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Wednesday, 5 December 2007

Aspects of Chartism: Chartism and the State 2

The army

When the military acted in support of the civil power they were in theory, and in some important matters in practice, under the control of the civil authorities. At the Whitehall level, it was the Home Secretary who was responsible for the distribution of troops throughout the United Kingdom, although there was consultation with the War Office, and with the commanders of the military districts. When the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland requested another regiment, the decision would be taken by the Home Secretary, usually in consultation with the Prime Minister, sometimes with the Cabinet, and it was the Home Department which issued the instructions. There would normally always be consultations with the Commander-in-Chief or, in 1848, more likely with the Military Secretary, since the Duke of Wellington seems often to have been by-passed.

At the local level, it has often been assumed that the magistracy had the power to requisition the military forces that were within reach of the actual or threatened disorder. The practice had grown up during the eighteenth century of the Secretary of State issuing a general order authorising military commanders to give aid to the civil power; and magistrates became accustomed to call upon the military without a previous application to the central government. This precedent was accepted during the first half of the nineteenth century, but it was always possible for the officer in command to refuse a request if he considered the call for assistance had been made on insufficient grounds or he could refer the request to a superior officer. Most of Britain was divided into military districts. London, including Windsor, was directed from the Horse Guards, and there were quite a large number of rural counties not included in any military district which were also administered from Whitehall. The largest district was the Northern and Midland that from 1842 took in the whole of the north of England from the Scottish border south through Durham, Yorkshire and Lancashire down to Birmingham and the counties of Leicestershire and Northamptonshire. The headquarters of the district were in Manchester, and the General Officer Commanding was Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Arbuthnot. He had taken command in mid August 1842. His senior officers were Major General Sir Willaim Warre, with headquarters at Chester, and responsibility for the North-West including the key town of Liverpool; and Major-General Thorn with his headquarters at York. The other districts were the South-West (Portsmouth); the Western (Devonport); Monmouth and South Wales (Carmarthen); Scotland (Edinburgh); and the Channel Islands, Jersey being separately administered from Guernsey and Alderney.

The military commanders were mostly veterans of the French Wars that ended in 1815, and in the main were able and efficient men. Sir Thomas Arbuthnot seems to have been quite outstanding, as interesting, although not so radical in political outlook, as Sir Charles Napier, but much less well known. He died in 1849 at the age of seventy-three. Both Graham and Sir George Grey used Arbuthnot for many services for which they judged the civilian authorities less competent; and his long reports to Grey during the troubled months of 1848 were intelligent, markedly shrewd and very informative. He was probably the most useful single source of intelligence during the spring and summer months of 1848 for the whole of the industrial North.

The military forces stationed in the United Kingdom were divided broadly between mainland Britain and Ireland: and the respective levels of order and disorder largely determined their distribution between these two main parts of the kingdom. In the late 1830s, for example, the Litchfield House compact between the Whigs and O’Connell, together with a Whig administration in Dublin Castle meant relative tranquillity in Ireland and the practicability of withdrawal of troops from Ireland to the mainland: a matter of considerable importance in the years 1839-40. In 1840 there were 26,845 troops (excluding officers and NCOs) in Britain and 13,112 in Ireland. It was indeed O’Connell’s boast that he had saved Britain from the Chartists. In 1848 the situation was quite different and the figures were 33,738 in Britain and 28,942 in Ireland. A large part of the army, it must be remembered, was overseas, and one of the favourable factors for the government in 1848 was the return of several regiments from overseas service. What helped the situation even more was the rapid extension of the railway network. The Quartermaster-General emphasised in evidence before a committee in 1844 how the railways[1] had enabled the army ‘to do the work of a very large one: you send a battalion of 1,000 men from London to Manchester in nine hours: that same battalion marching would take 17 days; and they arrive at the end of nine hours just as fresh, or nearly so, as when they started’.

The Yeomanry

In addition to the police, the special constables[2] and the army there were two other groups that could be used by those responsible for maintaining public order. The Yeomanry had been in existence since the 1790s. It was a volunteer force, made up in most counties from the better-off farmers and the lesser gentry. Certain of the metropolitan counties by the second quarter of the century were served by Yeomanry drawn from business and professional groups; but most of the Yeomanry forces were rural. They were the equivalent of a regular cavalry force, armed and to some extent trained. They had a standard six-day training each year and were inspected annually by a Field Officer of the regular army. On active service, under an Act of 1804, they were subject to military discipline, but their control was by the civil authorities. The Yeomanry were called out by the Lord Lieutenant or by the local magistrate but, as always in a period of crisis the chain of command could be superseded by Whitehall. The Home Secretary could authorise the Commanders of military districts to call out the Yeomanry and retain them under their command.

Governments never forgot the Peterloo ‘massacre’ of 1819 or the consequences of making martyrs; and during the Chartist years there was considerable reluctance to use the Yeomanry in the control of riot and disturbance. The Yeomanry were exceedingly unpopular, much more disliked than the army, and their presence might often worsen a difficult situation. The Whigs especially were critical of what Sir Charles Napier in his Memoirs described as the over-zealousness of the Yeomanry ‘for cutting and slashing’: and during his period as Home Secretary, Lord John Russell carried through a reduction in the numbers of the Yeomanry: ‘for his part he would rather that any force should be employed in case of local disturbance than the local corps of Yeomanry’. The cost of the Yeomanry was also a consideration, for they were paid during their days of service. They were mostly agriculturalists and farmers of one kind and another, and the seasonal round, especially harvesting, could be seriously interrupted. It was a matter that governments always tried to take into account. Opposition to the use of Yeomanry must not, however, be exaggerated. The Tories used the Yeomanry extensively in the difficult years of 1841 and 1842, and Whig scruples were never pushed beyond the real needs of internal security, as the events of the summer of 1848 clearly demonstrated.

Enrolled Pensioners

The last auxiliary group at the disposal of the law and order enforcers were the Enrolled Pensioners. Army pensioners had long been used in times of social unrest as special constables. In 1843, as a result of the massive turbulence of the previous year, retired soldiers were enrolled into local uniformed corps. They were given eight days training each year. The total number enrolled was not to exceed 10,000 and the normal age of retirement from the new corps was 55, although volunteers could be taken up to the age of 58. In 1846, a further Act brought in the naval pensioners. When called out on active service the Pensioners were armed with muskets and bayonets. The total number of Enrolled Pensioners in Britain in 1848 was 8,720; and a War Office memorandum listed the following numbers for certain towns in the industrial North: Bolton 211; Preston 141; Stockport 87; Liverpool 350; Manchester, First Division 378, Second Division 378; Halifax 157; Sheffield 175; Hull and York 130. The authority to call out the Enrolled Pensioners was vested in the Home Secretary, but he could, and often did, issue general warrants to selected persons that enabled Pensioners to be called out on local initiative. Warrants were normally issued to Lords Lieutenant and to the Mayors of incorporated boroughs. Again, as with the Yeomanry, in times of crisis the Enrolled Pensioners could be put directly under the commanders of the military districts. Enrolled Pensioners could be called out for twelve days in any one year under warrant; thereafter, only volunteers were available. In practice, because of the ‘high rates of pay’, there was never any difficulty in assembling sufficient numbers. The Enrolled Pensioners were highly cost-effective. In evidence before an 1850 Select Committee, Fox Maule, Secretary at War, reported that the cost of Pensioners for a normal year was about two pounds and ten shillings per head, exclusive of clothing that was issued once every five years.

By 1848, the coercive forces at the disposal of those acting on behalf of the Crown, and the administrative machinery of central and local government for their direction and control, were more efficiently organised than at any previous period. The growth of the great urban areas which went with industrialisation had created qualitatively new problems of social and political control for the governing classes. The definition of adequate security measures had become inextricably intertwined with the political problems of power sharing between the landed groups and the rapidly growing numbers of the middle class in the towns; and given that Ireland was always on a quite different level of social tension than the rest of Britain, it became the laboratory for experiment and exploration of new ways of dealing with insurgency. The much more urgent problems of law and order in Ireland provided patterns of control and coercion that could be applied, suitably adjusted and modified, to the rest of the United Kingdom. It was the emergence of mass movements, in both Ireland and Britain in the two decades before 1850 that forced Dublin Castle and the Home Office in Whitehall to improve the chain of command and increase the weight of coercive power that could quickly be applied to the areas of unrest and turbulence. In England the years 1839 to 1842 were crucial in these matters. What was new in 1848, compared with all previous years, was the stimulus to revolutionary action by the events in France at the same time as Ireland was apparently moving in parallel with the radical movement in Britain. For the first time the seemingly intractable problem of internal security in Ireland had now close links with radical activity in Britain. The coming together of Irish nationalists with English Chartists provided new dimensions to the security problem overall, and to contemporaries the conjuncture looked alarming and potentially highly dangerous. Revolutionary Paris, Irish insurgency and the Chartist mobilisation all came together to produce a situation in which the ranks of the propertied - the large and the small and the high and the low - joined in a striking demonstration of unity against what was felt to be a serious threat to the foundations of social life. The impressive response to the call for special constables in 1848 all over Britain exhibited the determination of the middle strata to preserve their economic and social positions. It was, for middle-class Britain, a levée en masse of quite remarkable proportions.


[1] The 1830s and especially the 1840s were great decades of railway building. By 1840, 1,500 miles of track were open, linking most of Britain’s large towns and cities with London. By 1850, 6,000 miles were open and a genuine railway network was in operation. This was important because it enabled the authorities to transport troops and police to trouble spots more easily than before. The railway companies could help this process. In 1848, for example, the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Company enrolled seven hundred of its workmen as special constables in anticipation of public disorder, despite many workmen’s reluctance.

[2] Special constables were recruited among the middle and working classes to support the regular police at times of crisis.

Tuesday, 4 December 2007

Aspects of Chartism: Did Chartism affect Government policies?

The extent to which the activities of the Chartists affected government policies between 1838 and 1850 is a matter of degree. The problem is establishing causal links. Was policy-making a response to Chartism? At the level of public order, both Whig and Conservative governments did respond to the threat from the movement. In other areas, for example economic and social policies it is more difficult to establish such close connections. The coincidence of policies with particular Chartist activities does not mean that they were a response to the perceived threat from the movement.

