A HISTORY OF NORFOLK 



threatened an impeachment of the ministers should any great stroke be struck 

 in Norfolk for want of those precautions which had been pointed out to the 

 honourable gentlemen.'^ By 1804 there were 32,000 men of all ranks ready 

 for the reception of any invading army, though, happily, they were never 

 called upon. 



In 1806 the Wodehouse party was again severely beaten at the polls, 

 ' Coke of Norfolk ' and William Windham being easily successful, though 

 unseated on a petition. In the next year Sir J. H. Astley (ancestor of Lord 

 Hastings) and Edward Coke, esq. of Derby were elected, probably by 

 arrangement. Later in the year, however, ' Coke of Norfolk ' took his 

 kinsman's place, a seat having been found for Edward Coke at Derby. 



There were of course great rejoicings at Norwich and in the county 

 generally at the news of the victory of Waterloo, but the happiness of this 

 year was greatly marred locally by the Corn Law riots. These were most 

 serious at Downham, where the military had to be called out, and at the 

 subsequent trials sixteen of the rioters were condemned to death, though two 

 only were executed. In 1822 there were serious rick-burning riots and 

 much open destruction of threshing-machines, but these troubles were 

 suppressed without loss of life. There were also the weavers' riots in 1826, 

 and renewed rick burnings in 183 1, which were probably not unconnected 

 with the agitation which brought in reform. The Reform Bill in 1832 

 disfranchised Castle Rising and divided Norfolk into two divisions, each 

 returning two members. In 1867-8 Thetford and Yarmouth were dis- 

 franchised, and the county received two members more. This arrangement 

 was again changed by the Redistribution Bill of 1885, which divided the 

 county into six single-member constituencies, North-Western, South- Western, 

 North, East, Mid, and South. Yarmouth, which had been disfranchised in 

 1867 for notorious corruption, now received one member from King's Lynn. 

 The latest incident in the political history of Yarmouth is fresh in the 

 memory of all. 



During the reign of the late Queen Victoria the only signs of any local 

 trouble or political ferment were those seen at the time of the Chartist 

 movement in 1839 and 1841. The movement seems, however, to have found 

 but very little support in Norfolk, and the subsequent political history of the 

 county has been that of the various contests between the two political parties 

 of the day. 



The two regular battalions of the present territorial regiment are 

 furnished by the old Ninth Foot, which in its early days had no connexion 

 with Norfolk, having been raised in Gloucestershire during Monmouth's 

 rebellion, though Sedgemoor was fought and won before the new corps was 

 ready for the field.^ It then saw long and honourable service at the passage 

 of the Boyne, in the Peninsula,' with Galway, at Belle-Isle, Havannah and 

 elsewhere, though fated to share the bitterness of Burgoyne's surrender at 

 Saratoga.* As early as the reign of Queen Anne, the Ninth bore the famous 

 regimental badge of Britannia, but armed with a spear, which was officially 

 confirmed to it in 1799.^ The Irish Army Lists after 1746 mention its 



' Pellew, Lift of Lord SiJmouth, ii, 232. * Hist. Rec. of Ninth Reg. (1848), et seq. 



' At Almanza the regiment was nearly annihilated. 



* Lawrence-Archer, British Army, 173. ' Hist. Rec. ut supra, 37. 



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