fell with him. " Ah ; it was a sad job."
At the head of a. large troop of willing or terrified followers,
about a hundred in number, Courtenay sallied forth from Bough-
ton on that morning of the 28th of May, with .a flag of white and
blue and the device of a rampant lion. A broken loaf was also
carried upon a pole. They marched by one of the petty byroads
to Goodnestone near Faversham. Here some of the multitude at-
tempted the old and ready process of redressing their wrongs by
putting -a lighted match to a bean-stack ; but lo, it would not burn ;
and this was a miracle wrought by the power of him they worship-
ped. To Herne Hill they next proceeded; where Courtenay re-
quired that his people should be fed, and without delay their wants
were supplied. Sometimes praying with the fanatics on their
knees, occasionally performing some piece of imposture, such as
firing at a star to bring it down, he led them into Bosenden
Wood. The night was coming on, and before the people dis-
persed he said they should have music from heaven to attest his
mission. There was method in his madness, for there was a con-
federate up a tree with a flute. Supper was given them at a farm-
house, and they slept in the barns. An intelligent tradesman of
middle age who lives in Boughton parish, on the road to Herne
Hill, described to us the movements of Courtenay and his fol-
lowers on that day. He knew most of those who believed in him
and were amongst his train. They were not all ignorant labourers.
There were small farmers amongst them, with some of whom
Courtenay had been living, going about from house to house.
Tney not only had confidence in his divine mission, but were as-
sured that every man should have an estate in land, and should
enjoy plenty, as well as eternal happiness. Many of the more de-
cent people who followed him were at the present time ashamed to
244 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
speak of it. There was one who was now an office-bearer in a
Wesleyan congregation who would speak frankly of the circum-
stances, and acknowledge the folly of which he had been guilty.
But the greater number of the rabble were horribly ignorant.
They could not well be otherwise. At Dunkirk, with a large pop-
ulation, there was then no church and no clergyman. There were
no National or Lancasterian schools for the children in any of the
villages. The people were utterly neglected by their rich and ed-
ucated neighbours. The Wesleyans had their meetings in cot-
tages, but they had then no chapel. The statements of this sensi-
ble tailor of Boughton were perfectly in accordance with the de-
tails of the education of this district presented by Mr. Wyse
in parliament in 1839. Out of fifty-one families at Herne Hill
there were forty-five persons above the age of fourteen, of which
number only eleven could read and write. Forty-two out of a
hundred and seventeen children were at school, but they learnt
little, and those who had left school and could once read the New
Testament could not do so now. The Sunday schools were inef-
ficient, as the children could never be brought to connect what
they learned with their practice in life. In the ville of Dunkirk
there were a hundred and thirteen children, of whom only ten
could read and write, thirteen could do so a little, and the remain-
der not at all. Of a hundred and nineteen children in Boughton,
thirty-two attended the Sunday school, but only seven went to a
school where writing was taught. * All with whom we conversed
were strongly impressed with the belief that the occurrences which
they deplored were wholly attributable to the neglect of education,
and to the indifference of the superior classes to the welfare of
their poorer neighbours. Out of evil comes good, said an honest
wheelwright of Selling. After the outbreak the Dunkirk gentry
built a church. The Boughton people were ashamed of what Dun-
kirk people did, and built a National school. Clergy and Dis-
senters bestirred themselves, and church, chapel, and schools in a
few years rose up and flourished.
With the dawn of the 2pth of May the fanatics were on their
march from Bosenden Wood. Along the great road they tramped
for ten miles till they reached Sittingbourne along that road
where the fields on each side looked like one garden to the for-
eigner who travelled from Dover along that road which exhibited
* Hansard, vol. xlviii.col. 538. These statistics quoted by Mr. Wyse, were furnished
from a Report made to the Central Society of Education on the State of the Peasantry
at Boughton. Herne Hill, and the Ville of Dunkirk, near Canterbury, by F. Liardet,
Esq., published in 1838.