  • There were no concessions to the Chartists’ six points while Chartism lasted. Government was prepared to negotiate with the Chartists and where negotiations did take place, as for example over the 10th April 1848 demonstration the government was in the stronger position.
  • Chartism merely determined the Whigs and Conservatives to resist further constitutional reform. The question here is whether further constitutional reform was ever a policy option in the late 1830s and 1840s. Russell had made the Whig position clear in his ‘Finality’ speech in November 1837 and the Conservatives never envisaged further constitutional reform as part of their political programme between 1841 and 1846.
  • Governments did try to improve working class conditions. The problem with this point is that reform did not coincide with Chartist activity. However, by 1840, some Whigs and Conservatives recognised either that something needed to be done to improve working class conditions either as a means of preventing public disorder or because it was right to do so.
  • The 1848 phase of Chartism was two years after the repeal of the Corn Laws. Again, historians have failed to establish whether there was any connection between these two events.
  • Conservative reaction to Chartism was much more rigorous than the reaction of the Whigs. It may have strengthened the Conservative determination to better conditions for the working classes by socio-economic methods.

The notion that there was a ‘softening’ of the attitudes of the state after 1843 and that it began to make legislative and administrative concessions to Chartist grievances remains a useful way of approaching an explanation for the decline of Chartism. Stedman Jones[1] argues that Chartist rhetoric in its early years was directed against a state that recognised and protected all kinds of property but those of labour and skill and that seemed to be waging war on working-class living standards through a series of measures that excluded working people from local and national political processes and threatened them with oppression and control through the new Poor Law and the new police. Chartism inherited and deployed the assumption that the state was irredeemably corrupt and that under the current political system all legislation would be turned to the advantage of the landed aristocracy and financiers (the ‘moneyocracy’) and used for further exploitation and repression of the wage-earning and taxpaying majority.

Stedman Jones argues that developments in the early and mid-1840s undermined these assumptions. The new Poor Law proved to be less threatening in practice than the rhetoric of its introduction suggested especially in the northern factory districts where it took a long time for new workhouses to be built and new officials to be appointed[2]. The Andover workhouse scandal[3] from 1844-5 led to a substantial review of the operation of the system and the 1847 Poor Law Act swept away the unpopular and increasingly ineffectual Poor Law Commission replacing in with a Poor Law Board accountable to parliament. The burden of taxation began to shift from necessary consumables to property and substantial incomes, especially as local graduated property taxes took up the burden of urban improvement as well as poor relief and the reintroduction of income taxes from 1842 moved national taxation irrevocably away from indirect taxes on goods and services. The Corn Laws were repealed in 1846, a symbolic victory for the middle classes even if it did not result in dramatic reductions in the price of bread. Movement began on the issue of factory reform with legislation regulating the employment of women and children in mines in 1842, an extension of the principles of the 1833 Factory Act in 1844 and with the ‘Ten Hour Bill’ visibly becoming attainable by mid-decade with legislation in 1847 and 1850 bringing it in[4].

By the mid-1840s, many Chartists acknowledged the benefits of the new, more benign attitude of the state. Reformism became credible because reforms were being introduced even if this did not include the Charter. The state may have softened its attitude on areas of social and economic policy but it continued to build up the police force, barracks and telegraph network and other technologies of control that were to make it easier to suppress the last Chartist upsurge in 1848. Chartism became popular as a conduit of popular grievances against an array of legislation that interfered with working class institutions and survival strategies in the 1830s. It began to decline once these abuses began to be remedied. What is remarkable is how little it took to dampen the impetus from the movement. The state gave ground only where there was scope to do so without undermining the possession and protection of property. The extension of the police force, also a working class grievance was not dealt with and in fact was essential to the repression that played a central part in Chartism’s decline. It was the combination of flexibility and strength that proved very effective in stabilising the constitution and proved sufficient reforms to counter many of the Chartist grievances about living and working conditions while maintaining state control through the legal system, systematic policing and military discipline.


[1] Gareth Stedman Jones ‘The Language of Chartism’, James Epstein and Dorothy Thompson (eds.) The  Chartist Experience: Studies in Working Class Radicalism and Culture 1830-1860, Macmillan, 1982, pages 3-58 and in an extended version as ‘Rethinking Chartism’, in his Languages of class: Studies in English working class history 1832-1982, Cambridge University Press, 1983, pages 90-178.

[2] P. Wood Poverty and the Workhouse in Victorian England, Alan Sutton, 1991 is a useful book on the introduction and operation of the 'new' poor  law

[3] The Andover scandal was not unique but it was highly publicised and used by those critical of or opposed to the new system. Bone crushing was used in some workhouses as a ‘useful’ occupation for paupers. The Home Secretary, Sir James Graham, disapproved of it as a means of employing the poor but Commissioner George Nicholls was a great enthusiast and a second Commissioner, Sir George Cornewall Lewis vacillating in his attitude. Andover was regarded, from the Commissioners’ point of view, as a model union. All outdoor relief was stopped as soon as the workhouse was opened and it was one of the few unions not to relax this rule during the ‘great freeze’ of January 1838. The Board’s ruthlessness shocked even the Rev. Thomas Mozeley, a convinced opponent of the old system.

At Andover, the work was hard, the discipline strict and the diet scanty. No little indulgences were allowed to creep in. This was due to the choice of ex-sergeant Colin M’Dougal, a veteran of Waterloo, as workhouse master and his wife, Mary Ann, as matron. The local Guardians acknowledged that even this admirable couple had their faults but were only too ready to leave the management of the union’s affairs to their domineering chairman. Attempts to end bone crushing at Andover in December 1844 were voted down by the chairman and his supporters. However, during the next few months ugly rumours began to circulate about what went on in the bone-yard in terms of inmates eating the marrow from the decomposing bones. The Guardians took no action, apart from suspending bone crushing during hot weather. Hugh Mundy, a local farmer frequently at odds with his colleagues whom he infuriated by paying his labourers ten shillings a week, two shillings more than his fellow landowners, went public. He turned to Thomas Wakley, who on Friday 1st August 1845, rose to ask the Home Secretary about paupers eating bone marrow at Andover. Sir James Graham replied that he could not believe this situation but promised to institute an enquiry. The following day Henry Parker, the Assistant Commissioner responsible for Andover, was dispatched to ascertain the facts.

His enquiry began on Monday 4th August 1845 and by the next day he was able to report back to London that the charges were true. On 14th August Parker was instructed to investigate any alleged ‘neglect or misconduct on the part of the Master or officers of the workhouse. M’Dougal offered his resignation on 29 September but when Parker, now summoned back to London, suggested consulting the Commission’s solicitors about prosecution the lawyers advised against it. The Commission was left with a hostile press, a critical Parliament, a seriously alarmed public and no scapegoat. Parker now found himself cast in this role. When he drafted a letter from the Board to the Andover Guardians he was accused of trying to throw the blame on the Commissioners. On 16th October Parker was called upon to resign and his only reward for years of devoted service was a suggestion that he should seek work with one of the expanding railway companies. If the Commissioners felt that they had saved themselves by dismissing Parker, they were mistaken. The former Assistant Commissioner published a long pamphlet in his own defence, which indicted his recent superiors, and his case was rapidly taken up by a group of anti-Poor Law MPs.

The public were unhappy about Parker’s dismissal and provided too valuable an opportunity for Edwin Chadwick, still bitter about his treatment by the Commission, who encouraged MPs to keep the issue alive. On 8th November 1845 the Poor Law Commissioners tacitly acknowledged the justice of the attacks made on bone crushing by issuing a General Order forbidding it. This came too late. Public opinion was now seriously alarmed and the government bowed to it. On 5th March 1846 a Select Committee of the House of Commons was established to investigate the Andover scandal, the conduct of the Poor Law Commissioners and the circumstances surrounding Parker’s resignation. The fifteen members of the ‘Andover committee’ included three well-known opponents of the workhouse, John Fielden, Thomas Wakley and Benjamin Disraeli and began work two weeks later. For the next three and a half months, they heard evidence from witnesses and their words were reported at length in the press. The New Poor Law, the Whigs who had created it and the gentry who administered it were on trial.  The Report was published in August 1846. It filled two large volumes totalling several thousand pages and contained a scathing indictment of everyone involved. The government announced that it proposed to take no action but it had privately decided that the Commission must go, partly to placate public opinion but also because it had done its work. The poor rates had been cut; outdoor relief for the able-bodied had all but ceased and almost the whole country had been unionised. The time had come when ‘the three kings of Somerset House’, as the Poor Law Commissioners had been nicknamed by their critics, could safely be replaced by a body with fewer dictatorial powers and directly responsible to Parliament.

[4] Northern rejoicing was still premature. From 1848 there were reports of evasions in Lancashire and of masters’ campaigns to repeal the Act. Several employers resorted to the relay system that meant that hours of work could not be enforced: the 15 hours per day clause in the 1844 Act had not been repealed. Gradually, a new campaign emerged to protect the Act but it was increasingly obvious that the Factory Movement was divided: Ashley Cooper and a ‘liberal’ group were prepared to accept some compromise while Oastler was not. A test case on the illegality of the relay system -- Ryder v Mills -- was heard in early 1850 and failed. The Factory Act 1850 increased weekly hours from 58 to 60 hours in return for banning relays by establishing a working day between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. Attempts to include children in the standard day failed and, as a result, men might work 15 hours, aided by relays of children beyond the hours allowed for women and young persons. Children only received their fixed day in the 1853 Factory Act and Disraeli only restored the ‘10 hours’ in 1874. In the meantime, however, similar legislation had been extended to a wide range of workers.

Aspects of Chartism: Chartism and the State 1

 

Relations between the government and Chartism were of mutual hostility[1]. Chartists denounced Whigs and Tories as ‘tyrannical plundering’ governments. Politicians of both parties saw Chartists as enemies of property and public order. In 1842, the Duke of Wellington said of the Chartists that: “Plunder is the object. Plunder likewise is the means”. Chartists had little political muscle and little education, and thus were powerless. Politically they were not dangerous. They were generally more conscious of the government than government was of them. The governments were firm but mostly fair and did not rush to turn out the troops. No martyrs were created, so there was no crusade. The police were much used. Government attitudes helped to defeat Chartism[2].

