A brief, and by no means complete, history of rebels and rebellions in England and Wales. It makes for interesting, sometimes depressing, reading as you realise how little some things have changed and see that, with the rise of AI (artificial intelligence), the age of the Luddites (in its correct or original meaning) has made an unwelcome return…
I have used various sources for this post – the BBC provides a huge amount of useful information, so does Historic-UK as well as various universities and government agencies…
This Sceptered Isle or Perfidious Albion?
“This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle”: so begins the speech from Richard II, Shakespeare’s play about the fall of the Plantagenet king…
These words are spoken by the dying John of Gaunt – who is lamenting the fact that England is being ‘leased out’ under King Richard II. As he lies dying, John of Gaunt pronounces the death of England…
“Perfidious Albion” is a phrase that was used in the late 18th and early 19th century to describe Britain’s reputation in Europe for bad faith, reneging on agreements and to back up accusations of outright treachery in her diplomacy and treaty-making.
Its origins are obscure. A 17th century French Catholic bishop and theologian wrote of Perfidious Albion in a poem attacking England and was used by Irish Catholics to describe England’s decision to renege on commitments to Catholic rights in Ireland made in the Treaty of Limerick in 1691…
Boudicca and the Iceni
Boudicca was queen of the Iceni people of Eastern England and led a major uprising against occupying Roman forces.
Boudicca was married to Prasutagus, ruler of the Iceni people of East Anglia. When the Romans conquered southern England in AD 43, they allowed Prasutagus to continue to rule. However, when Prasutagus died the Romans decided to rule the Iceni directly and confiscated the property of the leading tribesmen. They are also said to have stripped and flogged Boudicca and raped her daughters. These actions exacerbated widespread resentment at Roman rule. In 60 or 61 AD, while the Roman governor Gaius Suetonius Paullinus was leading a campaign in North Wales, the Iceni rebelled. Members of other tribes joined them.
Boudicca’s warriors successfully defeated the Roman Ninth Legion and destroyed the capital of Roman Britain, then at Colchester. They went on to destroy London and Verulamium (St Albans). Thousands were killed. Finally, Boudicca was defeated by a Roman army led by Paulinus. Many Britons were killed and Boudicca is thought to have poisoned herself to avoid capture. The site of the battle, and of Boudicca’s death, are unknown.
Hereward the Wake
Hereward the Wake was an Anglo-Saxon nobleman who resisted Norman conquest in and around the Fens from his base on the Isle of Ely, and who is believed to have been born in, or close to, Bourne. The epithet ‘The Wake’, first recorded in the fourteenth century, may refer to his lineage as a member of the Lincolnshire Wake family, though this is disputed by scholars. His life and exploits are recorded in many primary sources (including the Gesta Herewardi, a Latin text from the early twelfth century), though the veracity of many of them is also disputed, and he is the subject of legend.
Robin Hood
The legends of Robin’s enduring battles with the Sheriff of Nottingham began in Sherwood Forest. The outlaw was a stubborn thorn in the side of the establishment, often disguising himself to fool and outwit the Sheriff. Whenever he was captured, he simply escaped. Standing up for those in need, Robin triumphed over tyranny and inequality time after time.
The origins of the Robin Hood legend are obscure. The first literary reference to Robin Hood comes from a passing reference in Piers Plowman, written some time around 1377, and the main body of tales date from the fifteenth century. In references, there is nothing to suggest that Robin Hood dates to the time of King John: in fact the only king mentioned is ‘Edward our comely king’, which probably refers to a visit to Nottingham of King Edward II in 1324. Yet a court roll from Berkshire indicates that the legend of Robin Hood dates much earlier than this.
There are numerous cases in the C13th & C14th of outlaws taking the pseudonyms of Robin Hood and Little John, and it seems likely that the original Friar Tuck who got accreted to the legend was one Robert Stafford who was active in Sussex between 1417 and 1429. Yet this in itself indicates just how difficult it is to tie Robin Hood down, since each misuse of the legend adds details of its own.
Peasant’s Revolt
In 1381, around 35 years after the Black Death had swept through Europe decimating the population, there was a shortage of people left to work the land. Recognising the power of ‘supply and demand’, the remaining peasants began to demand higher wages and better working conditions. Laws were passed limiting any wage rises. In addition, extra revenue was required to support a long and drawn out war with the French, and so a poll tax was introduced…
Things appear to have come to a head when, in May 1381, a tax collector arrived in the Essex village of Fobbing to find out why the people there had not paid their poll tax. The villagers appear to have taken exception to his enquiries and promptly threw him out. The following month, King Richard II sent soldiers to re-establish law and order but they were rebuffed by the villagers.
Joined by other villagers from the southeast, the peasants marched on London to plead their case for a better deal. Not that the peasants blamed Richard for their problems, their anger was aimed instead at his advisors – Simon Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury, and John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster, whom they believed to be corrupt.
The peasants set off for London; villagers from Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk, converged on London via Chelmsford. Those from the south of the Thames first attacked Rochester Castle and Canterbury, before setting off for Blackheath on the outskirts of London. More than 60,000 people are reported to have been involved in the revolt. It was during the march one man emerged as their natural leader: Wat Tyler (Walter the Tyler) from Kent.
In an attempt to prevent further trouble, the king agreed to meet Wat Tyler at Mile End on 14th June. At this meeting, Richard II gave into all of the peasants demands and asked that they go home in peace. Whilst this meeting was taking place, some of the rebels marched on the Tower of London and murdered Simon Sudbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Robert Hales, the Treasurer.
The next day Richard met Wat Tyler and his Kentish rebels again, this time at Smithfield, just outside of the city’s walls. But Wat Tyler was executed and, by the end of the summer of 1381, the peasants’ revolt was over. Richard did not keep any of his promises, although the poll tax was withdrawn. The peasants went back to their old way of life. However, the Black Death had caused such a shortage of labour that over the next 100 years many peasants found that when they asked for more money the lords gave in…
Kent Rebellion 1
Kent had suffered greatly as a result of the wars with France. Taxation was high, many lives had been lost. The lack of success and continued demands for more men and financing caused resentment. This was increased as many people viewed the Kings closest advisors as being incompetent or corrupt. Arguments in court had led to divisions over policies on France and taxation and created a powder keg of ill-feeling against the Kings council and dissatisfaction with the effectiveness of the king himself.
Jack Cade was the leader of a popular uprising against the government of Henry VI. Cade’s rebellion of 1450 was a protest brought about by corruption, high taxes and discontent at the recent loss of Normandy. The uprising was centred largely in the South East of England with people from Kent rising and marching on London. Cade led the rebels from Sevenoaks through Kent, arriving on 30th June 1450. It ended with the death of Cade on 12th July 1450.
