Robert Hall, Leicester, to William Wilberforce, Westminster, 27 February 1817.

27 Feby 1817  Leicester

Dear Sir

   I esteem myself honored by the interest you condescend to take in my character.

   With respect to the meeting at Leicester for petitioning I was not at it; the only concern I had in it was that of signing the requisition.

   Upon the most exact inquiry I find nothing was said about universal suffrage, though annual parliaments were inserted in the petition.  Had I adverted to that circumstance in the requisition, I believe I should have demurred about signing it, for I decidedly prefer triennial.

   Of the Spencean Society I know nothing, nor wish to know any thing, but I can assure you that the requisition was signed by many of the most respectable characters in the town, & that I have good reason to believe the petition [f.169v] was signed by a great majority of those who are not under the influence of the corporation.

   I entirely concur my dear Sir with you in the impropriety of religious persons or persons professing religion making themselves conspicuous at political meetings. For myself, I never did, have very seldom been present, & never spoke at one, nor ever intend. I am not however ashamed to avow my political sentiments and gifts. I was educated in the sentiments of the late Charles Fox, & to his political creed as far as I am acquainted with it, I could more entirely subscribe than that of any [of any] other man. Though an enemy to revolution & anarchy in every form, I am equally so to the doctrine of passive obedience & nonresistance, which I detest from my heart.  To all practical purposes, I consider the British constitution as consisting of three estates as near an approximation to perfection as any that can be derived; but a very considerable reform in the constitution of the [f.270r] House of Commons appears to me requisite to give it its full & proper operation.  I cannot but consider the misery & ruin of a people and such appears to me the state to which [we] are approaching, if we have not already reached it, as the most decisive pray of a mismanagement of public affairs: from which a reform in the representative system seems to be the only remedy. And ye maladies of people reforming themselves, I conceive would be in vain to expect, [without] an exertion of the Public voice.  I must beg you my dear Sir to pardon for the freedom with which I have expressed myself upon subjects with which you are inexpressibly better acquainted than myself. But the occasion seemed to lend me to it. My earnest prayer is that our excellent constitution equally preserved from violence & decay may be perpetuated to the latest generations & may I be permitted to express my humble hope that it will never be suffered to want in persons of your talent, character, & station, watchful guardians & protectors. I am with the highest esteem

                     Your obedient Servant

                                             Robert Hall

Text:  MSS. Wilberforce, d. 15, ff. 269-70, Bodleian Library, Oxford.  Helpful information on this letter can be found in Alfred Temple Patterson, Radical Leicester: A History of Leicester1780-1850 (Leicester: University College, 1954):

In 1816, wages for those involved in the hosiery industry (the framework knitters and others) in Leicestershire fell by 30-40% due to a greater number of available workers (soldiers returned from the war) and a decline in orders (no uniforms to make, and less demand from abroad).  In April 1816, “ a meeting of stockingers in Leicester drew up a petition to the Commons, subsequently signed by 6,700 persons, on the distressed state of their trade. By the beginning of June ‘great numbers’ were being ‘almost daily turned out of employment in the town and county,’ and the magistrates of both were equally uneasy” (105).  An attack on Heathcoat and Boden’s lace-factory at Loughborough on 29 June raised tensions even further, instigated largely by quasi-Luddite organizers and gangs. But largely it was the result of three forces at work¾ “the political radicalism of the Hampden Clubs, the half-submerged and illegal efforts of trade unions, and the crude violence of the Luddites” (106). Though there is no record of active Luddism in Leicester in 1816-17, there would have been many sympathisers. “The ‘Hampdenite’ radicalism of the district was relatively orderly and constitutional; and the framework-knitters’ agitation for higher wages was a miracle of self-restraint under distressing circumstances” (107). To the town authorities, however, Luddism and “Hampdenism” were one and the same thing.

Hampden clubs were originally from London, founded by Major Cartwright and Sir Francis Burdett to advocate reform. The Leicester club was probably formed in October 1816, with low dues, paid mostly by small tradesmen and artisans (107). Some leaders were Jonathan Atherstone, a dyer and timber mercant; a cobbler named Bailey; Pares the printer; William Scott a framesmith (a radical from the 1790s); John Warburton; and Thomas Rowlett. Subscription was a penny a week. By November they had 500 members (108).

By January 1817 some 5000 persons in St Margaret’s parish were receiving parish aid, and some 700 families in St Mary’s parish (108). The Leicester Journal was convinced this linking of Luddism and Hampdenism was an effort to infest the lower orders with the principles of Jacobinism and the French Revolution, and to seek Parliamentary Reform through “desperate, disappointed men” (October 16, 1816) (109).  After the Spa Fields Riot in London, magistrates across the land were nervous about such groups and they were being watched closesly for “revolutionary” ideas (109).  Some were convinced that the real aim of the Hampden clubs were to redistribute the land according to “Spence’s Plan” (110).   As Patterson contends, though members of these clubs may have used some inflammatory language at times, “there is no untainted evidence to suggest that the clubs were anything but the peaceful and constitutional organizatios they claimed to be” (110). 

The reform party of Leicester had the use of the Chronicle as its means of propagating ideas, and “Dissenters almost to a man, and indeed mostly Unitarians” made up its leadership (110).  They generally held to the elimination of rotten or pocket boroughs; extension of the suffrage; more frequent parliaments; removal of the disaabilities of Dissenters and Roman Catholics; freedom of the press; and the abolition of slavery (111).  “Any brief and slight tendency for the Corporation Tories and the working-class to draw together in a common opposition to the wealthy Radical manufacturers, however, had soon been checked by the reappearance of Luddism, the upsurge of ‘Hampdenite’ popular radicalism, and the Tory fear of revolution.  And when at the beginning of January 1817 the middle-class reformers were moved by the example of other considerable places¾and by that of the local Hampden Clubs¾to call a reform meeting, the division set by conflicting class-interests between them and the working-class radicals was for the moment smoothed over.  Although the majority o the four thousand people present were o the middle class (since it was a morning meeting), there were also many Hampdenites among them. The terms of the petition¾calling for retrenchment, reduction of the number of placemen and of the army, extension of the franchise to all who paid taxes, and annual parliaments¾corresponded closely to the declared aims of the Club; and Ruding and Brewin were followed as speakers by Bailey, Warbuton, Rowlett, and another ‘Hampdenite.’ To the civic authorities, long accustomed to regard the middle-class reformers of the town as dangerously infected with Jacobinism, this was a most sinister conjunction of the enemies of the constitution” (112). 

A few days later, on 14 January, a meeting of the Leicestershire Hampden Clubs was held, with the delegates passing resolutions favoring universal manhood suffrage, annual parliaments, and the equalisation of electoral districts, “agreed to prepare petitions for these objects, and chose Atherstone and Warburton as delegates to the ‘Hampdenite’ Anchor Tavern in London” (113). The Leicester Chronicle welcomed the resolutions and the London meeting, but the authorities were still very nervous.  At the same time a minor disturbance had occurred at Oadby, called the “Oadby Riot” by the London papers, and blamed on the Hampden Club, though they vigorously denied it (113).   Luddism would soon die out with the executions of several of its leaders in Leicester in April 1817, but as Mansfield would write to the Home Office, “Dangerous as Luddism was, I think it quite trifling compared with the Hampden Clubs, whose continuance … appears absolutely impossible with that of the Government of the country” (114). 

Apparently, the threats of the government to suspend Habeas Corpus and implement some “Gagging Acts” was sufficient to curtail the radicals’ activities in Leicester, and by the end of February the Leicester Hampden Club was officially disbanded (115).