(We are always happy to welcome back Michael Bloor, both today and tomorrow.–LA)
It’s not generally realised that the barbarity of public beheadings only ended in England two hundred years ago. On November 7th, 1817, ‘Captain’ Jeremiah Brandreth (an unemployed outworker in the hosiery trade), Isaac Ludlum (a Methodist lay preacher), and William Turner (an elderly ex-Militia man) were beheaded in front of a large, sorrowing crowd outside Derby Gaol. They had been convicted of high treason for being the alleged leaders of ‘The Derbyshire Insurrection’ (also known as ‘The Pentrich Revolution’). They were the dupes of the Government’s agent provocateur, ‘Oliver the Spy,’ who convinced them that the Pentrich villagers’ armed march on Nottingham was part of a co-ordinated national uprising, which would usher in democracy and famine relief. The Government took the opportunity to introduce a series of repressive measures; Oliver the Spy was rewarded by being awarded the post of the Cape Colony buildings inspector in South Africa.
This essay seeks to describe that dolorous tragedy through the eyes of a participant.
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I, Isaac Ludlam of the village of Pentrich, Derbyshire, write this testament in the hope that my gaolers will convey it to my wife and children, following my execution on the morrow. In addition, I humbly request that my family also be allowed to receive my copy of Minister Richard Baxter’s A Call to the Unconverted. The study of this work has been my abiding pleasure during the period of my imprisonment, not least because of my awareness that the author wrote that sublime text whilst himself in gaol for his beliefs. Know that, though I fall from the scaffold, I shall rise up on The Last Day. And, though my head shall be struck from my body, the executioner shall not harm my immortal soul.
For those of my children too young today to understand why I embarked upon that desperate venture which brings my death, I set down these words. First of all, you must fathom the pain that a parent feels when he or she cannot put food into the mouths of the children: for two weary years I suffered that pain, my credit being long exhausted. I could bear it no longer because I could see no end to it: why quarry stone, and cart it, if no building is ever taking place? Furthermore, I knew that this doleful existence was no part of God’s Plan. Old Tom Bacon, whom you have known all your lives, would read aloud to those Pentrich villagers without schooling, from the works of Tom Paine and William Cobbett, telling how the common grazings had been taken from us by the landlords and how, in a commonwealth, all should have rights.
Yet a ham-bone and herbs do not make a broth. First you must supply the fire to heat the pot. That fire was Captain Jerry Brandreth, who came to Pentrich with news from Nottingham that a national rising was planned for June 9th and that we Pentrich men must arm ourselves and march to Nottingham to play our part. We would find Nottingham already in the hands of the revolutionaries, like a dozen other towns in the Midlands and the North, all according to plans laid by a committee of London gentlemen and secretly communicated by their messenger, William Oliver. Jerry Brandreth brought hope to our village: we were few and desperate, but he told us Pentrich did not stand alone – we were but a few drops of moisture in a mighty wave.
These were great tidings. We began the work of fashioning makeshift pikes and I hid them in the quarry. On the night of June 8th, we were to set forth for Nottingham, seizing munitions of war from Butterley Ironworks as we marched. In Nottingham, we would join forces our fellow revolutionists, the mighty wave. The landlords and their placemen would be swept away like Pharaoh’s army.
We set off at the appointed time and date, but the weather was against us – a night of heavy rain. Men joined us from the villages round about – Alfreton, Heage, Belper, Swanwick and Ripley – but we were ill-nourished, ill-clad, and ill-armed, marching fourteen miles on bad roads. It is no wonder that the rain diluted our ardour. Then we were shocked to find the Butterley Ironworks to be defended: the manager, Mr Goodwin, was there waiting for us, with a group of special constables, and denied us entrance. It was clear that our secret plans were no secret. And without the Ironworks munitions, our firearms were pitifully few. Jerry Brandreth bade us march on, and Old William Turner (who had served in the militia in Napoleon’s Wars) was of the same mind. But as we left Butterley, I sensed that our numbers were dwindling. We tried to collect provisions and more firearms at the farms on our march. At Mrs Hepworth’s farm, there was a scuffle and one of her farm servants was fatally wounded – a wretched business.
Jerry Brandreth had sent William Weightman ahead on a horse to Nottingham. When William returned, he and Brandreth spoke privately: no news was given out. Did we have an inkling that ‘the mighty wave’ of the revolt was a fiction? That the mysterious messenger from London, Mr Oliver, was really an agent of the government, provoking a minor insurgency as an excuse for repression? I think we did, but desperate men cling to a desperate hope. It was a hard thing, to walk that long night, not knowing whether we were dupes or a vanguard.
When we got beyond Eastwood, we found the road held against us by a detachment of hussars. We knew for certain then that the game was up. No word was given, no shot was fired: we threw down our pikes and fled.
Michael Bloor
