  Ben o' Bill's, the Luddite: A Yorkshire Tale. By And LONDON. Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent,&Co. Ltd. HUDDERSFIELD. The Advertiser Press, Ltd About the author D F E Sykes was a gifted scholar, solicitor, local politician, and newspaper proprietor. He listed his own patrimony as ‘Fred o’ Ned’s o’ Ben o’ Billy’s o’ the Knowle’ a reference to Holme village above Slaithwaite in the Colne Valley where many of the events in the novel take place. As the grandson of a clothier, his association with the woollen trade would be a valuable source of material for his novels, but also the cause of his downfall when, in 1883, he became involved in a bitter dispute between the weavers and the mill owners. When he was declared bankrupt in 1885 and no longer able to practise as a solicitor he left the area and travelled abroad to Ireland and Canada. On his return to England he struggled with alcoholism and was prosecuted by the NSPCC for child neglect. Eventually he was drawn back to Huddersfield and became an active member of the Temperance Movement. He took to researching local history and writing, at first in a local newspaper, then books such as ‘The History of Huddersfield and its Vicinity’. He also wrote four novels. It was not until the 1911 Census, after some 20 years as a writer, that he finally states his profession as ‘author’. In later life he lived with his wife, the daughter of a Lincolnshire vicar, at Ainsley House, Marsden. He died of a heart attack following an operation at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary on 5th June 1920 and was buried in the graveyard of St Bartholomew’s in Marsden. Introduction Although the book was initially credited to D. F. E. Sykes and G. H. Walker, G. H. Walker’s name is missing from the third edition, and it is essentially Sykes’ work. First published in 1898, it is a novel which deserves wider recognition as it deals with surprisingly contemporary issues, but it is as a social history of the period that it stands out. Sykes’ use of the local dialect, the entertaining asides that he includes and his skill at sketching characters and their lives, at a period of such turmoil in the Colne Valley, add to its value. It is interesting that, as a historian, Sykes chose to embellish the facts, that were available to him at the time, with fiction, and his purpose must have been literary. Historians rightly take issue in this matter, but he is clear on his sympathy for their cause and the background and reasoning behind these events, though he draws back on the murder of Horsfall. The Luddites were not mindless machine breakers but desperate men, in poverty and despair, fighting for a voice to be heard against uncaring mill owners and a corrupt government. This is undoubtedly Sykes’ best novel, a sound history of the Luddites and a good read. PREFACE AT the York Special Commission in 1812, sixty–six persons were tried for various offences in connection with the Luddite rising against the introduction of machinery. Of these sixty six seventeen were executed, one reprieved, six transported for seven years, seven were acquitted, seventeen were discharged on bail, fifteen by proclamation, and one stood over but was not called on. The story, Ben o’ Bill’s, is mostly true, and the authors have not felt called upon to vary in any material respects the story as it was gleaned in part from the lips and in part from the papers of the narrator. It is proper to say that the Ben Walker of the narrative was of kin to neither of the writers. The thanks of the authors are tendered to Dr. Edwin Dean, of Slaithwaite, and to the Justices of the West Riding for permission to reproduce the portraits of Dr. Dean and of Sir Joseph Radcliffe. DEDICATED CHAPTER I. IT HURTS me sore that folk in these days should so little understand the doings of us Luddites. To hear young people talk, the Luddites were miscreants that well, deserved the hanging they got—a set of idle, dissolute knaves and cut–throats the country was well rid of. Nay, worse, many young lads with a college learning seem to know next to nothing about them, and talk as though all great deeds were done in far–of parts, and as though of heroes and martyrs England has none to show. I am little apt at writing, and my hand is stiff and cramped with years. But my memory is good still, and I can remember better the things of fifty years ago than those of yesterday. So, before hand and mind fail me altogether, I will set on record all I call mind of those memorable days that closed so black after that bloody York Assize. And if to any reader I should seem garrulous or egotistical, be it remembered in excuse that I can only tell the tale as I now recall it, and that I write of things I saw and things I knew, and of doings I took part in. I risked my own neck, and had the good fortune to escape with my life, and with honour, too, which not all who escaped whole and safe could say. When I was a boy, in the last days of the past century, our folk lived at Lower Holme, above Slaithwaite, in the old homestead in which my father’s father and his father before him had lived. We were tenants of my Lord Dartmouth. The house is still there, and when I close my eyes of an evening, before the fire and my pipe goes out as I sit thinking, I can see the old place yet, as I knew it in my boyhood’s days. My father, William Bamforth—Bill o’ Ben’s—was a manufacturer, a small manufacturer we should say now; but no one thought of calling him a small manufacturer in those days. He was as big as most men thereabouts. He bought his wool of the stapler at Huddersfield—old Abe Hirst;—it was scoured and dyed in the vats in the farmyard; my mother and my cousin Mary, and Martha, the servant lass, that cleaned the house and milked the cows, and kept my mother’s mind on the rack and her tongue on the clack from morning till night, helped with the spinning. The warping and the weaving we did at home in the long upper chamber. We had four looms at home, and, moreover, we put our work out to the neighbours. It was a busy house you may be sure, what with the milking and the churning, and the calves, and the pigs, and the poultry, and the people coming for milk, and the men coming for their warps, and the constant work at the old hand–looms in the long, low chamber above, with its windows stretched right across the front to catch the precious light. What stir, too, there used to be when father and I set off for the fairs at Nottingham and Macclesfield and Newcastle, for all those markets did Bill o’ Ben’s attend regular as the almanac itself. There was the loading, overnight, of the great covered waggon with the pieces of good linsey, and here and there a piece of broadcloth for the clergy and the better classes, and the grooming and shoeing of “Old Bess,” the stout grey mare. Then the start at early dawn, with the first lark in summer, in the starlight of the winter mornings. Oh! it was grand in the summer across the moors, when the roads were plain to see, and only the crusted ruts to jolt our bones; but in the dark mornings of November, when the wind howled about the waggon’s arch, and the rain beat like pellets about the tarpaulin, and the waggon wheels sunk deep in slush, and in the set winter–time, when the roads were lost in snow, it was cruel work for man and beast. It was gamesome, too, at the slimmer statutes at Nottingham and Macclesfield, when I had nothing to do but stand at the stall in the market–place and cut the suit–lengths for the customers, or carry their parcels to their inns. And grand it was to see the men servants and the buxom country lasses at the hiring, making their half–yearly holiday, and spending their money right cheerfully. My father had an old connection, and scarce ever had to return with pieces unsold. Then, when the fair was over, and he sat in the parlour of the Angel at Nottingham, or the Swan at Macclesfield, smoking his long, “churchwarden” and drinking gin and water, I would off into the town to see the booths, and the actors, and the giants, and the fat women, and the dwarfs and two–headed monsters, and many other curiosities that may not now be seen. I used to sit for hours in the winter nights at home telling Mary of the bearded woman, and the hen with five legs, and the learned pig, but of the country lasses, whose cheeks were so rosy and lips so ripe, she cared not to hear. The times were bad for most people, but at home we did not feel the pinch very much. We had the cows and the poultry and the pigs, and though oatmeal was terribly dear, twenty shillings the hoop, I never knew what it was to miss the oatmeal porridge and the abundant milk for breakfast and bacon and potatoes for dinner. On Sundays we nearly always had beef or mutton and Yorkshire pudding, and