battery still exists, but the artillery disappeared | Cartwright's mill, in the fields of Sir George long ago; and though now walled up, the outlines of the embrasures formerly left for the cannon to be discharged through may yet be distinctly discerned. In addition to these means of defence, the workmen employed at the mills were armed, and kept watch and ward during the night." Mr. Horsfall, resolute and prompt, was not to be easily frightened, and the Marsden croppers were none of them Luddites. The inhabitants of Marsden and the surrounding villages were also compelled to deliver up all firearms in their possession, until the reign of terror should pass away. Armitage, at the obelisk (or, as the Luddites quaintly nicknamed it, "the dumb steeple"). When more than a hundred men had assembled, Mellor and Thorpe, the two young leaders, mustered the Luds, and called them over, not by names, but by numbers, in military fashion; there were three companies-the musket, the pistol, and the hatchet companies; the rest carried sledge-hammers, adzes, and bludgeons. They were formed in lines two deep, William Hale (No. 7), a cropper from Longroyd Mill, and a man named Rigge, being ordered by Mellor to go last and drive the Luds up, and see that no coward stole off in the darkness; for there were many Luds who only joined through fear of being assassinated, and had no real heart in the matter. The order to march was at last given; the band proceeded over wild Hartshead Moor, and from thence into a close sixty yards from Rawfold Mill, where the musket-men put on masks, got ready their firearms, and took a draught of rum to cheer them on to the attack. Mellor then formed his company of musket-men into lines of thirteen abreast, and moved on to the doomed mill, followed by Thorpe and his pistol-men. In the meantime Mr. Cartwright, who had apprehensions of an attack, was asleep in the great stone many-windowed building. The great water-wheels were still; the only sound was the ripple of the water in the mill-dam. The alarm-bell, rising above the roof, stood out dark against the sky. There was no light at any window, and no noise. The five workmen and their allies, the five soldiers, were asleep. The armed men, intent on destruction and ready for murder, to their design stole on like ghosts. Soon after twelve Mr. Cartwright, who had just fallen asleep, was awoke by the There were both infantry and cavalry in Marsden. The 10th King's Bays, the 15th Hussars, and the Scots Grays, were alternately billeted (at quite inadequate rates) in the town, impoverishing and sometimes ruining the landlords, irritating the high-spirited, oppressing the neutral, and contaminating the whole neighbourhood. These regiments were not allowed to remain long in one place, for fear of the men becoming tainted with Luddite opinions. The soldiers marched every night to the market-place at Marsden, and, having been paraded, were then told off into two divisions, the one to patrol on the road to Ottiwells and Valeside, and the other to spend the night between Marsden, Woodbottom Mill, and Lingards. As their movements were well known, and the clash of their swords and the tramp of their horses' feet were to be heard at a long distance at night, it was easy for the Luddites to steal away behind hedges, crouch in plantations, or take by-roads to their work of destruction. The cats had belled themselves this time, and the mice could play as they liked. On the 11th of April fire was set to the gun-violent barking of a large dog kept chained powder lying about the West Riding. On inside the mill for such a purpose. that day the croppers at Mr. Wood's mill at Longroyd Bridge, near Huddersfield, were planning a night attack on the mill of a Mr. Cartwright, at Liversedge. The leading conspirator was an impetuous cropper, named George Mellor (twenty-two). His chief lieutenants were Thomas Smith (twenty-three), William Thorpe (twenty-two), and a mean subtle fellow, afterwards an informer, Benjamin Walker (twenty-five). Joshua Dickenson, a cropper, came to the shop on the Saturday before-named, and brought a pint of powder, a bag of bullets, and two or three cartridges, to distribute among the Longroyd Mill men. They met at night, about ten o'clock, when it was not quite dark, about three miles from The mill-owner leaps out of bed to give the alarm; as he opens his bedroom door he hears twenty or thirty of the three hundred panes of glass on the ground-floor shattered in; at the same time there is a rattle and blaze of musketry at the ground and upper windows; the bullets whistle, and splinter, and flatten against the inner walls. At the same time a score of sledge-hammers are heard working at the chief door, and voices shouting and threatening