Hunt, Henry, 1773-1835; Social reformers -- Great Britain -- Biography
mean time the National Convention of France were boasting of their
victories; it was asserted that they had gained twenty-seven pitched
battles, taken one hundred and sixteen strong places, ninety-one thousand
prisoners, and three thousand eight hundred pieces of cannon. During this
year the son of Lewis the Sixteenth died in prison, and on the
twenty-eighth of July, the army of emigrants which landed at Quiberon bay
was totally destroyed. A most curious circumstance also happened: Hanover
made peace with France, so that our amiable allies, the good people of
Hanover, made peace with the King of England's most deadly enemy. It was
also in this year that Stanislaus, King of Poland resigned his crown, and
his kingdom was partitioned among his rapacious neighbours, Austria,
Prussia, and Russia.
This year was a very turbulent one for Great Britain, there being riots in
many parts of the kingdom in consequence of the high price of bread, the
quartern loaf of which continued above a shilling, during the whole year.
At Salisbury symptoms of rioting broke out one market day; some of the
farmers, attending the market, were hustled and insulted; some of the
sacks of corn were also cut by the rioters, and the corn let about the
marketplace; and the Cornet of the Everley troop of cavalry, Mr. William
Dyke, of Syrencot[12], near Amesbury, one of the largest farmers in the
west of England, who attended the market at Salisbury with his corn, was
insulted and ill-used by the people. The windows of his carriage were
broken, and the vehicle was otherwise injured, as he was escaping out of
the town towards his home in the afternoon. The antipathy of the people
was directed towards him particularly, because he had been very
instrumental in causing the _little bushel_, of the Winchester measure, of
eight gallons, to be introduced generally in the county of Wilts, instead
of the old bushel, which contained nine gallons, and in some instances ten
gallons. My father's district contained full ten gallons, and when the
little bushel was established, four of our bushels made exactly five of
the Winchester measure such was the aversion of my father, as well as of
myself, to the, new regulation, that when the law was enforced to compel
every one to use it, even then we ever afterwards, to this day, put 5
bushels into each sack, so that they were always of the same size and
weight as they were before the measure was altered. However, Mr. Dyke, our
cornet, was singled out, on account of his being the ring-leader, in what
the poor called a conspiracy to lessen the size of the bushel, and at the
same time to keep up the price of corn. The mob, as they pelted his
carriage with brick bats, as his horses galloped, or rather fled, through
the town, intimated that if he came the next week they would serve him
still worse. This was a great offence, and which was not to be borne. To
pelt 'Squire Dyke, the gallant cornet of the Everly troop, was such a
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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