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The remembrance of the Chartist^[23] rising in Monmouthshire of November, 1839, must have long faded away, except from the minds of the few survivors who were concerned in its suppression, and those of the younger generation who remember it from the anxiety it caused throughout the district. I came among the latter number. My father was an acting magistrate, and at the time alterations were going on in his house at Sedbury Park. I can well remember the surly, disobedient, and generally insubordinate behaviour of the local workmen in the week preceding Sunday, the 3rd of November. With the return of the workmen, in the course of the following week, the face of affairs had however changed. The rising had taken place, and had been thoroughly crushed. Receiving a reverse, they were there and then seized with panic, and fled. Their chief leaders—by name John Frost, Zephaniah Williams, and William Jones, and others not so deeply implicated—were captured, and to us the result was exceedingly satisfactory. The men when they returned were patterns of obedience and as meek as mice. They did not in the least desire the distinction of being known, in a magistrate’s house, to have taken part in an outbreak which had totally failed. They had thought that by Monday or Tuesday the house would be in their hands and our relative positions reversed, and, indeed, it would have been hard to find a house more indefensible against a disciplined mob than ours. Along two sides of the house (plate I.), ran a broad colonnade of Bath stone, supported by pillars so wide and so placed that in many cases men ascending by ladders put against them, would have been greatly or entirely protected from the discharge of fire-arms from the windows; and the broad flat surface of the top of the colonnade, 10 feet in width, by about 120 feet in length, would have made an admirable mustering ground for scores of men, from which to carry on their unpleasant attacks in conjunction with their allies below. This however we were spared.

The trial of Frost and the other leaders followed speedily by special Commission at Monmouth. It began in the following December and ended in January (1840), with a verdict of guilty of High Treason; and sentence of death according to the treason penalties of the time was pronounced by Lord Chief Justice Tindal as follows:—“That you, John Frost, and you, Zephaniah Williams, and you, William Jones, be taken hence to the place from which you came, and be thence drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution, and that each of you be there hanged by the neck until you be dead, and that afterwards the head of each of you shall be severed from his body, and the body of each, divided into four quarters, shall be disposed of as Her Majesty shall think fit, and may Almighty God have mercy on your souls.” A recommendation to mercy, which was mercifully attended to, was added on behalf of the five least guilty men. The possibility of the horrors of the details of the treason penalties (though much mitigated from those of former days on account of their being carried out on the dead body of the offender) created consternation through the district, and the remembrance has remained with me to this day. However, the capital sentence on Frost and his two special associates was commuted to transportation for life, an act of grace coincident with those extended on the marriage of our late Queen of glorious memory.

Only the above disjointed reminiscences of trouble have remained in my mind through the sixty years which have since elapsed, but the rising was so planned that, if it had succeeded, it would have proved a match to light the smouldering Chartism of the Midlands and the North of England, and even under the circumstances the case was described in the Attorney-General’s address to the Jury at the commencement of the Monmouth trial as follows:

“There has recently been in this County an armed insurrection, the law has been set at defiance; there has been an attempt to take forcible possession of the town of Newport, there has been a conflict between the insurgents and the Queen’s troops; there has been bloodshed, and the loss of many lives. The intelligence of these outrages has caused alarm and dismay throughout the kingdom.”^[24]

When divested of the repetitions and technicalities of the reports of the sworn witnesses, and also of the addresses of the Lord Chief Justice and legal authorities, the story of the rising possesses much interest as an account in many of its details of what could not happen in the present day. The mountainous nature of the insurgent locality, the extraordinarily stormy weather which threw the undisciplined thousands out in their calculations, and the short, but (for the time occupied) bloody climax would have formed under such a pen as Sir Walter Scott’s, a narrative of interest almost equal to some of those of the Covenanting troubles.

The part of the County in which the disturbances took place—was what is called the “hill district” of Monmouthshire (plate XV.), which has been described as an area of triangular form, having for its apex to the south, Risca, a town five miles W.N.W of Newport. The base of the triangle was at a distance of from fifteen to twenty miles in a northerly direction, with the great Beaufort and Nant-y-glo iron works to the west, on the edge of Brecknockshire, and to the east Blaenavon on the Usk in its hilly, or it might be said mountainous, neighbourhood. The area of this hill district is varied with hill and dale, intersected in parts by deep glens, and also by mountain streams, of no inconsiderable force after heavy rains. Picturesquely considered the country is of great beauty, but beneath the surface are rich supplies of coal and iron. For some years before 1839, the mines had been much worked, and the country, instead of being merely inhabited by a small and scattered population, was at the time of the outbreak estimated to contain above 40,000 inhabitants, often, as it was stated, displaying “an extent of ignorance very much to be deplored” and consequently easily led away by the agents of seditious societies and formed into affiliated bodies ready for outbreak when called on.

PLATE XV.

Map showing the District of the Chartist Rising in Monmouth.

Newport near the low right-hand corner above the bend

of the River Usk.

