Part 12

Jabez took no further notice then, but shouldering a great bundle of large umbrellas, carried them through the fringe room, and there noticed that, despite the caution he had given, his fellow-apprentice was dexteriously manipulating silk and scales to falsify the weights he called out.

CHAPTER THE EIGHTEENTH.

EASTER MONDAY.

That evening Jabez, a clear-eyed, open-browed youth in his seventeenth year, upright, well-knit, and firmly built for his age, knocked at the parlour-door after Miss Augusta had been sent to bed. There was some trouble on his countenance, as though he was bent on an errand utterly repugnant to him. He was truly sorry to be the means, however remotely, of bringing disgrace on both an old man and a young one; but Simon had led him to the conclusion that if there was little honour in turning informer, there would be absolute dishonesty in keeping silence whilst he saw his master robbed.

Yet he hesitated, and lingered with his hand on the handle of the door, after the clear voice of Mr. Ashton had twice invited him to “come in.”

Mr. Ashton therefore opened the door, and saw Jabez with a design for a bell-rope tassel in his hand.

“Well, Jabez, what is it? Something special you have to show us?”

“No, sir; I only brought this lest any of the servants should be curious about my errand here.”

Mrs. Ashton, who was reading a romance from Mrs. Edge’s circulating library in King Street, lifted up her head at this; and Jabez came in, closing the door.

“Then what is the errand which needs such precaution?” asked Mr. Ashton, resuming his seat and looking up at the dear face of Jabez.

“I _think_, sir”—and he laid an emphasis on the “think”— “I have found out how you are being robbed, and who it is that robs you.”

“You—what?” exclaimed Mr. Ashton, placing his hand on the elbows of his chair, and bending forward inquiringly.

Jabez repeated his statement, adding, “I think, sir, some of your putters-out and work-people are in league to defraud you.”

Out came Mr. Ashton’s snuff-box, down went Mrs. Ashton’s romance, whilst Jabez told succinctly how his suspicions had been first aroused, and how they had been confirmed that day.

“I did not tell my suspicions to Christopher, sir, thinking I had best not interfere, or put the—the—them on their guard until I had spoken to you. I feared lest I should defeat your plans,” said Jabez, modestly.

“Just so, Jabez, just so; you were quite right, Jabez,” said his master, whilst a shower of snuff fell on neckcloth ends and shirt frills.

“Yes, quite right!” assented Mrs. Ashton, with customary dignity. “‘A still tongue shows a wise head;’ but we seldom see an old head on such young shoulders.”

No active steps were taken for a few days, but Mrs. Ashton was in the warehouse, and doubly observant; and Mr. Ashton was also on the alert. They saw enough to convince them that Jabez was correct, and, acting on first impulses, Nadin was again communicated with.

From the window of Jabez Clegg’s little room, Kit Townley was seen to receive payment from a fringe-weaver for his share of the spoil; and then Nadin, who knew all about it quite well enough before, followed up the clue to a waste-dealer’s who bought at his own price workpeople’s “waste” (_i.e._, warp, weft, silk, &c., remaining after work was completed), and found tradespeople willing enough to re-purchase, well knowing that commodities so varied, and so far below market value, were not honestly come by.

Nadin, big and blustering when there was nothing to be gained by silence, was for hauling the whole lot off to prison—the two Kits, the waste dealer, and sundry workpeople—and the criminal code was a very terrible dispensation then.

But Mr. Ashton was more merciful; he was for milder measures. Besides, Mr. Townley was an old friend of his, and for the sake of the father he forbore to drag the son into a court of justice; and unless he prosecuted all, he could not prosecute any.

The sight of Nadin and his rough men, in their red-cuffed, red-collared brown coats, with their staves and handcuffs ready for use was sufficiently terrifying. The distress of old Mr. Townley was painful to witness. As for Kit himself, he seemed less conscious of his guilt than ashamed of being found out, openly declaring that he “_did no more than was customary_,” and no more than old Christopher, who had led him into it, had done for years.