THE TRAGEDY OF BOSENDEN WOOD. 245
such beauty to the eyes of a sanguinary republican in 1 792 that he
exclaimed, " Oh, what a pity, what a pity, if they set about to
revolutionize this fine country." * If the ignorant enthusiasts who
followed an impious madman along that road in 1838 had gathered
in any formidable numbers, there might have been scenes even
worse than the days of terror in France, scenes that would have
revived the memories of the Anabaptists of Miinster. John Thorn
and John Matthias present a remarkable parallel in their fates.
The baker who made himself master of Minister, and calling him-
self its king, undertook with thirty followers to disperse a military
force which came against him, perished with all around him at the
first onset with regular soldiery. The factor of Truro, who styled
himself king of Kent, stood up to do battle with a detachment of
the 45th Foot regiment, who had seen a hundred fights, and he
and eight of his wretched disciples fell at the first volley. The
circumstances of the catastrophe may be shortly told. From
Sittingbourne the rabble marched during two days through a
circle of vilages on the south of the great road Newnham,
Eastling, Throwley, Sheldwich, Lees, Selling. The leader prayed
and preached promised and denounced the peasants knelt
they obtained food at yeomen's houses they gathered more and
more in numbers farm-labourers quitted their field-work women
threw down their hoes and left the beans unweeded. The third
night closed upon this mad march as they once more entered
Bosenden Wood, and lay down in barns or under the leafy cano-
pies of that spring-time. On Thursday morning the 3ist, three
men appeared in the camp to search for a farmer's labourer who
had been seduced from his employment to follow a man who
promised that all should have plenty without work. One of these,
a constable, bore a warrant to arrest the servant who had offended
against the law. Thorn took as effectual a method to resist in-
truders as did his great predecessor Cade when he hanged the
clerk of Chatham Thorn instantly shot the constable. Drawing
his sword, he hacked the body of his victim, and cried out to the
people, " Now, am I not your Saviour ? " Two of the fanatics
then knelt at his feet. One of them, who still lives to repent his
folly as he quickly repented it for a year in Maidstone gaol, was
asked by Thorn whether he would follow him in the body, or go
home and follow him in heart ; upon which he sprang to his feet
and exclaimed, " Oh be joyful the Saviour has accepted me Go,
go on till I drop I'll follow thee." The murder of Mears, the
constable, caused a messenger to be sent to Canterbury for mili-
* Ante, vol. vi. p. 522.
246 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
tary aid. A party of a hundred men immediately marched in two
divisions. One division under major Armstrong proceeded inlo
the centre of the thick wood, about a mile and a half from the road.
Here a party of fifty or sixty men made their appearance, led on
by one who answered the description of the person called Courte-
nay. Lieutenant Bennett, with his section of the soldiers, ad-
vanced towards these men, one of whom carried a white flag. The
lieutenant and the leader of the fanatics each advanced till they
were within two rods of each other. Courtenay commenced run-
ning ; jumped over the trunk of a tree ; there was a shot ; and
lieutenant Bennett fell. The soldiers screamed with horror ; there
was rush upon them with bludgeons by the frantic rabble, led on
by Courtenay; another man was shot by them ; the command was
given to the soldiers to fire ; Courtenay and eight others of the
rioters were killed ; several were severely wounded. Those who
did not fly in time were apprehended, and were subsequently tried.
Three were sentenced to death, which was commuted for trans-
portation ; and six others were imprisoned for a year. The
wretched cause of this bloodshed and misery, at once madman and
impostor, was buried in the churchyard of Herne Hill. Not a
stone marks where he lies under the green turf. But years passed
over before the peasants ceased to visit that grave, firmly believing
his coming to life again would take place, although the promise he
had given to the poor woman who lived in the farm in the wood
that if he were killed, and she poured water on his face, he would
assuredly revive, was not fulfilled.
Three hundred years before these events there was a display
of fanaticism of a very different nature at Adlington, in Kent, not
twenty miles from Bosenden Wood. Elizabeth Barton belonged
to an age " when the pretensions to miraculous powers, which still
lingered round the shrines of a thousand saints and martyrs, im-
posed to some extent upon the clearest understandings."* The
statute, by which she and five others were attainted, states that
she deluded by her false revelations a great multitude of the
king's subjects " inclined to newfangleness." The followers of
John Thorn were also inclined to newfangleness ; but their fanati-
cism was not connected with the superstitions of a perishing faith
or the devices of a cunning priesthood. It was the ignorance that
had no foundation of religious belief or secular knowledge ; the
ignorance that had not been reached by the divine or the school-
master ; the ignorance which was a reproach to the nation, and
especially discreditable to the richly endowed Church under whose
* Ante, vol. ii. p. 354.