Rebellions early in the reign of Henry VII: Simnel, Warbeck and Cornish
The Lambert Simnel rebellion seems quite amusing and leaves you wondering how anyone thought that they could succeed. The story begins with a ten year old Lambert, who an Oxford priest tried to pass off as one of Edward IV’s sons (aka the Princes in the Tower). As that didn’t work, the priest then decided to pass the lad off as the Earl of Warwick. There was a problem with that, though – quite a major problem, really – which was that the Earl of Warwick was alive and well, albeit in the Tower of London…
Lambert was taken to Ireland, where he was proclaimed as King Edward VI. In addition to support from the Duchess of Burgundy (sister of Edward IV), the Earl of Lincoln joined in. In June 1487, Lincoln landed in Lancashire with an army but was dismayed to discover that there was little support for his cause. Lincoln met Henry VII’s forces in Newark on June 16th, 1487. Lincoln was killed along with over half of his army. The surviving nobles had their estates confiscated, thereby enriching Henry VII and securing his position.
Having defeated this rebellion, Henry VII punished Simnel by making him work in the royal kitchens, he later became the king’s falconer and died in 1534 of natural causes…
The Perkin Warbeck rebellion was the most significant threat Henry VII faced. He was dangerous for three reasons: first, the breadth and depth of his foreign support; second, the persistence of his campaign, which was not thoroughly suppressed until he was executed; and third, the fact that Henry – despite his boasts to the contrary – never knew for certain whether or not the young man’s claims were true…
Warbeck claimed to be Richard, Duke of Shrewsbury, the younger of the Princes in the Tower; not murdered, as his ‘brother’ Edward V had been, but spared by the tender hearted killer and spirited abroad. The story was thin and implausible, but not impossible. He finally surrendered to Henry VII at Beaulieu Abbey, where he had taken refuge following the defeat of his army at Taunton. Henry initially spared Warbeck and kept him in his entourage but when Warbeck attempted to escape, he was arrested, held in the Tower Of London and hanged at Tyburn in November 1499…
The Cornish Rebellion of 1497 led to a march on London and threatened the rule of King Henry VII and the new Tudor dynasty…
In 1497 Henry demanded exceedingly high taxes from the Cornish to wage war in Scotland against Perkin Warbeck. Warbeck claimed to be Richard Duke of Shrewsbury, one of the “Princes in the Tower”, who had a rightful claim to the English throne. He wasn’t, of course, just another of the Yorkist descendants bitter about losing their claims to the throne. James IV of Scotland, however, welcomed him as the rightful King of England, wishing to undermine Henry and the English, prompting Henry to declare war. The Cornish however felt this was completely unjustified as Scotland was no threat to them.
Tin mining was of great economic importance for Cornwall, so much so that it had its own separate government institutions: Stannary Parliaments. Stannary Law in fact is one of the oldest incorporated laws in England, and it gave special privileges to Cornwall to reflect just how important tin mining was to the region. This gave Cornwall its own sense of autonomy and identity. However, in 1496 Henry VII suspended these privileges and issued new tin mining regulations, once again in the attempt to undermine Cornish autonomy and further Tudor centralisation. This was the final straw for the Cornish, as their quasi-autonomous status given to them via the Stannary Parliament was now lost.
The rebellion started on the Lizard Peninsula and by the time they reached Devon, some 15,000 men were involved. During this time King Henry was in the north attempting to wage war against Scotland, however he was forced to retreat due to the danger the rebels posed. He assembled an army of some 25,000 men to battle the Cornish rebels. The rebels had picked up support on their march from Cornwall, however they were never efficiently organised and lacked both proper leadership and proper arms in comparison to the King’s forces. They did however manage to march all the way to London, and the two sides met at the Battle of Blackheath on 17th June 1497. The Cornish rebels, led by a blacksmith and lawyer, were easily defeated by the King’s forces at the battle just outside London, in what today is Deptford.
The battle though was not fought in vain, as Henry restored the Stannary privileges the Cornish so desperately wanted and never imposed such high taxes on the Cornish again. In 1997 Cornwall marked the 500th anniversary of the rebellion by recreating the original march. The “Keskerdh Kernow” march, Cornish for “Cornwall marches on”, shows how the rebellion played a huge part in the foundation of Cornish identity and is still in the minds of the Cornish today. Plaques and statues of the leaders of the rebellion were also unveiled in commemoration.
Pilgrimage of Grace
The Reformation in Tudor England was a time of unprecedented change. One of the major outcomes of the Reformation was the destruction of the monasteries which began in 1536. The Reformation came about when Henry VIII wished to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, who had failed to give him a male heir. When the Pope refused to grant the divorce, Henry set up the Church of England. The Act of Supremacy in 1534 confirmed the break from Rome, declaring Henry to be the Supreme Head of the Church of England.
This led to the Act of Suppression in 1536 whereby small monasteries with an income of less than £200 a year were closed and their buildings, land and money taken by the Crown. The Second Suppression Act of 1539 allowed the dissolution of the larger monasteries and religious houses. Monastic land and buildings were confiscated and sold off to families who sympathised with Henry’s break from Rome. By 1540 monasteries were being dismantled at a rate of fifty a month. After the disposal of their monastic lands and buildings, the majority of monks, friars and nuns were given money or pensions. However, there were some abbots and religious house leaders who refused to comply. They were executed and their monasteries destroyed. Thousands of monastic servants suddenly found themselves without employment.
The Dissolution was not universally popular and people in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire protested. What started as the Lincolnshire Rising in Louth, in October 1536, soon became known as The Pilgrimage of Grace. It was the worst uprising of Henry VIII’s reign and was a direct result of the dissolution of the monasteries, a policy which confused and angered many people. The presence of a royal commission was the spark; the local clergy encouraged it to flame. The Lincolnshire rebellion only lasted a fortnight, but Beverley, Yorkshire – led by the lawyer Robert Aske – was next and the rebellion spread quickly from there.
Faced with such odds, the king turned to diplomacy. The rebels, after all, did not seek to overthrow him. Their primary desire was for the dissolved monasteries to be restored. They also criticized the king’s ‘low-born’ advisers, particularly Thomas Cromwell. His policies of high taxation and forced enclosures had worsened poverty throughout northern England. The king negotiated peace through Norfolk, conceding their demands and promising a free pardon to all rebels who dispersed. Monastic lands would be restored and a new parliament called to address their concerns. The rebels accordingly dispersed. But, inevitably, Henry broke his word; martial law was declared, rebel leaders were indicted and put on trial. Several hundred rebels, including Aske, were executed.
Kett’s Rebellion – the commotion time
In July 1549 Robert Kett, brother William and a crowd of supporters from the surrounding rural area, arrived in the city of Norwich, teamed up with poor inhabitants of the city, and began destroying enclosures that had been erected on the city commons.
