GROWTH UNDER STORMY SKIES. 229 



presented himself at the estate office for his wages, he was 

 told he must either give his word of honour that he would 

 not join the Union or else leave his work and his cottage. 

 To their honour, rather than surrender an elementary and 

 statutory right twenty-four men chose exile. 



" Unless they tell us they leave the Union they must 

 leave our employ." Thus spoke the agent. 1 And the ukase 

 went forth to all his lordship's villages Thorpe, Thorpe 

 Achurch, Lilford, Clopton, Aldwinckle, Wigsthorpe and 

 Tichmarsh. 



An attempt was made by the local branch secretary to 

 settle the matter with Lord Lilford, but the attempt was 

 not successful. Seven men employed on the home farm 

 who refused to leave the Union were instantly dismissed, 

 and no farmer on the Lilford estate dared to employ them. 

 These men, like nearly all the others, lived in Lord Lilford's 

 cottages and the branch secretary was forced to suffer 

 eviction. 



Charles Robinson, a horse-keeper, after eighteen years 

 of faithful service received notice to leave his employment 

 and quit the house in which he was born. His mother, 

 aged eighty, who had spent her whole life there, was heart- 

 broken at being turned out. 



Mr. W. R. Smith witnessed the throwing out of the fur- 

 niture on to the roadside in the rain. Fortunately he 

 managed to enlist the sympathy of a farmer who protected 

 the beds and the few household gods which form all 

 there is of a labourer's furniture from the weather, by 

 housing them in a barn. 



The effect of Lord Lilford's act of feudal tyranny was 

 electrical. Every workman in the county, whether he was 

 a bootmaker or a farm labourer, felt lowered in the eyes of 

 his fellow-men by this action. It roused the whole country- 

 side. On a Sunday, men and women on foot and on cycles 

 surged into the little hamlet of Thorpe from Northampton, 

 Wellingborough, and Kettering, and in a village boasting 

 of not more than twenty-five houses 1,000 people assembled. 

 Speeches were made -by Mr. McCurdy, M.P., Mr. Lees 



1 Northampton Mercury, April 17, 1914. 