CHARTISM.
247
proudest seat of Christian instruction such a state of society had
grown up. Although forming an exceptional illustration of the
degrees in wMch knowledge had advanced during, the nineteenth
century, these events are yet suggestive of how much was required
to be done before England should arrive at the state of social im-
provement which marks the greatest difference between the first
year and the twenty-fifth year of the reign of Queen Victoria.
When the Parliament was opened by the Queen on the 5th of
February, 1839, a passage in the Royal Speech had reference to a
state of domestic affairs which presented an unhappy contrast to
the universal loyalty which marked the period of the Coronation.
Her Majesty said : " I have observed with pain the persevering
efforts which have been made in some parts of the cpuntry to
excite my subjects to disobedience and resistance to the law, and
to recommend dangerous and illegal practices." Chartism, which
for ten subsequent years occasionally agitated the country, had
then begun to take root. On the previous i2th of December a
proclamation had been issued against illegal Chartist assemblies,
several of which had been held, says the proclamation, " after sun-
set by torch light." The persons attending these meetings were
armed with guns and pikes ; and demagogues, such as Feargus
O'Connor and the Rev. Mr. Stephens at Bury, addressed the
people in the most inflammatory language. The existence of
Chartism was a painful and almost an appalling fact, of far deeper
significance than the discontents of ignorant masses of the manu-
facturing population stirred up by unscrupulous leaders. Thinking
men felt that there was something rotten in the composition of
society a gangrene that must be removed before the body politic
could be sound and healthful. The state of the labouring classes
was the subject of anxious solicitude, in their want of employment
or their low wages, partly arising out of the great changes pro-
duced by scientific applications to industry, at a time when an un-
sound commercial and fiscal policy forbade the developments of
skill, under the influence of increasing capital, to be a general
blessing. The evils of unrestricted competition, in its operation
upon a superabundant population of artisans and factory workmen,
were then very slightly mitigated by any considerate feelings of
the employer for the employed. There was no sympathy, there
was in most parts a jealous antagonism, between the two classes.
Dr. Arnold wrote to a friend in 1839, " Men do not think of the
fearful state in which we are living. If they could once be brought
to notice and to appreciate the evil, I should not even yet despair
t'iat the remedy may be found and applied ; even though it is the
248 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
solution of the most difficult problem ever yet proposed to man's
wisdom, and the greatest triumph over selfishness ever yet re-
quired of his virtue." * It was seen, however imperfectly, at that
period, what a resource England, Scotland, and Ireland possessed
against the evils of over population, against the terrible com-
petition for a bit of potato ground, or for a hand-loom, or for a
seat in a tailor's pestilent garret in all which forms of unprofit-
able labour there was the sweat of the brow but not the earning of
the bread. These sufferings were taking place "in a world where
Canadian forests stand unfelled, boundless plains and prairies un-
broken with the plough ; on the west and on the east, green desert
spaces never yet made white with corn ; and to the over-crowded
little western nook of Europe, our Terrestrial Planet, nine-tenths
of it yet vacant or tenanted by nomades, is still crying, Come and
till me, come and reap me !" f The eloquent expounder of the
miseries of that unhappy time has a hopeful prophecy of a better
future : " Is it not as if this swelling, simmering, never resting
Europe of ours stood, once more, on the verge of an expansion
without parallel; struggling, struggling like a mighty tree again
about to burst in the embrace of summer, and shoot forth broad
frondent boughs which would fill the whole earth ? A disease ; but
the noblest of all, as of her who is in pain and sore travail, but tra-
vails that she may be a mother, and say, Behold, there is a new Man
born!"J It was not only the benevolent schoolmaster and the
philosophic man of letters who were perplexed by the condition of
the working-classes. M. Guizot records that in his first inter-
course with sir Robert Peel in 1840, what struck him most of all
was sir Robert's constant and earnest solicitude with regard to the
condition of the labouring classes in England. " There is," he
often said, " too much suffering and too much perplexity in the
condition of the working classes; it is a disgrace as well as a
danger to our civilization ; it is absolutely necessary to render their
condition less hard and less precarious. We cannot do everything,
far from it ; but we can do something, and it is our duty to do all
that we can." Was sir Robert Peel then thinking that the time
might come when he should " leave a name sometimes remember-
ed with expressions of goodwill in the abodes of those whose lot
it is to labour, and to earn their daily bread by the sweat of their
brow, when they shall recruit their exhausted strength with abund-
* " Life," vol. ii. p. 164.