Kett’s Rebellion was one episode in a wider uprising in 1548-9 known as the ‘commotion time’. While there were other issues at stake (not least attempts by the government to firmly establish Protestantism) an important spark for these uprisings was the anti-enclosure proclamations issued in June 1548 and April 1549. Enclosure – the parcelling out of common land into individual privately owned plots – was an affront to common rights. Often viewed as a rural issue, many of the uprisings were rural in focus, a feature of the Norwich case was the urban setting and the solidarity between urban and rural protesters who travelled from all over Norfolk and Suffolk to join the rebellion.
It was the launch of a second enclosure commission on 8 July 1549 that was the immediate spark for the uprising in East Anglia. During celebrations associated with the dissolved abbey in Wymondham, crowds marched into surrounding fields to dismantle hedges and fences. Some of these fences were on land belonging to Robert Kett a local yeoman farmer. Rather than objecting to the destruction of his property, Kett agreed with the rioters that the enclosures should be removed and offered to lead them ‘in defense of their common libertie’ The rebels marched to Norwich, destroying other enclosures along the way and setting up camp on Mousehold Heath.
Kett and his followers stormed Norwich and took control, forcing the mayor to put his name to their demands. The rebels defeated the Earl of Northampton’s army sent to crush them and held out for a month. It was only following the arrival of reinforcement troops under the leadership of the Earl of Warwick, that they were eventually defeated. Even then it took four days of skirmishes, resulting in the deaths of several thousand protestors. Kett was captured and he and his brother were sent to London to stand trial at the King’s Bench. They returned to Norfolk for their execution. William was hanged from the tower of Wymondham Abbey and Robert on the wall of Norwich Castle.
Prayer Book Rebellion
The Prayer Book Rebellion was a rebellion that took place in the south-west of England in the summer of 1549, in the reign of King Edward VI. The protests were driven by the introduction of the Book of Common Prayer,. This had been composed mainly by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer and was the official liturgy of Edward VI’s Protestant Church. Furthermore, iIt was in English and replaced the Catholic Mass in Latin that the English people were used to celebrating. These changes were particularly unpopular in Cornwall and Devon, where rebels called for the rebuilding of abbeys, the restoration of prayers for souls in purgatory, the policy of only the bread being given to the laity and the use of Latin for the mass.
The rebels laid siege to Exeter in July 1549, holding out for about 6 weeks before being defeated by royal forces. It was the end of the rebellion. In January 1550, the rebel leaders were executed at Tyburn…
Wyatt’s Rebellion
In November 1553, Parliament tried to dissuade Mary from her plans to marry Philip of Spain but she had made up her mind and some men decided that a military coup might be the only way to prevent Mary’s marriage.
The fear of England becoming re-Catholicised combined with the proposed marriage between Mary and Philip of Spain, led to the Wyatt Rebellion of 1554. This was a rebellion led by nobles – principally Sir Thomas Wyatt from Kent, Sir Peter Carew from Devon and Sir James Croft from Herefordshire. In December, the rebel group was joined by Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk and father of Lady Jane Grey. But there were disagreements over the fine details, with some suggesting the idea that Mary should be assassinated, which Wyatt did not agree with. The plan was to depose Mary I and replace her with her half-sister Elizabeth.
Unfortunately, by the end of December 1553 the privy council heard that trouble was brewing. The rebels were forced into action earlier than planned and while Carew spread dissent in Devon, Wyatt organised the Kent uprising. On the 28th January, Mary I’s government sent 600 men from London to Kent under the leadership of Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, but they were outnumbered by Wyatt’s forces and many men mutinied, joining the rebels. Wyatt then marched on to London.
By the time Wyatt reached London, Mary I had rallied her troops and Wyatt found the City guarded and barricaded. Wyatt changed his plan, moving from Southwark to Kingston, and was successful in entering Kingston from where he proceeded to Ludgate. However, Mary’s force had barred the gates and the rebels were forced into turning around and heading to Temple Bar where Mary’s troops were waiting for them. With his men surrendering and swearing allegiance to the Queen, Wyatt was forced to surrender and he was arrested by Sir Maurice Berkeley and taken to the Tower of London.
Thomas Wyatt the Younger was tried and denied plotting the assassination of Mary I and refused to implicate Elizabeth. He was found guilty of treason and executed in April 1554. He was beheaded, quartered and disembowelled. Elizabeth had been taken to the Tower in March and imprisoned while Mary’s council tried to implicate her in the rebellion. She was released in May 1554 but Lady Jane Grey, whose father had been involved in the rebellion, was not so lucky. Jane, her husband Guildford Dudley and her father Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk, were all executed in February 1554…
Rising of the North
When Elizabeth came to the throne she found herself up against a group of powerful northern earls tried to limit their power by putting Southern lords in charge of some of their lands. These earls were also staunch Catholics and upset at the interference of Elizabeth in their affairs from distant London. These factors, and the arrival of Mary, Queen of Scots in England in 1568, pushed them to rebellion.
In 1569, Charles Neville (6th Earl of Westmoreland) and Thomas Percy (7th Earl of Northumberland) began to gather their forces. In November they rode to Durham with over 4,500 men, stormed the cathedral and destroyed the English Bible and Protestant communion table. A Catholic Mass was then celebrated – an act that was illegal in England and Wales.
However, they lacked a coherent plan, whilst in comparison Elizabeth’s reaction to the rebellion was swift. Most of the rebels retreated as soon as they heard that the Earl of Sussex and several thousand troops were marching north. Prisoners were severely punished with over 800 rebels executed as a warning to others.
The Earls fled to Scotland, and although Westmoreland managed to evade capture by escaping to Flanders, Northumberland was captured, handed back to the English in 1572, and executed. Rebel lands, and those of other Catholic families, were confiscated, and the power of the Northern Earls was broken…
Gunpowder Plot
The Gunpowder Plot was a failed attempt to assassinate King James I of England during the Opening of Parliament in November 1605. The plan was organised by Robert Catesby, a devout English Catholic who hoped to kill the Protestant King James and establish Catholic rule in England. As part of the plan, Catesby intended to kidnap James’s nine-year-old daughter Princess Elizabeth and install her as a puppet queen.
English Catholics had expected more religious tolerance under James I compared to the reign of his predecessor, Elizabeth I. James’s wife, Anne of Denmark, was a Catholic, and the king initially appeared sympathetic to English Catholicism. However, these hopes were dashed in early 1604 when in a speech to Parliament James I said he ‘detested’ the Catholic faith. Days later, he ordered all Jesuit and Catholic priests to leave the country. Following the king’s declaration, Catesby joined forces with other Catholic conspirators to bring down the Protestant government.
The Gunpowder Plot itself was foiled in the early hours of 5 November 1605. Catesby and the core group of conspirators first met and swore an oath of secrecy in May 1604. At first they had planned to tunnel beneath the Houses of Parliament, but in 1605 they were able to rent a cellar located directly beneath the House of Lords. Dozens of barrels of gunpowder were moved in, and explosives expert Guy Fawkes prepared to ignite the cache during the Opening of Parliament.