my mother’s home–brewed was famous throughout all the country side. Mr. Wilson, the parson of the church, always called when he came to Holme, though my father had grieved him sore by taking a pew at Powle Moor Chapel, and sitting under that godly man, Abraham Webster; and Mr. Wilson always declared to my mother’s own face that her home–brewed was better drinking than any to be got even at the Black Bull Inn, at Kitchen Fold, which boasted the best “tap” outside Huddersfield itself. Sometimes on Sundays, too, my mother had a guests’ tea–drinking, and then we had buttered tea–cakes and eggs, and salad, and tea, and out were brought the silver cream jug and silver sugar tongs and spoons and the little fluted china cups and saucers, with little, pink primroses on them, that belonged to my great aunt, Betty Garside. The women–folk drank tea, but not so much, I think, that they liked it, for they had not the chance of getting used to it, but because the quality drank it, and it served to establish their rank and dignity. My father would never touch it, and I can’t say I was ever partial to it myself. So you see we were not so badly–off at home. My father’s custom lay mainly in the country market towns, and the high price of corn caused by the ceaseless wars kept squire and farmer in rich content, and they paid for their cloth like men. It was the manufacturers who had made and relied on a foreign market for their goods, who cursed Napoleon, and cursed, too, our own Government, that was ever at daggers drawn with him. Why could we not let the French rule their country their own way they said. What was it to us whether king or Directory or Emperor ruled in France? My father was a Whig, and swore by Mr. Fox; yet I think at first he was not sorry to see our corn so high, prices so good, and money so plentiful among the farmers. But in time the war told on all of us, our ships could not sail the seas, the mills and warehouses groaned with piled–up merchandise, and the pieces fetched so little, it was scarce worth while to cart our goods from town to town. Then every manufacturer in the West Riding called for peace, and, in time, peace at any price. I think it was at Nottingham, in the back–end of 1811, I first saw any signs of a stir because of the new machinery. A man was shot at Bullwell, near that town, when trying to get at some new stocking–frames, I saw his body brought into the town on a stretcher by two constables I can see his eyes and open mouth, with the yellow teeth, and the tongue thrust out between them, and blood trickling down the sides of his chin and his hands, the fingers of one wide outspread, the other gripping tight some grass and sand he had clutched, and his right knee drawn up so rigid they could not stretch the body, and he was buried in a chest. They laid him on a table in the tap–room of the first inn they came to, and I saw him through the window. When we rode home to Slaithwaite, I remember my father was very silent, and would not talk about the new machinery, but I was soon to hear enough of it. I remember, as tho’ it were yesterday, one winter’s night about that time, my father was sat by the fire–side, smoking his pipe and taking a thoughtful pull at times at the yellow pewter pot from which he drank his ale; my mother in her rocking–chair knitting a pair of long, grey stockings for myself. I was reading by the candle–light a copy of Mr. Thomas Paine’s “Rights of Man,” which I had bought at Nottingham, and which, despite the groanings of Mr. Webster, our pastor at Powle Moor, I found a very sound and proper book, as, indeed, I still maintain it to be; and Mary was looking at the prints in Mr. Miller’s Scripture History, with lives of the most celebrated Apostles, and wondering for the hundredth time how it came about that the frontispiece exhibits Father Adam with a full beard, whilst the very next print depicts him, after the fall, with a chin as smooth as an egg: for there is no mention of razors in the Garden of Eden. Martha was down in the village at a prayer–meeting; and Siah, the teamer, had had his porridge and his pint and had gone to bed. We could hear him, through the rafters, snoring in the room above. It must have been a Tuesday, for father had been to Huddersfield to market, and had come home, as he always did on market–days, more talkative than his wont. “Aw rode as far as th’ Warrener, wi’ Horsfall, o’ Ottiwell,” I heard my father say. “He could talk o’ nowt but th’ new machines ’at he’s bahn to put i’ Ottiwells. He’s bahn, to ha’ all his wark done under his own roof, he says. He’s sick o’ croppers an’ their ways. An’, he says, too, ’at it ’ll noan be long afore there ’ll be a new kind o’ loom ’at ’ll run ommost by itsen, an’ pieces ’ll come dahn to next to nowt. He says time’s noan so far off when th’ old hand–loom weavers ’ll go dahn their own slot.” “How long did you stop at th’ Warrener?” asked my mother, who had her own way of putting a point. “Tha’ means it wor th’ ale were talking; but tha’s mista’en. He meant it every word. An’ he said, ’at them ’at lagged behind mun go to th’ wall, an’ he, for one, meant movin’ wi’ th’ times. Him an’ Enoch Taylor’s mighty thick, an’ Taylor’s putting th’ new machinery into Bradley Mills, and Vickerman’s. All th’ market’s talkin’ on it. Aw called at th’ Pack Horse—”. “I warrant yo’ did,” observed my mother. “At th’ Pack Horse,” proceeded my father, superior to innuendo, “an’ Horsfall wor there, an’ he said ’at th’ era o’ manual labour wor over, an’ th’ triumph o’ mechanic art had come. These were his very words. Aw thowt aw’d remember them to tell, yo’.” “An’ little aw thank yo’ for yo’r trouble, William Bamforth,” observed my mother, “for that nor any other o’ your fine tales from th’ Pack Horse. Little it seems yo’, or Horsfall either, dandering about th’ Pack Horse after th’ market’s done, an’ me toiling my blood to water to make both ends tie. Th’ triumph o’ mechanic art, indeed! Triumph o’ fiddlesticks. Th’ hand–loom’s done well enough for thee, an’ for thi father afore thee, an’ where would you put yo’ new machines if yo’ got ’em, I’d like to know.” “Ther’s that bit o’ money lying idle at Ingham’s, an’ we could build on th’ Intack, an’ ther’s a fine run o’ water, as Horsfall says it’s a sin an’ a shame to see running to waste, an’ ther’s that fortune of your Aunt Betty’s, at’s out at mortgage wi’ Lawyer Blackburn.” “Aye, an’ there it ’ll stop for me,” cried my mother, “let well alone, says I. Wasn’t tha tellin’ me only th’ other neet’ o’ that poor man at Nottingham, ’at our Ben couldn’t sleep o’ neets for seein’ him starin’ ’at him? Dost tha want bringing home on a shutter, an’ me lonely enough as it is, what wi’ thee an’ Ben settin’ off nearly every week, an’ when yo’r back stopping at th’ Pack Horse every Tuesday till it’s a wonder a decent man an’ a deacon isn’t ashamed to be seen coming up th’ broo. I’ll ha’ na building wi’ my brass. There’s enough to follow as it is, an’ that girl, Martha, that soft as she thinks every man as says ‘It’s a fine day,’ means puttin’ t’ spurrins in, and na, nowt ’ll do but havin’ th’ masons and th’ joiners all ovver th’ place, an’ them so fond o’ drink too. Aw’m moithered to death as it is, an’ ’ll ha’ none on’t, so tha’ may put that maggot aat o’ thi yed, William Bamforth.” “But Mr. Chew says” ….. Now Mr. Chew was our new vicar, Mr. Wilson being not long dead. “Oh, Mr. Chew. It ’ad seem him better if he washed th’ powder out o’ his own yed i’stead o’ puttin’ stuff an’ nonsense into other folks!” “If yo mun talk your own business ovver wi’ all th’ countryside why can’t you go to Mr. Webster, as is well known to ha’ more o’ th’ root o’ th’ matter in him than all th’ clergy, an him a weaver hissen, too.” “Why, and so I will,” exclaimed my father, rising to wind up the clock, a solemn act that, in our house, served, except on Sundays, instead of family prayers, and sent us all to bed. The very next Lord’s Day my father and mother, Mary, and myself, with Martha and ’Siah, must go to Powle Moor in the afternoon to hear a discourse by Mr. Webster, my father and I walking side by side, a thing which I liked not so much as to walk with Mary. But it chanced that on this very Sabbath my father explained to me what I had often pondered upon, why we should trudge a good two miles across the moor by a rude footpath to the Baptist Meeting House, when the Church lay on a broad and good road almost at our feet, and we had there a large pew, our own freehold, which had been used aforetime by my grandfather and my great–grandfather. Whatever the reason was it had not been apprehended by our old collie, for such is the sway of long habit, that every Sunday when the cracked bell chimed for morning service at the church, it would rise from the hearth, yawn, and stretch