at the other entrances, and indeed on all sides, except that on which the mill-pool lies. The hour is come at last. But Mr. Cartwright is Yorkshire too, resolute, bold, and of a good heart. He shouts to his men; they fly to arms, and load and cock their muskets. He and one or two of his workpeople run to the alarm-bell and pull fiercely at the rope, till it clashes out its summons to the Hussars at Liversedge, and friends near or far. This drives the Luddites stark staring mad as the firing becomes hotter; and a dozen of them cry out: "Fire at the bell-rope!" "Shoot away the bell!" "D that bell! get it, lads!" (For they knew the soldiers would be on them soon with their sabres if that bell clanged many minutes longer). Presently the bell-rope breaks, and two men are sent up to clash the bell and fire alternately. Cartwright and his men fire from the upper loops of the mill obliquely at the howling crowd that flash off their guns, and ply their hammers, and snap their pistols at the detested mill, where the ten men are glaring at them from under covert. The fire from and against the mill is hot, pelting, and furious. "Bring up Enoch!" roar stentorian voices. A big hammerman advances to the door, and pounds at it with Enoch as if it were a block of iron. The rest shout: "Bang up, my lads!" "In with you!" "Are you in, my lads?" "Keep close." "In with you, lads!" "D them! Kill them, every one!" of his hat. The enraged Luddite instantly leans in and fires at where the flash came from, taking the best aim he can. As he said afterwards: "I was determined to do it, though my hand was shot off for it, and hand and pistol had gone into the mill." It is very dark: nothing can be seen on either side but the jet of fire upwards and downwards as the besieged fire from behind the paving-stones, and the Luddites from their platoons. But now from the clamorous crowd outside came groans and screams; and the mob, either intimidated, dreading the coming sabres, or falling short of powder and ball, began to slacken their fire. That gave the mill people fresh courage, for they knew the Luddites were losing heart. Now the firing entirely ceased, except a shot or two at intervals. The wounded men were groaning with pain, and their comrades were trying to carry them off. The Luddites broke and separated towards Huddersfield; one man fell in the mill-dam; others slunk back to the Dumb Steeple Field; a few crept up the beck. Mr. Cartwright, listening, could hear the heavy groaning of the poor wretches left under the windows wounded, but he was afraid to go out lest it should afterwards be said that he Mellor then cries, with horrible impreca- had murdered the stragglers in cold blood. tions "The door is opened!" But it is not. They are wrong this time. Enoch has been hard and heavy at it, it is true; the panels are broken, so that a man's head might go through, but the locks and bolts are not burst yet. The planks are split with hatchets, the malls have broken and chopped it into holes, but the door still keeps faithful and fast. The stone jambs of one entrance are wrenched out, the frameworks are smashed in, still Cartwright and his men keep up their fire from between the flagstones that barricade the upper windows, and some of the Luddites are struck. There is a cry that some one is shot, and a man has fallen on his face. Booth is down, and there is hot blood on Dean's hands. Dean has been shot through the door as he plied his hatchet. There are only nine panes of glass left in the ground-floor; but Enoch has failed this, time. The firing has now gone on for twenty minutes, and still flashes to and fro over the mill-pool, from door to window, and from window to door. A man named Walker is looking in at a broken window when a ball from one of Cartwright's men strikes the edge Then the victorious defenders rejoiced, but kept the alarm-bell going. On a friend arriving, Cartwright went cautiously out and examined the field of battle, and removed the wounded men to a public-house near. When the day broke, Cartwright went and examined the ruined mill: the windows were destroyed, the doors chopped and broken, the paths to Huddersfield strewn with malls, hatchets, and hammers. There was a Luddite's hat floating in a dismal way about the mill-dam. That night many glimpses were obtained of the retreating rioters. Some of the frightened Luddites were soon tracked. On the night of the attack on Rawfold Mill, a man named Brooks, who was wet through and without a hat, called at High Town on a man named Naylor, from whom Mellor, the leading spirit all through this bad affair, borrowed a hat for his coadjutor. On the day after, a woman living at Lockwood saw a great many cloth-dressers come to the house of a man named Brook, whom