Cassell's History of England, Vol. 5 (of 8): From the Peninsular War to the Death of Sir Robert PeelAnonymous
History
Cassell's History of England, Vol. 5 (of 8): From the Peninsular War to the Death of Sir Robert Peel
Anonymous
Great Britain -- History
What immediately follows shows that Oliver had planned and brought to
a crisis, by his personal exertions, this unhappy rising. On Sunday,
the 8th of June, Jeremiah Brandreth, a framework-knitter of Nottingham,
appeared with some others at a public-house called the "White Horse,"
in the village of Pentrich, in Derbyshire. This village is about
fourteen miles from Nottingham, and about a mile from the small
market town of Ripley. It is in a district of coal and iron mines,
and is near the large iron foundry of Butterley. The working people
of the village, and of the neighbouring village of South Wingfield,
were chiefly colliers, workers in the iron mines or iron foundry,
or agricultural labourers--a race little informed at that day, and
therefore capable of being readily imposed on. This Brandreth had been
known for years as a fiery agitator. He was a little, dark-haired
man, of perhaps thirty years of age. He had been much with Oliver,
and was one of his most thorough dupes, ready for the commission of
any desperate deed. He had acquired the cognomen of the "Nottingham
Captain," and now appeared in an old brown great-coat, with a gun in
his hand, and a pistol thrust into an apron, which was rolled round his
waist as a belt.
Two of the workmen from Butterley Foundry entered the "White Horse,"
which was kept by a widow Wightman, whose son George was deep in the
foolish conspiracy into which Oliver and this his blind, savage tool,
the Nottingham Captain, were leading him. They found Brandreth with a
map before him, and telling them there was no good to be done, they
must march up to London and overthrow the Government. He said all the
country was rising; that at Nottingham the people had already taken
the castle and seized the soldiers in their barracks, and were waiting
for them. This shows that he had come straight from Oliver, who, on
the 7th, was at Nottingham, attending the meeting there, and who knew
that the meeting in Yorkshire had been prevented. Yet he had allowed
the people of Nottingham to believe that the Yorkshire men were coming,
according to agreement, in thousands; and he allowed Brandreth to go
and arouse Derbyshire, under the belief that Nottingham that night
would be in the hands of the insurgents. On Monday night, the 9th of
June, Brandreth and a knot of his colleagues proceeded to muster their
troop of insurgents for the march to Nottingham. They roused up the
men in their cottages, and, if they refused to go, they broke in the
doors with a crowbar, and compelled them to join them. Most of these
unwilling levies slipped away in the dark on the first opportunity.
At South Wingfield he assembled his forces in an old barn, and then
they proceeded through the neighbourhood demanding men and guns. An
old woman had the courage to tap the "captain" on the shoulder, and
say--"My lad, we have a magistrate here;" and many of the men thought
Brandreth must be mad or drunk. At the farm of widow Hetherinton he
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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