Cobbett

WILLIAM COBBETT (1763 - 1835)

Self-taught, Cobbett was a master of what Hazlitt called 'plain, broad downright English' - indeed he is one of the great prose writers in the language. He had pioneered what is now Hansard, and his celebrated Rural Rides combine keen observation with witty, energetic writing on agricultural themes. Though no revolutionary, he often savaged the government for corruption and incompetence. This fiercely independent radical largely confined his activities to southern counties, but he did eventually come north in 1832, and his observations on farming in Durham are of great interest:

'The cattle here are the most beautiful by far that I ever saw. The sheep are very handsome; but the horned cattle are the prettiest creatures that my eyes ever beheld. My sons will recollect that when they were little boys, I took them to see the 'Durham Ox' of which they drew the picture, I dare say, a hundred times.'

He was clearly out of his depth in the colliery districts, however, where some Geordie wag must have encouraged him to believe that miners and their families lived underground all their lives! A deputation waited on him in Newcastle on 21 September 1832, with an address. Much moved, Cobbett exclaimed that after thirty years of attacks 'from the poisonous mouths and pens of three hundred mercenary villains, called newspaper editors and reporters' [and twice being stripped of his earnings, put into jail and driven into exile] 'here I am on a spot within a hundred miles of which I never was before in my life; and here I am receiving the unsolicited applause of men amongst the most intelligent in the whole kingdom.'

He lectured in South Shields on 2 October, crossing the Tyne to North Shields at 11 o'clock at night, and made a very firm bargain with himself 'never to do the like again'. After lecturing in North Shields on 3 October, Cobbett travelled to Sunderland via Newcastle the next day. En route, he visited the prominent Newcastle citizen Armorer Donkin, on the lip of Jesmond Dene. Donkin had laid out a plantation six years previously, in the way advocated in Cobbett's Woodlands, and the author had requested to see it. Donkin also gave him a copy of Bewick's Fables and showed him a portrait of the artist whom Cobbett greatly admired. Of Sunderland, Cobbett wrote on 4 October 1832:

'The pitmen have twenty-four shillings a week; they live rent-free, their fuel costs them nothing, and their doctor costs them nothing. Their work is terrible to be sure; and perhaps they do not have what they ought to have; but at any rate they live well, their houses are good and their furniture good; and though they live not in a beautiful scene, they are in the scene where they were born and their lives seem to be as good as that of the working part of mankind can reasonably expect.'

Cobbett calls Newcastle 'this fine, opulent, solid, beautiful and important town' and lectured there on the evening of 5 October 1832. He then travelled to Hexham via Morpeth. The fertility of the Tyne valley round Hexham pleased him greatly, and he noticed that the biennial stocks stood the winter without any covering, 'which, as everyone knows, is by no means the case even at Kensington or Fulham.' In Hexham, Cobbett attacked the prominent local citizen and politician, Thomas Wentworth Beaumont, who had annoyed him with talk that people disapproved of Cobbett as much as they detested the Tories. Cobbett quotes Swift, who said that if a flea or a bug bit him, he would kill it if he could. 'And, acting upon that principle, I, being at Hexham, put my foot upon this contemptible creeping thing who is offering himself as a candidate for the southern division of the county, being so eminently fitted to be a maker of the laws!' Cobbett was delighted at the absence of potatoes in prosperous Tynedale - 'a certain sign that the working people do not live like hogs... from this degrading curse the county of Northumberland is yet happily free!'

Cobbett read Lingard's History of England and used it as the basis of his own History of the Protestant Reformation. This book had, by contemporary standards, a huge circulation and there must have been thousands who came to these ideas through Cobbett rather than Lingard (q.v.).

Myers Literary Guide:	The North-East
WILLIAM COBBETT (1763 - 1835) Self-taught, Cobbett was a master of what Hazlitt called 'plain, broad downright English' - indeed he is one of the great prose writers in the language. He had pioneered what is now Hansard, and his celebrated Rural Rides combine keen observation with witty, energetic writing on agricultural themes. Though no revolutionary, he often savaged the government for corruption and incompetence. This fiercely independent radical largely confined his activities to southern counties, but he did eventually come north in 1832, and his observations on farming in Durham are of great interest: 'The cattle here are the most beautiful by far that I ever saw. The sheep are very handsome; but the horned cattle are the prettiest creatures that my eyes ever beheld. My sons will recollect that when they were little boys, I took them to see the 'Durham Ox' of which they drew the picture, I dare say, a hundred times.' He was clearly out of his depth in the colliery districts, however, where some Geordie wag must have encouraged him to believe that miners and their families lived underground all their lives! A deputation waited on him in Newcastle on 21 September 1832, with an address. Much moved, Cobbett exclaimed that after thirty years of attacks 'from the poisonous mouths and pens of three hundred mercenary villains, called newspaper editors and reporters' [and twice being stripped of his earnings, put into jail and driven into exile] 'here I am on a spot within a hundred miles of which I never was before in my life; and here I am receiving the unsolicited applause of men amongst the most intelligent in the whole kingdom.' He lectured in South Shields on 2 October, crossing the Tyne to North Shields at 11 o'clock at night, and made a very firm bargain with himself 'never to do the like again'. After lecturing in North Shields on 3 October, Cobbett travelled to Sunderland via Newcastle the next day. En route, he visited the prominent Newcastle citizen Armorer Donkin, on the lip of Jesmond Dene. Donkin had laid out a plantation six years previously, in the way advocated in Cobbett's Woodlands, and the author had requested to see it. Donkin also gave him a copy of Bewick's Fables and showed him a portrait of the artist whom Cobbett greatly admired. Of Sunderland, Cobbett wrote on 4 October 1832: 'The pitmen have twenty-four shillings a week; they live rent-free, their fuel costs them nothing, and their doctor costs them nothing. Their work is terrible to be sure; and perhaps they do not have what they ought to have; but at any rate they live well, their houses are good and their furniture good; and though they live not in a beautiful scene, they are in the scene where they were born and their lives seem to be as good as that of the working part of mankind can reasonably expect.' Cobbett calls Newcastle 'this fine, opulent, solid, beautiful and important town' and lectured there on the evening of 5 October 1832. He then travelled to Hexham via Morpeth. The fertility of the Tyne valley round Hexham pleased him greatly, and he noticed that the biennial stocks stood the winter without any covering, 'which, as everyone knows, is by no means the case even at Kensington or Fulham.' In Hexham, Cobbett attacked the prominent local citizen and politician, Thomas Wentworth Beaumont, who had annoyed him with talk that people disapproved of Cobbett as much as they detested the Tories. Cobbett quotes Swift, who said that if a flea or a bug bit him, he would kill it if he could. 'And, acting upon that principle, I, being at Hexham, put my foot upon this contemptible creeping thing who is offering himself as a candidate for the southern division of the county, being so eminently fitted to be a maker of the laws!' Cobbett was delighted at the absence of potatoes in prosperous Tynedale - 'a certain sign that the working people do not live like hogs... from this degrading curse the county of Northumberland is yet happily free!' Cobbett read Lingard's History of England and used it as the basis of his own History of the Protestant Reformation. This book had, by contemporary standards, a huge circulation and there must have been thousands who came to these ideas through Cobbett rather than Lingard (q.v.).
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