Brontës (12 page)

Almost a month later, having obtained a new set of letters testimonial from Dewsbury and a new nomination to the perpetual curacy of Hartshead-cum-Clifton from John Buckworth, Patrick was relicensed, read himself in properly and took lawful possession.
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There was no time to sit back and relax, however, for problems were already building up in the parish. Caught in a terrible trap of inescapable poverty, the working classes of the industrial West Riding had little hope of relief. The interminable war with France disrupted supplies of wool and cotton and cut off important markets for finished cloth and textiles: unemployment, already high, spiralled further and those still working had to accept reduced wages. The cottage-based industries were being forced out of business by the introduction of new, more efficient machinery in the mills which produced more cloth, of a more consistent quality, at a much reduced cost in terms of labour. In many of the West Riding towns Poor Rates, the parochial taxes calculated on property values to provide food, fuel and clothing for the poor, which were intended only as a last resort, were levied four times during the year 1812. At a time when a loaf of bread cost 1s 8d. some 50,000 people in the manufacturing districts had only 2½d. a day, a mere eighth of that, for food.
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In desperation, and urged on by Jacobin sympathizers who hoped to imitate the French Revolution in England, malcontents began to meet in secret. Calling themselves Luddites, after Ned Lud, the semi-mythical Leicestershire man who had led the first rioters in the destruction of machinery, they took revenge on the only identifiable cause of the problems which was close at hand: the new machines.

The first attacks in the West Riding began in February 1812 in the Huddersfield area, about six miles south of Hartshead. Inspired by the Nottingham Luddites, whose activities had been recorded in the
Leeds Mercury
(no wonder Patrick made such a point of reading it!), the local Luddites made their first move right under Patrick's nose. They attacked a
consignment of cropping machines as it crossed Hartshead Moor on its way to Rawfolds Mill, near Cleckheaton. Throughout February and March there were a number of attacks on mills in the Huddersfield area and many shearing frames were smashed to pieces. It must have been a considerable blow to Patrick when, despite his admonitions from the pulpit and in print, his parishioners not only actively joined in but also took a leading role in two of the worst incidents of Luddite violence.
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Under cover of darkness, on the night of 11 April, a large force of Luddites drawn mainly from Hartshead, Clifton, Roberttown and Hightown, all within Patrick's parish, gathered in the fields belonging to Sir George Armitage behind the Three Nuns public house. Their leaders were almost all from Huddersfield, but included William Hall, a cropper from Hartshead who lived in Hightown.
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With military precision, the men were drawn into ranks and formed into companies according to their weapons: musketmen, hammermen, axemen, pistoliers and the unarmed who were to use whatever came to hand. Then, in silence – but surely not unobserved – the massed bands marched across Hartshead Moor, passing close to both the church and Patrick's lodgings at Lousy Thorn farm. Their objective was Rawfolds Mill, a couple of miles from Hartshead. William Cartwright, the mill owner, had been a leading light in introducing new machinery and in publicly defying the Luddites to attack him. He was supported enthusiastically by Patrick's friend, the Reverend Hammond Roberson, though Patrick himself seems to have taken a much less prominent role in the politics of the affair.

