‘I went up one night to get my wages, and behold, when I got me to the farmer’s house, the bailiffs were in, and he going to be sold up, and the winter coming on. I walked toward home half mad; passing by a public-house, who should be at the door but the ’Squire’s gamekeeper—he kept him on—and he being sorry to see me so downcast, for he was a good kind fellow, though a gamekeeper, would make me take a glass with him; I think I had not been in a public-house since I had been married. The drink and the grief flew up into my head; before I got home, I fell in with a crowd of friends and fellow-labourers holloing and shouting. They had been breaking Farmer Bullivant’s threshing-machine, and swore they would not leave one in the county. I began to try to persuade them to go away quietly, but they ended by persuading me; we met a machine, as ill-luck would have it, on the road just turning into Farmer Grinder’s stack-yard. We smashed it to pieces; in the middle of the row the soldiers came up. I was taken in the act, with about twenty others; they lodged us in Winchester gaol the same night. The assizes were sitting; they tried us in batches, and found us guilty almost as soon as we came into court. I never saw my poor wife until the moment when the judge sentenced me to transportation for life. I hear her scream often now; I wake with it in the middle of the night. We had no time to get any one to speak to character for us; we had no lawyer or counsellor. Such poor people as we were had no friends of any use. The farmers who knew us were too angry and too frightened—although some of them were the first to speak against the threshing-machines. Good Parson Calton had been away, ill and dying, or I do not think it would have happened. For where are we poor countrymen to look for a friend wiser than ourselves if the Parson or the ’Squire does not stand by us?