17th July 1816: Stockport Weavers send a Memorial to the Prince Regent

TO HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS

GEORGE PRINCE REGENT

OF THE

UNITED KINGDOMS OF BRITAIN AND IRELAND,

WITH THEIR DEPENDENCIES.

THE HUMBLE

MEMORIAL

Of the undersigned, being Manufacturers of Cotton Goods, and Workmen, who have been employed in the various branches of that once extensive and important Manufacture,—

SHEWETH,

THAT Your Royal Highness’s humble Memorialists, who on all occasions have proven themselves His Majesty's most faithful and loyal subjects, are brought to the greatest distress, which is every day becoming more poignant; and unless some means of Relief be speedily devised, one Common Ruin must involve both Masters and Workmen.

Your Memorialists are well aware that many classes of His Majesty’s subjects labor under similar distresses, with this difference,—THEIRS have not long existed—OURS have almost become permanent;—They have had constant Employment and full Wages, until within these few months; but the evils of which Your Memorialists complain, have been growing for upwards of Fifteen Years, till they have arrived at a climax of unparalleled WANT, MISERY, and RUIN!!!

THAT the evils to which Your Memorialists allude, may be ascribed to One great Cause, viz. the Exportation of the half-wrought Material, as TWIST and WEFT. By this traffic, one part of His Majesty’s subjects work to enable Foreigners to do without the labor of the other part; and hence their restrictive measures against the finished Manufactures of your Memorialists. Another evil arising out of the above, is the frequent Reduction of Wages. This system must at all times decrease the value of the Stock on hand, which is sometimes immense.

The consequence is, that the most wealthy of the Masters have either altogether, or partly, declined the Manufacture; whilst others, by repeated sacrifices of depreciated stocks, have become insolvent. Hence many thousands of Weavers are out of employ; whilst those who have work, cannot on an average, earn more than Four Shillings per Wweek; and little more than two years ago, for a short period (Foreign Looms being prevented for some time from manufacturing goods from British Cotton Yarns, owing to their country’s being then the Seat of War) they could earn Sixteen Shillings and sixpence in the same time.

THAT since Peace took place, and the Foreign Looms were set to work again with British Yarns, Wages have been gradually decreasing to their present ruinous state; nor can Your Memorialists see any period when they can be employed again, so long as Yarns continue to be sent out of the Kingdom in such increasing quantities.

THAT the Cotton Manufacture has given employment and support to many Hundreds of Thousands of Persons in the United Kingdom; and Your Memorialists humbly presume, has been of considerable importance in a financial point of view. Shall such a source of our national greatness be removed?—No! 

Your Memorialists trust, with humble confidence, that Your Royal Highness will be graciously pleased to take the above into Your Royal Highness's most serious consideration;

And Your Memorialists will ever pray, &c.

Stockport, July 17th, 1816.

18th May 1815: Francis Raynes appeals to the Home Secretary for a job with the army

Crawford-Street, 18th May, 1815.

MY LORD,

His Grace the Duke of Montrose informed me by note, dated the 7th of March, that he had done me the honor to present to your Lordship a memorial, wherein I stated an abstract of services rendered by me, during the disturbances in the north of England, in the years 1812 and 13, and in which were blended both civil and military duties.

Were I not sensible of the interest his Grace feels in my behalf, as do other men of high consideration, I should be led to conclude my case hopeless or unworthy of notice, by the silence your Lordship observes, in not doing me the honor to reply to my memorial.

I did confidently hope, my Lord, on witnessing the rewards so justly bestowed on meritorious officers, at the conclusion of war, and from the testimonials of my conduct for services which were considered of much importance at the time, I should not have escaped the notice of His Majesty’s Government.

That the duty was an arduous one, is manifest from the difficulty to obtain officers to engage in it. The Generals and officers commanding regiments, can vouch for this fact.

To assure your Lordship I went further than any other officer would venture, to suppress the spirit of disaffection, I now beg leave to enclose a testimonial from the bench of Magistrates acting for the division of Stockport.