she heard evidently telling "some sorrowful tale." She could tell that by the motion of his hand. She heard only a few words, and those were: "That of all the dismallest dins anybody ever heard, that was the dismallest, and that you might have heard it half a mile, and I had rather be clemmed to death than be in such a stir again." Before any of the men could be arrested, the irritation produced by the failure of the attack on Rawfold's mill had led to a fresh crime. A day or two after the repulse the croppers at Mr. Wood's mill at Longroyd's Bridge were talking together, lamenting the loss of life amongst the Luddites at Cartwright's mill. Mellor, always foremost, then said there was no way of smashing the machinery but by shooting the masters. No one present seems to have protested against this proposition. Mellor, who had been to Russia, had brought back with him a large pistol of a peculiar kind, with a barrel half a yard long. It had been sold to a man named Hall for some pigeons. This pistol was borrowed on the afternoon of the 28th of April. At Hall's house, Mellor loaded this pistol so heavily, that Hall asked Mellor if he meant to fire that. He thought the piece would jump back. Mellor replied coolly, "Yes; I mean to give Horsfall that." About five o'clock that day Mellor came into a room at Longroyd Mill, where a man named Walker was at work with three other men, and asked him to go with him and shoot Mr. Horsfall. The man did not then consent; but half an hour after, Mellor came again, put a loaded and primed pistol into his hand, and told him he must go with him and shoot Horsfall. Walker examined the pistol, found it nearly full, and consented. This Mr. Horsfall-the man whom the four Luddites waited for in the narrow strip of plantation on the Huddersfield road-was an excitable, impetuous man, violent in manner, but kind and forgiving to his own workpeople. Against the Luddites, however, he was always implacable. Though he had offered to his neighbours, the Armitages, to pull down the obnoxious frames, he had been heard to express his wish to ride up to the saddle-girths in Luddite blood. The children, as he rode through Lingard's Wood, used to run out and cry, "I'm General Lud!" and he would invariably pursue the urchins with his horsewhip. This rash and impulsive man was about forty, and in the full flush of vigorous manhood. It was said that the Luddites had, on the night of the defeat at Rawfold's, tossed up a shilling to settle whether Cartwright's mill or Horsfall's mill should be first attacked. The other men were in a wood twenty yards nearer Huddersfield. They were to fire after Mellor and Thorpe had fired. This was at about six o'clock. At about half-past five Mr. Horsfall has mounted at the door of the George Hotel, Huddersfield, rash and defiant as usual, and ridden off. A few minutes after he was out of sight, Mr. Horsfall's friend, a Mr. Eastwood of Slaithwaite, who had often expostulated with the daring and obnoxious mill-owner on the imprudence of his intemperate language about the Luddites, called at the George to propose, for protection and companionship, to ride home with him. On hearing he had gone, he cantered quickly after him, hoping to overtake him. About six Mr. Horsfall pulled up his horse at the Warren House Inn at Crossland Moor. Finding there two of his old work people, Mr. Horsfall gave each a glass of liquor in a friendly way. He did not himself alight, but on the saddle tossed off a steaming glass of rum and water, and then rode off flushed with the grog. A man named Parr was about a hundred and fifty yards behind him. All the way from Huddersfield there had been an intermittent stream of people returning homeward-farmers in gigs, labourers with carts, and young squires riding gaily back to their country places. When Mr. Horsfall comes abreast of the plantation, Parr sees four men in dark-coloured clothes stooping about under the boughs. All at once there comes a crack, as of a gun, and a puff of smoke; then another. Mr. Horsfall's horse jibs around, and the rider falls with his face on the horse's neck. Two shots had been fired. By a great effort the wounded man raises himself painfully up by the horse's mane, and calls out "Murder!" At that moment a man in a bottle-green top-coat (one of the four in ambuscade) springs on the wall with one hand and both feet. Parr, riding up, seeing this, called out to the murderer, "What, are you not contented yet?" and rode fast up to the wounded man, who was already dripping with blood. Horsfall said to the farmer coming so providentially to his assistance: "Good man, you are a stranger to me, but pray ride on to Mr. Horsfall's house" (his brother's), "and get assistance. I am shot." Parr, supporting him in