That old hypocrite went down on his knees with many whining protestations of his innocence; but, finding proof too strong, he made a clean breast of it, and on learning that through the generosity of his employer he was about to escape prosecution, which would have led to transportation, he begged piteously to be allowed to retain the situation he had held for so many years.

“No, Kit,” said Mrs. Ashton; “‘there is no rogue like an old rogue;’ you have not only robbed us yourself, but taught others the trick. Think well you have escaped the New Bailey” (the Manchester and Salford prison).

At that period the constable who apprehended a criminal received a bonus on each conviction, called “blood-money,” so large a proportion of felons were executed; and Nadin, gruff and uncourteous even to his superiors, was disposed to resist Mr. Ashton’s amiable “interference with the course of justice.” A liberal douceur from the elder Mr. Townley’s well-stocked purse was potent to allay his zeal. His runners were dismissed, and his friend the waste-dealer had a longer lease.

The clearance of rogues paved the way for honest men, besides suggesting measures to prevent like embezzlement in future. The Ashtons rightly thought that the best way to reward Jabez was to serve his friends. A situation as putter-out to the weavers was offered to Tom Hulme, Mr. Ashton having had his eye on him for some time; and old Simon, being sent for, went home delighted with commendations of Jabez, and the consciousness that the only barrier to Bess’s marriage was now removed, and that through the foundling’s instrumentality.

The only bar, that is, save the double fees of Lent, and the “ill-luck” supposed to follow a couple united during the penitential forty days. Tom put up the banns, however, and Easter Monday was chosen as the day of days for the ceremony. Tom Hulme’s parents had been married on an Easter Monday, Simon had been tied to his wife on an Easter Monday, Jabez had been made a Blue-coat boy on an Easter Monday, and apprenticed on an Easter Monday; it was consequently an anniversary to be observed and respected.

Early marriages prevail amongst the class made early self-dependent by earning their own living. Matt Cooper had long been a grandfather, Molly and his three eldest boys had been married and settled. A brisk young butcher coming to the tannery with hides had met Martha, the other girl, bearing her father’s dinner, and been so taken with her sharp, active gait, and saucy answers, that he proposed to transfer her to his shop beyond Ancoats Lane Canal-bridge, and to make his offer more palatable, suggested an amalgamation of the two households, and to take the youngest lad—Matthew, aged fourteen—as his apprentice.

So ardent and promising a lover was not to be despised. Martha did not say “No,” and Matt, beginning to stoop in the shoulders, rejoiced at the prospective haven for his declining years.

It was arranged that they should be married along with Bess and Tom Hulme; and so Matthew Cooper went with the Cleggs to church, not as a gallant bridegroom, but, more suitably, to give away a bride.

And now how shall I describe the scene at the Old Church on Easter Monday, to convey anything like an idea to modern readers, unacquainted with the locality, the period, and the habits of the people?

It must be borne in mind that registrars’ offices did not exist; that there was no marrying at dissenting chapels; that few, if any, churches were licensed for the solemnisation of matrimony; and that the collegiate parish church of Manchester was the nucleus towards which the marriageable inhabitants of all the surrounding townships and villages turned at the most important epoch of their lives.

The venerable pile (now being doctored by restorers) was set, as it were, in a ring-fence of old houses, with an inner ring of low wall encircling the churchyard, which, as grave-stones testified, had once extended to the very house-steps. As I have elsewhere said, the path between this wall and the houses was known as Half Street, a portion of which, containing Mrs. Clowes’s old shop, still remains; and did I enumerate all the public-houses in this ring-fence which offered accommodation to wedding and christening parties, only a future generation of antiquaries would thank me; and even they might doubt the facts set down in a work of fiction.

Nevertheless on Easter Monday not one of these hostelries had a spare foot of room. Every window and every door stood wide open. Men and women, gaily dressed as their own means or friendly wardrobes would allow, went in and out, filled rooms and passages, leaned from the windows with ribbons flying loose, or with pipes and ale-pots in their hands, calling to their friends below, whilst rival fiddlers (almost every party having its own) scraped away in anything but harmony. Horses and carts blocked up every avenue, and the churchyard itself was thronged with an excited crowd.

