Category: History

Joseph Ritson the Radical

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By Stephen Basdeo

Joseph Ritson was born in Stockton-on-Tees in 1752 to a poor yeoman family. As a child, he attended the local Unitarian Sunday School where his talents intellectual talents were noticed, which led him to being apprenticed to a conveyancer in Stockton, after which his employer convinced him to seek employment in London where he could find more lucrative employment.

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A barefooted man in a rural part of England. An illustration by John Bewick to one of Ritson’s publications. Being poor, Ritson had to walk all the way from Stockton-on-Tees to London, often barefooted, to procure his first proper job.

While in London, he was kept busy trying to advance in his chosen career, which he did, eventually obtaining a salary of £300 per year. He spent his spare time conducting historical research into English history.  He was interested, not in the ‘high’ culture of people in times past, but in the culture of the common man, hence he published many collections of ancient songs such as A Select Collection of English Songs (1783), and Pieces of Ancient Popular Poetry (1791). Ritson quickly established himself as an authority on many historical subjects owing to his willingness to seek out obscure primary sources from archives and libraries across the country. He was also cantankerous, and fiercely critical of his rivals such as Thomas Percy who took it upon himself to edit and ‘refine’ Old and Middle English texts.

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The man himself: Joseph Ritson (1752-1803)

Being from poor circumstances himself, he was ever-ready to help fellow man when needed. If something could help to improve their condition, he would offer his legal services gratis. One example of this is the fact that, in 1788, Jonas Hanway asked Ritson to draft a bill for ‘The Consideration of the Politic, Humane, and Merciful’ relief of ‘distressed boys’ living in the metropolis which would, among other things, have regulated the chimney sweep trade and made it safer for boys. Having written Hanway’s bill, Ritson refused to take any payment for it but instead gave his labour freely to the cause.

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Ritson offered his legal services free of charge to Jonas Hanway, who drew up a bill designed to give greater protections to chimney sweeps.

He also taught his nephew that

Charity and benevolence have a much stronger claim upon a person than the superfluous indulgence of his own appetite. Never hesitate between a beggar and a halfpenny worth of nuts … lay up treasure in heaven.

Underneath the gentlemanly and scholarly façade, however, lurked a budding revolutionary: Ritson visited Paris in the summer of 1791 and became captivated by the teachings of Thomas Paine and the ideals enshrined in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. In a letter to a friend that summer, he wrote:

Well, and so I got to Paris at last; and was highly gratifyed with the whole of my excursion. I admire the French more than ever. They deserved to be free and they really are so. You have read their new constitution: can anything be more admirable? We, who pretend to be free, you know, have no constitution at all … The French read a great deal, and even the common people (such, I mean, as cannot be expected from their poverty to have had a favourable education, for there is now no other distinction of rank,) are better acquainted with their ancient history than the English nobility are with ours … Then, as to modern politics, and the principles of the constitution, one would think that half the people in Paris had no other employment than to study and talk about them. I have seen a fishwoman reading the journal of the National Assembly to her neighbours with all the avidity of Shakespeare’s blacksmith. You may now consider their government completely settled, and a counter-revolution as utterly impossible: they are more than a match for all the slaves in Europe.

Declaration_of_the_Rights_of_Man_and_of_the_Citizen_in_1789

When he returned to England in November 1791, he made contact with several leading radical thinkers including William Godwin, John Thelwall, John Horne Tooke. Ritson was a big admirer of Godwin, less so of Godwin’s fiction:

You have read his novel [Caleb Williams], I presume; he has got it sufficiently puffed in the Critical Review, but, between ourselves, it is a very indifferent, or rather despicable performance, — at all events unworthy of the author of Political justice: I have no patience with it.

It was during the 1790s that in his letters he began to address all of his associates as ‘Citizen’ and adopted the French Revolutionary calendar as well.