Coercive powers of the state

The county magistrates in England were appointed on the recommendation of the Lord Lieutenant. There were property qualifications to be met, set low enough for small landowners to be eligible, but the problems of recruitment were often serious. The county nobility often showed a marked reluctance to sit on the bench. One consequence of the selectiveness of Lords Lieutenant in their choice of magistrates and of the unwillingness of many of the gentry to serve was the large number of Anglican clergymen as Justices of the Peace: although by the 1840s the situation in most areas was beginning to change. Whig politicians were always concerned to reduce the Anglican element among the county magistracy and to increase middle-class representation. For one thing, the traditional authorities in rural areas were often troublesome to Whitehall, whatever the politics of the government. County magistrates often panicked about the seriousness of threats to public order and just as easily allowed their political prejudices to bias their magisterial judgements. Governments, especially Whig administrations, were constantly apprehensive in times of trouble about the reactions of the backwoods gentry and their Church allies, and they were conscious always of the social damage that could be inflicted. In late 1830s and the 1840s, however, it was not the rural areas but the industrial regions of the North, together with London, that were the main centres of radical agitation and unrest; and it was here that the most important structural changes in the character of authority had taken place.

The police

Outside London, the crucial legislation for the great towns of the provinces was the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835. The incorporated towns were now free from the inconveniences of the county bench. The new places on the borough commissions were filled, in most places, by Liberals and Whigs who formed the majority parties. These magistrates were much superior to their predecessors who had often lived outside the town boundaries. They demonstrated energy and a vigour that was in sharp contrast with what was still the lethargy of magisterial practices in many of the unincorporated towns. These new justices had a direct interest in the preservation of law and order in their own urban areas: it was they who owned the mills and the warehouses and the shops. And they were also more sensitive to the social problems of their rapidly growing towns than the traditional county bench. Sympathy did not affect the toughness of their attitude towards disorder and turbulence, but many among the business classes understood that repression was a beginning and not an end: an appreciation that was certainly not pervasive among the old order of magistrates, whether lay or clerical.

The most important single consequence of the 1835 Act was the obligation it imposed upon the incorporated towns to establish a Watch Committee whose responsibility it was to appoint and maintain an adequately sized police force (the phrase was ‘a sufficient number’ of constables) to be financed out of local rates[3]. Progress in the country at large was uneven for there were many vested interests to be overcome and much opposition to professional policemen of the new type, but in most large towns by 1848 the size and the competence of the police forces proved to be more or less adequate for the special problems of that year. This was certainly true of Manchester and Liverpool. The metropolitan police of London[4], who came directly under the control of the Home Office, were by far the most efficient in the country; and their aid was at times requested by local authorities in other parts of the country. By contrast, the Home Office in London, except in times of crisis, had almost no influence over local police forces in the incorporated boroughs.

The 1835 Act obliged Watch Committees to send quarterly reports, with quite minimal information, to the Home Office, but these were not apparently used to improve those police forces that were backward. It was in the rural areas that the development of professional forces was most uneven. The Rural Police Act of 1839 was permissive, and the most important element in the many strands of opposition or reluctance to its adoption was the expense involved and the future burdens on the rates. It was to the Home Office that magistrates reported or requested advice, and it was the Home Office that issued instructions: either local, to a particular individual or bench, or, in times of national crisis, by means of circulars throughout the country. In times of stress the closeness of contact was impressive, and the Home Office was never slow to remind local benches and commissioners of the peace of their duties, including the obligation to keep Whitehall fully informed. There were occasions, in very critical periods, when a town mayor would write three times in one day to the Home Office and daily correspondence, both ways, was quite usual.

The magistrates

The magistrates had the responsibility of maintaining public order in the area of their jurisdiction. A disturbance that involved three or more people was in common law a riot, and if it led to an arrest, the prisoner would be charged with a misdemeanour, punishable by imprisonment or a fine. If, however, more than twelve persons were involved in a disturbance and refused to disperse, the Riot Act of 1715 could be read, and once read, the riot became a felony, allowing the authorities concerned to use force including the use of firearms. These matters were the responsibility of the magistracy. It was the duty of the local magistrates to gather a sufficient force and to lead it in person to the scene of the disturbance; and it was their decision whether the Riot Act was read and they alone could give the order to open fire. The magistrates had to rely in the first instance upon the local police force and if this proved insufficient, two or more magistrates were entitled to swear in special constables: or, if a disturbance was feared at some time in the future, special constables could be sworn in against that possibility. The magistrates could also require aid from the local military, or they could call out, on their own authority, the local Yeomanry. By 1848, they also had the power to summon a detachment of the Enrolled Military Pensioners[5] and request the Home Office to issue a warrant retrospectively to legalise their action. The police in Britain were not armed, but the magistracy could, and often did, apply to the Home Office for arms to be distributed. In almost all cases their requests were refused, but in the summer of 1848 sections of the metropolitan police, and the police forces in selected industrial towns of the North, were issued with cutlasses. Special constables, in spite of a good many requests, were never allowed arms by the Home Secretary at any time during the Chartist years.


[1] F. C. Mather Public Order in the Age of the Chartists, Manchester University Press, 1959 remains the standard text on the reaction of government to Chartism.

[2] This chapter extends my paper ‘Chartism and the State 1838-1848’ published in Modern History Review, November 2003.

[3] In Bolton with a population of 51,000 in 1841, there were only 10 police and 13 constables. Compare this with the city of Bath that had a similar population with 10 inspectors and 132 constables. In Manchester, the new incorporated borough created a police force of 48 officers and 295 constables but there was opposition to the levying of a police rate and the old police commissioners established a rival force of 240 men. Local politics prevented the creation of an effective police force. Birmingham also lacked a properly constituted civil force. For a population of 180,000, Birmingham had only 30 day street keepers, 170 night watchmen and 2,300 special constables for emergencies.

[4] The Metropolitan Police had been established by Sir Robert Peel in 1829 hence their nicknames ‘Bobbies’ or ‘Peelers’.

[5] Enrolled pensioners were men less than 55 years of age retired from active military duty. Many lived in working-class communities but threats to their pensions lowered any opposition to service they might have.

Monday, 3 December 2007

Aspects of Chartism: The reaction of government

Lord Melbourne’s ministry: 1835-1841

The Whigs were traditionally the party of ‘liberty’ and so were not anxious to set out on a repressive course of action against popular movements until necessary. Lord John Russell as Home Secretary (18th April 1835 to 30th August 1839) and the Marquess of Normanby (30th August 1839 to 6th September 1841) were responsible for dealing with Chartism in its early stages. Russell was devoted to the idea of liberty and wanted to allow freedom of discussion on political issues. Unfortunately, he was not sufficiently aware of the depth of working-class discontent. Anti-Poor Law agitation in the north was treated with great toleration, very much an example of advanced thinking for the time. On 18th September 1838, Russell said “So long as mere violence of language is employed without effect, it is better, I believe, not to add to the importance of these mob leaders by prosecutions”.

Russell intended to deal with developing Chartism as he had dealt with earlier agitation. In the winter of 1838-39, Chartist activity peaked. Melbourne had taken charge, and he had a reputation for severity. Repressive measures led to more violence. Russell decided in early in 1839 that there was little danger of insurrection, so he adopted less severe tactics. He was criticised for being ‘soft’ on Chartism. His attitude stiffened in April 1839 as the Chartists began to arm and drill. When Birmingham needed police in 1839, controversially Russell sent down a force of metropolitan policemen on the train. However, from the middle of 1839, increasing numbers of Chartist leaders were arrested including Feargus O’Connor and William Lovett and hundreds of local Chartists were hounded and arrested in the months that followed. Short prison sentences removed Chartist leaders from circulation. The Newport Rising in November 1839 and the abortive insurrections in January 1840 in Sheffield, Bradford and Newcastle were easily dealt with by either by regular troops or local authorities with transportation to Australia rather than the noose as the chosen punishment. Neither short terms of imprisonment or transportation created political martyrs.

Sir Charles Napier was the commander of troops in the Northern District, based on Nottingham, between 1839 and 1841. In April 1839, Napier, who came from the West Country, was put in charge of 6,000 troops in the Northern District. He was sympathetic to the Chartist cause. Napier knew that the people were discontented because they were hungry, and made this plain in his reports. He blamed “Tory injustice and Whig imbecility” for the problem -- in private. He pitied, rather than feared them and attributed much of the trouble to the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act: in his Journal in 1839, he said, “An anonymous letter comes, with a Chartist plan. Poor creatures, their threats of attack are miserable. With half a cartridge, and half a pike, with no money, no discipline, no skilful leaders, they would attack men with leaders, money and discipline, well armed and having 60 rounds a man. Poor men! A republic! What good did a republic ever do? What good will it ever do?” His fear was not revolution, but widespread disturbances. He sought to prevent these by concentrating his forces to limit the risk of conflict and overawing his opponents, because prevention was better than cure. He wished to avoid deaths among rioters that would occur if widespread disturbances broke out. Napier out-thought the Chartists rather than out-fought them.

Sir Robert Peel’s ministry: 1841-46

Sir James Graham was Home Secretary (6th September 1841 to 6th July 1846). Chartism had been reviving since 1840 and gathered strength in the bad winter of 1841-42. By spring 1842, the depression had reached its worst point. As strikes and turnouts spread (including the Plug Plots), so the violence grew. Graham took a more serious view of threats of disorder than Russell had done in 1839. Napier’s approach suited Russell and Normanby, both of whom paid insufficient attention to detail. Graham was different. Napier was sent to India in September 1841; and during the summer of 1842, both the Northern and Midland District was put under the overall command of Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Arbuthnot, based in Manchester.

