The Turnpike System 79 



dom associated themselves together, both by day and by night, 

 and cut down, pulled down, burnt and otherwise destroyed 

 several turnpike gates and houses which have been erected by 

 authority of Parliament for repairing divers roads by tolls, 

 thereby preventing such tolls from being taken, and lessening 

 the security of divers of her Majesty's good subjects for 

 considerable sums of money which they have advanced 

 upon credit of the said Acts, and deterring others from making 

 like advances." Persons convicted of such offences were 

 without any discretion being given to the justices to be 

 committed for three months' imprisonment, and were, also, 

 to be whipped at the market cross. These penalties appear 

 to have been unavailing, since we find that four years later the 

 punishment, even for a first offence, was increased to seven 

 years' transportation. 



But the hostility increased rather than diminished. In the 

 " Gentleman's Magazine " for 1749 there is an account of some 

 turnpike riots in Somerset and Gloucestershire which began 

 on the night of the 24th of July and were not suppressed until 

 the 5th of the following month. A start was made with the 

 destruction of the gates near Bedminster by " great numbers 

 of people." On the following night a crowd bored holes in the 

 gates at Don John's Cross, a mile from Bristol, blew up the 

 gates with gunpowder, and destroyed the toll-house. Cross- 

 bars and posts were erected next day, in place of the gates, 

 and the turnpike commissioners took it in turns to enforce 

 payment of the tolls. At night " a prodigious body of 

 Somersetshire people," armed with various instruments of 

 destruction, and some of them disguised in women's clothes, 

 went along the roads to an accompaniment of drum-beating 

 and much shouting, demolished the turnpikes, and pulled 

 down the toll-houses. Re-erected, the gates were guarded 

 by a " body of seamen, well armed with musquets, pistols 

 and cutlasses " ; but two nights afterwards the rioters were 

 out again, this time with rusty swords, pitch-forks, axes, guns, 

 pistols and clubs. They demolished and burned some 

 turnpikes which had been put up a third time, and destroyed 

 others besides. By August 3 " almost all the turnpikes and 

 turnpike-houses " in the neighbourhood of Bristol had been 

 demolished ; but a report dated Bristol, August 12, says : 

 " By the arrival of six troops of dragoon guards on the 5th, 