Cartwright was prepared for the attack, with lookouts posted and a number of soldiers and other armed men positioned inside the mill. At 12.30 in the morning, there was a violent assault on the building which broke the windows and showered a volley of shots into the mill. While the Luddites tried repeatedly to force an entrance, to the accompaniment of shouts of ‘Bang up!', ‘Murder them!' and ‘Pull down the door!', the guards fired continuously at them. After about twenty minutes, the attempt was given up and the Luddites withdrew, taking their wounded with them but leaving two behind. Samuel Hartley of Halifax and John Booth of Huddersfield, both mortally wounded, were carried on litters to the Star Inn at Roberttown by Cartwright's men but died a few hours later: the inquest found judgements of ‘justifiable homicide'. The defeated Luddites fled towards Huddersfield, passing through Hightown and Clifton, where they received food and help for their injuries: it was said that the road was stained
with their blood for four miles from Rawfolds. There were no casualties at all among Cartwright's men, though one soldier, who had refused to fire on the Luddites, was court-martialled and sentenced to 300 lashes, which would probably have proved fatal; when the sentence was about to be carried out at Rawfolds the following Tuesday, the crowd was in such an ugly mood that Cartwright secured its commutation to twenty-five lashes.
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The Luddites, then as now, attracted both sympathy and hostility. Their appalling living conditions, their unemployment and poverty and the sheer desperation which drove them to violence provoked concern among the more liberal minded; and there is still something inherently romantic about this last-ditch attempt of a doomed band of men fighting the inexorable tide of industrial progress. But violence was no solution and, by causing widespread fear and alarm, did nothing to help the Luddites' case. Patrick undoubtedly sided with the establishment in condemning the attack, though he did not go as far as Hammond Roberson, who turned up when the alarm sounded at Rawfolds Mill with sword in hand. He probably also approved of the signing of a testimonial to Cartwright and the presentation to him of a subscription which raised £3000 in recognition of his spirited defence of the mill.
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Given the fact that there was a strong feeling in favour of the Luddites in his parish, Patrick may have feared reprisals. It seems likely that it was in this period that he acquired his lifelong habit of keeping a loaded pistol in the house overnight. The discharging of the bullet out of the window each morning would become a ritual which aroused much future comment.
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The threat of assassination was real. A week to the day after the attack on Rawfolds Mill, an attempt was made on the life of William Cartwright. As he was returning from Huddersfield, presumably in the vicinity of Hartshead and Clifton, shots were fired at him from behind the hedges on each side of the road; the attack took place in broad daylight but Cartwright escaped unhurt.
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William Horsfall, a woollen manufacturer from Marsden, a village about ten miles away on the other side of Huddersfield, was not so lucky. On 28 April he was ambushed and murdered by four armed working men, presumed to be Luddites. He, too, had been unremitting in his efforts to catch the men who had attacked Rawfolds and had, for some years, employed highly efficient cropping machinery in his mill at Marsden.
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The murder of Horsfall, and the vigorous prosecution of the search for those responsible, marked the virtual end of active Luddite resistance,
though groups of armed men continued to meet and drill in secret on the moors above and around Huddersfield. The following January, a full nine months after the events had taken place, sixty-six Luddites were tried at York Castle under a special commission: seventeen were executed, including three for the murder of Horsfall and five for the attack on Rawfolds.
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The Reverend Thomas Atkinson, Patrick's successor at Hartshead, later told his servant that some of the bodies of the executed men were brought back to Hartshead and buried secretly at dead of night in the churchyard there. Patrick had seen the disturbed state of the churchyard and discovered that the burial had taken place, but let it pass without comment, seeing that no harm had been done and believing it was wisest not to inflame popular feeling.
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This story is clearly apocryphal as there was no need for secrecy in the burial of any of the Luddites, most of whom received public funerals. Nevertheless, it indicates a belief in Hartshead that Patrick was not totally without sympathy for the Luddite cause.

Though the excitements and turmoil of the uprisings must have given Patrick worry and work, by the middle of the year he had something else to occupy his mind. He was now thirty-five years old, ‘a man of very retired habits, but attentive to his clerical duties'.
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He had a wide acquaintance among the clergymen of the district and still enjoyed the company of the young men he had taught in the Sunday school at Dewsbury, many of whom, like the Newsome brothers, made the effort to come over regularly to Hartshead to hear him preach.
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There was the pleasant and inspirational company of the Buckworths at the vicarage in Dewsbury and the renewal of friendship with William Morgan in Bradford. But now that he had his own parish and a post as perpetual curate from which he could not be evicted, short of some major catastrophe, Patrick could afford to consider marriage. No doubt Mary Burder sprang instantly to mind, but her faith and the fact that his letters to Wethersfield remained unanswered effectively ruled her out. It was no easy task to find an eligible bride who was capable of inspiring at least affection, if not love, in him. Fortunately, Patrick was to find a woman who possessed all the qualities he held most dear.