He still showed discretion and propriety in dealing with the disturbances. When it became clear that law and order was breaking down, Graham acted with great administrative efficiency, a feature of the new Conservative Party. However, the strike movement had two negative effects on the Chartists. First, the effort made by some to organise the strikes for their own ends allowed Peel and Sir James Graham, to blame them for the strikes. There was a wave of arrests in September. Harsh sentences were handed out: in Staffordshire, for example, of 274 cases tried, 154 men were imprisoned and five men transported for life[1]. By early 1843, there was less need for harsh treatment, as the strikes were over and unrest had quietened. Peel and Graham recognised, as Russell had done in 1839-40, that pushing repression too far was counterproductive, alienating public opinion and creating public sympathy. Secondly, trade union disillusion with Chartism probably increased. To unionists the issue was economic not political and, for them, the strikes were, in part successful.

In April 1839, when General Napier wished to put the yeomanry on permanent duty, both Melbourne and Russell declined to do so. Sir James Graham continued this preference for regular troops. His reasons were financial: the yeomanry were paid only when they were called out but regular troops had to be paid anyway. There were also political considerations. He appreciated the need not to call out farmers at harvest time. There were also tactical reasons. Graham knew that the yeomanry was hated and its appearance would be as likely to cause a riot as prevent one.

Lord John Russell’s ministry: 1846-52

In 1848, Chartism was closely linked to Irish discontent. Ireland was in the grip of the Famine at the time Whig treatment of Chartism was little different to 1839 although there were genuine fears of revolution. Elaborate plans were made for keeping the peace at Kennington Common. By the 1840s, the government recognised that the strength of justice tempered with mercy. In the wake of the Chartist disturbances of 1848, most sentences passed were of between six months and two years. This avoided making martyrs, but took troublemakers out of circulation for long enough to ensure the forces of law and order would prevail. Moderation and restraint by the authorities deprived would be revolutionaries of their moral case for rebellion.

By 1848, the position of the forces of law and order was considerably greater than in 1839 and 1842. First, the small number of troops had been made more effective by the establishment of the railway network. Already by 1839, Napier was able to move some troops by train, but when the national network was established, the logistical situation was transformed. The second development was the London police. Their handling of crowds in the late 1830s had been poor and ineffective but by 1848, they had learned a great deal about crowd control. Not only were they able to confront the peaceful demonstration on 10th April with firmness and without provocation, but they also survived the must more testing time during the summer evenings of May, June and July.


[1] J. F. Ariouat Rethinking Partisanship in the Conduct of the Chartist Trials, 1839-1848’, Albion, volume 29, (1997), pages 600-615.

Friday, 30 November 2007

Aspects of Chartism: Further thoughts on Women Chartists

The part women played in the Chartist movement involved, in the main, indirect supportive activities, but also some very direct and organised activities. The ways in which women participated appear to have been constrained to some extent by the domestic ideals of the time[1]. In the north, the principal Chartist leader was Feargus O’Connor who instigated and became proprietor of The Northern Star based in Leeds[2]. O’Connor attended mass meetings organised by Halifax Chartist leaders such as Ben Rushton. Many of the smaller meetings possibly excluded many women as the meetings tended to occur in alehouses where primarily working class men met. Queenshead was renowned for its beer shops which, though seen by local magistrates in 1836 as ‘strongholds of the devil’, did in fact provide meeting places for one the earliest radical groups[3].  However, women did attend mass meetings either with fellow male Chartists, or by themselves. One such meeting reported on by The Northern Star in 1847 records a meeting of 2,000 women Chartists at Oddfellows’ Hall, Halifax on August 9th.

In the late 1830s, women appeared to be primarily concerned with opposition to the New Poor Law legislation. In 1839, the Female Political Union in Nottingham, headed by Mary Savage, represented an elderly woman who had been sent to stone-breaking by the Poor Law authorities. They held protest meetings and provided financial help for her[4].  In February 1838, some members of the Elland female association took it upon themselves to roll in the snow a commissioner whose intention was to set up new procedures in Yorkshire for implementing the new Poor Law[5].  This association, led by Elizabeth Hanson preceded the Charter, but subsequently supported Chartism by donating funds to the first Chartist Convention. The Bradford Female Radical Association was formed in 1839 and comprised factory workers, woolcombers and weavers who were probably the wives and daughters of male Chartists. In fact, over 100 female radical associations were recorded in the first few years of the Chartist movement which suggests independent activities on the part of women at the beginning of the movement.

However, enfranchisement for women was not part of the Chartist agenda, even though the movement relied to a large extent on the activities of women, for example in exclusive dealing. Exclusive dealing was in effect the boycotting of tradesmen and shopkeepers who did not support the Charter. Women, who tended to do most of the shopping, were instrumental in maintaining pressure on these non-supporters. In August 1839, the Northern Star newspaper reported: ‘The female radicals of the Bradford district, amounting to upward of 600, walked in procession through the principal streets…at the head of the procession there was carried by a woman a large printed board with the words “exclusive dealing”.[6]

Some women did speak out about enfranchisement and in 1839, Elizabeth Neeson of the London Democratic Association, argued for women’s suffrage by pointing out that if a woman can be given the task of ruling a nation then why shouldn’t women be free to rule themselves?[7]  Though some Chartists advocated enfranchisement for all adults, the arguments put forward by men usually alluded to domestic ideals to which women were expected to aspire. Industrialisation was possibly seen as not only a threat to family life which had started to fragment as a result of labour moving from the home into the factories, but also a threat to male employment. J. R. Richardson’s paper, The Rights of Women, on the one hand, argues that women’s increasing contribution to the nation’s wealth through industry was a good enough reason for their having a right to parliamentary representation, yet on the other hand, refers to factories as ‘hideous dens’ and both female and child labour as ‘slavery’ from which they should be freed[8]. As if to underline the importance of women in domestic life Richardson argued that only widows and spinsters should be allowed enfranchisement implying that married women were be expected to agree with their husband’s political preferences.

The emphasis on the family by the Chartist movement is not surprising considering the economic climate of the late 18th century when, for the family to survive, most members had to work. Traditionally women’s work had always been low status and low paid[9].  However, the Chartist movement did not seek to improve women’s low wages even in the factories. In fact they sought to resolve this issue, in part, by supporting Richard’s Oastler’s movement for the Ten Hours Bill. This, it was thought, would not only reduce the misery of women and children who currently worked twelve or more hours a day, but would hopefully mean more men would be needed to take their places in the factories and mills.

In 1842, parliament rejected the second Chartist petition. In the same year, in a provocative article in The Halifax Guardian, Edward Akroyd, now one of the leading industrialists in Halifax, was quoted as saying that ‘machinery was a blessing’. These events galvanised local Chartists into supporting the strikes and plug riots that were spreading from Lancashire across the region. On August 15th a procession of several thousand strikers entered Halifax singing Chartist hymns. Women headed the procession, four abreast, and the strikers dispersed after being directed to local mills by a man on horseback. On the same day a larger procession arrived from Bradford[10].  Again the procession comprised a large proportion of women many of which were ‘poorly clad and walking barefoot’ who stood in front of the military and dared them to kill them if they liked. In fact women appear to have been subjected to the same violence as men in these demonstrations. Undisciplined Specials were reported to have ‘broken the heads’ of some women that day. That women who were prepared to fight and even go to prison is illustrated by the actions of Elizabeth Cresswell, a 43 year old framework knitter who was arrested in Mansfield during a demonstration in support of the National Holiday. She was found to be carrying a loaded revolver and spare ammunition. In 1839, a delegate reported to a meeting in Lancashire that the women he represented were ‘in a state of progress, and were purchasing pikes in large numbers’. 

Women also involved themselves through other more practical activities such as banner making, providing presents for visiting speakers at meetings, holding tea parties, teaching in local Chartist schools etc.[11]  For example a description of a soiree held in honour of Ernest Jones (the first Chartist candidate for the Halifax Borough) included the fact that the hall was decorated with banners that displayed slogans and portraits of radical leaders. The women who attended the soiree wore green ribbons and even green dresses[12]. Some male Chartists appear to have felt more comfortable with the domestic involvement of women within the movement rather than with those who directly took part in processions and demonstrations. Another example of this ambivalent attitude is an article in 1839 in the radical Scottish Patriot newspaper. On the one hand, the writer praised the formation of a new radical female group in Scotland, but on the other wished the Chartist movement did not have to rely on the political activity of women. These women could best serve the Chartist cause by remaining at home with their families. The writer further argued that Chartists should not drag women away from the family home like the aristocracy had done by forcing them into factory labour.  The idea that men should be allowed the dignity of being the family breadwinner prevailed, even though women had always contributed to the family income, either informally, e.g. through casual work such as back-street brewing, child-minding etc. or through home-based proto-industrial employment which usually required input from the whole family.

Women also appear to have been instrumental in facilitating the emergence of temperance within the Chartist movement. For example the Nottingham women’s friendly societies were very keen to move from their alehouse meeting place to other meeting rooms in the area unconnected with drinking alcohol[13].   Temperance meetings may possibly have been encouraged by the Chartist leaders as a means of adding respectability to Chartist meetings and also as a way of encouraging more family involvement. The growing emphasis on temperance may also have been a deliberate attempt to rally more middle class support by emphasising the domestic family unit as a Chartist’s ideal. One of the first temperance groups was formed at Queenshead, having also been the location of one of the first radical groups[14].

Women did not appear to thrive as leaders within the Chartist movement. This was possibly a result of domestic constraints in that they were unable to travel far and stay away from the family home overnight and their lack of skills in public speaking. Their lack of political ambition may also have resulted from the perceived notion that such ‘political’ women, especially single women, were considered too ‘bold and forward’. They therefore wanted to protect their jobs and their reputations as much as possible. In Bradford, in 1845, a Miss Ruthwell who was treasurer to the Power Loom Weavers Society gave a remarkable speech describing the victimisation of herself, her sister and father who were all sacked from their jobs for being active members of the Society. Some women were able to move beyond these constraints such as Anna Pepper, secretary to an association of women in Leeds, who spoke at various meetings in the West Riding and even in London[15].

