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However obsolete the statute of Edward VI prohibiting gig-mills may have been, it is important that the croppers were aware of it and held that protection against displacement by machinery was not only their ‘right’ but also their constitutional right. They also knew of the clause in the Elizabetha…

This analysis already exists,1 but it may be corrected and supplemented by evidence which has more recently come to light. Luddism proper, in the years 1811–17, was confined to three areas and occupations: the West Riding (and the croppers), south Lancashire (and the cotton weavers), and the framew…

For this reason the secret political tradition appears either as a series of catastrophes (Despard, Pentridge, Cato Street), or else as a trickle of propaganda so secretive and small-scale, and so hemmed in by suspicion, that it scarcely had any effect, except in those places where it effected a ju…

Hence the Home Office records (our main first-hand sources) often make perplexing reading. Like uncomprehending travellers, the magistrates and commanding officers were at the mercy of their informants. A friendly society might appear as an engine of sedition to a man who had never thought of the c…

The agitation promptly went underground once more. We may once again try to follow its history in the West Riding. Throughout the summer of 1801 meetings continued, mainly at night; Batley, Ossett, and Saddleworth are added to the list of centres. At Halifax, in July 1801, some kind of delegate com…