t Carlyle "Chartism," p. 112. } Ibid., pp. 112, ns
Guizot" Memoirs of Sir Robert Peel," p. 83.
JAMAICA. 2 49
ant and untaxed food, the sweeter because it is no longer leavened
with a sense of injustice ? " *
The document called " The People's .Charter," which was em-
bodied in the form of a Bill in 1838, comprised six points univer-
sal suffrage, excluding, however, women; division of the United
Kingdom into equal electoral districts ; vote by ballot ; annual
parliaments ; no property qualification for members ; and a pay-
ment to every member for his legislative services. These prin-
ciples so quickly recommended themselves to the working classes,
that in the session of 1839 tne number of signatures to a petition
presented to Parliament was upwards of a million and a quarter.
The middle classes almost universally looked with extreme jealousy
and apprehension upon any attempt for an extension of the fran-
chise. The upper classes for the most part regarded the proceed-
ings of the Chartists with a contempt which scarcely concealed
their fears. This large section of the working population very
soon became divided into what were called physical-force Chartists
and moral-force Chartists. As a natural consequence, the prin.
ciples and acts of the physical-force Chartists disgusted every
supporter of order and of the rights of property, and left the whole
educated community very unwilling to sanction any measure which
would ' rectify the anomaly of which many sound-hearted and
right-thinking working men complained, that the Reform Bill
of 1832 had set up an invidious and irrational barrier against the
claim of the artisan to the rights of citizenship ; and had settled
the question as to who was qualified to choose a representative in
Parliament by the arbitrary and varying test of occupying a tene-
ment at an annual rent of Ten Pounds. There were many of the
best men amongst a class rapidly growing into the ability to judge
temperately and honestly on all political questions who deeply felt
this exclusion : and they resented it the more when they were con-
founded with the physical-force slaves of the brutal demagogues
that disturbed England in 1839.
At the opening of Parliament it was stated in the Queen's Speech
that in the West Indies the period fixed by law for the final and
complete emancipation of the negroes had been anticipated by
Acts of the Colonial legislatures ; and that the transition from the
temporary system of apprenticeship to entire freedom had taken
place without any disturbance of public order and tranquillity. But
although the emancipation had taken place without any excesses on
the part of those who had now become free men, responsible only
to the laws, the planters of Jamaica were in a state of moody dis-
* Sir R. Peel's Speech on the resignation of Ministers, June tg, 1846.
2^0 i.ioiOKY OF ENGLAND.
content at the altered relations between the capitalist and the
labourer, and they testified their displeasure by opposition, often
frivolous and always stubborn, to the desire of the Imperial govern-
ment to protect the negroes from cruelties and oppressions. Local
legislation came to a stand. Lord Melbourne and his colleagues
determined to adopt a strong measure, by proposing to Parliament
a suspension of the Constitution of Jamaica for five years, during
which period the affairs of the colony would be administered by a
provisional government. A motion to this effect was brought for-
ward on the Qth of April by Mr. Labouchere. It was a great occa-
sion for a trial of the strength of parties. Counsel were heard at the
bar of the House of Commons against the bill, and it was not till
the 6th of May that the parliamentary discussions on this subject
were brought to a close by a division in which two hundred and
ninety-four voted with the ministry and two hundred and eighty-
nine against them. This slender majority showed upon how frail
a foundation rested the tenure of office by the Melbourne ministry.
