The Nineteenth Century 123 



the country as a whole. Generally speaking, these variations can be 

 summed up by saying that the period 18 15 to 1837 was marked by 

 depression; that of 1838 to 1874 was marked by improvement and 

 prosperity; while after 1874 the century was agaua characterised by adver- 

 sity and difficulty. It is in the light of tliis general curve that the evidence 

 for Cambridgeshire must be examined. 



The County shared with the rest of England in the disastrous effects of 

 the Napoleonic wars. The year 18 15 brought peace and beggary. Between 

 1 814 and 1 8 16, agriculture passed suddenly from prosperity to extreme 

 depression. As Richard Preston asked, "Was Great Britain ever before in 

 so reduced and impoverished a condition?"' As for Cambridgeshire, 

 Lord Brougham, speaking in the House of Commons on 9 April 18 16, 

 said: 



The petition from Cambridgeshire presented at an early part of this evening, 

 has laid before you a fact to which all the former expositions of distress afforded 

 no parallel, that in one parish, every proprietor and tenant being ruined with a 

 single exception, the whole poor-rates of the parish thus wholly inhabited by 

 paupers, are now paid by an individual whose fortune, once ample, is thus entirely 

 swept away.* 



In the same year, it was said that "a detestable spirit of conspiracy" was 

 manifesting itself "in the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Huntingdon and 

 Cambridge, directed against houses, barns and rick-yards, which were 

 devoted to the flames ".3 This was generally ascribed to a "want of agri- 

 cultural employment, joined to the love of plunder ".3 In some localities, 

 the general unrest broke out into riots, and the number of labourers, 

 committed to the county gaol under the Vagrancy Law for "refusing to 

 work for the customary wages", rapidly increased from the twenties 

 onwards.* 



In December 1829, came a petition from the farmers of Ely to Parlia- 

 ment. It could but repeat what was well known already. The labourers, 

 "no longer able to maintain themselves by the sweat of their brows", 

 were driven "to the scanty pittance derived from the parish funds".5 

 Frequently, their distress sought a violent oudet. There was an outbreak of 



' Richard Preston, "Review of the Present Ruined Condition of the Agricultural 

 and Landed Interests", Pamphleteer, vii, 150 (1816). 



' Speeches of Henry, Lord Brougham, i, 504 (1838). Lord Ernie notes that, m 1815, 

 nineteen farms in the Isle of Ely were without tenants; and that the number of arrests 

 and executions for debt in the Isle increased from 57 in 1812-13 to 263 in 1814-15 

 {English Farming Past and Present (1932), pp- 322-3). 



3 Annual Reqister (1816), p. iv. 



t SeeE. M. Hampson, The Treatment of Poverty in Cambridgeshire, 1 597-1 834 (i934). 

 p. 196. 



5 See ibid. p. 215. 