Only the parties immediately interested were admitted into the sacred edifice, but to reach the doors they had to force their way, and could only return in couples through a dense avenue of humanity, amid a shower of jests, many not the most seemly.

Bess wore only a white cambric gown, and a straw bonnet crossed with white ribbon, both of which Mrs. Ashton had provided; but somewhere in Tom’s Peninsular campaigns he had picked up a bright-coloured scarf, which made her glorious to behold, and the envy of many a country bride. His old uniform had been kept for the occasion, and they looked grand together, but the quiet content on Bess’s face was better than the grandeur.

Nat Bradshaw, the butcher-bridegroom, was of a jovial turn, and nothing would do but the whole double wedding-party, Jabez included, should turn into the Ring-o’-Bells to drink health and happiness to the brides, and give them spirit to go through the ceremony befittingly. Bess and Martha hung back blushing like peonies; but Nathaniel was not to be gainsaid, and in they went: and whilst the brides sipped, he quaffed, and pressed the others to do likewise.

At length Jabez, who had been brought up temperately, cried out they would be too late—Parson Brookes had been gone into the church half-an-hour.

There was a general rush from the room, and in the scramble to get first the party got separated; Matthew pulling his daughter along and leaving the bridegroom to follow. They elbowed their way into the church, and reached the choir just as Joshua pronounced the benediction over some twenty couples closely packed around the altar. Then there was a jostle and a scramble for “first kisses,” amidst which rose the rough voice of the chaplain.

“Now clear out, clear out! Do your kissing outside. There are other folks waiting to be wed. Do you think I want to be kept here all day tying up fools?”

That instalment of the married having been hustled away to sign the church books, with their attendant witnesses, Joshua called out impatiently to the waiting couples, amongst which were Bess and Tom.

“Come, come! How long do you mean to keep me standing here? Do you intend to be married or not? Oh, it’s thee, is it? [to Bess] Well, thah’s waited long enough.—See that you make her a good husband [to Tom]. Kneel down here,” and he placed them, not roughly, almost in the centre of the altar, pulling others to their knees beside them, with scant ceremony.

“What do _you_ want here?” in his harshest tones he asked a very youthful-looking couple.

“To be wed,” was the prompt answer of the young man.

“Ugh!” grunted the Parson, “what’s the world coming to? I used to marry men and women—now I marry children! Here, you silly babies, take your places.”

Another file of candidates for matrimony being ranged (after some pushing and pulling) in pairs around the altar, Joshua took his book and the service began.

So long as it was general, all went tolerably smoothly—women and men alike were too bashful and confused to know much what was said, or what they responded, and certainly they rarely looked in each other’s faces. At length there was a slight stir and a whispering from the quarter where Matt Cooper stood beside his daughter.

“Silence there!” roared Joshua, in a voice which set a row of hearts in a flutter, and there _was_ silence.

But he had come to the troth-plight, and again the same commotion was apparent as he approached the Coopers.

“What’s wrong here?” he demanded, pausing before Martha, who was all in a tremble.

“Moi lass is waitin’ fur her mon,” answered Matthew from behind.

“Ugh! I can’t wait for laggards.—Here, you, [addressing Tom Hulme,] answer for him.—What’s his name?” [to Martha].

“Nathaniel,” she faltered.

“I, Nathaniel, take thee, Martha, to be my——” he went on, insisting on the response of Tom, who looked aghast at the prospect of marrying the wrong woman, and being told “to pair as they went out,” as Joshua had summarily adjusted a like mistake heretofore; or what was worse, of being saddled with two wives.

On imperturbable Joshua went with the ceremony, bent on a marriage by proxy. His experience having taught him that women of the working class as a rule took charge of their wedding-rings, he asked Martha for hers, which was duly produced, and without further ado he directed Tom Hulme to place it on Martha’s finger, as he had previously put one on Bess’s, and with the same formula.

They had got as far as “With this ring I thee wed,” when the missing bridegroom came in hot haste through the side door into the chancel, closely followed by Jabez, who had been in quest of him.