his arms-for he grew sick and faint, and was falling-said: "Are you Mr. Horsfall of Marsden?" As he groaned "I am," the blood spurted from his side, and he fell off his horse. Parr then drew him to the side of the road, and a clothier, named Bannister, supported him in his arms till two boys came up with a cart, and removed the dying man to the Warren House. A labourer in the adjacent fields, who saw the murder perpetrated, was seized with terror, and fled. Another man, ignorant of the murder, saw four men run and clamber over a wall into Dungeon Wood. In getting over the bars, part of a pistol was seen under one of the men's coats, and the ploughman said to himself: "There go Luds; we shall have mischief tonight!" When the surgeon came, he found poor | their precautions. The head-quarters of the Horsfall's pulse weak, faint, and tremulous, cavalry were at the house now belonging to and he was pale and sick. One ball had passed Mr. Robert Taylor. It was then the principal through his left side to his right side, and inn in the village, and known as the Old Red nearly cut the femoral artery. The other ball Lion, kept by a landlord named John Race. had pierced his left thigh. He died in about The large room still extending over the entire thirty-eight hours. building-now applied to a far different purpose was converted into barracks for the cavalry, their horses being kept in the adjoining stables. At Ottiwells, where a portion of the infantry was continually on guard during the night, prompt measures against a probable attack were taken. Watch and ward was maintained by the soldiery and the local constabulary, a strict surveillance was kept over all suspected individuals, and no lights were permitted in any dwellings after nine o'clock in the evening. It was naturally anticipated that Woodbottom Mill and its proprietors would be the next objects of vengeance, and preparations were made to frustrate it. For months past Enoch and James Taylor had slept in the mill in consequence of their lives being threatened and their own dwellings being unsafe, and they formed part of the mill garrison at night. Their future partner, Arthur Hirst, was the woollen engineer at the mill, and he vigorously laboured to convert the factory into a fortified place, becoming for the time a military engineer. The windows of the first story were barricaded. The doors and window-shutters were coated inside with sheetiron. All communication between the first and upper stories could be cut off, and the defenders inside were enabled to fire upon an attacking force from the upper stories while sheltered themselves. A trap-door on a floor over the water-wheel had been so ingeniously planned by Arthur Hirst, that if the rioters had gained an entrance they would, on touching the flooring, drop through into the wheelrace below." The man (probably Mellor), seeing the pistol was observed, drew his top-coat down over it. Smith and Walker hid their pistols in two ant-hills in the wood, and also Mellor's powderhorn. Mellor and Thorpe then ordered their companions to go Honley way, and gave them two shillings to buy beer. They went on two miles further to Honley, and there drank seven or eight pints of ale. There was a drunken collier there, and the collier, pleased with Smith's excellent whistling, got up and tried to dance. Soon after, some pale, frightened men came in from Huddersfield market, and brought word that Mr. Horsfall had been shot, and was lying half-dead at the Warren House. The next day Walker was sent for by Mellor to come into his shop at Longroyd Mill. Mellor, Thorpe, and Smith then produced a Bible, and ordered him to kiss it, and swear to keep the secret "in all its circumstances.' Six other workmen had already been sworn. Mellor had burned his finger in firing, and it was then bound up, while Thorpe's face had been scratched in running through the planta tion. Mellor and Thorpe's pistols had been left by the former at his cousin's at Dungeon Wood, where the apprentices hid them under some flocks, and after that in the laite. At this house Mellor also left his own bottle-green top-coat and Thorpe's, and took his cousin's drab-coat away as a disguise. The Luddites were now triumphant, while quiet and honest people were frantic with fear. We draw upon our local authority for a picture of the aspect of things at this crisis. There were, however, brave men still resolute and determined. "At Marsden, on the receipt of the intelligence, the authorities, undismayed, prepared for all emergencies and redoubled Such, however, was the fear of the vengeance of the Luddites, that Mellor and his companions remained undiscovered for nearly a year. Though two thousand pounds (a large sum for poor workmen) were offered for their