May I be permitted to submit to your Lordship, whether I might be placed in some fencible or other regiment, as a Major with temporary rank only, and thence allowed the retirement; yet buy no means being understood as wishing to stand aloof, whether my services may be required; being aware, my Lord, such modes of rewarding officers, have not been unfrequent. I presume my services in the line and militia, those in the 12th light dragoons in Egypt, as certified by Lieut.-General Sir John Doyle, to the more recent ones as Captain of the Stirlingshire militia, comprising a period of nearly twenty years, will be deemed a sufficient plea for such a proposition. I trust your Lordship will not consider me too pressing, in urging some decision on a subject which has occupied my hopes for more than two years, the more especially when my residence in town, waiting such decision, and the expense of a large family in the country, are submitted to your Lordship’s feeling consideration. I have the honor to be  [etc]

FRANCIS RAYNES,

Captain, Stirlingshire, &c. Militia.

[To] The Right Hon. Lord Viscount Sidmouth, &c.

8th March 1815: Stockport Magistrates write a reference for Captain Francis Raynes

In his continuing efforts to obtain compensation from government, Francis Raynes had now enlisted the Stockport Magistrates to provide a reference which he planned to use in due course:

SIR,

Stockport, 8th March, 1815.

We the undersigned magistrates, acting for the division of Stockport, in the county of Chester, having been desired to express our opinion of your services towards the restoration of the public tranquillity, during the disturbances which prevailed in this and the adjoining districts, for a great part of the year 1812, feel great satisfaction in addressing to you this testimonial of the high sense we entertain of your individual services at that alarming crisis. Stationed in a part of the country there, more particularly exposed to danger, you evinced uncommon prudence and alacrity in the discharge of an arduous duty; and, not content with merely affording protection to the district confided to your care, you, with a zeal highly honorable to you, endeavoured to break into that illegal confederacy, unto which a great part of the lower class in that neighbourhood were then associated. Your exertions were successful; and you were the means of bringing to justice, many who would otherwise have escaped their merited punishment.—For these important services, and for your earnest co-operation with the civil authorities, in the suppression of those tumults, and the preservation of the public peace, we beg to convey to you our best thanks, with confident hope and recommendation, that they may speedily receive the consideration of His Majesty’s Government.

Your obedient humble Servants,

J. PHILLIPS.
THOS. WM. TATTON.
H. D. BROUGHTON.
ROBERT HARRISON.

[To] Francis Raynes, Esq. &c. &c.

16th May 1814: William Hay sends the spy John McDonald's memorial to the Home Secretary

No. 31 Clipstone Street 16th May 1814

My Lord,

At the request of the Magistrates at Manchester I have the honor to enclose a memorial from John Macdonald, petitioning for some compensation for his services during the disturbances in 1812. I understand that he was out between two and three months, and that his expences out of pocket were paid, but no recompense has been afforded him. Not being able to judge what might be considered as a proper sum for him, should Government think him entitled to the prayer of his memorial, I desired that the Magistrates would favor me with their opinion on that head; that opinion I take the Liberty of enclosing. Col. Silvester and Mr. Wright were present when the Commission was given by Genl. Maitland, and a promise made that the parties to be sent should be paid by Genl. Maitland. I heard of it immediately afterwards, and was present at the York Assizes when John McDonald gave his evidence – it appeared to me that he had been very active, and in situations at considerable peril—

I have [etc]
William Robert Hay

To
The Right Honourable
Lord Visct. Sidmouth
One of H. Ms principal Secretaries of State &c &c

12th May 1814: The Memorial of the spy, John McDonald

To The Right Honorable the Secretary of State for the Home Department.

The Humble Memorial of John MacDonald of Manchester in the County of Lancaster Labourer Sheweth that early in the year one thousand eight hundred and Twelve the Counties of Lancaster York and Chester were unhappily disturbed by Riots and Societies were formed for the administration of illegal Oaths and for purposes intended to subvert the order and Government of this County—

That Generals Maitland and Ackland on the third day of July one thousand eight hundred and Twelve with the concurrence of the magistrates for the district of Manchester employed your memorialist to go from Manchester into Yorkshire for the purpose of entering into the before mentioned unlawful societies with the view of detecting and suppressing the same and the mischiefs intended thereby and engaged that your memorialist should be handsomely rewarded for undertaking so dangerous a service—

That your memorialist accordingly went into Yorkshire and entered into a society in Halifax and had there an unlawful Oath administered to him and entered into the plans of the society and afterwards gave information to General Ackland and Prosecutions were carried on at York against several of the parties in which prosecutions your memorialist attended as a Witness and upon his evidence several the persons charged were convicted and transported—

That your memorial list is a poor man and engaged in the before mentioned undertaking which he knew to be exceedingly perilous for the purpose of serving his Country.