He was flushed with ale and excitement, but was clear-headed enough to perceive what was going forward, and to the chaplain’s chagrin, plucked the young woman back from the altar and his proxy, and the ring rolled to the ground.

Then ensued an altercation between the butcher and Joshua Brookes, the latter insisting that what was good enough for princes might be good enough for him, and refusing to go over the ceremony again. But an apparitor drew the tardy bridegroom aside, and whispered to him a few mollifying words, whilst Joshua concluded the ceremonial, and then hurried from the altar with hardly a look at either Jabez or Simon as he passed out of the chancel, chafed and angry. Another clergyman took his place, and in the next group Nat Bradshaw and the half-married Martha took theirs. The lost ring had a substitute provided by the clerk for such emergencies; and this time they were as surely married as Bess and Tom had been.

Jabez had found the truant bridegroom at the “Ring-o’-Bells,” oblivious of the flight of time, or of his party. The story having got wind, there was a general rush in their direction.

“Here’s th’ mon wur too late to be wed!”—“Tak’ care thi woife hasna two husbants!”—“Hoo’s getten two husbants o’ready!”—“See thah’s tied oop gradely, lass!”—“Thah’rt a pratty fellow!” and much more which might have provoked a man less good-humoured in his cups.

As it was the new brides clung to their husbands, half afraid of those noisy demonstrations, and were not sorry to get clear of the crowd, and thread their way to Ancoats Lane, where the thriving butcher, assisted by Mrs. Ashton, Mrs. Clowes, and Mrs. Clough, had prepared a dinner which bore no proportion to the “short commons” of every-day fare.

CHAPTER THE NINETEENTH.

PETERLOO.

People had been naturally sanguine that the conclusion of peace would inaugurate prosperity, that commerce would flourish with the flourish of pens on the parchments of a treaty. But the war had been of too long continuance, too universal, too destructive of life and property and crops. When grounds lie untilled for years: when swords reap harvests that should have been left for the sickle; when cattle are slaughtered wholesale for unproductive soldiery, or for lack of provender; when orchards and vineyards which have taken years to mature are given to the flames, there can be no sudden re-adjustment of commercial matters. Food products are the staple of trade, which is only a system of exchange facilitated by coin and paper.

What could a food-producing continent, down-trod by the iron hoof of war, have to offer in exchange for our textile fabrics and hardware?

Trade could not revive, until there was food to sustain it. Yet the mass of the people in 1816, still further impoverished by a deficient home harvest, imputed the evil to defective legislation, and the exclusion of foreign corn save at famine prices; and discontent became universal.

Strangely enough, the agricultural districts which the Corn Laws were supposed to protect, were the first to cry out against them, and to break out into riot—not Manchester, Oldham, Nottingham, and the manufacturing centres.

This year closed on a popular demand for Parliamentary reform, but not a riotous one. Sunday schools had created readers on humble hearths, and William Cobbett supplied them with books and pamphlets bearing on their own rights and wrongs. They were read with avidity, and he became a power. He counselled peaceful persistence, not armed resistance. Hampden Clubs were formed all over the country, in which the political questions of the day were discussed with as much freedom as stringent law permitted. Public speakers and poets, of whom Samuel Bamford was one, arose from the ranks of the working classes; and the men banded together under such leadership called themselves Radical Reformers, a title which soon degenerated into Radicals.

The members of these rapidly-spreading clubs subscribed a penny a week each. Delegates were sent to meet and debate together; and on the 4th November, 1816, a large meeting was held in St. Peter’s Field, Manchester (strangely enough, the site of the present Free Trade Hall), “to take into consideration the distressed state of the country.”

Other meetings were held by the Reformers and their delegates; and on the 13th January, 1817, their political opponents held a counter-meeting, to consider the “necessity of adopting measures for the maintenance of the public peace;” for certainly the meeting of large masses of disaffected people, however peacefully disposed in the outset, and individually, becomes threatening in the aggregate. No one cares much for a grain of gunpowder; but mass the grains into pounds, and the pounds into tons, and there is certainly need of precaution in dealing with it.