Women clearly did not shy away from active participation in the Chartist movement, though the extent to which they took a lead in it was much less marked. At the beginning of the movement many working-class women were more focused on opposition to the New Poor Law and matters closer to the family and home. They appeared to organise more independently of men. This may have been because their initial concerns differed or it may have been that women were discouraged from meeting with their male peers because in the early years these revolved around beer shops. It appears to have been a natural step to take for early female radical associations to support the mainstream Chartist movement either financially or by giving support at mass demonstrations. Significantly the issues that affected women, such a low factory wages or even female enfranchisement were not of any serious concern to the mainstream Chartists. Even J.R. Richardson in his The Rights of Women seems to have failed to realise that if every working woman, married or not, was able to vote as well as every working man the political strength of the working class would be even greater. It seems that many of the women who were involved in the movement saw themselves as supporting their husbands, brothers and fathers in their struggle. Women were generally encouraged to believe that they should be spared the indignity of working in the factories and allowed to devote their time to their homes and families. However, many of the women who worked in the factories were single and possibly even pleased to gain some independence from their families. It appears that some women wanted to become more politically involved in the Chartist movement, and were well qualified to do so. However due to their domestic ties they were unable to participate to any great extent in the National Charter Association and this constrained promotion of their own ideas and needs.


[1] On the role played by women see the collection of papers edited by Kathryn Gleadle and Sarah Richardson Women in British Politics 1760-1860: The Power of the Petticoat, Macmillan, 2000 that places protest by women in a broader context. Helen Rogers Women and the People: Authority, Authorship and the Radical Tradition in Nineteenth-Century England, Ashgate, 2000 pages 80-123 is an excellent study of the role of women within the Chartist movement and is part of an extremely important study placing women within the radical tradition. Anna Clark The Struggle for the Breeches: Gender and the Making of the British Working Class, University of California Press, 1995 seeks to place the struggle of working class women within the broader struggles of the working class. On women and Chartism, there are two specific studies: David Jones ‘Women and Chartism’, History, volume 68, (1983) is less critical and Jutta Schwarzkopf Women in the Chartist Movement, Macmillan, 1991 is a more detailed, but not entirely satisfactory, study.

[2] G.R. Dalby ‘The Chartist Movement in Halifax and District’ Transactions of the Halifax Antiquarian Society, (1956), page 94.

[3] D. Thompson The Chartists. Popular politics in the Industrial Revolution, Wildwood, 1984, pages 244-245

[4] D. Thompson The Chartists. Popular politics in the Industrial Revolution, Wildwood, 1984, page 137.

[5] D. Thompson The Chartists. Popular politics in the Industrial Revolution, Wildwood, 1984, page 134.

[6] D. Thompson The Chartists. Popular politics in the Industrial Revolution, Wildwood, 1984, page 135.

[7] D. Thompson The Chartists. Popular politics in the Industrial Revolution, Wildwood, 1984, page 120.

[8] D. Thompson The Early Chartists, Macmillan, 1972, pages 115-127.

[9] June Purvis Women’s History: Britain, 1850-1945, UCL Press, 1995, page 29.

[10] D.G. Wright The Chartist Risings in Bradford, Bradford Libraries and Information Service, 1987, page 30.

[11] Eileen Yeo ‘Some Practices and Problems of Chartist Democracy’, in J. Epstein and D. Thompson (eds.), The Chartist Experience: Studies in Working Class Radicalism and Culture 1830-60, Macmillan, 1982 page 350.

[12] D. Thompson The Chartists. Popular politics in the Industrial Revolution, Wildwood, 1984, page 141.

[13] Anna Clark ‘The Rhetoric of Chartist Domesticity: Gender, Language and Class in the 1830s and 1840s’, Journal of British Studies, volume 31, (1992), pages 62-88.

[14] D. Thompson The Chartists. Popular politics in the Industrial Revolution, Wildwood, 1984, pages 122-123.

[15] D. Thompson The Chartists. Popular politics in the Industrial Revolution, Wildwood, 1984, page 245.

Wednesday, 28 November 2007

Sources for Chartism: Chartist Women 5

Women in Public

For some women Chartists, the movement allowed them to develop from being supporters of the demand for universal male suffrage to the claim for a public political role for themselves. They too might stress their domestic role, but that role carried the potential for what Anna Clark has called ‘militant domesticity’. Their view of domesticity tended not to carry the often sentimental rhetoric of male Chartists. Some working women, like the Glasgow weaver who described herself in 1838 as “a plain working woman”, or the Ashton female Chartists, did demand the vote for themselves. A few outstanding Chartist women - and these tended to come from middle- or lower middle-class backgrounds - did write and lecture on a political role for women. Susannah Inge and Mary Ann Walker of the City of London Female Chartist Association were both accomplished speakers and defended their own right to participate in the movement. Addressing a mixed audience was still a novel undertaking.

Source 9: ‘Miss Mary Ann Walker on the People’s Charter, The Northern Star, 10th December 1842, page 7

A crowded and most respectably composed meeting, convened by public advertisement, was held last Monday evening, in the spacious and elegant hall of the National or Complete Suffrage Association, High Holborn, for the purpose of hearing Miss Mary Ann Walker deliver a lecture on the social evils which afflict the state and on the People’s Charter as the remedy, and the only remedy, for the removal of those evils, and restoration of the happiness and independence of Great Britain and her dependencies.

The meeting was convened for 8 o’clock, and soon after that hour the hall began to fill rapidly in all parts. The meeting at this time began to manifest impatience to hear Miss Walker, by loudly stamping on the floor, as a signal to have the chair taken. Among the mass of persons present, was a large proportion of very elegantly dressed ladies, many of whom were of the superior classes of society.

At about ten minutes past 8 o’clock, a simultaneous burst of applause from all parts of the meeting, announced the presence of Miss Walker. She was attended by numerous friends, amongst whom we were glad to see the encouraging and supporting presence of many ladies; and as she advanced up the body towards the platform, the applause consisting of cheering, clapping of hands, waving of handkerchiefs, mingled with the loud huzza, and other demonstrations of welcome, became marked and enthusiastic, almost beyond description. There were a few bad spirits in that part of the gallery to the right of the platform, but their dissentient voices, or rather, and the more to their disgrace, - hisses! - were overwhelmed in the reverberating din of acclamation. On reaching the platform, Miss Walker was again and again loudly cheered, a compliment which she acknowledged by inclining repeatedly to the audience. She was dressed in mourning, a habit which it is her calamity to wear for the death of her father, of whom she has not been very many months bereaved. The body of her dress was partially and becomingly low, displaying a very graceful bust, and tending to set off to greater interest a figure and form of interesting proportions. She appeared more than usually wan in countenance, the effect, doubtless, of her anxiety to do justice to her subject, and convey instruction and satisfaction to her audience. She wore a light sort of crepe scarf, or negligee, attached gracefully to, and hanging from her arms, the effect tending to set off her costume, enlivening and contrasting with the black material. A jet necklace, suspending a cross:

‘Which Jews might kiss and Infidels adore’ adorned her bosom, giving a finish to her contour.

The anxiety and excitement of the audience was now wound up to the highest pitch to have the proceedings commence; and, on the motion of Mr. Overton, seconded by Mr. Cuffay, Mr. Balls was unanimously called to the chair...

…It was her first time - he might almost say her first - of addressing a great public assembly, and he therefore hoped they would hear her without interruption. At the conclusion of the address, Miss Walker would answer any questions which might be put to her. He would not longer detain them than to express the very great pleasure he felt in introducing to their notice Miss Mary Ann Walker (loud and continued cheers), amidst which Miss Walker rose and said, she deeply felt the difficulty of her situation on that evening, but feeling, at the same time, most deeply on the subject of her great and lovely country's wrongs, and of her fellow countrymen and women’s sufferings, she had no apology to make for presenting herself before the meeting that evening. It was a bold thing, she admitted, for woman to step out of her retirement; and of course there would be always found persons who would put foul constructions on her motives in order to detain and throw her back (hear hear). And if there were any in that assembly who asked why she came out, to him she would answer, ‘she came there at her country’s call’. If the human misery which afflicted the people of this great country was beyond the power of man to control if it was the ordination of Providence, then would it be man’s duty to submit; but when such was not the case, it was time, she would say, that man aroused himself, and ought to resist its cause. (Hear hear and loud cheers). There never was a time when England possessed so much abundance as at present. (Hear). How was it then, she would ask, that two-thirds of the population were in the face of such a fact, without food? (Hear, hear, hear). How was it that they could not take up a paper, but they were shocked and startled to read some frightful and affecting suicide! (Hear hear). How was it that but a few days ago, a young girl of about fourteen years of age committed suicide! And, be it remembered, she was of a respectable family, but had disobliged her father. How? But because she could not get employment. How was it that the women of England were reduced to make shirts for one penny each and had to find thread out of that! (Indignant cries of 'shame' from all parts of the hall.) How was it that Mr. Comyn, a surgeon, for whose character she entertained the highest respect, had recently called a meeting on behalf of these poor shirt makers? How came he to know of their circumstances and most deplorable condition? Alas! through having been called in to one of them, who, to put an end to her miseries, had taken vitriol. (Deep sensation). That poor creature had worked for sixteen hours a day for sixpence. (Horror, accompanied by cries of ‘shame, shame!’ pervaded and ran through the meeting)....

.... She concluded by assuring the meeting that if she were satisfied that her coming out had the effect of alleviating the trouble of even one poor fellow creature, she would feel herself for life repaid, and would go on in that virtuous course, let the obloquy and the consequences that would attach to her be what they might. (Loud and enthusiastic cheers, amidst which Miss Walker resumed her seat.)

Source 10: Susanna Inge, ‘Address to the Women of England’, Northern Star, 2nd July 1842

Friends and Fellow Countrywomen - That point has now arrived, when man, aroused to a full sense of his misery and degradation, and having succeeded in groping his way from darkness to light, emerges from that ignorance in which superstition and fanaticism have hitherto fast bound his mind, and in exerting his powers of reason in order to obtain for himself those political rights which are now most unjustly denied him.