That he has not received any compensation for the services rendered on this occasion and he most humbly conceived that his case is entitled to consideration.

Your Memorialist therefore prays that the circumstances of this claim may be taken into consideration and that such measures may be adopted for making him some compensation as in your Lordships direction may seem [meet]

The + mark of John McDonald

We the undersigned Magistrates acting within the Division of Manchester do certify that the Facts stated the foregoing memorial are true—Witness our hands this twelfth Day of May 1814

WR Hay
M. A. Farrington
R. Wright
J. Silvester

6th October 1812: Stockport bourgeoisie & ruling class send a memorial to the Home Secretary about John Lloyd

To the Right Honorable Lord Viscount Sidmouth,

Secretary of State for the Home Department.

The Memorial of the undersigned Inhabitants of the town of Stockport in the County of Chester, and its vicinity.

Humbly Sheweth,

That for several months previous to the fourteenth of April last divers evil disposed persons did assemble almost every night in the Fields adjacent to this Town concerning plans for the destruction of certain Machinery used in the Cotton Manufacture as well as for the purpose of swearing or twisting in all persons who wished to join in their measures the nature of which Oath now publicly known fully explains—That at these meetings it is well known Delegates from the Counties of Lancaster and Nottingham did regularly attend—That Letters were received by most of the principal Manufacturers and spinners threatening not only to burn their Factories but to take away the lives of some of them and likewise by the Magistrates equally daring and wicked—That reports were most industriously circulated amongst the lower orders of Society tending to produce the greatest terror and dismay threats being held out that if anyone should attempt either to prevent their destructive designs or to give any sort of information by which the parties might be discovered he would certainly be murdered and his property destroyed—That on the night of the fourth of April several Slugs were fired into the sleeping Room of Mr Goodair and many large Stones thrown with great violence through the Windows of the said Room—The Windows also of several other Manufacturers were broken in the night time and attempts were made in the night at different times to set fire to two or three Factories providentially without much damage the light being soon discovered—That on Tuesday the fourteenth day of April about 10 o'Clock in the Morning when most of the principal Tradesmen were gone to the Manchester Market a large Mob composed of Men (some of them in Women's Cloaths), Women and Children armed with Stones &c assembled at the upper part of Hillgate breaking the Windows and assailing the Dwellinghouses of several Spinners and Manufacturers pouring in increasing numbers into the Town attacked the House of Peter Marsland Esquire a Magistrate breaking most of the Windows and threatening the family he being at Manchester, they then proceeded to the Weaving Factory of Mr Goodair is in which they destroyed Machinery to a considerable amount, part of the Mob at the same time breaking into his Dwellinghouse demolishing his Furniture & setting Fire to it. That the alarm and apprehensions of the well disposed Inhabitants excited by these outrageous proceedings were general and excessive and had it not been for the exertions of The Reverend Charles Prescot a Magistrate and a small military force your Memorialists are convinced that the extent of their depredations the mischief on that day would have been incalculable—

That for several weeks subsequent to these wicked and, until this period, unheard of transactions this Town and Neighbourhood continued in perpetual alarm and affright, during which time John Lloyd Gentleman a Solicitor in this town did evince  unwearied zeal activity and resolution in discovering and bringing to justice many of the Ringleaders and your memorialists do testify that owing to his indefatigable exertions at the risque of his life and to the total neglect of his professional pursuits they are in a high degree indebted for the tranquillity they now enjoy—That for these valuable services in particular as well as for many others rendered to Government by Mr. Lloyd in his constant and unparalleled endeavours to suppress the same riotous spirit which now prevails in some of the neighbouring Counties your memorialists feel themselves called upon to submit this case to your Lordship beseeching that your Lordship would be graciously pleased to take it into consideration and to confer such recompence upon Mr. Lloyd as in your Lordships wisdom and justice shall seem meet

And your Memorialists will ever pray.—

John Thomas Stanley
HM Mainwaring
John Legh
Egerton Leigh
Wilbraham Egerton
E Stracey
John Clegg
Randle Wilbraham
George Wilbraham
[illegible] Trafford
[& one illegible name]

Magistrates assembled at the General Quarter Sessions of the Peace held at Nether Knutsford in and for the County of Chester the 6th day of October 1812 Do approve of the above Memorial and Recommendation—

Peter Marsland
H.D. Broughton
Thos Wm Tatton

Magistrates for the Stockport Division