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The Revolutionary Calendar

While he admired Paine and Godwin, he wrote little on politics at the time. Pitt’s Terror, which curbed press freedom and placed restrictions upon freedom of assembly, was in full swing by the mid-1790s. Ritson had himself seen many of his revolutionary-minded associates in the dock for sedition, and said that,

I find it prudent to say as little as possible on political subjects, in order to keep myself out of Newgate.

Yet one book which Ritson wrote has, in popular culture at least, outlasted the names of both Paine and Godwin: in 1795, Ritson published Robin Hood: A Collection of All the Ancient Poems, Songs, and Ballads.

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Ritson’s Magnum Opus: Robin Hood: A Collection of All the Ancient Poems, Songs, and Ballads (1795)

Ritson’s Robin Hood sounds like a dry historical work which gathered together primary sources relating to the life of the famous outlaw. It fulfilled this function but was it is anything but a boring tome: the most important part of the book was the ‘Life of Robin Hood’ which he prefixed to the work, in which he gave the biography of England’s most famous people’s hero.

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One of John Bewick’s Images of Robin Hood from Ritson’s Robin Hood: Resistance to corrupt authority was an heroic and patriotic act.

Ritson transformed the prevailing image of Robin Hood in popular culture from being a small-time medieval outlaw who lived in the woods to a radical, revolutionary bandit: this was the politics of the 1790s superimposed onto that of the 1190s, whose rulers were veritable tyrants who denied people even the most simple pleasures in life through harsh laws made by a narrow elite which served only their interests:

The deer with which the royal forests then abounded (every Norman tyrant being, like Nimrod, “a mighty hunter before the Lord”) would afford our hero and his companions an ample supply of food throughout the year; and of fuel, for dressing their vension, or for the other purposes of life, they could evidently be in no want. The rest of their necessaries would be easily procured, partly by taking what they had occasion for from the wealthy passenger who traversed or approached their territories, and partly by commerce with the neighbouring villages or great towns.

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From Ritson’s Robin Hood.

It was a medieval outlaw’s duty, and by extension it was the duty of a 1790s revolutionary, to make war upon the British establishment to protect the desolate and oppressed, but such a course of life would not be easy:

In those forests, and with this company, [Robin Hood] for many years reigned like an independent sovereign; at perpetual war, indeed, with the King of England, and all his subjects, with an exception, however, of the poor and needy, and such as were “desolate and oppressed,” or stood in need of his protection. When molested, by a superior force in one place, he retired to another, still defying the power of what was called law and government, and making his enemies pay dearly, as well for their open attacks, as for their clandestine treachery. It is not, at the same time, to be concluded that he must, in this opposition, have been guilty of manifest treason or rebellion; as he most certainly can be justly charged with neither. An outlaw, in those times, being deprived of protection, owed no allegiance: “his hand was against every man, and every man’s hand against him”. These forests, in short, were his territories; those who accompanied and adhered to him his subjects: “The world was not his friend, nor the world’s law:” and what better title King Richard could pretend to the territory and people of England than Robin Hood had to the dominion of Barnsdale or Sherwood is a question humbly submitted to the consideration of the political philosopher.

In other words: who says that any king has any right to lord his authority over any patch of land? Robin Hood’s ‘physical force’ resistance to a tyrannical king was simply the actions of a true patriot.

Ritson signs off his biography of Robin Hood by extolling the outlaw’s virtuous and heroic acts:

Such was the end of Robin Hood: a man who, in a barbarous age, and under a complicated tyranny, displayed a spirit of freedom and independence which has endeared him to the common people, whose cause he maintained (for all opposition to tyranny is the cause of the people), and, in spite of the malicious endeavours of pitiful monks, by whom history was consecrated to the crimes and follies of titled ruffians and sainted idiots, to suppress all record of his patriotic exertions and virtuous acts, will render his name immortal. With respect to his personal character: it is sufficiently evident that he was active, brave, prudent, patient; possessed of uncommon bodily strength and considerable military skill; just, generous, benevolent, faithful, and beloved or revered by his followers or adherents for his excellent and amiable qualities.