And that period has also arrived, when woman, awakening to a sense of the social miseries by which she is surrounded, and by which she is degraded and enslaved, by her desolate home and fireless hearth, by her starving children, and by her own hard toil and scanty fare, has taken her stand in the arena of politics, has raised her feeble voice in defence of her rights, and those of her injured country, and has embarked with her light bark upon the ocean of agitation, to assist in steering the shattered bark of liberty to a smooth and sheltered haven.

In consequence of physical superiority, man, while in a state of ignorance, always treats woman as an inferior creature, as one who was formed to be a slave to his pleasures and his well-being; and not as an equal and companion; for while in a state of ignorance, man being insensible to his own mental and intellectual qualities, it very naturally follows that he cannot appreciate those of women, and he therefore regards the kind offers, the fond attentions, and the tender endearments of women, not as things which it is his duty to repay with kindness and protection, but as things which she has a right to give, and he only sought to expect and demand.

As civilisation advances, man gradually becomes more inclined to place woman upon an equality with himself, and though excluded in every thing connected with public life, her condition is considerably improved; still she is regarded in an inferior light, her province being only to make a pudding, prepare a dinner, clean the house, tend to her children, if she have any, and such like. Now these are all necessary things, nay, essential, our comfort and wellbeing in society demand that they should be done.

But are we, because we are women, excluded from the more rational enjoyments of life? If so, why then was woman gifted with a mind to which in point of delicacy of taste, delicacy of feeling, and devoted affection, even proud man himself must bow. Why then, if we are thus gifted, are we to be thus treated? Shall we sit still and tamely submit to a slavery against which our cheeks glow with shame and our hearts burn with indignation? No! perish the thought in the bosom of its ignoble birth. Rouse yourself to a sense of your merits. Assist those who will, nay, who do, place women on an equality with themselves in gaining their rights, and yours will be gained also.

God is our guide in the great and glorious struggle in which we are engaged, and liberty is our birthright, which the Charter alone will give us. Join with us, then, for the Charter of our freedom. Come forward and unite with us in the great struggle for independence and for those rights which are ours by nature, but which a cruel, despotic and tyrannical government have deprived us of.

Do not say you have no business with politics, and that you leave such things for your husbands, fathers and brothers. You have an interest in politics, a deeper interest than you are aware of. If the country is misgoverned, and bad laws instituted, and good laws perverted, it is on you those laws fall heaviest; witness those which regulate the price of food and the monopolies. If the country is well governed, and good laws acted upon, does it not naturally follow that we shall also feel the benefit of them? Besides, if you have husbands, fathers, or brothers who are Chartists, your participating in that which interests them most will please and urge them to further exertions. If you have husbands, fathers, or brothers who are not Chartists, your example will influence them, and induce them to become such.

The principles of the Charter, if carried out, are such as will give man not only his political rights, but will enable him to get a more equitable remuneration for his labour, and that will enable you to live in more comfortable homes - to give your children as much food as they require, and to prevent your leading such wretched lives of poverty and unrequited toil.

Unite with us, therefore, for in union only is strength. Let the Charter be the foundation stone on which to rest all your hopes; and remember, however much the name of Chartist may be now despised, and made the butt for every witless fool to fling his jests at - however much it may now be held up in ignominy and scorn, the time will come (and will come sooner, too, if you will come forward and assist us) when the poor, despised, and persecuted Chartist shall be honoured at the expense of his country.

Susanna Inge.

Member of the Female Charter Association of the City of London,

55 Old Bailey, June 27th.

Woman’s Rights and Chartism: a verdict in 1851

The number of women involved in Chartism after 1848 declined rapidly. Exceptionally, however, the Sheffield Female Radical Association, founded in 1839, remained in existence until 1851. Its members were approached in that year by Anne Knight, a Quaker activist in the antislavery movement who had, after watching events at the London World Convention of 1840, become committed to women’s suffrage. Anne Knight and the Sheffield women adopted a petition to be submitted to both houses of parliament for the enfranchisement of women, and published an address to the women of England which appeared in the Chartist periodical, the Northern Star. It was seen and welcomed by French women active in the revolution of 1848 in France. In 1852 they founded a National Woman’s Rights Association and attempted to build links with surviving associations elsewhere.

Source 11: Ernest Jones, Notes to the People, London: J. Pavey, 1852, reprinted London, Merlin Press, 1967, Volume II, page 709

WOMAN'S RIGHTS;

[Though we abstain from inserting anything eulogistic of our own writings, we think ourselves authorised to break through the rule in the case of our fair friends; but especially because the voice of woman is not sufficiently heard, and not sufficiently respected, in this country. The greatest test of enlightenment and civilisation among a people is the estimation in which women is held, and her influence in society. Woman has an important mission in this country and our fair friends in Sheffield shew themselves worthy of the task.]

Women’s Right’s Association,

84, Pond Street, Sheffield, Dec. 17, 1851.

Respected Sir, - A recent number of your Notes to the People was brought to our last meeting by one of our members. To consider that ably-written letter on “Raising the Charter from the Pot-House”, and it was unanimously carried that a vote of thanks be given to you, and reply sent to that effect, for your advocacy of woman’s influence; also to solicit your continued support; and in doing so, sir, we beg to state, or rather confirm your statements, that did our brothers but admit our rights to the enjoyment of those political privileges they are striving for, they would find an accession of advocates in the female sex, who would not only raise the Charter from those dens of infamy and vice from which so many of us have to suffer, but would with womanly pride strive to erase that stigma, which by the folly of our brothers has been cast on Chartism, not only by exercising their influence out of doors, but by teaching their children a good sound political education. This, sir, will never be done while men continue to advocate or meet in pot-houses, spending their money, and debarring us from a share in their political freedom.

Signed on behalf of the meeting,

ABIAH HIGGINBOTHAM, Cor. Sec.

Chartism mobilised men and women together as they sought to create a working-class consciousness. Yet although their political objective was universal male suffrage, their struggle has also to be related to the shifts in the world of work. The Chartist stress on the languages of family and domesticity reflected its appeal to artisans and to skilled working men. Such a message was difficult to combine with any recognition of equal political rights for women. Nevertheless for many of the women who took part in Chartism did appear to offer a way forward to a different prospect of society. But only for a few, and those few mainly the better educated, did it provide a base from which the different needs of women in an industrialising society could be explored. Radical movements of the 1850s and 1860s and campaigns for extension of the franchise in those years paid little attention to the possibility of the franchise for women. Nor did they encourage the active formation of women's associations as Chartism had done. The focus had shifted to patterns of organisation rooted in the workplace rather than the community. In spite of the strength and the radicalism of some women within the Owenite and Chartist movements, the first organised feminist activity came from other patterns of dissent.

Tuesday, 27 November 2007

Sources for Chartism: Chartist Women 4

The rights of women

Chartist leaders needed to appeal to women workers and gain their support, especially in northern industrial areas. At the same time, they were asking for the vote in order to protect women from the exploitation of employment in factories and mines, and to recover the domestic harmony of an imagined earlier world. Although sometimes male and female Chartists co-operated in strike action, Chartists were for the most part calling for the exclusion of women from the work force. The Chartist demand for citizenship was not based on the right of property or of heads of households; Chartists would not, for instance, exclude the rights of sons. It could be based on the natural rights argument. Women’s political enfranchisement was however a matter of some interest among Chartist leaders, and the issue had been raised when the Charter was first drafted. The view that this demand would be ridiculed and would delay male suffrage had prevailed. But Chartists could also recast the older arguments to claim the vote on the basis of property in the skill of the worker, and those who did so tended to assume that skill was a masculine monopoly. Nevertheless there was considerable support for women’s rights and some leaders, like R. J. Richardson and Ernest Jones continued to defend women’s suffrage throughout the 1840s and 1850s. However, they did not always find it easy to reconcile women’s suffrage with the language of domesticity. Women Chartists were never nominated for any local or national committees, and played no part in the direction of the movement.

Source 8: R. J. Richardson, The Rights of Woman, 1840, reprinted in Dorothy Thompson The Early Chartists, Macmillan, 1971, pages 115-119

Having occupied some time in shewing you the natural degree of woman, also her scriptural qualifications and her physical inequality, I shall now proceed to the main feature of the question, or rather to the question itself-"Ought Women to interfere in the political affairs of the country?" As I have before prepared you, by an abstract dissertation upon the natural rights of woman, I do most distinctly and unequivocally say-YES! And for the following reasons:

First, Because she has a natural right.

Second, Because she has a civil right.

Third, Because she has a political right.

Fourth, Because it is a duty imperative upon her.

Fifth, Because it is derogatory to the divine will to neglect so imperative a duty.

The first reason I hope I have sufficiently argued before and established its truth.

The second is, in a certain degree, answered by the establishment of the first reason; but is addition I may say, that it is nowhere written in the body of the civil law, that woman, by reason of her sex, is disqualified from the exercise of political right except by her own voluntary act. Grotius, Puffendorf, Montesquieu, Vattel, and other famous civilians, have nowhere consented to such an unjust exclusion; the only instance on record where we find this right disputed, is in the famous controversy between Philip of Valois, and Edward III, concerning the Salic law, by which females and their descendants are excluded from the monarchy of France, and from the inheritance of the allodial lands of the nobility, the latter part of the law has long become obsolete, and the former is nowhere acted upon except in France, proving that the doctrine of the exclusion of females from political power is not consonant with the law of nature and nations.

Again, civilians teach us the doctrine of community of persons and community of rights, as the best mode of establishing a pure commonwealth, in strict accordance with the genuine principles of liberty. Surely then it cannot be argued, that any inequality should prevail, or that any distinction should exist in a community, where all things are held in common, or in trust for the good of that community. Of course I now speak of society in its purest state, but it is a legitimate argument in favour of my position; for as all political law is based upon the civil law, so are those political institutions best that proximate nearest to the original standard of civil liberty.

Civilians tell us also, that for all the uses of society woman stands upon an equal footing with man; for all the purposes of civil government, woman is equally admissible to office; for the due promotion of the welfare of the state, woman is essentially necessary in conjunction with man. These three positions I shall mention when I advance my arguments in favour of Reason Third.

