against pulling down and destroying fences of approved grounds, by unknown persons in the night; further recites, that divers evil-disposed persons were grown so impudently bold of late, that they not only in the night time burn, pull down, and destroy houses, fences of approvement, and other things; but also in multitudes, armed, and disguised in such a manner that they may not be known, in the day time commit the same offences, in contempt of the law, and the insupportable wrong and damage of many of his majesty's subjects; and the towns adjoining will not apprehend such offenders, and bring them to justice. "Wherefore it is prayed, that it may be enacted," that if any person disguised, do, in the day time, destroy any such fences or corn, and the towns next adjoining do not, upon notice given to the constable, or other chief officer, apprehend and cause such offender to be brought to justice within a reasonable time, that such township next adjoining, for every such neglect, shall be "distreined" to levy and make up, at their proper charge, such hedges and ditches, and answer damage to the party or parties, in like manner as towns neglecting to indict such as are guilty of throwing down fences in the night are by the said former statute to be "distreined," and answer damages.

The Commoners opposed this bill, and published a Statement of their Case, on a large half folio sheet of paper*, in which they state, that, though "this bill was brought in as a public bill, it was in fact intended only for the private advantage of Mr. Nath. Reading, and for their prejudice." Then, after showing that Mowbray's Deed exempted them from the operation even of the old statutes of Merton and Westminster, they go on to say, " that in case this bill should pass into an act, it would be severe on all towns, and especially on the inhabitants of this Manor of Epworth, their commons lying many miles in length, insomuch that a constant watch of less than one hundred persons could not secure the fences; and in case such watch should be kept for that purpose, yet, in misty days, fences may be thrown down, and the watch not

see

* From the original hand bill, in the possession of R. P. Johnson, Esq. on which is endorsed 400 ordered to be printed.

see them. That the said Commoners have great reason to believe that the said Mr. Reading hath so great prejudice to them, that, in case this bill passes into an act, he will by himself or his servants, when he or his servants see the coast clear, and that they are not seen, pull down the fences themselves." I have now to relate a transaction the most savage and horrible that can well be imagined, being nothing less than an attempt to destroy Mr. Reading's house by fire, and to cause him and every member of his family to perish in the flames. Mr. Reading had erected a new house at Sandtoft*, at a short distance from the site of that which had been destroyed a few years before, and to which he had removed. On the first night, the 15th of April, 1697, the thatch was discovered to be on fire; and, on the alarm being given, the inmates of the burning dwelling found that all possibility of escape was taken away, by the key-holes having been stopped up with clay. Who can describe the dismay and consternation which overwhelmed them: for the house had been so strongly fortified with iron stancheons at the windows, that no exit could be made through them, until Colonel Reading succeeded in pulling out one of the bars, and the family crept through the opening just as the blazing roof was ready to fall upon their heads. This is the account of Reading: but a witness, whose deposition was afterwards taken, says that "a number of disguised persons, of whom one Peel and Sparke were the ringleaders, having set fire to the thatch, by thrusting old bundles of tow underneath it, broke into the house, and dragged the family from their beds at the dead of night."

Mr. Reading printed an account of this horrible transaction; and the Commoners

*It appears from an affidavit of Mr. Reading, that the first house, in which he had lived upwards of forty years, was on the south side of Sandtoft church and town; and the new one, which was the scene of this horrible transaction, was in Belton Plains, adjoining the six cavells of land marked on the map A B C D E F. On this ground the corn was growing which the incendiaries destroyed. That which Mrs. Popplewell set fire to grew on the hundred acres next the Sandtoft house. From the original document, in the possession of R. P. Johnson, Esq. It appears also, from these affidavits, that this house in Belton Plains had been set fire to, and burnt down in January preceding.

From the original depositions, in the possession of R. P. Johnson, Esq.

Commoners endeavoured to confute hiin, by publishing "a true account how Mr. Reading's house at Sandtoft came to be burnt." In this they assert that the "servants having been brewing the night before, and having brought much wood to boil the liquor, and more than did it, left it there carelessly. Now it happened that the wood took fire that night, and got to the thatch, and so burnt the house;" that Mr. Reading himself made the bundles of tow, tied them to sticks, and thrust them under the thatch himself, which had escaped burning, after the accident had happened; that Sparke could prove that he was at the house of one Aldus, in Belton, all that night: which, when Reading heard was the case, he then "charged Richard Scott, William Vessey, and William Kynman with it*."

