Lydia doesn’t know where to be.
The house of Sneddon Street is eerie quiet without the shoosh of Sandy’s shuttle. Through the open door onto the street there is an emptiness but also the inkling of a murmuring.
Two days now they have been idle – or not idle. Anything but idle. Yet not an inch of web has been woven. Not a strand of cotton spun.
The pain in Lydia’s gut is growing fierce again. She sips what remains of her tea. The tea in the caddy will last a few days more. There is still half of a cheese. The bread is finished. Peasemeal and bannocks will have to do.
Becky was only an infant when Sandy refused to weave for twelve long hungry weeks[i]. Twelve weeks they stood firm against the manufacturers who offered rates below the fair price the magistrates had set. Not that the magistrates enforced their decision. When the time came, they implemented the Combination Act, made strikes illegal and offered a £20 bounty for the strikers’ leaders.
What have we learned? Lydia wonders.
Ay, but Sandy’s never been what they call a quick study. He is out there still.
“You can’t let them walk all over you,” her Da would have said.
“But they do it anyway, Da.”
Becky Is stirring the ashes in the grate. The girl looks wan and anxious. The chores are done and they dare not work and her idleness inspires a sort of panic.
There had been a rammy on the High Street on the previous afternoon. After the stramash on Monday, on Tuesday, idle Buddies and nervous soldiers milled about the cross. The soldiers’ muskets were stacked. Flashy cavalrymen in braided tunics smoked their pipes at the foot of the cross and eyed the townsfolk warily. A few, on horseback, ambled through the crowds, blue jackets with yellow braid, showing off their sabres[ii].
Lydia had walked down towards Maxwelton with Sandy and the girl. Before they reached Wellmeadow, Jimmy Speirs told Sandy a lad named Billy Cochran had been shot the night before. The lads were up at Foxbar searching for arms and the farmer’s son shot him dead. The others ran as the cavalry arrived.
As the news spread, another shiver of dread and anger rippled through the crowded streets. Davy Campbell, probably in his cups, shared his thoughts with a soldier from the Staffordshires[iii], then read aloud from the proclamation[iv].
“Shall YOU, Countrymen, bound by the sacred obligation of an oath, to defend your Country and your King from enemies, whether foreign or domestic, plunge your Bayonets into the Bosoms of Fathers and Brothers at the unrelenting Orders of a Cruel Faction and sacrifice those feelings which hold in common with the rest of mankind?”
It turned out that the soldiers would.
“We’re not your fucking countrymen,” the sergeant said and stabbed poor Davy for his honesty. There were veterans of the war on both sides but that didn’t seem to give the lads in uniform any pause. She watched Davy bleed to death on the cobbles. The soldiers formed up in ranks and dispersed the sullen crowd, leaving Davy lying in the street.
Some muttered, “Remember Manchester.” But was that warning or an invocation?
Folk do remember Manchester[v], though none of them were there.
One Saturday, a few weeks after the massacre in Manchester, they marched out, in defiance of the Potentate of Wales’ ban on gatherings and flags, to meet at Meikleriggs Muir. Sandy took the morning off to join the throng. Despite the ban, some Radicals from Glasgow marched down the High Street to the West End carrying their banners high. Lydia and Sandy spent the long Saturday morning agreeing with the orators, angry at the outrage. The podium was dressed in black, in mourning for the 7 massacred in Manchester. Everyone was up for action against oppression. The action they agreed was to abstain from tea, tobacco and strong liquor.[vi]
But on their way back along the High Street, the Glasgow contingent were waylaid by Special Constables. Scuffles broke out and the Riot Act was read. In the early afternoon, the cavalry arrived in the town to ‘pacify’ them. They were not easily pacified.
Stones were thrown. Sticks were swung. Folk smashed the windows of the Bailies, Ministers and Batonmen and the lamps on the town-centre streets. They ran to Storie Street to rip iron railings from outside the Methodist Chapel on Storie Street to use as pikes against the soldiery. The coffee-house was trashed and Birkmire’s warehouse. There was a vicious glee and a great thrill of excitement and an awful dread. She threw her share of chuckies that night. Smashed a window pane in the Reverend Findlay’s manse. Becky kept finding stones for her to throw.
Only when it was too dark to see did they disperse to eat and rest and reflect on the power of their defiance. Next morning, though it was the Sabbath, they were out again as fierce as before, hissing at the soldiery and constables, making a ruckus and smashing Tory properties.
On Monday morning, Sandy was back to work at his loomstead, none the worse. As darkness fell, younger men raised mayhem on the street with whatever energy remained after a working day. Sandy was 28. She bade him see sense and, on this occasion, she thought he had.
That winter, cleggs[vii] were introduced into their lives.
The not-knowing gnaws at her. Sandy has been gone half the morning. He took three cleggs with him though she thought he had seen sense in Maxwelton on Monday.
Johnny Craig brought a copy of the Proclamation to the house on Saturday, after he came back from Glasgow. Sandy was fair tickled reading it aloud by candlelight.
“ROUSED from that torpid state in which We have been sunk for so many years,” he read out as if he was some sort of Henry Hunt[viii], “We are, at length, compelled, from the extremity of our sufferings, and the contempt heaped upon our Petitions for redress, to assert our RIGHTS, at the hazard of our lives and proclaim to the world the real motives, which (if not misrepresented by designing men, would have United all ranks ) have reduced us to take up ARMS for the redress of our Common Grievances.”