itself, look about it as though enquiringly and reproachfully, and then sedately descending the hill, would enter the church, walk decorously to the old pew, now generally empty, and stretch itself by the door, in the aisle. Nor, I confess, was I much wiser than the old dog, for my father’s explanation of our desertion of the church of our fathers. “You see, Ben,” he said to me, when pressed on the point, speaking slowly, for he breathed with some difficulty in our way up the hill,—“you see, blood is thicker than water.” Now this is a truth there is no gainsaying. “And I shall allus hold,” continued my father, “I shall allus hold ’at Parson Wilson had no reight to stir th’ magistrates up to refuse th’ license to th’ ‘Silent Woman’ because some o’ th’ Baptists ’at belonged to th’ Nook Chapel used to go theer o’ wet neets to sing an’ pray an’ expound for mutual edification, an’ if one or two on ’em did happen tak’ too mich ale at times, it’s well known talkin’s dry wark. Then about them hens o’ your mother’s half–cousin, Sammy Sutcliffe, Sam–o’–Sall’s. Tha’ knows it were agin all natur’ for Parson Wilson to gi’ it in as he did, an’ it were but nateral we should side wi’ our own kin.” Now it was about these hens I wished to learn, for it was because of them that it has ever been said that schism was hatched in Slaithwaite—that th’ dissenters layed away like Hannah Garside’s hens, and had laid away ever since. “Yo’ see it wor this way,” explained my father, “Hannah were allus a very fractious woman, more particular as, do what she would, could never get wed, an’ such drop o’ th’milk o’ human kindness as God had ge’en her to start wi’ seemed to ha’ soured on her. Her an’ Sam–o’–Sall’s lived neighbour, an’ it were like enough ’at her hens strayed into Sammy’s fowd, and into th’ shippon too. Hens is like other folk, they’ll go’ wheer they’re best off, an’ if Hannah threw th’ fowls nowt but bacon swards yo’ needn’t blame ’em if they went wheer they could get out o’ th’ reach o’ her tongue an’ a grain of meal an’ corn as weel. Onyway she pulled Sammy up afore Parson Wilson for th’ eggs, an’ Parson Wilson gave it agen yor’ mother’s cousin. An’ what I say is,” said my father, pausing to’ get his breath, and striking his stick into the ground by way of emphasis, “What I say is, there’s no swearin’ to eggs. Moreovver Hannah gloried ovver th’ decision to that extent it wer’ more nor flesh an’ blood could bear, an’ when she cam’ an’ set i’ church, reight i’ th’ front o’ yor’ aunt, wi’ a Easter egg fastened i’ her bonnet, Sammy saw no way for peace but to join th’ Baptists. An’, as I said afore, blood’s thicker nor water, an’ yor’ mother an’ me havin’ prayed on it, and yor’ aunt sayin’ beside ’at no money o’ hers, an’ it’s well known she’s tidy well off, should ever go to th’ Erastian idolators, our duty seemed clear both to yo’r mother an’ misen. Not but what aw liked th’ owd Parson well enough, tho’ he wer’ a Tory, an me a Whig.” We were by this time in the road that strikes across the top of the hill towards Salendine Nook, and by the side of which the Powle Moor Chapel was built, with the house and outbuildings for the minister. We could see the men quitting the burial ground and the little public—house hard by, and, all in their Sunday clothes, folk were coming from every part for the afternoon service, not hurrying, and with no air of business, but solemnly and seriously, talking little, and with thoughts, like their faces, set Zion–wards. When we exchanged greetings, as we did with most, it was in grave tones, for it was not counted decent in my young days to be over cheerful on the Sabbath Day. And tho’ as I have said, we at home had not felt the pinch of the hard times more than we could bear, there were few there so well off. Most that went to th’ Powle were hand–loom weavers, with here an’ there a little shop–keeper, and tho’ meal was neither so bad nor so dear as it had been in Barley time, nor work so scarce as it became later, yet most knew the pressure of want, and the shadow of worse things still to come seemed to brood over us all. It was a sight to see Powle Chapel at an afternoon service. Every pew was filled, and every eye was fixed on Parson Webster as he gave out the hymns line by line, verse by verse, for few of us could read, tho’ most made a point of having a hymn book. Up in the loft was the music, the double bass, the viol, and the clarionet. Between Jim Wood—Jim o’ Slack—who played the double bass, and his colleagues of the viol and clarionet contention had raged from the very foundation of the church at Powle. Jim o’ Slack maintained that in every true view of harmony wedded to divinity, the notes of the double bass stood for the wrath of Jehovah, and were designed to inspire awe and inward quaking. The feeble and futile utterances of the viol and the clarionet, he conceded, might represent the tender qualities of mercy and compassion, and, as such, might be worthy of some consideration among the Methodies, whose spiritual food was as milk for babies, but in High Calvinism, Jim maintained, nought but the bulky instrument his soul loved could convey adequate conception of the majesty of God and the terrors of hell. It was grand to hear the singing. We all sang for our lives, and we all had a notion of singing in tune. Then the praying! oh! it was fine to hear little Parson Webster. How he rejoiced over the elect! How he lamented over the unregenerate! It was very comforting to hear, for we were the elect, the Erastians of the Church and the Arminians of the chapel in the valley we well understood to be those in outer darkness. With what a solid satisfaction, too, did the elders settle down to the discourse of an hour and forty minutes by the hour glass, which was the least we expected from Mr. Webster. I remember still his text of that very day, “Behold I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” Who could deny, he asked, the utter and natural depravity of man? Why only he who by the very denial stood confessed of the sins of arrogancy and self–sufficiency. Was not the natural man, since the Fall, prone to murder, lust, evil imaginings, covetousness, hardness of heart, vain glory, malice, and all unworthiness, all being, by nature, the children of wrath, and only that small handful of the dust of Zion, of all that great valley, called forth and justified before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love. How awful, too, was the lot of those that went down quick into hell, whose steps took hold on the eternal fire whose flames were never quenched. But we were not of these, tho’ on this we must not plume ourselves, for salvation was not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy, for the potter had power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour. I was very glad for my part to have been made a vessel unto honour, and of this there could be no reasonable doubt, for when my father, moved thereto by my mother, after the split about Hannah Garside’s eggs, finally asked for admission to the community of the Powle and was dipped, cousin Mary and I were required to state on which side we elected to stand. Mr. Webster, in a long and earnest discourse in the parlour at home, and with much praying, set before us, as he said, life and good, death and evil, blessing and cursing. I waited to hear what Mary had to say, being for my part little troubled in my mind at that time about religion and not rightly understanding on what points of doctrine Mr. Chew differed from Mr. Webster, and liking the chapel the better because the singing was heartier, and the Church the rather because the sermons were shorter, and it seemed to me your soul might be saved there with less pother. Now Mary, I know not why, said she should go with her aunt, and was commended for a good girl by Mr. Webster, and I, not wishful on the Sunday to turn down the broo’ to Church whilst Mary toiled up the hill to the Powle, announced my resolve to walk in my father’s steps. So Mr. Webster, much pleased, praised my filial obedience, and he being well content to take this as a sign of grace and effectual calling, I e’en took his word for it and joined the Baptists. I say I remember well the text of that afternoon, and by this reason. My father and mother and Mary were set in the one pew whilst ’Siah and Martha and myself were set behind them. Now as I looked upon Mary that afternoon it came into my mind very strongly that it was strange so fair and dainty a specimen of the potter’s craft should be shapen in iniquity, and I was marvelling greatly to myself that out of the same lump of clay two vessels so unlike as Cousin Mary, and Martha, our serving wench, should be fashioned by the potter’s hands. For Martha was broad shouldered and squat, and had coarse