Three Accounts of Peterloo by Eyewitnesses: Bishop Stanley, Lord Hylton, John Benjamin Smith; with Bishop Stanley's Evidence at the Trial — John Shaqi
Three Accounts of Peterloo by Eyewitnesses: Bishop Stanley, Lord Hylton, John Benjamin Smith; with Bishop Stanley's Evidence at the TrialStanley, Edward
History
Three Accounts of Peterloo by Eyewitnesses: Bishop Stanley, Lord Hylton, John Benjamin Smith; with Bishop Stanley's Evidence at the Trial
Stanley, Edward
Manchester (England) -- History; Peterloo Massacre, Manchester, England, 1819
The Rev. Edward Stanley (1779-1849) was the second son of Sir J. T.
Stanley, the Sixth Baronet, and Margaret Owen, of Penrhos, Anglesey. His
elder brother was the first Baron Stanley of Alderley. As a boy, he had a
natural inclination for the sea, but this was not encouraged. For
thirty-two years he was Rector of Alderley, in Cheshire. While making
himself beloved as a Parish Priest, he found time for many scientific and
other interests. His _Familiar History of Birds_ is a standard work; he
advocated, and assisted in, the teaching of Science and Temperance at
Alderley; and he became one of the first Presidents of the Manchester
Statistical Society. Though he declined the See of Manchester, when it was
offered him, he accepted from Lord Melbourne, in 1837, the Bishopric of
Norwich, and introduced a number of reforms into that diocese. A short
memoir of him was written by his son, the famous Dean of Westminster.
At the date of Peterloo, a number of clergymen sat on the Bench of
Magistrates for Lancashire and Cheshire, but Stanley stated clearly at the
Trial that he was not a Magistrate. He was then forty years of age, and
Rector of Alderley, and in his evidence he was careful to say that his
narrative of Peterloo was compiled about two months after the event, for
private circulation among his friends, and had never been published. It is
clear that a copy was in the hands of Counsel who cross-examined him at
the Trial in 1822. The manuscript is very neatly written (I should
conjecture by Stanley himself) on nine large quarto pages, the plan being
drawn by the same hand, and the notes given at the end. I have thought it
more convenient for the reader to have the notes thrown to the foot of the
respective pages. The manuscript was lithographed, in 1819, by the
Lithographic Press, Westminster, and entered at Stationers' Hall. I found
on enquiry that there was one copy in the Manuscript Department of the
British Museum (Add. MSS., 30142, ff. 78-83). It is addressed to
Major-Gen. Sir Robert Wilson, and sealed with the Stanley crest. The
authorship was not known, and the Keeper of the MSS. was glad to be able
to add this to the document as the result of my communication. In the
Printed Book Department of the British Museum there is a second copy,
catalogued under Manchester, with press-mark 8133i. There is no trace of
Stanley's MS. in the Public Records Office. I can find no other copy but
the one at the Manchester Reference Library, which is in excellent
preservation, and has recently been rebound. Mr. J. C. Hobhouse quoted
from Stanley's narrative once in a speech in the House of Commons.
Speaking on May 19th, 1821, in support of a Petition for an enquiry as to
the outrage at Manchester, Mr. Hobhouse, following Sir Francis Burdett,
said: "The Rev. Mr. Stanley, who watched from a room above the
magistrates, saw no stones or sticks used, though if any stone larger than
a pebble had been thrown, he must have seen it." I have not found any
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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