Signed Royal Pardon. Issued for David Holmes, Martin, Brooks, Samuel Bartram, and Owen Hardingham, who had been found guilty of 'Riot and Machine Breaking' the previous January.

WILLIAM IV, King of Great Britain.

Published by July, 1831, 1831

About this Item

32 lines in neat black ink on two sides of a folded folio sheet, royal seal intact; old folds, paper flaws to lower margin of second leaf not affecting text. 'We in consideration of some circumstances humbly represented unto Us, are Graciously pleased to extend Our Grace and Mercy unto them and to Remit until them such part of their said sentences as remains yet to be undergone and performed', addressed to 'Our Trusty and Wellbeloved the Keeper of Norwich Castle and all others whom it may concern.' William IV, 1765-1837, was the third son of George III; he inherited the throne, aged 64, after his two older brothers died with no living legitimate children. With no expectation as a young man that he would become king, William served in the Royal Navy, and, following his return to England, lived with the Irish actress Dorothea Jordan with whom he had 10 children. He married Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen in 1818 and was known to be faithful to her. They lived first in Hanover and later in London. Though Adelaide was pregnant at least four times the couple had no surviving children; their first daughter lived only a few hours, Adelaide suffered a miscarriage during her second pregnancy, their second daughter lived less than three months, and the fourth known pregnancy resulted in the stillbirth of twin boys. These tragic losses ultimately resulted in Princess Alexandrina Victoria of Kent, the only child of William's younger brother Edward, to be named heir presumptive. The first years of William's reign were difficult, and this document is representative of one of the most significant issues that he faced as King. Enclosure Acts, which placed ownership of previously common land into the hands of wealthy landlords, meant that most farmers did not own the land they worked and were forced to rely on a cash wage from their landlord - about 6 million acres of land was enclosed between 1770 and 1830. Horse-powered threshing machines that could perform the work of many men had been introduced years earlier and resulted in the need for fewer labourers and the lowering of wages. The harvests of 1828 and 1829 had been terrible, and farm labourers were wary of another bad winter, especially since under the tithe laws, the church was entitled to a tenth of a parish's harvest. A culmination of these issues, as well as the inadequacy of poor law support, saw growing unrest in southern and eastern England, and the first threshing machines were targeted in Kent in the summer of 1830. As the riots spread, more threshing machines were destroyed along with tithe barns and workhouses, which were often burnt. The land-owning class was seriously threatened by these actions and the government took decisive action with nearly 2000 protesters being brought to trial in 1830-1831. Like the four men pardoned in this document, most individuals were sentenced to local jail time, though 481 were sentenced to transportation to penal colonies and 252 were sentenced to death - though only 19 were actually executed. Politically, radicals like William Cobbett used the riots to lobby for parliamentary reform, and it was for his articles on the riots that he was ultimately charged with Seditious Libel, though he was acquitted, much to the government's embarrassment. A general election had been triggered by the death of George IV resulting in the election of a Whig government, led by Earl Grey. The Swing Riots were deeply influential on the Whigs, particularly in regards to their reform policies, and the Great Reform Act of 1832 and the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 were both directly in answer to the actions of those discontented farm labourers. The King's popularity ebbed and flowed during his reign. He was initially popular with his citizens, but when he tried to reinstate the Tory Duke of Wellington to office following the resignation of Grey and other Whig leaders in response to the King refusing to create enough sympathetic peers to push the Reform Bill through Parl.

Seller Inventory # 103432

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Signed Royal Pardon. Issued for David Holmes, Martin, Brooks, Samuel Bartram, and Owen Hardingham, who had been found guilty of 'Riot and Machine Breaking' the previous January.
• Publisher: July, 1831
• Publication Date: 1831