On the 7th of May lord John Russell announced the resignation of
ministers upon the ground of not having such support and such con-
fidence in the House of Commons as would enable them efficiently
to carry on the public business. Upon the resignation of her ser-
vants the Queen had consulted the duke of Wellington, who recom-
mended that sir Robert Peel should be sent for. The attempt to
form a new administration failed, and lord Melbourne and his col-
leagues returned to power in a week. On the I3th sir Robert Peel,
having received her Majesty's permission to explain the circum-
stances under which he had relinquished the attempt to form an
administration, made that explanation in the House of Commons.
The Queen's most ingenuous truthfulness was conspicuous in
these negotiations. Her Majesty at once asked sir Robert Peel
whether he was willing to undertake the duty of forming an admin-
istration, at the same time telling him that it was with great regret
that she parted with the administration which had just resigned.
The next day sir Robert Peel submitted to her Majesty the names
of those he proposed to associate with him. No objection was
raised as to the persons who were to compose the ministry or to
the principles on which it was to be conducted. But a difficulty
suggested itself to the minds of sir Robert and his friends. He
again waited upon the Queen to state to her Majesty the necessity
of making some change in the appointment of ladies to fill the great
offices of her household. Her Majesty consulted her ministers,
and on the loth wrote the following note : " The Queen having
considered the proposal made to her yesterday by sir Robert Peel,
THE BEDCHAMBER QUESTION. 251
to remove the Ladies of her Bedchamber, cannot consent to adopt
a course which she conceives to be contrary to usage, and which is
repugnant to her feelings." Sir Robert, it seems, took an especial
objection that the wife of lord Normanby, Lord Lieutenant of Ire-
land, and the sister of lord Morpeth,the Chief Secretary, were in the
closest attendance upon the Queen. He and his party had wholly
disapproved the policy of conciliation which was advocated by the
Irish administration, and they thus objected to the continued posi-
tion about the royal person of the marchioness of Normanby and
the duchess of Sutherland. Upon the abstract constitutional
question it is now generally felt that sir Robert Peel was right.
Immediately after he had declared his inability to form an Admin-
istration unless the Ladies of the Bedchamber were removed, the
ministry recorded their opinion in a Cabinet minute that they held
it " reasonable that the great offices of the Court, and situations in
the household held by members of Parliament, should be included
in the political arrangements made in a change of the Administra-
tion ; but they are not of opinion that a similar principle should be
applied or extended to the offices held by ladies in her Majesty's
household." The Cabinet had precedents to support their view.
Lady Sunderland and lady Rialton had remained in the bedchamber
of Queen Anne for a year and a half after the dismissal of their
husbands from office, and it was the uniform practice that the ladies
of the household of every queen consort should be retained on
changes of administration, notwithstanding their relationship to
men engaged in political life.
The discussions in and out of Parliament which arose upon
this question were protracted and violent. The people generally
were inclined to think that an attempt had been made to treat the
Queen with harshness by removing from her presence ladies who
had become her personal friends ladies exemplary in their private
lives, and whose accomplishments shed a grace over the Court of
a female Sovereign. Meetings were held in various parts of the
country to express approbation of her Majesty's conduct. These
were no doubt to some extent meetings influenced by political con-
siderations ; but the sentiments there expressed were consonant
with the general opinion that the Queen was worthy of the most
respectful sympathy with her actions and feelings. It is painful to
reiate that from this period was manifested, on the part of some
who, disdaining the name of Conservatives, clung to the extremest
Tory opinions, a virulence that did not even exempt frqm their
personal attacks the conduct and character of the Sovereign. To
those of the present day who have not traced the course of politics
252 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
in the early part of the Oueen^s reign it would seem impossible to
believe that a member of Parliament, at a public dinner at Can-
terbury, should have designated the Sovereign who has secured to
an unparalleled extent the love and veneration of her subjects, as
one who thought that if the monarchy lasted her time it was
enough ; that this party firebrand should have been cheered when
he talked of the abdication of James the Second as a precedent not
to be forgotten. It would seem impossible to imagine that the
colonel and officers of a regiment should have brought themselves
under the censure of the Commander-in-Chief for having sat at a