In October 1605, Catholic peer Lord Monteagle was handed an anonymous letter by a servant. This letter, delivered by a stranger in the road, warned Monteagle not to attend the opening of Parliament. Monteagle, loyal to the king, took the letter to James I’s chief minister Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury.
The plotters had been informed of the letter by a servant of Monteagle, but, bizarrely and despite the risk, decided to continue. Cecil waited to see how events unfolded before showing the letter to the king. On 4 November, men loyal to the king searched the vaults of Parliament and found a large pile of firewood in a cellar. Fawkes himself was also discovered; claiming he was called John Johnson, Fawkes said that the firewood belonged to his master Thomas Percy. This aroused further suspicion however, as Percy was already known to the authorities as a Catholic agitator.
James I ordered a second search and, in the early hours of Tuesday 5 November, Fawkes was found dressed in a cloak and hat, wearing boots and spurs and carrying fuses and matches. He was arrested and 36 barrels of gunpowder were discovered. Fawkes was tortured and eventually revealed his identity and those of his fellow plotters. The planned Catholic uprising came to nothing, and the other conspirators attempted to flee. Catesby, Percy, Jack and Kit Wright were killed while attempting to escape the authorities, but the surviving eight plotters were captured and found guilty of treason. They were hanged, drawn and quartered…
The English Civil War, the Kentish Rebellion and the Levellers
Charles I became King of England in 1625 following the death of his father, James I. He married a French princess, Henrietta Maria. This caused concern among some MPs, who believed Charles had plans to make England a Catholic country again. England had been Protestant since the late 1500s, so this would represent further change after years of religious upheaval. Charles also believed in the Divine Right of Kings. This was the belief that he had been put in charge of the country by God, so therefore did not need assistance from Parliament in order to make decisions.
In 1629, Parliament became increasingly critical of Charles’ decision making and policies. Charles dissolved Parliament and ruled without them. Parliament did not sit again until 1640. Without Parliament, Charles was not allowed to raise new taxes. To get around this, Charles introduced ship money in 1634. This was extremely unpopular, as this tax had only ever been raised during times of war.
In 1633, Charles appointed William Laud as Archbishop of Canterbury. This was an unpopular appointment, as Laud had some controversial ideas. For example, he ordered churches to have stone altars, rather than wooden communion tables. Stone altars were a feature of Catholic churches, so this added to some people’s fears that Charles intended to make England a Catholic country again. In 1637, Charles ordered the use of a new prayer book in Scotland, which angered Scottish Puritans. They believed that the Church needed to become more Protestant, and that the Church should be ‘purified’ of all traces of Catholic practice. People rioted when clergy used the prayer book in church services. In 1640, angered by Charles’ changes and interference, Scottish Covenanters invaded the north of England. Charles was in urgent need of money, so he had to recall Parliament to try and raise some new taxes to fund an army.
In December 1641, Parliament voted in favour of the Grand Remonstrance. This was a list of demands for Charles to make further reforms. Charles refused to agree to the Grand Remonstrance. In January 1642, Charles went into the Houses of Parliament to try and arrest 5 MPs, but they had been warned of his arrival and escaped on the River Thames.
In August 1642, Charles grew tired of Parliament’s demands and declared war on Parliament. The first time the Royalist and Parliamentary forces directly fought each other was at Edgehill, in Warwickshire. Neither side won a convincing victory. Both sides mainly had inexperienced soldiers, which made it difficult for anyone to win the war quickly.
Charles had some success in the first two years of the war, but the momentum changed when Parliament decided to form a more professional army. Thomas Fairfax became commander-in-chief of the troops and Cromwell was in charge of the cavalry. Thomas Fairfax led this new, professional army at Naseby. The Royalists were led by Charles and Prince Rupert. Naseby was a decisive victory for Parliament. The Royalists lost over 5,000 men and much of their equipment and weapons captured. The extent of the defeat meant Charles did not have the resources to put up effective resistance. Charles fled to seek support from the Scots, but was handed over to Parliament in exchange for £100,000 in January 1647.
Charles escaped from Hampton Court, where he was being held, in November 1647. He travelled back to Scotland. He won support from Scots who said that they would invade England with him, to help him regain the throne. In return for their support, Charles agreed to make religious reforms. The invasion, along with uprisings from Royalist supporters in England, started in May 1648. By August they had all been defeated. Charles was captured again. He tried to negotiate a settlement with Parliament, but Oliver Cromwell was opposed to this. Charles was charged with treason and put on trial in January 1649 and sentenced to death. His execution resulted in the only period of republican rule in British history, during which military leader Oliver Cromwell ruled as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth. This period is known as the Interregnum, and lasted for 11 years until 1660 when Charles’s son, Charles II, was restored to the throne.
Kent Rebellion 2
The second Kent Rebellion was a precursor to the short lived Second English Civil War of 1648 and was partly driven by the Canterbury Christmas Day riots of 1647 which were triggered when the Puritan Mayor and officials of Canterbury tried to ban traditional Christmas celebrations.
In May of 1648 members of the land-owning gentry and other prominent Kent citizens petitioned Parliament and when Parliament rejected the petition a rebellion was raised in support of the King. After some initial success campaigning in the East Kent area against supporters of Parliament, a force of around 1,000 men continued campaigning in Kent and beyond in the Royalist cause. A few days later the garrisons of the small coastal defence castles Sandown, Deal, and Walmer surrendered to the East Kent rebels without a fight and ships of the English fleet lying in the Downs off the coast of Deal and Walmer also joined the rebels. Dover Castle remained in the hands of the Parliamentarians.
Parliament dispatched troops of the New Model Army to retake Sandown, Deal and Walmer castles, and raise the siege at Dover. The troops relieved Dover Castle on 6th June and it remained in Parliamentary hands until the Restoration of the Monarchy in May of 1660 when Charles II landed at Dover en route from the Continent to London to reclaim the Crown.
After the defeat of the Kentish rebels, the terms of surrender stated that “the Lords and Gentlemen (the officers) were all prisoners of mercy”, and that the common soldiers were to be disarmed and given passes to allow them to return home after first swearing an oath not to take up arms against Parliament again…
There was also a brief rebellion in 1648 by Cornish Royalists…
The Levellers
The Levellers grew out of the conflict between Charles I, parliament and the subsequent civil war. They represented the aspirations of working people who suffered under the persecution of kings, landowners and the priestly class, and they spoke for those who experienced the hardships of poverty and deprivation. They developed and campaigned, first with Cromwell and then against him, for a political and constitutional settlement of the civil war which would embody principles of political freedom, anticipating by a century and a half the ideas of the American and French revolutions.
