Regency Trivia – Fear of Revolution

Someone asked if the English had a fear of a French style revolution taking place in England. The answer is yes. Among many of the gentry and the aristocracy there was a real fear that a rebellion happening in England. This is a short description of some of the things that prompted the fear.

The first murmurings took place in the late 18^th century around the time of the French rebellion. However, it wasn’t until 1811, when the economic situation in England was fairly dire, especially for the lower and working classes, that one saw actual armed protests. This was also the time that weaving machines were introduced reducing the man power required for weaving cloth. Creating a fear that jobs would be lost. This fear gave rise to The Luddites, a radical group of English weavers and textile workers who destroyed weaving machinery as a form of protest. Mill owners hired men to shoot the protesters. By 1816, the military was called in to put down the rebellion.

Adding to the discontent in the country side, parliament passed the Corn Laws (for the Americans in the group, corn refers to all grains. Corn as we know is it called maize). The Corn Laws which kept the prices of grain artificially high and imposed tariffs that made importing grain too expensive, thus exacerbating wide spread hunger in parts of the country. Another problem was roving bands of soldiers who had come back from the war and had no work. The Tory government’s response to all of this was to crack down on all rebellions using force.

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