I ask upon what ground can this civil right be abridged diverted or abrogated? I ask those who tyrannically withhold from woman her political rights, on what assumption do they do so? I challenge them to sustain their opinions. I invite them to discussion, and will appear to maintain my proud position as the vindicator of the rights of woman against any one who may be so lost to a sense of shame as to oppose helpless woman in pursuit of her just rights.

The third reason I advance in justification of my emphatic approval of the question at issue is, because I conceive Woman has a political right to interfere in all matters concerning the state of which she is a member, more especially as applied to Great Britain, for the following reasons:

1st-Because, by the ancient laws of the English constitution, she is admissible to every executive office in the kingdom, from the monarch upon the throne to the parish Overseer, the village sexton , or the responsible office of post mistress, which is still common in small towns.

2nd-Because, by the present law of tenures, of powers, of contracts, of bargains and sale, of inheritance, of wills, and every other matter or thing touching the rights of property and transfer, woman (except in femme covert,) is qualified to be, and therefore, is admissible as a contracting party, save during her minority or a ward in chancery, then her affairs are managed by trust.

3rd-Because, woman is responsible in her own person for any breach of contract, for any offence against the peace and laws of the land. In the church, by the penalties of imprisonment, excommunication, and premunire; in the state, by fine, imprisonment, banishment, and death.

4th-Because she is taxed in the same degree with others for the maintenance of the state and its appendages under all circumstances.

5th-and lastly, because, she contributes directly and indirectly to the wealth and resources of the nation by her labour and skill.

On these five reasons I found my opinion upon the great question, "Ought woman to interfere in the affairs of the state?" and to that question I again I answer Yes! emphatically YES!

To the first of these reasons I will add, if a woman is of nullifying the powers of Parliament or the deliberate resolutions of the two estates of the realm, by parity of reason, a woman in a minor degree ought to have a voice in the election of the legislative authorities. If it be admissible that the queen, a woman, by the constitution of the country can command, can rule over a nation, (and I admit the justice of it,) then I say, woman in every instance ought not to be excluded from her share in the Executive and legislative power of the country.

To the second reason I will add further, if a woman can exercise the powers of a conductor, or vendor, or become heiress, testatrix, executrix or administratix, and act in such important capacities over matters and things daily arising out of transactions with real and personal property, I say that it perfectly justifies my opinion that woman is not only qualified, but ought by virtue of such qualification , to have a voice in the making those laws under which the above transactions take place.

The third reason I will illustrate by saying, that, if women be subject to pains and penalties, on account of the infringement of any law or laws,- even unto death,- in the name of common justice, she ought to have a voice in making the laws she is bound to obey.

The fourth reason is next in importance to the last, so long as the legislature claim and levy a portion of the worldly income of a woman for the support of the state, surely it is not presumption in woman to claim the right of electing that legislature who assume the right to tax her, and on refusal, punish her with pains and penalties; it is unjust to withhold from her her fair share of the elective power of the state, it is tyranny in the extreme, and ought to be properly resisted.

The fifth Reason is equal in importance to the last, and in support of which, I shall extend my arguments. It is a most incontrovertible fact, that woman contribute to the wealth and resources of the kingdom. The population in Great Britain in 1831 consisted of 16,255,605, which may be classified under the head of agriculture, mining, and manufacturing; from these three sources the wealth of a country is raised. Now let us begin with agriculture, and see what share the women take of the labour necessary to produce the food of the people, the rent of the landlord, and the taxes of the state. In the first place, the dairy is managed almost exclusively by woman and girls; the small live stock, such as poultry, &c., wholly so. Look to the cheese counties of Gloucester and Chester, where the female population is almost wholly employed in the dairy. Look to the milk and butter counties around the large towns, and see the number of females who are employed in milking and making butter, and bringing them to market. In a farmyard the smallest child performs some labour or other, feeding poultry, driving cows, &c. In the fields, again, we find women performing every kind of labour except draining, hedging, ditching, fencing, ploughing, and mowing. We find them driving, sowing, setting, harrowing, drilling, manuring, weeding, hoeing, picking stones, gathering potatoes, turnips, pulling carrots, mangelwurzel, shearing, binding, gathering, hay-making, &c. &c. The boys and girls too, are employed in picking stones, driving, scare-crowing, tending sheep, gathering roots, &c. In the barn, with the exception of thrashing and handicraft work, women perform every other occupation. There is no country in Europe where the women are such slaves upon the soil as they are in Scotland. I have many times counted twenty or thirty woman in one field to about four or five men and boys. It is quite common to see women in the same unequal proportion to men labouring in the fields at every kind of predial labour; and many times I have been tempted too exclaim, Surely the curse of God is not upon the woman instead of the man! For in the language of holy writ, he declared to Adam, “in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.” And many times I have in my heart blamed men for allowing their women to be such slaves, to perform such labour that nature never intended them to do, nor befitted them for the task. Inured to such toils and hardships, she becomes masculine; and the force of all those tender passions implanted by God in the breast if woman to temper the ruggedness of man, become weakened, her real virtues forgotten, and her proper usefulness destroyed. To the men of Scotland, I say, Shame! To the women I say, endeavour to throw off the degradation of predial slavery, return to your domestic circles and cultivate your finger feelings for the benefit of your off-spring. How can you expect men, who seek only “to command and overbear” others, to look to other than their own selfish interests? Rouse you, and let future historians record your zeal in the cause of human redemption, and you will confer a perpetual obligation on posterity. Debased is the man who would say women have no right to interfere in politics, when it is evident, that they have as much right as “sordid man”. None but a tyrant, or some cringing, crawling, hireling scribe, succumbing to the footstool of power, would dare to say so.

The Normans in Southern Italy: A Holy War?

The evidence clearly indicates that the Normans who made their careers in the central Mediterranean, especially Duke Robert Guiscard of Apulia and his brother Count Roger I of Sicily, fostered their image as proto-crusaders throughout their campaigns against the Sicilian Muslims and the Byzantines. They also, as described above, took on the chivalric role of protectors of the Papacy, and as such safeguarded Papal elections and defended Pope Gregory VII against King Henry IV of Germany, who attempted to depose him and appoint a new Pope. But it is difficult to conclude that the Normans were deeply moved by the prospect of being ‘soldiers of Christ’, for in order to do so one must reconcile their chivalric Christian warrior image with their reputation for brigandage and piracy.

The reason for the arrival of the Normans in Italy is unclear, but various traditions relate that the local population asked for their assistance while the Normans were passing through on pilgrimage. Amatus of Monte Cassino claims that a group of Normans stopped in Salerno on their way back from visiting the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and that during their sojourn a group of Saracen raiders arrived and demanded tribute from the Salernitans. “And the Norman pilgrims saw this, they could not stand such injustice of the lordship of the Saracens, nor that the Christians were subjected to the Saracens.”[1]  The Normans then drove off the Saracens, and the overjoyed Salernitans invited them to stay and help protect them against future raids by the heathen. The pilgrims, however, preferred to return home, but they promised to pass the word in Normandy that there were many opportunities for employment in Italy available to brave Norman knights.

This incident may well have taken place, but the Normans’ primary reason for going to Italy was probably not to save the Christian population from the Muslim menace. The fact that a new feudal aristocracy was on the rise in Normandy in the early eleventh century, resulting in the uprooting of many families from their land, more plausibly explains the Normans’ southward migration. Because Italy was war-torn and practically in a state of anarchy, it was a good place for the displaced knights to profit from their famed warrior skills and acquire estates of their own. David C. Douglas assesses the situation convincingly: “Whatever truth may lurk behind the belief that these men were pilgrims who performed prodigies of valour against the pagans, the fact remains that the Normans who first came to Italy are better to be regarded as armed adventurers seeking their fortunes in a distracted land and living by violence and pillage.”[2]

As such, they were very successful, winning victory after victory, initially for their employers but eventually for themselves and in accumulating wealth and land. They were ruthless in their tactics and, as their power increased, so did their notoriety. They incurred the loathing of the Italians, to the point that Pope Leo IX, in response to the pleas of the Lombards who were most often the victims of Norman rapine, took it upon himself to protect his flock and rid the world of the Norman menace. He dubbed the Normans enemies of Christendom and declared a genuine Holy War against them. He gained the support of the Holy Roman Emperor, the Byzantine Emperor, and various other nobles by emphasising the sanctity of the mission. To those whom he recruited for the mission he provided a spiritual incentive: Amatus claims. “And he promised to give absolution for their sins.”[3] Before setting out for the battle from Benevento, Leo dramatically stressed to the German and Lombard soldiers (the Greeks had not arrived yet) their divine purpose: "And the Pope with the bishops climbed up onto the walls of the City, and looked at the multitude of his knights to absolve them of sin, and gave pardon for the penance they had to do for their sins."[4]  He is even said to have promised that anyone who died in battle with the Normans would become a martyr and go directly to heaven. Leo offered absolution in exchange for military assistance, just as Pope Urban II would do for the First Crusaders at the Council of Clermont in 1095. Civitate is the first example of the Pope directly declaring Holy War: but this time it was against fellow Christians, and it occurred 42 years before Urban called for the First Crusade to recapture the Holy Land from the Muslims.[5]

The Normans defeated Leo, however, so it is a bit surprising that subsequent Popes continued to declare wars for the salvation of Christendom or that the Normans themselves would often be at the forefront of these Holy Wars. The synod of Melfi in 1059 shows that the Papacy had not at all given up on the idea of the Holy War; Pope Nicholas II seems simply to have realised that future Crusades would be more appropriately fought against non-Christians, and that the Papacy needed to be more selective when conscripting ‘soldiers of Christ’ before it declared any more Crusades. Facing troubles in Rome and lacking the support of the Eastern and Western Emperors, Nicholas decided that it was in the Apostolic See’s best interests to have the fierce Norman warriors on its side.  The synod made the Normans the official feudal protectors of the Papacy. They were henceforth responsible not only for safeguarding the material possessions of the Pope (his lands and revenues) but they were also charged with making sure nothing prevented the cardinal bishops from conducting canonical Papal elections. This facet of the Papacy’s alliance with the Normans continued the tradition established by Leo IX whereby the Pope, as the Vicar of Christ and His representative on Earth, could call for military support in order to enforce ecclesiastical policy and direct armies in order to secure the best interests of Christendom. The fact that the specific ecclesiastical policy that the Papacy needed the Normans to enforce was the Papal election decree, which aimed to separate the Church from the influence of laymen, is indeed ironic; but the Normans did proceed in the following years to support canonically elected Popes against usurpers, and they never tried to install their own friends as popes after the fashion of the German Emperors.