The Levellers found spokesmen and campaigners in John Lilburn, Richard Overton, William Walwyn, Gerrard Winstanley the True Leveller or Digger, and others. These men were brilliant pamphleteers enjoying a short-lived freedom to print, publish and circulate their views at a time when censorship was temporarily in abeyance, and printing presses newly cheap and easy to set up. They developed their own traditions of free discussion and vigorous petitioning and used them to formulate and advance their demands.
The Levellers’ demands were encapsulated in a document called An Agreement of the People outlining a new and democratic constitution for Britain. As well as reflecting the clash of interests between 17th century haves and have-nots, the Levellers’ ideas can be traced right back to the teachings of the Bible. The conflict in the Old Testament between the kings and the prophets, between temporal power and the preaching of righteousness, lay at the heart of the arguments in the English revolution – both the one between the King and Parliament, and that between Cromwell and the Levellers. Unsurprisingly, the ideas of the Levellers were considered extremely dangerous by those with a vested interest in the preservation of privilege, property and power and by 1650 the Levellers’ movement had been effectively crushed.
Luddites
On 9th October 1779, a group of English textile workers in Manchester rebelled against the introduction of machinery which threatened their skilled craft…
Today the term ‘Luddite’ is often used to generalise people who do not like new technology, however it originated with an elusive figure called Ned Ludd. He was said to be a young apprentice who took matters into his own hands and destroyed textile apparatus in 1779. The groups of workers that followed in his footsteps said they were taking orders from “General Ludd” and issued manifestos using his name. There is no evidence of his actual existence, with Ned Ludd assuming a mythical reputation and becoming a legendary character others would use their cause. Ned Ludd followers, the Luddites, were using the name to shock the government into submission.
The Luddites were not, as has often been portrayed, against the concept of progress and industrialisation as such, but instead the idea that mechanisation would threaten their livelihood and the skills they had spent years acquiring. The group went about destroying weaving machines and other tools as a form of protest against what they believed to be a deceitful method of circumventing the labour practices of the day. The replacement of people’s skilled craft with machines would gradually substitute their established roles in the textile industry, something they were keen to prevent, rather than simply halting the advent of technology.
The textile workers and weavers were actually skilled, well-trained middle-class workers of their time. After working for centuries maintaining good relationships with merchants who sold their products, the introduction of machinery not only superseded the need for handcrafted garments but also initiated the use of low skilled and poorly payed labourers in larger factories. This transition would prove disastrous for the artisans of their craft, who had spent years perfecting and honing their skills only to be replaced by less skilled, underpaid workers operating machinery.
In an attempt to halt or at least make the transition smoother, the Luddites initially sought to renegotiate terms of working conditions based on the changing circumstances in the workplace. Some of the ideas and requests included the introduction of a minimum wage, the adherence of companies to abide by minimum labour standards, and taxes which would enable funds to be created for workers’ pensions. Whilst these terms do not seem unreasonable in the modern day workplace, for the wealthy factory owners, these attempts at bargaining proved futile.
The Luddite movement therefore emerged when attempts at negotiation failed and their valid concerns were not listened to, let alone addressed. The Luddites activity emerged against a backdrop of economic struggle from the Napoleonic Wars which impacted negatively on the working conditions already experienced in the new factories. With the advent of new technology and more low skilled workers, this issue was exacerbated.
In the eighteenth century, the working classes were not likely to rebel against the government, largely due to the fear of reprisals as punishment was severe. The main preoccupation for workers, as was the case for the Luddites, was being able to make a living but as the Industrial Revolution began to threaten the status quo, so too did the levels of discontent rise amongst the workers. The Luddites became typical for the period, rebelling against the threats to their livelihood, attempting to find a position in which they could barter for better conditions and wages and most importantly not lose their place in the chain of production.
The foundations for the Luddites began in the late 1700’s but the first noticeable riots occurred in 1811. For those who had attempted to negotiate with the factory owners and the government, their pleas had not been heard. The tactics used appeared quite radical; however considering the fact there were no unions to fall back on, the message of defiance against a known threat to their livelihood took the form of breaking machinery. The intention was to put employers under pressure in order to cave into their demands, however the response they were met with was swift and brutal.
Initially the response from the government was to put through the Protection of Stocking Frames Act in 1788 which essentially increased the penalties for destroying factory equipment. This did little to hinder Luddite activity and in March 1811 the first major Luddite riot took place in Nottingham. This became one of many, as the movement swept across the country with weavers burning mills and destroying factory equipment. In 1811 alone, hundreds of machines were destroyed or broken and the government soon began to realise that neither the movement nor the frustration of the people was dissipating.
The group would often meet at night, somewhere isolated near the industrial towns where they worked in order to organise themselves. Much of the activity surrounded the Nottinghamshire area in late 1811 but was extended to Yorkshire the following year and to Lancashire in March 1813. The activity was organised by smaller groups of men who felt their livelihoods were at stake. As there was no central force organising the Luddites, the movement was able to sweep the country easily as many families’ lives were being compromised by the industrialisation process.
The attacks used sledgehammers and in some cases escalated to gunfire when the factory owners responded by shooting the protesters. Whilst the workers hoped the uprising would encourage a ban of weaving machines, the British government had no such plans and instead made machine breaking punishable by death.
The wealth of the factory owners meant that the British government were very responsive to the concerns of the owners rather than the workers. In accordance with this, they sent around 14,000 soldiers into the affected areas, forcing Luddites to battle with the British Army, such as at Burton’s Mill in Rochdale. They also attempted to suppress the activity by infiltrating the group with spies. The unrest was escalating and there seemed to be no end in sight.
In April 1812 some of the Luddites were gunned down at a mill near Huddersfield. The army were on the offence and began to round up the Luddites, transporting large groups of them to either be hanged or taken to Australia to serve their punishment. The harsh response which resulted in imprisonment, death or being sent across the world was enough to suppress the actions of the group. By 1813, the activities had dwindled and only a few years later the group had vanished. The last recorded Luddite activity was carried out by a unemployed stockinger in Nottingham called Jeremiah Brandreth who led the Pentrich Rising. Although not specifically related to machinery, it was the last fight of its kind before the tragic circumstances of the Industrial Revolution prevailed in the country.