Were movie and television producers honest, all modern Robin Hood productions would give due credit to this eccentric man for their works. Ritson’s work had a profound effect on successive portrayals of Robin Hood, who was, after Ritson’s 1795 book, envisioned less as an outlaw and more as a freedom fighter standing up for people’s rights against tyrannical elites.

Indeed, name of Robin Hood might have gone the way of other medieval outlaws such as Eustace the Monk, Adam Bell, Clim of the Clough, William of Cloudesley. These outlaws were likewise celebrated in medieval ‘popular’ culture but have disappeared from public notice except amongst academics.

What is even more admirable about Ritson is that, while other British ‘radicals’ slowly abandoned their support of revolutionary ideals after the Reign of Terror, Ritson remained steadfast and true to his beliefs till the end of his life in 1803, after suffering a debilitating stroke.

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From Ritson’s Robin Hood.

Further Reading:

Stephen Basdeo, Robin Hood: The Life and Legend of an Outlaw (Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2019)

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Rosie’s #Bookreview of #NonFiction ROBIN HOOD: The Life And Legend Of An Outlaw by @sbasdeo1 @penswordpub

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Thanks for the Kind Review!

Rosie Amber

Robin Hood: The Life and Legend of an OutlawRobin Hood: The Life and Legend of an Outlaw by Stephen Basdeo

4 stars

Robin Hood is a non-fiction study that attempts to discover just who the legendary Sherwood Forest outlaw really was.

Was he a common thief, a disgraced nobleman or man who truly did rob from the rich to give to the poor? Or was he nothing but a fictional character whose tale was acted out at village festivals?

This was an interesting insight into the mystery and myth which surrounds the man. The quantity of material that mentions Robin Hood was impressive. However, as the author goes on to make clear, it is hard to determine what is fact and what is fiction. It was interesting to see how the story around Robin Hood changed through different periods of history, as it reflected political and social fashions.

As with most non-fiction I found certain parts more interesting…

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John Ball’s Letter to the Essex Men

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By Stephen Basdeo

In the summer of 1381, the people of England had had enough: disease, war, and low harvests had caused great discontent throughout the land. The Statute of Labourers (1351)—which kept wages fixed at a low price—was still in force, while the lowest class in society, the serfs, were the virtual slaves of the lord, forced to work the land for little-to-nothing beyond what was needed for their subsistence.

To add insult to injury, the government had imposed 3 successive poll taxes in 1377, 1379, and 1380.

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John Ball delivers his famous sermon to the rebels: “When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?” (c) Stephen Basdeo

The Church might have preached deference to one’s betters, and for the lower orders to accept their lot in life, but some preachers like John Ball had a different view. John Ball was a radical preacher who went from town to town preaching a doctrine of equality, epitomised by his famous lines:

When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?

Conditions were ripe for an uprising of the people against their tyrannical overlords. And the first outbreak was at a village called Fobbing in Essex in May 1381, when the people there refused to pay the poll tax, having insisted that they had already paid it. The tax collectors were outnumbered and chased out of the village.

In fairness to the tax collectors, the villagers probably had not paid the tax already, for we know that there was a lot of tax evasion in the fourteenth century.

In any case, news of the revolt spread like wildfire, and soon the men of Kent and Essex rose with one accord to demand the abolition of the poll tax, the end of serfdom, and the freedom for all men to buy and sell in the marketplace (which serfs could not do).

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The Death of Simon Sudbury (c) Stephen Basdeo

At the initial outbreak of the rebellion in May, Ball was locked away inside Maidstone Castle, his radical message having gotten him in trouble with the authorities. It was probably while there that he wrote the following letter—listed as ‘a pastoral exhortation and sermon’ by scholars and preserved on a manuscript in the British Library—intended to be delivered to the Essex men.[i]

The letter is produced here in modern English (transcription completed by myself):

The Letter Sent by John Ball to the Commons of Essex

John Sheppard, some time priest of Saint Mary’s in York, and now of Colchester, greets well John the Nameless, John the Miller, John the Carter and bids them to be wary of treachery in the borough, and stand together in God’s name, and bids Piers Ploughman to go to his work, and chastise well Hobb the Robber, and take with you John Trewman and all of his comrades, and obey only one leader.