The subsequent proceedings of these villains prove how very little credit is due to any of their statements. This fire took place in April'; and in June following, this very Sparke, with Thomas Peel, Alexander Pitts, Robert Scott, John Davy, Robert Otter, Benjamin Harsley, Geoffrey Glew, and William Godfrey, Robert Batty being disguised, went to Sandtoft, and pulled down the out-buildings belonging to the house which had been burnt, cut' down the fruit trees, burnt and destroyed the farming implements, such as waggons, harrows, ploughs, &c. &c.; that Richard Scot broke the lead pump into several pieces, and distributed them amongst the rioters, "to make pellets for their mortar;" and that "the very same evening they sent from Reading's house two hens, a cock, and a duck, and three small pigs to deponent's house, for her to get ready for supper, which she did; and that Sparke came with the disguised persons, and partook of themf."

For such crimes as these, perpetrated in so open a manner, and executed as deliberately as they were planned, and of which there was such clear evidence, one would have supposed that none of them could have escaped capital punishment, especially as Popplewell † declared that, "he would have nothing more to do with them." The ringleaders were indeed obliged to abscond

* From the original hand-bill, in the possession of R. P. Johnson, Esq.

From the deposition of Elizabeth Law.

abscond, and never durst make their appearance in the country again; and several of the rioters were indicted at Lincoln assizes, and true bills found against them. But Popplewell foreseeing the evil fate which awaited his wife, and the disgrace which would come upon his family, by her suffering an ignominious death, applied to Colonel Whichcott and Colonel Pawnell to intercede with Mr. Reading, not to press matters to extremities. Mr. Reading agreed to refer the whole business to these gentlemen; who awarded that Popplewell and the other rioters should pay £600, on condition that all legal proceedings against them were stayed.

Mr. Reading survived these events nineteen years, when he died amongst his inveterate enemies, and was buried at Belton, on the fourth of June, 1716, at the advanced age of nearly one hundred years, "after having been kept," as he himself says in his petition, "in the wilderness of the Participant's service, and grieved with this generation of vipers longer than forty years." He married Arabella Churchill, aunt to the famous duke of Marlborough, and sister to Sir John Winstan Churchill, by whom he had four sons, John, Lionel, Thomas, and Robert, all of them military men. After their father's death, Thomas and Robert continued to lease the Participants' lands, and were at very great expence in inclosing and keeping up the fences. When not engaged in active service, Lieut-Colonel Robert Reading resided at Sandtoft. In 1714, however, the Islonians destroyed his crops, and he was obliged to have a part of his own regiment stationed at Ross, to protect the property; but the act against rioting being passed in the following year, and another bill of the Commoners against the Participants being dismissed with costs, they seem at length to have been effectually deterred from rioting, and weary of litigation.

From this account it appears that the Participants by no means succeeded, to use the expression of a bitter enemy to the drainage, "in turning the springs of Derbyshire into the western seas;" on the contrary, their drains answered

*This agreement bears date 28th Feb. 1698, and is said to be for the purpose of abiding the award of Whichcott and Pawnell, for settling the unhappy and vexatious quarrels which have happened between Mr. Reading and the Commoners.

answered very imperfectly the object for which they were made; for a great part of the Level continued flooded at times, to such a degree, that before the late inclosure of the Isle Commons, boats frequently passed from Westwoodside to Bearswood Green. The profit to the original undertakers was little or nothing. Scarcely ten years had elapsed ere "these chosen people," says the same author, "had forsaken their entrenchments and fled." To the inhabitants it was the cause of much moral evil. It led them into the commission of the greatest crimes, and involved them in expensive litigations, for nearly a hundred years, to the ruin of many ancient and opulent families. Most authors who have written on this subject have represented the Commoners as a set of ignorant and malignant monsters, who resisted, by the most unjustifiable means, that which was even to themselves a very great and beneficial improvement. But such, I think, is not a just statement of the case. The works of the Participants never were and never will be of any advantage to the Isle Commoners; on the contrary, they were for many years a source of very great and serious loss: for the drain which was made to convey the waters of the river Torn to the Trent, not being sufficiently capacious, was continually overflowing its banks, and drowning those lands which had hitherto been dry.

Every one must allow that the claim which the Commoners made to the whole of the Commons, under Mowbray's Deed, was a just claim, and to a very considerable extent it was finally established. We ought, therefore, to consider them as persons forcibly deprived of one-third of their inheritance; and, before we condemn them too severely for the violent means which they had recourse to, let us remember they were smarting under the injury of having the remaining two-thirds miserably wasted and destroyed; and that their acts of aggression were strictly confined to those lands* in the Isle of Axholme on which they had formerly right of common.

Vermuyden and his people seem, in the first instance, to have provoked the outrages of which they complained, by their insolent threats, and by erecting a gallows whereon to hang the inhabitants; who, having been ac

* Coloured green in Vermuyden's Map by Arlebout, 1639.

customed