Pentrich Rising
One evening in June 1817, around sixty men set out from the villages of Pentrich and South Wingfield in Derbyshire on a fourteen-mile march towards Nottingham. They believed themselves to be in the vanguard of a Rebellion which would see ‘clouds of men’ descend from the north of England. Huddersfield, Sheffield, Wakefield and Leeds were scheduled to rise the night before, Nottingham, Leicester and Derby the same night and Birmingham the following day. This self-styled ‘army of regenerators’, anything upwards of 100,000 strong, would assemble in Nottingham, which was to be made the regional centre of government. From there, they would make their way up the River Trent to Newark. After seizing the arms depot and revenue in the Town Hall, they would sweep south to London and establish a government that would nationalise property, renounce the national debt and taxes and issue new money. Britain would become a republic under a new red, white and green tricolour flag. The Pentrich rebels were led by members of their own community – men like William Turner, a 46-year old mason and former soldier, and Isaac Ludlam senior, a 52-year old stone-getter and sometime Methodist preacher, and commanded by a relative stranger Jeremiah Brandreth, an impoverished stockinger universally known as ‘Nottingham’ or ‘the Captain’, but immortalised in history as ‘the Nottingham Captain.’ Their march took them to the ironworks at Butterley where there was a standoff with armed special constables and then on to Eastwood where they found an expectant crowd awaiting their arrival. Towards Gilt Brook the rebels spotted an oncoming detachment of 15th Hussars that had been despatched from Nottingham Barracks. The sight of twenty Light Dragoons riding towards their position was enough to scatter the rebels in all directions, discarding armaments as they went. Most of the rebels were hunted down and the majority taken to Derby Gaol. Three of the rebel leaders, Brandreth, Thomas Bacon and George Weightman, were found guilty of high treason. Brandreth and Bacon were executed on the 7 November 1817, though Weightman had his sentence commuted to transportation.
Peterloo Massacre
Thirty years after the French Revolution, reform groups all over the country, particularly in the industrial regions, were calling for representation. Many regarded Britain’s parliamentary system, which was based on property ownership, as unfair and unrepresentative. On 16 August 1819 over 50,000 people gathered at St Peter’s Field in Manchester to protest the right to vote, by the end of the day what became known as the Peterloo Massacre, would lead to the death of 10 to 20 people with more than 400 injured.
The crowd were there to hear radical speaker Henry Hunt make a call for the reform of Parliament but as he began his speech the authorities ordered the gathering to be shut down by force. An attempt was made to arrest Hunt, and in the chaos that followed, soldiers charged the crowd resulting in a massacre.
Ordinary people at the time were not citizens, simply subjects who didn’t have the vote. Factory workers had very few rights. Corn laws kept the price of bread high. A belief had settled that no parliament that was democratic would have done things like this. They were there to claim the vote. And they were doing this in Manchester which had no MP at the time. The local magistrates didn’t believe that it was possible for large numbers of working people to gather without there being trouble. They sent the deputy constable in to arrest the people on the platforms. They came in with the yeomanry who were completely untrained. They had been drinking at lunchtime – a common habit – they were essentially amateurs. They got stuck and they started lashing out with sabres. There was a great surge of people in every direction. Then the chairman of the magistrates, William Hulton, called in the regular troops, the Hussars, to clear the field. It’s difficult to be certain exactly how many people died as a result of the events of 16 August 1819, some died as a result of skirmishes on following days or of injuries sustained on the day.
There were several acts of Reform throughout the 19th century, but it was not until 1918 that universal suffrage was granted in the Representation of the People Act. This granted the vote to men aged 21 and over, whether they owned property or not, and to women over the age of 30.
The Swing Riots
The wholesale enclosure of common land between 1760 and 1820, and the loss of the rights to cultivate it, led to the impoverishment of the landless labourer, who was left to support the tenant-farmer, the landowner, and the tithes of the Church. In addition, poor harvests, low wages and high unemployment between 1829 and 1830, led to hunger among poor agricultural workers and their families. To further add to their troubles, the Agricultural Revolution had introduced new technology such as the threshing machine which separated the grain from the stalks by beating it and thus dispensed with the need of workers to perform this task. This situation resulted in protests that started in Kent and later spread to surrounding counties.
They were called the Swing riots after the eponymous Captain Swing. The made-up name symbolised the anger of the poor in rural England who wanted a return to the pre-machine days when human labour was used. Threatening letters were sent to farmers and landowners which demanded that wages increase and often told farmers to desist in their employment of threshing machines. Landowners and farmers also had their farm buildings and hayricks set alight. The first of the Swing riots occurred in August 1830, with the destruction of a threshing machine near Canterbury.
At first, magistrates tried to be lenient with those arrested for offences committed during the riots, and in Canterbury at the East-Kent quarter sessions in October 1830, Sir Edward Knatchbull imposed a mere three-day prison sentence on seven machine-breakers. However, as the uprising continued the penalties became more severe, and on Christmas Eve, 1830 William Packman and Henry Packman were sentenced and hanged arson on a barn. A petition asking for clemency was rejected – altogether 19 people were executed, 505 transported to Australia and 644 imprisoned.
Tolpuddle Martyrs
Tolpuddle is a village near Dorchester, where between 1833 and 1834 a wave of trade union activity took place and a lodge of the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers was established. Entry into the union involved payment of a shilling and swearing before a picture of a skeleton never to tell anyone the union’s secrets. Lord Melbourne was Prime Minister at the time and was bitterly opposed to the Trade Union Movement, so when six English farm labourers were sentenced in March 1834 to 7 years to a penal colony in Australia for trade union activities, Lord Melbourne did not dispute the sentence.
The labourers were arrested ostensibly for administrating unlawful oaths, but the real reason was that they were trying to protest at their already pitiful wages. The labourers at Tolpuddle lived in meagre poverty on just 7 shillings a week and wanted an increase to 10 shillings, but instead their wages were cut to 6 shillings a week.
The government had become alarmed at the working class discontent in the country and, instead of doing something to resolve it, were determined to squash the union and to control increasing outbreaks of dissent. Six of the Tolpuddle labourers were arrested: George and James Loveless, James Brine, James Hammett, Thomas Stansfield and his son John. At their trial, the judge and jury were hostile and the six were sentenced to 7 years transportation to Australia. After the trial many public protest meetings were held and there was uproar throughout the country at this sentence, so the prisoners were hastily transported to Australia without delay. The people were incensed at this treatment and after 250,000 people signed a petition and a procession of 30,000 people marched down Whitehall in support of the labourers, the sentences were remitted. After some delay, the the six were given a free passage home from Australia.
The Battle of Bossenden Wood
The Battle of Bossenden Wood took place in 1838 and was instigated by John Tom, a maltster from Truro who turned up in Canterbury in 1832 posing as a Sir William Courtenay. He hoodwinked many people to the extent that he won votes in a parliamentary election in Canterbury. After a conviction for perjury, he was deemed insane and detained in the Barming Asylum in Maidstone in 1833. On release from the asylum, having lost his credibility in Canterbury, he settled for a while in the nearby village of Boughton and set about convincing the local people that he could rescue them from their poverty He quickly gained a following in Boughton and neighbouring villages. He impressed people with his knowledge of the Bible, convinced them he was the Messiah and preached a millenarian message. Millenarianism is a belief in a second advent bringing a destructive end to the sinful world and an ensuing thousand-year period of divine rule and felicity on earth. There had been previous agrarian discontent in that area during the Swing riots and further protests against the Poor Law of 1834. Farm labourers smallholders and some local tradespeople were quick to respond to Courtenay’s promises of a better life. On May 29th, Oakapple day, Courtenay led his followers on a march around the local countryside with a flag and the traditional symbol of protest – bread on a pole. The local landowners became concerned, and a warrant for Courtenay’s arrest was issued. When a constable and his assistant, Nicholas Mears attempted to arrest him, Courtenay shot dead Mears, and after that, the army was called in to intervene.
