A HISTORY OF NOTTINGHAMSHIRE 



its ranks were the members of the Female Political Association lately formed 

 in the county. 1 On 12, 13, and 14 August of the next year the Chartists 

 kept their notable ' three days' holiday.' Those of Mansfield united with 

 those of Button and the villages round, and marched in procession along a 

 lane outside Mansfield. Special constables were ordered to seize the ring- 

 leaders, and a detachment of the 5th Dragoons was ordered to be in readiness 

 to overwhelm the rebels. 8 They seem, however, to have been perfectly 

 passive, and even the Nottingham Mercury confessed that the extreme pro- 

 ceedings taken against them were quite uncalled for. 8 However, the next 

 year, in anticipation of an insurrectionary movement, special measures were 

 taken to secure Nottingham. From 10 to 17 August the mayor was in 

 constant attendance at the police office, troops were under arms every 

 evening, and the Rifle Brigade was in constant readiness. But the year passed 

 by quietly with no attempt at an organized meeting. 4 



The spirit of progress and reform which marked Nottinghamshire in 

 the early nineteenth century has grown strong in its old centres in this 

 early twentieth century. Newark, the royalist centre of the Civil War, still 

 maintains its old-time reputation, and as in 1833 it was the first constituency 

 of Gladstone, then ' the rising hope of the stern and unbending Tories,' so 

 now as ever it represents the Conservative element in the county. 



1 Nott. Rev. Nov. 1838. * Ibid. Aug. 1839. 



* Nott. Mercury, Aug. 1839. * Bailey, op. cit. iv, 415. 





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