towzelled hair, very red, and her mouth was large and her lips thick, and her arms were rough of skin and red, and she waddled in her walk, and her breathing was heavy, and her eye dull, and her voice was not tuneful, tho’ she would sing in the hymns, albeit my mother frowned at her and would have had her hold her peace, for my mother did not think it quite proper for the serving man and maid to sing with their betters: but as my father said “If you go to chapel, you must do as chapel does.” But Mary, oh! my children, you will never know what my cousin Mary was like in those days, with her brown eyes, so warm and soft, and her brown hair all wavy, and with little love ringlets about the neck and her little hands not white but creamy brown, and her rosebud mouth, and her voice so musical, and her smile so sweet. And so, I say, thinking, perhaps, too much of these things, and wondering, too, at the marvellous skill of the potter, and opining, belike, that there must be a difference in the clay, but quite certain that Mary was not fashioned in iniquity, and the day being hot and the air very heavy, and two suet dumplings I had eaten for dinner sitting heavy on me, I fell into a sort of doze as Mr. Webster reached his twelfthly. Now, Mary, seeing this, and being ever full of mischief, having looked to see that my father was intent on the discourse, and that my mother’s eyes were closed—in thought—did lean over the pew and put into my mouth a lump of good–stuff and, I chancing at the moment to throw back my head, the sweet rolled into my gullet and had gone nigh to choke me. I had much ado to stifle my coughing, and all the congregation did look hard at me, save only Mary herself, who listened with sweet gravity as Mr. Webster proceeded with his twelfthly. I walked home that evening with ’Siah, for Mary dallied behind with Martha, and father and mother had gone on before with Mr. Webster, who was to take his supper at our house, as was now his almost weekly custom of a Sunday. ’Siah was a silent man, and was a good servant, loving his beasts and careful for them, but over fond of ale, and much to be feared when overtaken with drink, and noted that he had fought a great fight at the Feast with one arm tied behind his back. “Aw believe awn getten it, Ben,” said ’Siah, as we went across the fields in the wintry gloom, homewards. “What’s ta getten, ’Si?” I asked. “Th’ conviction,” said ’Siah. “Conviction, what conviction?” “Why, th’ conviction o’ sin to be sure. How many convictions does ta’ think there are?” said ’Siah, in a pet. “Why, ’Siah, th’ last conviction tha’ had were afore Justice Ratcliffe at th’ Brigg, and more by token if my father hadn’t sent me wi’ th’ fine, in th’ stocks tha’d ha sat for six mortal hours by Huddersfield Church clock.” “That were a different sort o’ conviction all together, Ben, that were for feightin’, and this aw mean naa is th’ conviction o’ sin.” “Well, fighting’s a sin,” I said. “Aw dooan’t know as it is—not if it be for feightin’ such a thing as th’ ostler at th’ Pack Horse for sayin’ Martha’s bow–legged, when aw know better, but aw do believe at aw gat my conviction o’ sin much i’ t’ same way.” “How does ta’ mean, ’Siah,” I asked, for I saw our teamer was in deadly earnest. “Why, bi wrastlin’, to be sure. So th’ missis munnot tell me agean there’s no gooid i’ wrastlin’. It were after aw came back fra th’ village last neet. Aw leets o’ Martha an ’oo gav’ me a bit o’ her tongue for makkin’ a swill tub o’ mysen an’ for lettin’ a little chap like th’ ostler at th’ Pack Horse ha’ th’ law on me, an’ so aw went into th’ shippon an’ set by mi’ sen for happen two hours i’ th’ hay at aw’d pulled for th’ beasts. An’ aw said to mi’ sen ’at it were no use tryin’ to be good for aw were clear born to be damned. Aw could ha’ ta’en that hop o’ mi thumb at th’ Pack Horse awmost atween mi finger an’ thumb an’ pinched him i’ two if it hadn’t been at aw were mazed i’ drink. An’ so th’ text com’ into mi head at aw wer reight served for mi fuddlin’ an’ ‘auv made up mi mind to just pay him aat next time aw goa to market, an’ then awst turn religious an’ happen gi’ up drinking, except at th’ Feast an’ Christmas time, an’ mebbe when aw get treated an’ at a chersenin’ or a weddin’ or a wake, an’ mebbe occasional o’ a Saterday, not to lose th’ taste an’ feel on it, an’ i’ th’ way o’ dooty as yo’ may say.” This was the longest speech I ever heard ’Siah deliver. I thought his resolution a good one, only advising him when he brought the matter off with the man at the Pack Horse to be sure to make his opponent touch a button so as to have law on his side, and if possible to have witnesses that could be relied on to speak the truth, I mean, so as to make it a case of what lawyer Blackburn called provocation. It was after supper that the momentous consultation about the machines began. Full justice had been done to that evening meal. There had been cold beef and a chine, oatcakes that had been dried on the creel over the big fireplace before which a bullock might have been roasted whole, cheese and apple pie, and, to drink, a quart or more of my mother’s famous home brewed. Mr. Webster, by grace of his office, was privileged to drink his ale out of the large two–handled silver flagon, a hundred years old at the least, that no common lips had ever touched. I do not think the supper was the worse for that we took it in the house instead of the parlour. There was the sanded floor to our feet and the smoked rafters above, and in the sill of the long diamond paned windows were red earth pots of geranium and musk and fuschia, that made the room smell sweet as a nosegay. The spinning wheels were away in the corner, a list hearthrug made by my mother’s own hands stretched before the grate, a cushion whose covering worked by the same tireless fingers imaged the meeting of Jacob and Rebecca at the well, adorned the long oak settle under the window. The walls, washed yellow, were relieved by the framed funeral cards of departed relatives; the calf bound family Bible containing entries of births, marriages and deaths for many generations back, my own birth being at that time last entry of all, tho’ there have been added a goodly list since then, reposed on the chest; a celery glass, highly cut, on the one side and a decanter on the other. A beautiful enamelled tray, with hand–painted roses, was reared behind, and best pictures of all, my father always vowed, and richest ornaments of any room, a prime flitch of bacon and two sturdy hams hung on the hooks near the door, so as to catch the air to keep them sweet. I have been in many a fine room since then, notably when I went to Woodsome Hall to see my Lord Dartmouth and give the tenants’ greeting to his bonnie bride; but for real home feeling and snug comfort never have I seen ought to compare with the old house at Holme when it was tidied up for Sunday. Supper was over. Mr. Webster was sat in my father’s arm chair, his little legs, with their worsted stockings, hardly reaching the ground, and I make no doubt he would have been more comfortable on the settle, which was lower; but it was a point of civility with my father to surrender the master’s chair to an honoured guest. A long churchwarden sent its reek up the broad chimney, and a little glass of weak gin and water stood by the parson’s right hand convenient on the table. Not that Mr. Webster took much of either ale or strong waters; but this was Sunday, and it is well known that when a minister has preached two sermons, with many a long prayer thrown in, to say nothing of hymns, sing he never so badly, his throat must needs be dry. My father sat opposite Mr. Webster on the other side of the hearth, my mother, in her low rocking chair with the iron rockers, swaying gently to and fro, and fingering her handkerchief for lack of her knitting needles, which must not be used on Sundays. The case reserved, as a lawyer might say, had been put by my father with much aiding and commentary from the mother, who justified her interruption, under a look of remonstrance from both pastor and lord, by saying that a woman could jump over a wall while a man was going round and round seeking for the gate. “It is no small matter, friend Bamforth,” at length said Mr. Webster, “and one that I doubt not you have taken to the Lord in prayer. Well pleased too am I that you have seen fit to take counsel with me in this weighty business. For it is laid upon me to feed the sheep of our Master’s fold, and tho’ you would not look to me for the bread that perisheth, but rather I to you, for it is written that the labourer is worthy of his hire, and ye may not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn, yet perchance in doubtful and perplexing times a pastor’s counsel may be the more needful nourishment. Now I would have you take heed against the besetting sin of this latter–day and corrupt generation, which I take to be that very making haste to be rich against which the Book doth expressly warn us. You speak of building a mill for these new methods. Hast thou not thought within thyself, like the man in the parable, saying ‘What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits? This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods.’ And mark what to that man God said: ‘Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided? So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.’ And now I ask you, brother Bamforth, can you be rich toward God, if you build up your fortune on the ruin of your fellow men. You say one o’ these new finishing frames will do the work of four, may be of six men. Aye, also is there talk of looms that shall need neither skill nor care. It may be true, I know not. But oh! it will be a sore day for this hillside, and all the country round when that day shall be. What is to become of those who now keep a decent roof over their heads, and tho’ times be bad can still give bit and sup to wife and bairns. You may make new machines but you cannot make new men to order. And see to it that it be not now with thee as in the days of Pharaoh of old, when Aaron’s rod swallowed up the rods of the wise men and the sorcerers, and thy rod too be swallowed up. If that came to pass of which I have read and heard, there will be no room in this valley for men of but moderate means. Yo’ may build a mill, but bigger men will build bigger mills, and the bigger mills will swallow up the less, and thou and thy son, and even Mary yonder may be fain, thou in thy old age and they in their prime, to take wage at another’s hand, and to do a hireling’s task in another’s mill.” “If I do may I be—” “William,” said my mother, before my father could conclude, and we could only guess what awful doom my father was about to invoke upon himself. But enough had been said. Whether the mind of our household’s head were the more moved by the picture of his friends and neighbours reduced to want, or by the picture of himself and his working for others, who had always puts out work ourselves, I know not; but from that day forth there was no more thought for many a long day of any change in the ways we had used of old, and, for the new machines, my mother died in the belief that the curse of Scripture was upon them. CHAPTER II. IT WAS not often my father missed the Audit Dinner at the Dartmouth Arms, but for some reason I do not remember, he could not go to the November Audit of 1811. So I went in his place, as was but my due, seeing that in the course of time and nature the homestead would be mine, and I tenant to my lord in my father’s stead. So to the dinner I went in great state and no little fluster, having donned my Sunday clothes, and showing as fine a leg (though I say it that should not) as ever passed Slaithwaite Church. I went by the churchyard corner where old Mr. Meeke rested in his grave, and I did not fail to doff my beaver, for was I not taught all I ever knew at the Free School, founded by Mr. Meeke, and I was, too, ever a lover of the Church, though we had joined the Hard–bedders. There had been a wedding that day, and I should have been there, but none were invited save only family friends, owing to times being so bad. Jack o’ Jamie’s had wed Sue Lumb, and I knew Jack o’ Jamie’s and Sue both, as indeed I knew every mother’s son and lass in Slaithwaite; and my mother could tell their pedigree for generations back. Opposite the door of the Dartmouth Arms I came across a crowd different from ordinary, for in the midst was Jack donned in his Sunday best, and a great white rosette at his breast, and there was Sue with a white veil over her head and clinging to Jack’s arm and crying and coaxing, and Jack fuming and swearing and waving his arms and shaking his fist at his own father. Sure a rare sight for a wedding day, and I stayed to hear what might be the meaning of it all. I knew Jack for a decent, hard working lad that kept his father, a drunken neer–do–weel, from the rates. Old Jamie had a hang–dog look to be sure, as he kept away from his son’s reach and cowered behind his new daughter–in–law. “It’s too bad,” Jack was crying, “It’s too bad; yo’ all know ’at awn kept mi father awmost even sin’ aw could addle a meg, an’ him doing nowt but tidy th’ house up an’ go a rattin’ with th’ dog an’ happen bring a rabbit home betimes—an’ aw never grudged him owt, for he’s mi own father, an’ mi mother ’at’s dead an’ gone left him to me. But, its too bad aw say—gise ’ang, it ud make a worm turn—here its mi wedding day, an’ aw thowt we’d have a bite an’ sup by ordinar. So aw off to Ned o’ Bill’s an’ bowt three p’und o’ good wheat flour, tho’ it’s well known, what price it’s at, an’ ill aw could spare th’ brass. But a felly doesn’t get wed every day. We calc’lated it ud mak ten cakes, an’ that ud be one round apiece an’ two to put bye for Sunday. Mi father baked ’em hissen three days sin’, for we thowt we munnot eit ’em till they were stale, new uns crumble so—an’ aw bowt a piece of th’ skirt o’ beef at lay me in five good shillin’—so when aw set off to take Sue here to th’ chuch aw left mi father to watch th’ beef afore t’ fire, an’ we borrowed some plates an’ knives an’ forks an’ three chairs, for aw thowt we’d all have a feast at ’ud make th’ weddin’ party remember mi weddin’ day as long as they lived. An’ after th’ knot wer’ teed an’ we were walkin’ th’ village so all could see what a lass awd gotten, we just looked in at th’ house door to see if th’ meat were nearly done—an would yo’ believe it, th’ owd glutton ’ud supped welly a gallon o’ th’ weddin’ ale an’ were wipin’ his chops wi t’ back o’ his coat sleeve, ’at weren’t his own, but borrowed o’ mi uncle Ben; an’ ther’ were nobbut four cakes left an’ a good p’und cut off th’ joint an’ th’ pan as bare o’ gravy as if it had been new scoured. Oh! tha’ brussen guts; if tha’ weren’t mi own father!” And here Jack shook his fist over Jamie’s head, and Sue tried to turn aside his wrath and to play the peace–maker, as a good woman ever will. “For shame o’ thissen,” said one; “It ’ud sarve thi reight to put thee i’ th’ stocks,” said another; “Let’s stang him,” a woman cried. “Many a decent body’s been cucked for less,” said Moll o’ Stuarts, who knew what the cucking stool meant full well. And all felt that Jamie Thewlis had done as scurvy a trick as ever he had done in a scurvy life. Even those that drank with him, the loafers and vagabonds of the village, got to the outskirts of the crowd, and left him alone to his defence. “Yo’ see it were this way,” said Thewlis, when he could get a hearing. “Th’ table’ wor set all ready for th’ weddin’ party. Aw’d laid a clean cloth on th’ table. There were a plate an’ a knife an’ fork for every one that were comin’. Th’ house were tidied up an’ as clean yo’ could had etten yor dinner off th’ floor. Then Jack started off to fetch Susan. Th’ cakes were on th’ table, one bi each plate. Aw put th’ joint on th’ jack afore th’ fire just as he’d told me bi th’ clock. Then aw set me dahn to watch it. It wor a grand joint. Aw could ha’ fair hugged it when aw took it up, so plump an’ red and firm, wi’ streaks o’ fat runnin’ in an’ among th’ lean like rivers o’ cream in a bank o’ strawberries. Th’ fire were just reight, banked down an’ hot, an’ aw ca–ered me dahn first o’ one side o’ th’ hearth an’ then on t’ other, an’ began to watch th’ hands o’ t’ clock an’ wish it wor dinner time. Dinner time it were bi reights, but we’d put th’ dinner back so’s Jim an’ his frien’s could walk through th’ village. Then th’ skin o’ th’ joint began to crack, an’ th’ fat to fizzle an’ ooze ‘aat an spit. Aw looked at th’ clock. Aw’ll swear th’ han’s hedn’t moved for half–an–hour, an’ yet it were tickin’ reg’lar—aw nivver felt hauf as hungry i’ mi life afore. Aw’d had no breakfas’, for awd said to mi sen it ’ud nivver do to shame yar Jack’s weddin’ dinner bi not doin’ reight bi it. Then all at once th’ jack gay’ a click an’ summut splurted aat, an’ all at once there wer’ a smell at fair made mi belly leap inside me. But aw’d promised yar Jack at aw’d do fair—so aw went to th’ cellar–head to see if ther’ wer’ happen a crust or owt to stay mi innards, but ther’ wer’ nowt. Then ther’ wer’ another click, an’ another spurt, an’ th’ room wer’ fair full o’ th’ smell. It awmost turned me dizzy. Aw looked at th’ clock agen, an’ guise ’ang me, if th’ hand had stirred aboon an inch, an’ dinner seemed as far off as ivver. Then aw thowt awd fetch th’ ale. So aw got th’ jug an’ a milkin’ can an’ started off to th’ Globe. Aw tried hard to strap a gill, but th’ owd skin–flint wouldn’t trust me. Aw’d awmost talked her into it when