In Bossenden wood on the afternoon of the 31 May 1838, a group of about forty agricultural labourers were confronted and outnumbered by an armed detachment of the 45th Infantry Regiment, the constabulary and some of the local landed gentry. The armed forces quickly subdued the farm workers who only had sticks and staves to protect themselves apart from Sir William Courtenay, who was armed with pistols and a sword. He killed Lieutenant Bennett of the 45th Infantry Regiment. Courtney and ten others were killed by the soldiers.
About thirty of Courtenay’s followers were arrested. Ten of them eventually stood trial at Maidstone Assizes in August while the grand jury discharged the others. Two (Thomas Mears and William Price) were charged with the murder of Nicholas Mears and nine others with the murder of Lieutenant Bennett. Thomas Mears and William Price were found guilty and sentenced to death, but a recommendation for mercy by the jury persuaded the judge, Lord Denman to reduce the sentence to transportation to Australia for life for Mears and Price for ten years. The rest were sentenced to ten years imprisonment.
Chartism
The Chartist movement was the first mass movement driven by the working classes. It grew following the failure of the 1832 Reform Act to extend the vote beyond those owning property.
In 1838 a People’s Charter was drawn up for the London Working Men’s Association (LWMA) by William Lovett and Francis Place, two self-educated radicals, in consultation with other members of LWMA. The Charter had six demands:
All men to have the vote (universal manhood suffrage); Voting should take place by secret ballot; Parliamentary elections every year, not once every five years; Constituencies should be of equal size; Members of Parliament should be paid; The property qualification for becoming a Member of Parliament should be abolished
In June 1839, the Chartists’ petition was presented to the House of Commons with over 1.25 million signatures. It was rejected by Parliament. This provoked unrest which was swiftly crushed by the authorities. A second petition was presented in May 1842, signed by over three million people but again it was rejected and further unrest and arrests followed.
In April 1848 a third and final petition was presented. A mass meeting on Kennington Common in South London was organised by the Chartist movement leaders, the most influential being Feargus O’Connor, editor of ‘The Northern Star’, a weekly newspaper that promoted the Chartist cause. O’Connor was known to have connections with radical groups which advocated reform by any means, including violence. The authorities feared disruption and military forces were on standby to deal with any unrest. The third petition was also rejected but the anticipated unrest did not happen.
Despite the Chartist leaders’ attempts to keep the movement alive, within a few years it was no longer a driving force for reform. However, the Chartists’ legacy was strong. By the 1850s Members of Parliament accepted that further reform was inevitable. Further Reform Acts were passed in 1867 and 1884. By 1918, five of the Chartists’ six demands had been achieved – only the stipulation that parliamentary elections be held every year was unfulfilled.
Rebecca Riots
The Rebecca Riots were a series of protests against conditions in the rural areas of Wales between 1839 and 1843. They are usually seen as attacks on toll gates on the roads of Wales. But many ‘Rebecca’ incidents – almost half – were about general economic conditions in the countryside and not about tolls at all. The riots were mainly confined to the old counties of Pembrokeshire, Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire; there was only one incident in north Wales at Penmorfa, near Porthmadog, in Caernarfonshire and this was really a joking re-enactment of the south-west Wales incidents. Underlying the protests were the economic conditions of the time and the relationship between farmers and landlords, and the church.
The population of the rural areas of Wales had doubled in the century before the riots, despite the large numbers of people who left the countryside for the industrial areas of Wales and emigrated to America. It was hard for them all to gain a livelihood. Most farmers did not own their own land but paid rent to wealthy landlords for the use of their farms. Rents were quite high – and out of proportion to what farmers could earn from their produce. The prices they received for cattle and sheep were falling. The common lands which were once available for the use of all the people in a village were now enclosed – that is they had become the property of the landlords and were leased out to farmers. Labourers (who worked for the farmers) had used the common to graze animals or for gathering firewood, suffered as a result.
The farmers also had to pay tithes to the church, to support the local vicar. Most people who went to religious services went to chapels rather than the church but still had to pay, even if they went elsewhere. In 1836 the way the tithe was collected was changed and it became more of a burden. At the same time a new system of support for the poor was brought in by an act of 1834 and it was becoming established gradually as the riots took place. Under the new system, if you did not have enough money to support yourself you had to go into one of the new workhouses where conditions were meant to be worse than the worst paid labourer outside. Families were split up; husbands separated from wives and sisters from brothers. The farmers thought this a cruel and expensive system. In the past, they had often given food and goods to the poor but now they were expected to pay for building the hated workhouses. This meant paying rates and they had little spare cash.
The trigger for the disturbances was the toll gate system. Roads were especially bad in Wales. To remedy this, in Wales as elsewhere in Britain, turnpike trusts were established. A number of people (trustees) made up the trust and they improved the roads. In return they were allowed to erect toll gates and collect charges from road users (much like crossing the Severn Bridge now). Farmers were hard-hit by this as they used the roads to transport lime to their farms to improve the soil. In 1839, a new gate was erected at Efailwen to catch farmers who were evading the tolls. It was the last straw. Already there were too many toll gates; the market town of Carmarthen was like a fortress with twelve gates around it. The Efailwen gate was destroyed by a large crowd and when it was re-erected, a public meeting was announced ‘for the purpose of considering the necessity of a toll-gate at Efailwen.’ It concluded that there was no need and the gate was destroyed again. Throughout the outbreak there was much good humoured play-acting and a concern to show that there was justice and reason on the side of the rioters.
The name ‘Rebecca’ was that of the mythical leader. ‘She’ had helpers like ‘Charlotte’, Nelly and ‘Miss Cromwell’ and followers (daughters). The name came from the Bible which Welsh chapels goers had learned to read in the previous couple of generations: ‘And they blessed Rebekah, and said unto her, Thou art our sister, by thou the mother of thousands of millions and let thy seed possess the gate of those that hate them’ (Genesis 24 Verse 60). The toll gates were seen as the property of the gentry (‘those that hate them’) as they were often the trustees of the turnpikes. The gates became a symbol of many different discontents about the land and the church (which was also seen as the church of the gentry). The rioters wore women’s clothes and blackened their faces, for disguise, but also perhaps to suggest the idea that women were entitled to act to defend their families. Normally respectable people may have felt that in disguise they were symbolising their community rather then breaking the law as an individual.