Lydia shifted uncomfortably at the mention of ‘take up arms’. The inside of the front door was worried sick with Sandy’s target practice, throwing his cleggs from the other side of the room. Standing closer to, Becky was a dab hand at throwing them too. She tried herself but never got the knack of it. She’d stick to stones if it came to it but throwing rocks isn’t taking up arms.
“…the interests of all Classes are the same. That the protection of Life and Property of the Rich Man, is the interest of the Poor Man, and in return, it is in the interest of the Rich to protect the Poor from the iron grasp of DESPOTISM; for when its victims are exhausted in the lower circles there are no assurance but that its ravages will be continued in the upper.”
Fine words!
“Our principles are few, and founded on the basis of our Constitution which was purchased with the DEAREST BLOOD of our ANCESTORS, and which we swear to transmit to posterity unsullied, or PERISH in the Attempt. Equality of Rights (not of Property) is the object for which we contend…”
“What constitution is that?” she asked.
“Well,” said Sandy. “The Magna Carta, surely?”
“Did we fight for the Magna Carta?”
“Wheesht!”
“’We are not that Lawless Sanguinary Rabble which Our Oppressors would persuade the higher circles we are –but a BRAVE and GENEROUS PEOPLE, determined to be FREE. LIBERTY or DEATH is our Motto, and We have sworn to return home in triumph – or return no more!’ Liberty or death, eh? Well!”
Becky asked, “What does sanguinary mean, Dad?”
But it was that “return no more” that bothered Lydia.
She winces as another twinge of pain rips through her gut.
It isn’t that she doesn’t see the sense in Universal Suffrage and Annual Elections: she is as fond of a Phrygian bonnet as anyone. Equality of Rights…and Rights for Women…is only just and fair. But is it worth getting widowed for?
“Mum,” Becky says, “Can we go out and find Dad?”
“No,” she says. “Not yet!”
On Sunday, the Sheriff and Magistrates posted their own proclamation. All ‘well-disposed persons’ were to retire to their homes on the alarm and, in any case, bide through the back of their lodgings from 7 in the evening till further notice. The announcement spoke of immediate retaliation in case of ‘injury’.
But Lydia thought the tide had turned, for Sandy, on Monday when they went to hear of the plans at Maxwelton.
She had already heard of an intention to seize arms and powder from the gentry. A few veterans took the lead and the younger men were up for it. On Monday morning they proclaimed their intent to the crowds at Maxwelton, which didn’t seem sound policy to Lydia.
Becky was on her father’s shoulders, the better to see the orators. Lydia clung to Sandy’s arm, as much for restraint as comfort.
If the lads were seizing arms and powder, in addition to the pikes and cleggs they had been stock-piling through the winter, how, someone asked, would the arms be distributed among the willing? By experience? By luck? By ‘seniority’? And what of the pistols many carried? Would powder seized be shared with every man who owned a gun? And how much powder each then?
They fell to haggling in public.
How much powder did they expect to seize? How many muskets and pistols did they have at their disposal?
They settled, after some wrangling, at tuppence ha’penny’s worth of powder per gun – down from an opening bid of thruppence ha’penny. There was a wee cheer of satisfaction that something, at least, had been settled when Billy Cumming piped up.
“Men! Are ye daft thegither? Bless me! Only think! Owerturnin the British Empire wi five bawbees o powder?”
Lydia had no inkling how much powder five bawbees would buy but it didn’t sound enough: not against veterans who had defeated Napoleon Boneparte. She tugged at Sandy’s arm and he glanced down.
“Billy’s got a point there, Sandy.”
“Ay. But…”
“Ay but’ll get ye killt! Come back. Let’s go and find some dinner.”
“You go,” he said and waited on with Becky. He was home in the evening though and that got her hopes up. Then Davy was killed on the High Street and that vexed him again.
Outside on Sneddon Street, the sound of marching feet abrades the quiet. The bootsteps are drilled regular, the tread of soldiers marching. Becky has already drifted to the doorstep and Lydia joins her there, wondering if more soldiers are arriving along the Renfrew Road. But they are coming from the cross. Already the vanguard of the company are turning towards them. Officers and sergeants mark off the column at intervals. The street remains deserted but for the soldiers and a few women, children and old men watching from their doorways. No one is throwing stones.
“Are they going away now?” Becky asked.
For a moment, Lydia wondered. The end of the column had turned the corner now and a clump of men detached from the rear and stepped towards the houses. As the end of the shortened column drew level with where they stood, another squad of men detached, lowered their muskets and approached the house. Four bayonets pressed on towards Lydia and her child and it dawned on her they were coming for her, coming for them.
“Move it, bitch!”
She dragged Becky back into the room as the four men squeezed through the doorway, spread out and, when they had grown accustomed to the light, began to smash everything they could lay their hands on, starting with her tea cups[ix].
[i] Weavers Strike of 1812. Radical Renfrew, Tom Leonard.
[ii] The History of Paisley, John Parkhill
[iii] 80th Foot, Staffordshire Volunteers
[iv] Proclamation for the formation of A Provisional Government, Glasgow, 1st April 1820
[v] Peterloo Massacre – Wikipedia
[vi] Parkhill ibid.
[vii] Cleggs were made of lead, in the shape of a top. An iron spike was inserted into the small end and feathers fitted to the broad end to create a sort of dart. Parkhill ibid.
[viii] Henry Hunt (politician) – Wikipedia
[ix] Although some leaders of the insurrection in Paisley, for example James Speirs, were acquitted by the jury despite the steering of the judiciary, many others fled to America. In late summer 1820, James Wilson, Andrew Hardie and John Baird were hanged and beheaded in Stirling and 19 others transported to Australia. Radical War – Wikipedia