t’ thowt cam’ into mi head at happen one o’ th’ naybors ’at hedn’t bin axed to th’ weddin’ might be after th’ joint; an’ aw span home as fast as aw could for fear o’ spillin’. Then when aw oppened th’ door ther’ war’ a fair blast o’ th’ smell o’ gravy right i’ mi face. It just took mi breath away, an’ aw had to tak’ a pull at th’ jug to steady misen. That heartened me up a bit, an’ aw just took one o’ th’ cakes, mi own at wer’ to be an’ set i’ my own place at th’ table, so it were no robbery,—an aw put it i’ th’ pan under th’ meat; an’, by gow, it wer’ a sop an’ gradely. Aw think aw mun ha’ put too much salt on it, for aw felt as dry as a lime–kiln. Then aw had another swig at th’ jug, an’ looked aat for th’ weddin’, but aw could see no’ signs on ’em. Then aw bethowt me at th’ fiddler were’ nobbut a little un, an’ could mak’ hauf a cake do, so aw made hauf a sop. Then th’ gravy began to run red an’ brown into th’ pan, an’ ow knew th’ meat wer’ near enuff—an’ still ther’ wer’ no signs o’ anybody. Howsomever, aw thought my share shouldn’t be spoiled for any tomfoolery such as walkin’ th’ village wi’ a lass o’ my arm, as if yo’ couldn’t do that ony time. So aw just cut a slice aat an’ put it on a shive an et it o’ mi knee, an’ had a swallow out o’ th’ piggin’ to make it equal wi’ th’ jug. Then aw thowt aw meight as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, an’ aw ate mi fill. Tha’ ma’ poise me, Jack, if tha’ likes, but tha’ll noan poise th’ meat out o’ me, that’s one comfort. It’s th’ first time for six months ’at mi back an’ mi belly ha’ not shakken hands, an’ aw’ll ta’ thi poisin’, an’ thank yo’ for it.” But long before Jamie had done his story he was out of danger of a hiding. There was not one there that did not feel hungry with the very story, and the party trudged homewards with a laugh and a cheer to make out as best they could on what was left—Jamie, forgiven and impenitent, not last in the joking throng. The partition of the upper story of the Dartmouth Arms had been removed, and thereby room was made for the poorer tenantry who came this year in great numbers, many there being who came to plead the hard times and escape their remit, but joined in the rude scramble for the thick slices of meat and bread and the brimming pewters that were their yearly gift from the lord. But in the long room, on the top floor, was more decent seeming and good manners; for the tenants of the larger holdings at that time paid to the host of the inn each man eighteenpence that there might be a well–spread board. Mr. Joseph Scott, who lived at Woodsome (none of my lord’s family being then in residence), did sit at the head of the table, and gave us the health of the king, which we drank with a good will, for there was none that did not grieve for the old man so sore stricken in his latter days. Then did Mr. Scott call upon us to toast His Royal Highness, the Prince Regent, and many did drink the health with a hip, hip, hurrah but for my part, though I hate to waste good liquor, I poured my ale into the spitoon, for stories not a few had come to our ears of the wild doings of the Prince and of his cruel treatment of his consort. Mr. Fox, to be sure, and other leaders of the Whigs in Parliament, did excuse the wildness of the Prince, and some did even bear a railing tongue against the hapless princess; but for me, who am perhaps too little learned to judge of princes and courts, I deemed such naughtiness should not be in high places more than in men of less degree, and my loyalty went into the sawdust. But I took a double draughty to the health of my lord and his lady. There was no lack of subjects for our tongues to wag upon when the ale had loosed them, and a well–lined waist set the oil of gladness on our faces. There was, for one, the never failing theme of Lord Wellington’s doings among the Dons. But a few days previous, General Marmont had raised the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo, and our spirits had been greatly stirred by the discovery of one of his dispatches, in which he boasted that he would have pursued the British forces to the lines of Lisbon “if the moment designed for the catastrophe of England had arrived.” That put our English up, and was as good as a score of recruiting sergeants to our army. Catastrophe, we knew well, might come to us as it has done to other nations; but never, we vowed, should or could it come through a frog–eating Frenchman. We gladly turned from that topic to news nearer home. There was the great fight at Thissleton Gap, for instance, which showed what British grit and muscle and pluck could do; and we were all ready to wager all we had that if you searched France from north to south you could find no champion like Crib, who had near been the death of Molineux in a fight near Grantham, breaking his jaw, and leaving him senseless on the field. There had not been a bed to be had for love or money for twenty miles round Thissleton Gap the night before the fight, said the “Leeds Mercury,” and all the nobility and gentry of the county had been there; and after his great victory Crib, carrying away a purse of £400, had driven to London in a carriage and four, the postillions decked with blue ribands and streamers, and the whole populace in every town and hamlet by the way turning out to cheer the wearer of the belt. Then, too, there was much talk of the progress making with the cutting of the new canal that was to tie the eastern and the western seas; and we had not yet done marvelling at the boring of the waterway under Stanedge. Then, again, we must gossip to one another anent that strange portent of the skies, the wondrous comet, that still made our early morns so beautiful and yet so fraught with dread. The wise men said its tail was over twenty million miles long, as it streamed away from Charles’s Wain across the distant sky, and Mr. Mellor, the schoolmaster, did try to show me how the calculation had been made; whilst Mr. Varley, of the corn mill, who had a merry wit, did say that coals would soon be cheaper, for the Welsh were counting on the comet coming so near, they might toast their cheese by it. Mr. Mellor was somewhat ruffled that his serious discourse should be turned to levity, and said that as perchance Mr. Varley could not be expected to understand the deep subtleties of astronomy, he would try him on a subject nearer his heart. “I will, to–morrow,” said Mr. Mellor, “bring to your house twenty golden guineas, and in return you shall give me your written bond to give me therefor, one grain of good wheat, two grains and no more on the day following, four on the next, and so on each day thereafter for six months by the calendar, every day doubling the number of the day before.” “Done, and done to it,” cried Mr. Varley, and all the company exclaimed that so rare a bargain the miller never made in his life before and for an hour after that I saw Mr. Varley was doing sums in his head, and chuckling feebly to himself but in time he ceased to laugh, and his brow wrinkled and his eye was anxious, and he was seen to add figures secretly in his bulky pocket–book, and ever as he worked he grew sadder; till at length he cried that not all the corn that grew that year in Yorkshire could pay his wager, and he was fain to fill our measures round with best ale to be quit of his bargain. And all that went away sober that night told their wives how the schoolmaster had bested the miller, and were the more resolved their lads should mind their books and be good at figuring. And I was very glad that my old master had come off with so great credit, for Mr. Varley, by reason of being the lord’s agent, was something prone to give himself an air. But Mr. Webster was not too pleased that Mr. Varley should have jested of the comet. It had exercised him sore in the searching of the Scriptures, and oftentimes had he pointed to its presence in the heavens, and many a restless night had he given to my mother. Mr. Webster would have it that the comet did foretell the coming of the Son of Man in a cloud with power and great glory, and the good man rejoiced thereat, seeing nought to cause us grief, but rather joy, that there were “great earthquakes in divers places, and famines and pestilences, and fearful sights and great signs from heaven.” And he would exultingly call us to witness the fulfilment of prophesy for that there were signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars, and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; men’s hearts failing them for fear and for looking after those things which were coming on earth. But my mother lived to laugh at her fears, and even to wear a dress that became the fashion, of which the body was of pale red silk, a star of gold thread standing for the comet’s head, and a