. 1723. Parvin and Kingcot appealed to the Lord Tnstices for a pardon, but this was refused on 28 Nov. (PRO, SP 43/68).

53 The London Journal of 30 Nov. states that one of the convicted men was ‘the Landlord of the House where they used to rendezvous, who, as he shared in their Plunder, is now likely to bear a Part in their Fate’. But this is a mistake: Parvin actually took part in the Holt raid, as the evidence makes plain. He was not convicted of receiving.

54 See for example Daily Journal and Daily Post, 5 Dec.: British Journal, 7 Dec. On 25 Nov. the high-flying Freeholder's Journal used the case as the peg on which to hang an attack on infor- mers - doubtless provoked by the measures adopted to catch the Jacobite conspirators.

55 Daily Journal, 15 Nov. 1723. The same newspaper had on 16 Sept. described Ansell as an ‘hosder’. Similar accounts are found in the criminal biographies cited in n. 6, although they both give Marshall's age as 36, not 56. Further details regarding Ansell's other criminal career are supplied by both biographers. There is no support in either the Lives or the Accounts for the story involving the highwayman James Barton.

56 Daily Journal, 11 Dec.: Read's Weekly Journal, 14 Dec. The Political State reported a rumour that ‘his Ethiopian Majesty [would] abdicate’ after the arrest of the seven (p. 316).

57 Blackstone, IV, 208: PRO, SP 44/81/336: Mist's Weekly Journal, 31 Aug. 1723: London Journal, 7 Sept. 1723: Whitehall Evening Post, 5 Sept. 1723.

58 The keepers of Bere Forest, like so many Crown servants, were badly in arrears on their salary of §50. See Norton's report to the Treasury of 27 Nov. 1722.

59 A curious epilogue is found in a letter of Swift in Nov. 1725, alleging that ‘a good living’ in the diocese of Armagh had been given to ‘a certain animal called a Waltham Black', on the recommendation of Townshend. ‘It is a cant word for a deer stealer. This fellow was leader of a gang, and had the honour of hanging half a dozen of his fellows in quality of informer, which was his merit.’ See The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, ed. Williams, Harold (Oxford, 1963–1965), III, 116.Google Scholar The notes wrongly identify the Blacks with Epping Forest. In fact Power had been institu- ted as rector of Ballinderry, Co. Tyrone, on 19 July 1725. He resigned this office in 1734: Leslie, James B., Armagh Clergy and Parishes (Dundalk, 1911), p. 122.Google Scholar He soon showed himself once more as a man of ‘indifferent character’, and complaints reached Ambrose Philips, the poet, who was secretary to the primate, Boulter. Swift's superior, Archbishop King, was equally incensed by Power's ill conduct. See Mant, Richard, History of the Church of Ireland (London, 1840), II, 443–5:Google ScholarKing, Sir Charles S., A Great Archbishop of Dublin (London, 1906), pp. 252–3.Google Scholar

60 Note the argument used at the start of the section on the Blacks in Select and Impartial Accounts, II, 25:Google Scholar ‘These People, though but a Race of petty Thieves, rendered themselves so for-midable, that a Law was made particularly to reach them; and therefore they certainly deserved Death, for introducing a Necessity of making such a penal Statute, as may, perhaps, affect others, whose Offences might not, as the Law stood before, have merited capital Punishment; and, indeed, something of this Kind has already happened.’