Regency Events: The March of the Blanketeers

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After considerable organization in March 1817, some 5,000 people assembled in Manchester. The group were mostly spinners and weavers, and they were concerned about the Lancashire cotton trade. The plan was, in order to skirt the Riot Act cap on assemblies of 12 or more people, was to walk in groups of ten from Manchester to London to appeal directly to the Prince Regent.

While the groups organizers stressed peaceful protest, the Riot Act was read at the urging of magistrates and the King’s Dragoon Guards descended on the group to break up the protest.  Twenty seven people were arrested, and calls for dispersal quickly resulted in confusion and chaos. There were fatal consequences for some of the residents and marchers.

cultural districts Riots necessitating the interference of the military occurred at intervals in various parts of the country Manchester was the focus in which discontent was concen trated and a great meeting was held in Manchester on the 3rd of March to protest against the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act The meeting adopted the fashionable expedient of the Reformers of the day It was adjourned to the follow ing Monday the 10th of March And it was agreed that ten out of every twenty persons who attended the adjourned meeting should proceed to London on foot with a petition to the Prince Regent The petitioners were recommended to provide themselves with a blanket and in consequence their march is known in history as the march of the Blanketeers Walpole, S. (1913). A History of England from the Conclusion of the Great War in 1815. India: Longmans, Green, and Company.

ensuing 1st of The Habeas Corpus Suspension Act was passed on the 3rd of March the bill for restraining seditious meetings did not become law till the 29th of March Within a week after the passing of the act for imprisonment with out trial and before the magistrates had received any accession to their power as to the dispersion of tumultuous assemblies an occurrence took place at Manchester which was at once evidence of the agitated condition of distressed multitudes in the manufacturing districts and of the extreme weakness of their purposes This was the famous march of the Blanketeers And yet when the renewed
suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act was proposed in June the report of the secret committee entered into minute detail of this senseless project as one of the arguments for tampering again with the liberties of the whole kingdom A plain and honest account of this affair is given by Samuel Bamford According to his narrative William Benbow the shoemaker had taken a great share in getting up and arranging a vast meeting subsequently called the Blanket Meeting for the purpose of marching to London to petition the prince regent in person Bamford himself wholly condemned the measure He deprecated the blind zeal of those who had proposed it he believed they were instigated by those who would betray them Up to this time the maxim of the reformers had been Hold fast by the laws New doctrines now began to be broached which if not in direct violation of the law were ill disguised subterfuges for its evasion The Blanket Meeting however took place in St Peter's Field at Manchester It consisted according to Bamford of four or five thousand operatives according to the second report of the Lords secret committee of ten or twelve thousand Many of the individuals says Bamford were observed to have blankets rugs or large coats rolled up and tied knapsack like on their backs some carried bundles under their arms some had papers supposed to be petitions rolled up and some had stout walking sticks The magistrates came upon the field and read the riot act the meeting was dispersed by the military and constables three hundred commenced a straggling march followed by a body of yeomanry and a hundred and eighty reached Macclesfield at nine o clock at night Some were apprehended some lay in the fields The next morning the numbers had almost melted away about a score arrived at Leek and six only were known to pass Ashbourne Bridge More terrible events how ever were in preparation According to the second report of the Lords secret committee it was on the night of the 30th of March that a general insurrection was intended to have commenced at Manchester The magistrates were to be seized the prisoners were to be liberated the soldiers were either to be surprised in their
५ barracks or a certain number of factories were to be set on fire for the purpose of drawing the soldiers out of their barracks of which a party stationed near them for that object were then to take possession with a view of seizing the magazine This atrocious conspiracy was detected by the vigilance of the magistrates and defeated by the apprehension and confinement of some of the ringleaders a few days before the period fixed for its execution Bamford records that on the day after the Blanket Meeting a man dressed much like a dyer came to him at Middleton to propose that in consequence of the treatment which the Blanketeers had received at the meeting and afterwards a Moscow of Manchester should take place that very night Bamford and his friends dismissed him with the assurance that he was the dupe of some designing villain The scheme which this dupe or scoundrel propounded was exactly that described in the Lords report But there were men who did not receive this proposal with disgust and suspicion as those of Middleton did The avowed reform leaders delegates and Hampden club men were under perpetual terror Some wandered from their homes in dread of imprison ment others were seized in the bosom of their families Public meetings were at an end The fears and passions of large bodies of men had no safety valve Open meetings thus being suspended secret ones ensued they were originated at Manchester and assembled under various pretexts Their real purpose divulged only to the initiated was to carry into effect the night attack on Manchester the attempt at which had before failed for want of arrangement and co operation A little while after this Moscow proposal a co delegate came to Bamford to propose the assassination of all the ministers We know that this scheme smouldered for several years The fact was says Bamford this unfortunate person in the confidence of an unsuspecting mind as I believe had during one of his visits to London formed a connec tion with Oliver the spy which connection during several succeeding months gave a new impulse to secret meetings and plots in various parts of Lancashire York shire and Derbyshire and ended in the tragedy of L2 147
Brandreth Ludlow and Turner at Derby The course of this tragedy we have now to recount It is the only one of the insurrectionary movements of the manufactur ing districts in 1817 that has left any traces of judicial investigation with the exception of proceedings at York at which all the state prisoners were discharged by the grand jury or acquitted upon trial All the persons connected with the Blanket expedition and the expected risings at Manchester were discharged before trial The midland counties of Nottingham Leicester and Martineau, H., Knight, C. (1877). History of the Thirty Years’ Peace. A. D. 1816-1846. United Kingdom: G. Bell.

The contemporary newspaper reports were varied in sympathy and description, one account from the Calendonian Mercury on 15 March 1817 reporting a crowd of at least ten thousand and praising the Magisrtates for their careful advanced planning for the event. The Commercial Chronicle (London) reported that the thirty thousand blanketeers were a deluded multitude swayed by a false prophet.

Protests by Blanketeers wanting reform would continue to occur, and matters would esclate until the Peterloo Massacre.

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