In January 1812, the Wesleyan Methodists had opened a new boarding school for the sons of ministers and preachers at Woodhouse Grove, an elegant, stone-built Georgian mansion at Rawdon, on the northern outskirts of Bradford and Leeds. It was set in seven acres of garden and had a further eight acres of rich parkland running down to the River Aire.
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As their first headmaster and acting ‘Commercial and Mathematical Master' they had
appointed John Fennell, Patrick's friend from Wellington; he was expected to be resident and his wife, assisted by their daughter, Jane, was to act as matron and housekeeper to the establishment.
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It was only a matter of time till Patrick, a dozen or so miles away at Hartshead, came over to renew his friendship with the family.

Doubtless there were earlier informal visits, but the first important one was made in July when Fennell, anxious to satisfy his board of governors as to the quality of the teaching at the new school, invited Patrick to come to Woodhouse Grove for a few days to examine the boys in the Classics. Patrick did so and presented his report to the committee; it was an unsatisfactory one and, on his recommendation, Mr Burgess, the ‘Classical Master', was dismissed shortly afterwards.
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While he was there, Patrick was introduced to Maria Branwell, Fennell's niece by marriage, who was helping her aunt with the domestic side of running the school.

Maria was twenty-nine years old, petite and elegant though not pretty; pious and something of a blue-stocking but also of a bright, cheerful and witty disposition. She was the daughter of a successful, property-owning grocer and tea merchant of Penzance, Thomas Branwell, who had died in 1808; her mother, Anne Carne, the daughter of a silversmith in the town, had died a year after her husband. Maria had grown up in a totally different world from Patrick. The eighth of eleven children, at least three of whom had not survived infancy, Maria had enjoyed all the benefits of belonging to a prosperous family in a small town.
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Penzance at the turn of the nineteenth century was a busy sea port, visited by traders from all over the world. Its position, at almost the southernmost tip of the Cornish peninsula, made it somewhat isolated from the rest of the country but also placed it in the forefront of the war against France. Indeed, the people of Penzance had been the first in England to learn of the victory of Trafalgar and the death of Nelson when two fishermen had intercepted the ship bringing home the news.
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Though the land routes to London were only just being developed, Penzance was a regular port of call for ships passing between the capital, Bristol and Plymouth, so trade was brisk. The townsmen exported local pilchards, tin and copper and imported luxury goods such as tea, brandy, wines and snuff, which had to lie in their bonded warehouses until they had passed through the customs house beside the quay. The Branwell family were heavily involved in the import trade. Maria's father owned cellars at the quay, retailing and wholesaling the goods through his grocery shop in Market Square. He also owned
a substantial amount of property in and around Penzance, including a brewery, the Golden Lion Inn on Market Square and Tremenheere House, the only mansion in the town. Maria's brother, Benjamin, continued the businesses after his father's death and, like him, was a prominent member of the town corporation, serving as mayor in 1809.
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Penzance in Maria's day was therefore a thriving market town of some three to four thousand inhabitants and, because of its trade, with a far wider outlook than its isolated and provincial position would otherwise have merited. It was the most important banking centre in Cornwall, banks like that of the Bolitho family being founded and funded out of the profits of the local tin smelting industry.
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The Branwells not only had substantial sums invested in this bank but Maria's cousin, Joseph, who married her sister, joined its staff after abandoning his career as a schoolteacher.
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There was also plenty of intellectual and artistic activity. The town had had its own Ladies' Book Club, Agricultural, Provident, Humane, Scientific and Literary Societies and a Penzance Institute since before Maria was born. There were concert rooms behind the Old Turk's Head Inn and Assembly Rooms, funded by public subscription and built in 1791 by Maria's uncle, Richard Branwell, where balls were held throughout the winter months.
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