fan shaped tail of silver spangles spreading out in likeness of the comet’s tail. It was my great honour after the dinner, and whilst the company sat over their cups, to be invited to the head of the table by Mr. Joseph Scott, of Woodsome, who was then lately become a magistrate, a handsome man of some forty years. He asked most kindly after the health of my father and mother, and bade the tapster who waited on the upper end of the table charge me a bumper of the wine of Oporto, which did fill my heart with a great warmth. Then when I would have returned to my seat by the schoolmaster he bade me remain, and I listened with all my ears to the talk of my betters. I noticed that Mr. Scott spoke mostly with Mr. William Horsfall, of Marsden. I knew Mr. Horsfall well by sight, having seen him often on the road as he went to or returned from market, a man in his prime, with a keen, resolute look; not easily turned from his purpose, I warrant you. Impatient of opposition, I judged him even then, brusque, and a little petulant, but not unkindly of heart as I had heard, for those that worked for him had ever a good name for him—but a masterful man. The talk between these two was much of the coolness there then was between America and England. Mr. Horsfall was very bitter about this. “It is all the fault of those accursed Orders in Council,” he said. “Before our benighted Government issued the Orders in Council, America took twelve million pounds worth of our manufactures—now not one penny–worth. Withdraw the Orders and you conciliate America; you bind her to us by the closest tie of all, the tie of self–interest. So long as these Orders remain in force it is futile to talk of negotiations. It is beating the air. We are alienating our own flesh and blood, we are running grave risk of having another enemy on our hands, and that of our own household, our cousins if not our brothers. Here are we pulling our own nose to spite Napoleon’s face. It is suicidal, it is criminal!”—and I know not how many other hard names Mr. Horsfall hurled at the poor Government whilst Mr. Scott, with the ink scarce dry on his commission, fidgetted in his seat and was, I thought, hard put to it to defend the Government. At last when Mr. Horsfall grew more vehement in his denunciation of ministers, Mr. Scott bade him remember that it was the Whigs who in January, 1807, issued the first counterblast to Napoleon’s Berlin Decree; and then did these two Englishmen, the one a Whig and the other a Tory, get so warm about Whiggery and Toryism that I had much to do to get to the truth of the matter. In a lull of the storm I did so far presume upon the great condescension that Mr. Scott had shewn to me, for my father’s sake, as to ask him what these same Orders in Council might be, and how they bore upon us humble folk in Slaithwaite, for save that every one did speak of them as the cause of much of our bad trade and sore distress, I knew little for certain about them. “You must know then,” explained Mr. Scott, “that in 1806 Napoleon issued from Berlin a proclamation, addressed to all the world, declaring the island of Great Britain in a state of blockade, all British subjects, wherever found, prisoners of war, and all British goods, wherever taken, lawful prize, and excluding from all the ports of France every vessel which had touched at any British port, no matter to what nation such vessel might belong.”—— “But surely, sir,” I said timidly, for I knew little of such great matters, “surely, that was to declare war on all the countries of the world.” “‘Rem acu tetigisti’—thou hast touched the point with a pin,” cried Mr. Mellor, who had drawn near, whereat I blushed mightily, for I knew a little of the Latin, thank to much persistence of my good dominie, and by this time all the company had ceased their jesting and coffing and idle gossip, and all ears were cocked to hear what Mr. Scott and our neighbour Horsfall were so hot about. “Then did the Whig Government,” continued Mr. Scott, triumphantly, “issue an Order in Council, declaring that England was authorized by the Berlin Decree to blockade the whole seaboard of France; to prohibit all vessels which had touched at a French port from entering our harbours, and making their cargoes fair prize. It was that Order which estranged America, and has made it so that all our foreign trade has been cut off as with a knife.” “Nay but,” said Mr. Horsfall, “you should not forget to say that Mr. Percival, your Tory minister, has not only continued the Order but extended it; that the Whigs have admitted the error of their policy, that petition after petition has gone from the manufacturers of Yorkshire, praying for a Repeal of the Order’s, and that Mr. Brougham is never weary striving for that good end. But we know how it is—the war may ruin us manufacturers, but it pays the landowner. It keeps up the price of corn and stock, it finds pay and promotion for the young bloods of the aristocracy, it distracts the minds of the people at home from domestic reforms, it keeps up the hideous system of privilege, by which peer and prelate batten on the spoils of a people oppressed to the limits of endurance, and it is mighty convenient to keep Napoleon as a bogy man to frighten the people withal when they cry for reform.” And then did these two good men at it again hammer and tongs, and others joined in, and the ale and the wine talked louder than sense and knowledge, and you could make neither head nor tail of all the talk. But presently they simmered down, and Mr. Horsfall was drinking to the health of Mrs. Scott, whom he vowed he knew when she was the beauty of Storthes Hall, as if nothing had come between them to raise a dust, and all the more that, as good chance would have it, they hit on a subject on which they had little variance. “I hear,” said Mr. Scott, “that you are trying these new finishing frames of the Taylor’s, at Ottiwell’s.” “I am that,” said Mr. Horsfall, “and well content I am with them. They finish the cloth better far than the best croppers ever did or could, and one machine can do the work of four men.” “Then you will need less men,” said Mr. Scott, “and this is no time to be sacking men—I remember what happened twenty years ago when Grimshaw, of Manchester, arranged with Dr. Cartwright, the new Bishop Blaize as they called him, to set up four hundred looms at Manchester to be run by a steam engine. Grimshaw received hundreds of threatening letters, he was fired at more than once, his wife nearly fell into a decline from constant fear, and just when the mill was built, for four hundred looms, and part of the machines were in, mill and looms and all were swallowed up in a fire, and who made the fire you may well guess. It ruined Grimshaw, and now he goes about saying he wishes Bishop Blaize had been in blazes ’fore ever he had tempted him with his fine stories. But you Whigs will never be content with the wisdom of our forefathers. You must have something new fangled, either in mill or state“—and so they off again into politics; and having promised my mother to be home by milking time, and fearful if I stayed longer the fumes of the tobacco and the wine would be too much for an unseasoned head, I took my leave of Mr. Scott and won my way into the open air. By the stepping–stones that crossed the river, who should I see but Soldier Jack and a merry party that had been out with the harriers. They had come trooping down Kitchen Fold from over Crosland Moor way, and were in high feather, shouting and singing, while the hounds bayed in chorus. Soldier Jack was no man’s lad, a bye–blow. He had been left on the Workhouse steps tied in a bundle, and nought to show who was his father or who his mother. Then when he was a lad of ten years old the Overseer had ’prenticed him out to a shoemaker in Huddersfield, but he had been a sore trial to his master—disappearing and appearing when he liked, and neither fair words nor the strap, of which his master was not sparing if Jack spoke truth, availing to make him follow the old adage and stick to the last. Then one fine day the recruiting sergeant, in all his bravery, had put up at the Rose and Crown, and called on all gallant lads to take the king’s shilling and fight for glory and their country. “That’s the colour for me to dye,” thought Jack, and braving the law, which would have laid him by the heels for breaking his writings, he ’listed in a foot regiment, and was off for the wars with a heart as light as the heels he showed his master. Then many a year passed. Jack was unseen and forgotten in the haunts of his youth, when lo! he appeared, from God knows where, straight as a picking rod, brown as a berry, minus the left arm, and with a limp of his right leg; but otherwise sound as a bell and tight as a drum. He had some