The matured plan of the rising was arranged on the 1st of November at a meeting at a place called Blackwood, where there was a Lodge or Society of Chartists. At this meeting deputies attended, and orders were formulated, that the men should assemble armed on the evening of the 3rd, the following Sunday. There were to be three principal divisions, one under the command of Frost (then living at Blackwood), the other two to be respectively formed of men from the up-country, and men more from the east and north. These divisions were to meet at Risca at a convenient distance from Newport, their destination, which they purposed to reach about two in the morning. They hoped to find the inhabitants asleep, and to carry out their plans at their own convenience; attack the “intended-to-be-surprised” troops at Newport, break down the bridge over the Usk, and stop the mail. The Newport mails in those days were forwarded over the Old Passage of the Severn to Bristol, from which place at a given time they were sent North. The non-arrival of the mails at Birmingham was to have been a sign of success of the Monmouthshire outbreak, and of a general rising in Lancashire, and other parts of the kingdom. Affairs, however, turned out very differently to what they expected. The night between the Sunday and Monday was the darkest and most tempestuous that had been known for years, and consequently though Frost arrived near Risca early in the night, the other divisions were long behind time. Meanwhile Mr. Phillips, the Mayor of Newport, afterwards Sir Thomas Phillips, a firm and intelligent man, well informed of what was going on, had been quietly making preparations, in view of the intelligence received during Sunday. He had given orders to the Superintendent of Police to have a number of Special Constables ready on that evening. A detachment was stationed at the Westgate Hotel, where the Mayor and another magistrate also located themselves about 9 p.m., and remained watching throughout the night. When day dawned on Monday, November 4th, intelligence was received that the insurgents were approaching, and the Mayor sent a request to the barracks for military assistance. There was only one company of soldiers (of Her Majesty’s 45th Regiment of foot) stationed at Newport at the time. Of these thirty men, under command of Lieut. Basil Gray, were sent to the assistance of the Mayor. They arrived at the Westgate Hotel about 8 a.m. The soldiers were placed in a room on the ground floor of the hotel with three windows (a bow window with three divisions) coming down within a few inches of the ground, and it should be observed that they did not load their muskets until, after being fired upon, they were ordered to do so. Shortly after the rioters were seen advancing, the numbers being technically stated in the indictment for High Treason as “a great multitude ... to the number of two thousand and more,” probably more accurately computed at 5,000, armed with guns, pistols, pikes, swords, daggers, clubs, bludgeons, and other weapons. Amongst the miscellaneous “weapons of offence” were scythes fixed on poles, and an instrument (of which a specimen was produced in court) called a “mandrel,” used for working out coal in the mines, and somewhat resembling a pick-axe in shape. A portion of the rioters formed in front of the hotel, and at once began the attack by firing a volley of small arms at the windows of the room where the soldiers were placed, of which the lower shutters were closed. They gained entrance to a passage, or corridor, communicating with it by a door. The word was immediately given to load with ball cartridge, but whilst the lower window shutters remained closed, the men could not reply. Therefore, with the certainty that they would be fired on, the Mayor and Lieutenant Gray threw back the shutters, and stood unmasked facing the insurgents, who immediately discharged a volley of small arms, whereby the Mayor was wounded in the groin, and seriously in one arm near the shoulder, and Sergeant Daily was badly hit in the head. The order to fire was at once given, and several of the insurgents were wounded, and fell. For the short time that the conflict lasted the rioters in the house continued to try to force the position by rushing up to the doorway; but when they encountered their own dead and received the return fire of the soldiers they faltered, and in less than ten minutes the affray was over. The passage was cleared of all excepting the dead and wounded, and the vast mob of rioters was dispersing with all speed. In the words of one witness, they “ran to all quarters.” Another deposed that he met numbers of them near Newport “running back in all directions,” and though here and there some men remained, they were without arms, and from the quantity of weapons of offence collected afterwards, it was demonstrable that in many cases the men must have flung them away as they fled. But though short, the affair had been bloody. The rioters lost seven men killed besides a number of wounded, and the casualties to their opponents were in some cases serious, although not fatal. Hundreds hurried from the scene of their repulse with such speed that by ten o’clock a.m. they were passing the Lodge Gate of Tredegar Park, about two miles from Newport. Amongst this crowd was John Frost, ex-draper of Newport and would-be conductor of the outbreak, a man who had proved himself as deficient in courage as he had been inefficient in leadership. He was endeavouring to conceal his identity by holding a handkerchief to his face as if he were crying. But on being spoken to and recognised, he left the road and going through an archway leading to a coppice wood, was lost sight of. A warrant was granted in the afternoon of the same day, and in the evening, on the door being forced open of the house of a man named Partridge (about a quarter of a mile from the Westgate Hotel in Newport), Frost was found and was immediately taken into custody. On being searched, three pistols all loaded, a powder flask, and some balls were found in his pocket.

PLATE XVI.

Chepstow Castle, Monmouthshire.

(p. 16.)