Amongst the precautionary measures deemed necessary for the protection of the peace, and the suppression of seditious meetings, were the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, and the enrolment of the Manchester and Cheshire Yeomanry Cavalry, under the command of Sir T. J. Trafford; Laurence Aspinal, Ben Travis, and John Walmsley joining the corps.

On the 24th of March—since known as Blanket Monday—a large number of men assembled in St. Peter’s Field, with blankets upon their shoulders, with the openly-expressed design of walking to London, to lay their grievances before George, the Prince Regent, in person. The blankets were intended for coverlets on the wayside beds Mother Earth alone would spread for them. The meeting was dispersed by military, the newly-formed Yeomanry distinguishing themselves by trapping a number of the Blanketeers who had prematurely set out, and who had not got farther than Stockport.

This was the signal for widespread alarm, and for Joseph Nadin to prove his discrimination and vigilance by scenting out imaginary plots, and arresting suspected plotters, whom he tied together, handcuffed, ill-used, and hauled to prison, or before magistrates (whether for acquital or conviction), for little other reason than the dangerous power given by the suspension of the Habeas Corpus. He was a big, blustering, overbearing fellow, with a large grizzled head, closely set on strong broad shoulders, with overhanging brows drawn close, and a sallow skin; and his officious zeal in arresting such persons as Samuel Bamford the weaver-poet, Thomas Walker, and the amateur actors he laid hands on at a public house in Ancoats-lane, laying to their charge plots which had their origin in his own brain, did more to embitter the people against their rulers than those dust-blinded rulers suspected.

The Radical agitation reached its climax in 1819, when our friend Jabez was a well-formed, well-favoured young man of twenty, high in the estimation of his master and mistress. Popular rights had found a fresh champion in Henry Hunt, the son of a well-descended Wiltshire yeoman, a man of gentlemanlike bearing and attire, agreeable features mobile in expression, and dull grey eyes which lit like fiery stars when in the fervour of his speech his soul shone out of them.

“Orator Hunt,” as he was ironically dubbed by those who loved him not, was the very man to move the people as he himself was moved; his energy and fervid eloquence carried his hearers with him, and as he was wont to lash himself to a fury which streaked his pale eyes with blood, and forced them forward in their sockets, no wonder the Manchester magnates were afraid of his influence on the multitude, or that the Prince Regent should issue a proclamation against seditious meetings and writings, or the military drilling of the populace, then carried on with so fervid an orator to inflame them.

When Henry Hunt made a public entry into Manchester, and attended the theatre the same evening, a disturbance ensued, and he was expelled, and the next evening the theatre was closed, to preserve peace. Then a Watch-and-Ward, composed of the chief inhabitants, was established; a meeting called by the Radicals was prohibited; but that did not deter the calling of another on St. Peter’s Field, on the 16th of August, when a couple of large wagons were boarded over to serve as temporary hustings, whence Orator Hunt from the midst of his friends might address the assembled multitude.

Augusta Ashton had just passed her fifteenth birthday. She was slim, graceful, and tall beyond her age, and was surpassing lovely. She was still under Mrs. Broadbent’s care, and went to school that morning as usual, other meetings having passed off quietly, and no apprehension of disorder being entertained until long after nine o’clock.

About that hour the people began to assemble from all quarters on the open ground near St. Peter’s Church—not bloodthirsty roughs, but men, women, and children, drawn thither for a sight of a holiday spectacle. True, of the collective eighty thousand, though there were many thousands of earnest, thinking men who went to grapple with important questions, yet no such mighty gathering could be without its leaven of savagery and mischief.

But those who went from the mills and the workshops, the hills and the valleys around Manchester, walking in procession, with bugles playing and gay banners flying, though they might look haggard, pinched and careworn, made no attempt to look deplorable, or excite compassion. They wore their Sunday suits and clean neckties; and by the side of fustian and corduroy walked the coloured prints and stuffs of wives and sweethearts, who went as for a gala-day, to break the dull monotony of their lives, and to serve as a guarantee of peaceable intention.