money, in the coinage of all the countries of Europe well nigh; and, as I heard tell, right royally did Jack live while his money lasted. He had no fixed quarters in the early days of his return from the wars, but of recent years he had dwelt much among the Burn Platters, an uncanny race of outlaws that some said were Frenchmen and some said were gypsies, that lived at Burn Platts on the moors on the edge of Slaithwaite, and of whose savagery and evil ways many stories were told. But Soldier Jack ever kept himself spruce and trim, and was a welcome visitor at every house on all that country side. How he lived none did know for gospel. At times in his cups he talked mysteriously of golden crosses and rare stones that he had lighted on in the sack of holy houses in Spain; but this, I think, was mere embroidery of his adventures. Lord! what a life had been Soldier Jack’s—what sieges he had seen, what pitched battles he had fought in, what prisoners he had taken, what forlorn hopes he had led, what distressed damsels he had rescued, how many haughty hidalgos he had slain with his own hand! Even Lord Wellington himself had been under obligation to him, and he had all but seized with his own hands the awful person of Napoleon himself. How he lived I say I know not. Belike he had some small pension from the king. At haymaking time, too, he turned a good cock and an honest penny, despite his one arm. He never missed a market or a fair, could be trusted above the common to carry a message, and was something of a farrier. But set job he had none, and yet never wanted. To be sure he had free quarters in nigh every hostelry all the country round, and if truth were told could hang up his hat when he would, for good and all, at the Black Bull; for widow Walker, who kept that house, was known to be widowing, and a fair and buxom dame withal. Now on this night of the Rent Audit Soldier Jack was pleased to leave the hunters and walk homewards with me, though his comrades were clamorous for him to join them in another bout at the ale. Though times were never so bad, it went hard with the weavers if they could not leave their shuttles and follow the hounds; and somehow they had ever wherewith to guzzle at the inn. But Jack was maybe wearied with the trail, and we took our way past the church and up the hill towards Holm. For some short distance Jack walked with never a word, though I wanted news of the hunt, where they had killed, and whose hound showed the truer scent. Then without prelude Jack began. “Ben, I want a word with thee. You and me has ever been friends, and your mother, God bless her, ever the soft word and the open hand. And yo’r father, a good man, though over hard on the slips o’ youth”—now Jack was forty if a week—“But there are things brewing it is right yo’ should know on; for them tha’s ’kin to yo’ are like to be tangled in em.” “Whatever do yo’ mean, Jack?” I asked, trying to speer at him in the gloom, for I thought maybe the ale had got into his head. “There’s a deal o’ sufferin’ about these parts, Ben. More nor yo’ think on. Yo’ happen think ’at because th’ lads about are after th’ hounds an’ have a bit to spend on drink ’at they’re better off nor they are. But yo’ see I’m more about nor yo’ an’ more intimate like. Folk is sellin’ their bits o’ stuff quiet like. Mony a decent woman ’at wouldn’t have it known has sent me wi’ ’owd keepsakes an’ heirlooms like to th’ silversmith i’ Huddersfelt an’ Owdham. They put a brave face on it an’ talk little, but aw know there’s scores o’ fam’lies i’ this valley and on these hill sides, ’at’s welly clammin’! It isn’t them as goes ‘afore the overseers ’at’s the worst off. There’s scores an’ scores livin’ on the town ’at go reg’lar every week for th’ town ’lowance. They’n got th’ length o’ th’ ovverseer’s foot, an’ its not for the like o’ me to blame ’em.” “Crows shouldn’t pike crows’ ’een, eh Jack?” I put in. “Th’ ovverseer’s fair game,” continued Jack, unmoved. “But he’s a fool for all his stuck up ways. Aw tell yo’ ’at there’s hundreds awmost sucking their finger ends, like bears do their paws, ’at winnot go on to th’ parish. An’ mark yo’, th’ poor ha’ borne wi’ slack work an’ mullocked on as best they could, as long as they thought th’ wars and bad harvests were to blame. An’ they’ve bided in hope, for harvests winnot all be bad, an’ we’st beat the little Corporal yet. But now th’ mesters are for makin’ bad worse wi’ this new machinery. They’re crying ‘Every man for hissen an’ devil take the hindmost.’ They’re bringing wood and iron to do the work of willing hands and arms, an’, by gow, the lads about won’t see their craft ruined, an’ them an’ theirs pined to death, wi’out a blow struck. Aw tell yo’, Ben, there’s mischief brewin’, or my name’s not Soldier Jack; an’ if yo’ want to know more, yo’ mun ask yon mettlesome cousin o’ yours, Judd Mellor, o’ th’ Brigg.”— “What! George Mellor?” I cried; “why, what has he to do with it?” For such an ending to the soldier’s tale I never thought nor dreamed of. “I’ve said my say, Ben, and yo’ll get no more out o’ me. It’s no use pumpin’ at a dry well tha’ knows. So aw’ll say good neet, an’ my duty to thi father an’ mother.” And resisting my entreaty that he would go onwards to our house and take pot luck at supper, Jack wheeled off into the dark, and I heard his stride, firm and martial still, despite the gamey leg, as he made across a footpath to the left, and his voice humming a stave of Lillibulero. CHAPTER III. IT WAS the Christmas Eve of 1811, a night beautiful, bright and clear. The moon was high in the heavens, and a myriad stars gemmed the sky. Flakes of snow fell gently, like the lighting of grasshoppers, but not so thick as to cloud the air. It was cold, but not bitterly cold. The snow crunched cheerfully under your feet, the hedges were rather frosted than cumbered; but the wild waste of hill all around and above Slaithwaite was white with a coverlet smoothed as with careful hands. The little homesteads on the hillsides stood out stark and black on the pale setting, their slender lights of lamp or candle declaring that many this night waked, who every other night in the year went to bed with the sun. We sat in the house, kitchen you would call it now—all our household save only ’Siah, who, we made no doubt, was faithful to his yearly custom of honouring Christmas by getting more ale than was good for him. Only a candle burned on the table, but the fire was piled high, and cast a lurid light about the room, the yule log saved from last year’s fire blazing bravely. My father was fidgeting and looking at the clock. He would have rather been in bed. We had had our supper, but a great currant loaf and a round of cheese was on the table, and the biggest pitcher of all our ware was ready for Martha to fill from the barrel in the cellar, when the right moment should come. Mother and Mary had speculated, and wondered and then wondered again as to whether the Church singers would this year sing a verse or two by our door. My mother argued they would not, as a mark of reprobation for our joining the Baptists. Mary, who knew that the hearts of the young men of a choir, church or chapel, are not in the keeping of vicar or minister, had her own reasons for maintaining a contrary view. My father stoutly declared he did not care a brass farthing one way or another. Meat and drink and five good shillings were waiting them, he said, and if they were fools enough to turn up their noses at good victuals and good brass, that was their look out, not his. All the same we all knew he would have felt it keenly that our house should be passed over for the first time within the memory of any of us. Then came the further problem—which set would be likely to reach us first, the church, who must sing first at the Vicarage and Dr. Dean’s, and at Sammy Sykes’s, who was churchwarden; or the waits from Powle Moor, who had further to come and a rougher way. Anyhow we hoped devoutly the two parties would not arrive together. We could hear, in the still night, the sound of music in the air, sad and wistful, floating among the hills. However we should soon be out of doubt, for midnight was hard upon us. The old clock warned the hour with a staggering click, and its clear metallic voice had rung out but six of the twelve hours, when we heard a footfall on the carpet of snow in the yard. There was no murmur of voices, none of the hawking and tuning and chuntering of a band of lads and lasses, but right out upon the still air, firm, strong and deep baritone, as from a singer well set up and fearless, music of itself, and with instrument neither of string nor reed to back it, came the grand old words and tune, like which no other words and tune do ever stir my heart— |
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