Though there was much discontent, there were only a few outbreaks of action in 1839, including an attack on a new workhouse at Narberth. But in 1842-3, when economic conditions were even worse, the outbreaks swept though the three counties. Soon not a single toll gate was standing there. Landlords were sent threatening letters to intimidate them into lowering rents. There were violent attacks on individuals who were seen as breaking the ‘people’s law’. ‘I am averse to tyranny and oppression’ was a common remark of the rioters. Mass meetings were held to raise grievances like tithes, rents, the poor law and many other issues. There was also an attack on the workhouse in Carmarthen in 1843 and other violent actions when shots were fired. Eventually one woman was killed – surprisingly there was only one death.
The government sent in troops to try to prevent the outbreaks but they were ineffective. They could be heard coming for miles; the rioters knew the territory much better and could spread false information about where they might strike next. Troops were often sent on wild goose chases. The Times sent a special correspondent, Thomas Campbell Foster, to cover the riots. He went to meetings and talked to farmers and reported favourably. In the end the government modified the toll gate system and the poor law to remove some of their worst features and gradually economic conditions improved. More people moved away from the rural areas to the towns. The railway came into south-west Wales by the late 1840s and made it easier for people to leave. The riots affected the most agricultural areas; if there was nearby industry (as with the lead mines of the northern part of Cardiganshire or the slate quarries in Gwynedd) there were no outbreaks. Here there were better chances to earn a living.
The name ‘Rebecca’ lives on. In the 1860s and 70s local people protesting against the sale of fishing rights to outside interests in mid-Wales used the name in their protests, as have farmers in the past fifteen years or so protesting about policies in agriculture. When the local community bought to right to levy tolls at a surviving toll in Porthmadog in the 1990s, they named it Rebecca and gave the money raised to local charities. But that toll has now ended, though there are still a few of the old tollgates surviving in Wales…
Women’s Suffrage Movement
Even in the 1800s, women had very few rights in law and were not allowed to vote. For example, “The Great Reform Act” of 1832 excluded women from the electorate by defining voters as ‘male persons‘. Women were expected to marry, have children and look after the home. When a woman got married, any property she owned passed into the ownership of her husband. Divorce was difficult and there was limited legal protection against domestic violence. Working class women often worked in low paid jobs, such as in the new industrial mills and factories, or in domestic service. Few middle-class women worked and once they were married, any money they earned became the property of their husband. It was also difficult for women to get a university education and to access well-paid jobs such as doctor, architect or lawyer. In 1865, Elizabeth Garrett-Anderson became the first woman to be a qualified doctor in Britain. By 1900, there were still only 200 female doctors in Britain...
In the mid-1800s, some women started to campaign for the right to vote, commonly referred to as women’s suffrage. Though many men opposed the women’s suffrage movement, there were some men who supported the campaign. In 1832 Mary Smith, from Yorkshire, petitioned MP Henry Hunt that unmarried women should have a vote as they paid their own taxes. Henry Hunt was mocked by fellow MPs when he presented this petition to Parliament. John Stuart Mill, another MP, wrote a book in 1869 called The Subjection of Women, in which he argued that women should be treated as equal to men. In 1867, Mill had put forward an amendment to the Reform Act that would have given women the right to vote on the same terms as men. This was defeated by 196 votes to 73. It did, however, help raise awareness of the issue of women’s right to vote…
Following the 1867 vote, the London Society for Women’s Suffrage was formed. Their aim was to peacefully protest and campaign for the right for women to vote. Groups similar to this were set up across the country, and in 1897 they joined together to form the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), led by Millicent Fawcett. She was the sister of Elizabeth Garrett-Anderson, the first female doctor in the UK...
Over time they won some publicity, and their membership grew, but by 1903 some women were increasingly frustrated at the lack of progress the NUWSS was making. Lack of action from Parliament meant that some campaigners felt that more aggressive action was needed.
In 1903, Emmeline Pankhurst, and her daughters Christabel and Sylvie, formed the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). They became known as the suffragettes. Their slogan was ‘Deeds not words.’
The suffragettes wanted to use direct action as they believed the peaceful methods of the suffragists were ineffective. Suffragettes used tactics such as:
- Chaining themselves to the railings of Buckingham Palace. Queen Victoria had called the campaign for women’s suffrage a “mad and wicked folly”; burning down the homes of MPs who opposed women’s suffrage; burning down churches as the suffragettes felt the Church of England was opposed to women’s suffrage; breaking shop windows on Oxford Street, the main shopping street in London.
The government decided to take a hard line when the WSPU became more militant. Women were banned from political meetings and women who engaged in violence were imprisoned.
The experiences of working-class women campaigning differed from those from middle- and upper-class backgrounds. For example, working-class women were subjected to harsher treatment in prison. Middle class women were often protected by their family connections, and received softer prison conditions. Race also played a part in women’s experiences of the suffrage movement. The suffragettes were mostly made up of white women but many women from ethnic minorities were active campaigners. Sophia Duleep Singh was of Indian origin and born in London. She was a prominent suffragette in the WSPU and a key figure in the campaign to refuse paying taxes. Unlike some suffrage movements elsewhere in the world, Britain’s campaign did not discriminate against race and supported all women’s right to vote.
Suffragettes were regularly arrested for their actions. They continued their direct action from prison and some women started going on hunger strike. This caused a problem for the government as they did not want these prisoners to become martyrs. To combat this, authorities approved the force feeding of women on hunger strike. This was traumatic and risked serious harm or even death, but the practice continued for four years, despite an increase in public concern. In 1913, the government passed the ‘Cat and Mouse Act.’ This was a law that women could be temporarily released from prison when they were becoming ill from refusing to eat. When they were recovering and eating again, they would be arrested and sent back to prison.
In 1913, a suffragette called Emily Davison went to the Derby at Epsom, one of the most famous horse races in the world. She walked onto the racetrack in front of King George’s horse, Amner. She was carrying a WSPU sash and was hit by the horse, suffering serious injuries. She later died in hospital.
Some historians have suggested she had intended to attach the sash to the horse’s bridle to promote the movement for women’s suffrage to the large crowd. Regardless of her intention, it shows the dangerous situations women were willing to put themselves in to further the suffrage movement. Newspaper coverage of the incident was initially very negative, but her funeral was attended by thousands of people and saw a change in attitude.
In August 1914, Britain declared war on Germany. For the duration of the war (WW1), an estimated two million women replaced men in traditionally male jobs. The year 1918 saw the introduction of two significant Acts of Parliament:
- The Representation of the People Act gave women the vote provided they were aged over 30 and either they, or their husband, met a property qualification
- The Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act allowed women to stand for Parliament
Women were able to vote in a general election for the first time on 14 December, 1918 – with 8.5 million women eligible. 1928 saw the introduction of “The Equal Franchise Act”, giving women equal voting rights with men. All women aged over 21 could now vote. In the election of 30th May, 1929 women between 21 and 29 were able to vote for the first time with fifteen million women eligible…