The Normans carried out their job as Papal protectors with fervor. This went along with the doctrine of fighting under the Pope’s, and by extension God’s command, spread quickly to their other campaigns. In his oath to Pope Nicholas II, Robert Guiscard calls himself “by the grace of God and St. Peter duke of Apulia and Calabria and, with the help of both, future duke of Sicily.”[6] Such ambitious wording in the context of an oath of vassalage to the Papacy obviously implies that the Papacy was ready to back a Norman attempt at conquering the island, from which Muslim pirates had been conducting devastating raids against the mainland for over two centuries. The cause was quite worthy of blessing, for it meant the subjugation of dangerous and aggressive infidels and the reunification of the Greek Christians of Sicily with the rest of the Christian world or at least with the Latin Christian world over which the Pope exercised his authority.

Thus Pope Alexander II blessed Robert and sent him off with a Papal banner in 1061.[7] The contemporary sources indicate that Robert himself adopted some of this enthusiasm for the divine cause. Amatus (who, admittedly, sought to glorify Robert Guiscard and Richard of Capua) claims that reports of the Saracens oppressing the Christians in Sicily stirred Robert. Inspired to cross the straits of Messina and liberate his Christian brothers, he cried out to his knights:  “I would like to deliver the Christians and the Catholics, who are constrained by the servitude of the Saracens, and I desire greatly to break them of their servitude, and avenge the injury to God.”[8]  He then gathered an army, and according to Geoffrey Malaterra, a monk of Sant’ Agatha in Catania (Sicily) who chronicled the Normans’ exploits at the request of Count Roger I, Robert called on his followers before they left the mainland to confess their sins and place their trust in Spiritus Sanctus cooperator, “the Holy Spirit our ally,” and Deum ordinatorem et fortiorem gubernatorem, “God our commander and steadfast guide.”[9] The Norman leaders thus used the pretext of fighting, with God’s assistance, for fellow Christians against enemies of Christendom in order to boost the morale of their expeditionary force. The Norman knights were presumably inspired by their sanctified cause, and motivated to put forth their best effort in the upcoming campaign.

The Normans could also hope to utilise the ‘Holy War’ mentality in order to gain the support of the Greek Christian population of Sicily. The Muslim emirs who had ruled the island since the ninth century, however, had not oppressed the Greek Sicilians. The Saracens were tolerant of their religion, and they did not exclude the Greeks from the prosperity they had brought to Sicily, which was at the center of the Muslim Mediterranean world and thus a thriving centre for trade. But the Greeks must have been attracted by the prospect of being reunited with Christendom, and the Normans did what they could to cultivate this attraction and inspire the Greeks with the spirit of liberation from the clutches of the infidels. As soon as the Normans took possession of Messina in 1061 and sent the Saracen population of the city fleeing inland, Robert Guiscard organised a thanksgiving ceremony with the Greek population in their church in order to emphasise the spirit of deliverance.[10] From Messina the Normans advanced inland through the Val Demone, where the Greek Christians did indeed view them as liberators: they greeted them enthusiastically, running out to meet them and bringing them gifts.[11] The Norman ‘crusaders’ thus succeeded in convincing their new Greek subjects to offer their loyalty.

The theme of the ‘Holy War’ pervaded the entire venture to subdue the Muslims of Sicily. In 1063, when the Normans were outnumbered at the battle of Cerami and pondering retreat, Malaterra says that Roger encouraged them with these words: Arrigite animos vestros, o fortissimi christianae militiae tyrones. Omnes Christi titulo insigniti sumus. “Harden your spirits, most courageous recruits of the Christian knights. We are all inscribed with the sign of Christ.” While the Great Count was speaking, apparuit quidam eques, splendidus in armis, equo albo insidens album vexillum in summitate hastilis alligatum ferens et desuper splendidam crucem. “A certain knight appeared, shining in arms, sitting on a white horse, carrying a white standard on the top of his lance and a shining cross from above.” This was none other than St. George, who rallied the Normans and led them to victory over the superior Saracen force.[12]  When the crusaders finally made their way to Palermo and defeated the Muslim garrison, their first act was to reconsecrate the Church of St. Mary, which the Muslims had used as a mosque for over two hundred and forty years, and hold mass there with the city’s Greek Archbishop. This was a very momentous occasion, for the Normans had restored to Christian hands one of the most populous, prosperous, and culturally rich cities in the Mediterranean.[13] Amatus reports that yet another apparition graced the thanksgiving mass: a choir of angels sang in the church, and a heavenly light illuminated the mass.[14]

There are several reasons for questioning whether or not the Norman conquerors of Sicily were indeed as motivated by piety as Amatus and Malaterra claim. For one thing, the Normans by no means unequivocally hated the Muslims. They gained their first foothold on the island by allying with one Sicilian emir, Ibn at-Timnah, to fight against another Sicilian emir, Ibn al-Hawas.[15] They never tried to force the Sicilian Muslims to convert to Christianity; such a policy would never have succeeded, and it certainly would have made the task of governing the island impossible. The Normans could not risk provoking the Muslims into declaring a jihad in retaliation for the Christian holy war. Both Robert Guiscard and Roger went on to employ Saracen mercenaries in their later campaigns. Moreover, these accounts come from authors who intended to eulogise the Normans, for they wrote for Norman audiences and were employed by Norman patrons. Thus the authors were significantly biased in the way they projected heroic and chivalric ideals upon their Norman protagonists. But they also must have been writing exactly what the Normans wanted to believe about themselves, and what the Normans wanted the Pope and all other Christians to believe about them. Hence we can conclude that the Normans revered and actively cultivated their ‘crusader’ image. This form of propaganda must have stirred genuine religious feelings in the Norman knights and boosted their morale. The Normans’ crusader image elevated their status and made their campaigns seem like just wars and their victories like triumphs for Latin Christendom, not just successful acts of piracy and brigandage.

The same zeal pervaded the Normans’ adventures in the Balkans in 1081. Now they were fighting not against Muslims but Christians, although the Latins perceived the Greeks as heretics as a result of the schism of 1054. This time Pope Gregory VII himself declared his Norman vassals to be soldiers of Christ and sent them off with his benediction.[16] Anna Comnena, the Emperor Alexius I Comnenus’s daughter, includes a description of the Normans in her history of her father’s reign, the Alexiad, which she wrote around 1148. Anna makes them out to be just as pious and reverent as they are in Amatus’s and Malaterra’s descriptions. The night before they went to battle with Alexius at Dyrrachium, she writes that Robert led his soldiers to pray: “With all his forces he arrived at the sanctuary built long ago by the sea in honour of the martyr Theodorus. All that night the Normans, in an attempt to propitiate the Deity, were partaking of the holy and divine mysteries.”[17] Anna truly hated the Normans for the destruction they inflicted upon her father’s Empire, so it is certain that she did not give this account in order to glorify the Normans for their faith. She may, however, be foreshadowing the First Crusade that Pope Urban II called fourteen years later and in which Norman warriors played a prominent part. Her testimony thus confirms that the Normans were motivated not by the desire for conquest alone, but also by a sincere belief that they were on God’s side.


[1] Aime, Moine du Mont-Cassin, L’Ystoire de li Normant, ed. M. Champollion-Figeac, Paris: Societe de l’Histoire de France, 1835, 1.17.

[2] David C. Douglas, The Norman Achievement, 1050-1100, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969, page 39.

[3] Aime, Moine du Mont-Cassin, L’Ystoire de li Normant, ed. M. Champollion-Figeac, Paris: Societe de l’Histoire de France, 1835, 3.23.

[4] Aime, Moine du Mont-Cassin, L’Ystoire de li Normant, ed. M. Champollion-Figeac, Paris: Societe de l’Histoire de France, 1835, 3.37.

[5] David C. Douglas, The Norman Achievement, 1050-1100, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969, pages 99-100. Jonathan Riley-Smith, (ed.) The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997, page 78. Steven Runciman, The First Crusade, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992, page 42f.

[6] Oath of Robert Guiscard to Pope Nicholas II: translated in Brian Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State: 1050-1300, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988, page 44.

[7] David C. Douglas, The Norman Achievement, 1050-1100, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969, page 102.

[8] Aime, Moine du Mont-Cassin, L’Ystoire de li Normant, ed. M. Champollion-Figeac, Paris: Societe de l’Histoire de France, 1835, 5.12.

[9] Gaufredus Malaterra, De Rebus Gestis Rogerii Calabriae et Siciliae Comitis et Roberti Guiscardi Ducis Fratris Eius, Bologna: Nicola Zanichelli, 1928, 2.9.

[10] John Julius Norwich, The Normans in Sicily, Penguin Books, 1992, page 141.

[11] Gaufredus Malaterra, De Rebus Gestis Rogerii Calabriae et Siciliae Comitis et Roberti Guiscardi Ducis Fratris Eius, Bologna: Nicola Zanichelli, 1928, 2.14.

[12] Gaufredus Malaterra, De Rebus Gestis Rogerii Calabriae et Siciliae Comitis et Roberti Guiscardi Ducis Fratris Eius, Bologna: Nicola Zanichelli, 1928, 2.33.

[13] John Julius Norwich, The Normans in Sicily, Penguin Books, 1992, pages 176f, 183.

[14] Aime, Moine du Mont-Cassin, L’Ystoire de li Normant, ed. M. Champollion-Figeac, Paris: Societe de l’Histoire de France, 1835, 6.20.

[15] John Julius Norwich, The Normans in Sicily, Penguin Books, 1992, page 135.

[16] David C. Douglas, The Norman Achievement, 1050-1100, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969, page 102.

[17] Anna Comnena, The Alexiad, translated E. R. A. Sewter, Penguin, 1969, page 146.