apprehension, they remained going in and out at Longroyd Mill just as usual, though several dozen men must have known of their guilt. At last, Benjamin Walker, tempted by the reward, betrayed them, and was admitted evidence for the crown. A special commission was held at York before Baron Thomas and Judge Le Blanc for the trial of the Luddites, sixty-four in number, who were concerned in the disturbances in the West Riding. The assizes commenced on Saturday, and detested. His ill-earned money did not prosper; he became poor, and in his old age had to apply for parish relief at Huddersfield. On the 9th of January, Haigh, Dean, Ogden, the three Brooks, Walker, and Hirst were tried for the attack on Cartwright's mill. Haigh, Dean, Ogden, Thomas Brook, and Walker were found guilty and hanged. The rest were acquitted. January 2d, 1813, and terminated on the 12th of the same month. Amongst the prisoners were three of the murderers of Mr. Horsfall, namely, George Mellor, William Thorpe, and "The members of the firm of Messrs. AbraThomas Smith. The evidence against them ham and John Horsfall took the death of their was conclusive. The prisoners were defended son and nephew greatly to heart; and the by Henry, afterwards Lord Brougham. At father, Mr. Abraham Horsfall, from thencethat day it was a peculiarity of the law in forth appeared to imbibe a dislike to Marsden. trials for such crimes as the prisoners were The use of the obnoxious machinery was discharged with, that while their counsel could continued at Ottiwells, and cropping by hand cross-examine the witnesses for the crown, and resumed; and in a few years afterwards their examine the witnesses for the defence, they mill property in Marsden was disposed of, could not address the jury on behalf of the Bank bottom Mills passing into the possession accused. This palpable and cruel injustice no of Messrs. Norris, Sykes, and Priestley; and longer exists. Mr. Justice Le Blanc, the pre- Ottiwells into that of Messrs. Abraham and siding judge, summed up the evidence clearly William Kinder. It is related that, after his and impartially. At the close of the summing- son's death, Mr. Abraham Horsfall never again up the jury retired, and returned in twenty- entered the mill at Ottiwells, and when riding five minutes, bringing in a verdict of "Guilty" past on his way to Bankbottom, he invariably against all the prisoners, who, upon being averted his face from the mill, as if its very asked if they had anything to urge why sen- sight was hateful and painful to him." tence of death should not be passed upon them, severally declared that they were "Not Guilty,' Thorpe adding, "Evidence has been given false against me, that I declare." Before and after the conviction an impression possessed many minds that Smith was not as culpable as the rest, and that he was as much sinned against as sinning. This feeling was strengthened by the fact that the jury singled him out from the rest, and, the day before the execution, recommended him to mercy; but the recommendation was disregarded. The trial concluded on Wednesday, the 12th of January. In those days death followed quickly upon conviction, and on the Friday following the execution of the three men took place at York. In the short interval between conviction and execution the prisoners were very penitent, yet persistently refused to make any acknowledgment of their guilt. Mellor declared "that he would rather be in the situation he was then placed in, dreadful as it was, than have to answer for the crime of their accuser (Walker);" adding, that "he would not change places with him for his liberty and two thousand pounds." To prevent the possibility of rescue, the place of execution was guarded by a strong force of cavalry and infantry, and at nine o'clock in the morning, in the presence of a vast assemblage of people, the murderers met their doom. Though deeply affected, they made no confession of their guilt. On the Saturday but one following, fourteeen more persons were executed at York for crimes of a similar character; a wholesale execution which has since had no parallel in England. Walker, the informer, was ever after shunned After this wholesome severity, the Luddites never made much further head in Yorkshire. The spirit of resistance was roused, leaders were wanting to the rioters, and the better class of workmen began to shrink from combinations that, beginning in destroying machinery, so soon ripened into murder. WALTER THORNBURY. MINGUILLO. FROM THE SPANISH. Let's undo it while we may, That she may have nought to say. "Do she keeps so great a pother, Chides so sharply, looks so grave; One you give, but two you take;" "Give me back the two, my darling! Give them, for my mother's sake.". J. G. LOCKHART. |