John the Miller has been ground down to almost nothing. The king’s son of heaven shall pay for us all. But be wary or you will be sorry; know your friend from your foe; do not sin—show restraint and do not loot, for you can do better than that. Seek peace and adhere to that principle. Thus bids John Trewman and all his fellows.

Ball first introduces himself under the alias of John Sheppard. As he went from town to town, preaching a subversive message of equality in defiance of the authorities (for which he had been locked up more than once), the need for such aliases becomes apparent. Perhaps it was as John Sheppard that the men of Essex knew him.

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The Death of Wat Tyler

He then mentions three people: John the Nameless, John the Carter, John the Miller. These did not refer to any particular person but to certain types: John the Nameless could refer to, perhaps, the lowest of the low, the serfs. Yet the 1381 rebellion was not simply a mob of discontented serfs, for respected village folks were aggrieved at having to pay another poll tax, and this is why the miller and the carter, two important village trades in the fourteenth century, are also mentioned. This is an inclusive social protest that has grown out of annoyance with the poll tax, cutting across all class distinctions. They need to show solidarity with each other in God’s name.

Curiously, Ball then proceeds to reference Piers the Ploughman of Langland’s famous 1377 poem. Piers Plowman was an allegorical poem in which a dreamer surveys medieval life, the follies of its higher and lower classes (the poem is also noteworthy for containing the first literary reference to Robin Hood). The figure of the ploughman was said to be representative of the most virtuous class of medieval society, while the other figure which Langland mentions in his poem, Hob the Robber, was the antithesis of the virtuous Christian worker. And it was very convenient that one of the architects of the poll tax was named Robert Hales and was easily elided with a ‘robber’. So Ball was using contemporary popular culture to make a political point and criticize the establishment.

Ball exhorts the commons of Essex to ‘take with you John Trewman and all of his comrades, and obey only one leader’. John was one of the most common names in medieval England, and John Trewman is another ‘everyman’ type of the lower orders who, in Ball’s words, should be ‘taken’, that is that they should be recruited to the cause. The rebels should organise—recruit everyone they possibly can for their cause but importantly they should be organised under one leader.

Then we come to the main part of the letter beginning with the words ‘John the Miller has been ground down to almost nothing’. In the original Middle English, the words are as follows:

Johan the Mullere hath ygrounde smal, smal, smal;

The Kynges sone of hevene schal paye for al.

That is to say, taxes have so reduced the circumstances of the common people, typified by men such as John the Miller, that they have almost nothing left. The people are right to be angry.

Yet they must be wary: they will have many foes who will seek to undermine and demoralize them. They should therefore engage, as far as possible, in peaceful protest. They should not loot anyone’s properties. If the rebels follow Ball’s guidelines, then all should go well.

Ultimately, the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 was a violent clash between the ruling class and the lower class. The rebels killed the Chancellor, Simon Sudbury, as well as Robert Hales, while the rebel leader Wat Tyler was killed at Smithfield, and Jack Straw and John Ball were later put through an excruciating death for their role as ringleaders of the revolt.

[i] Royal MS 13.E.ix fol.287r.

Further Reading: James M. Dean, ed. Medieval English Political Writings (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1996); R. B. Dobson, ed. The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 (London: MacMillan, 1970); Stephen Basdeo, The Life and Legend of a Rebel Leader: Wat Tyler (Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2018).

Revolting Women

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By Stephen Basdeo

This is a précis of an article written by Sylvia Federico. Please click the link and cite Federico’s well-researched article in any work of your own. Do not cite this blog post.

In the summer of 1381, the common people of England rose up against their oppressive government who had hit them with three regressive poll taxes in 1377, 1379, and of course in 1381. In the south, the people organised; the commons of Kent elected the brave Wat Tyler as their leader and, having written down their grievances in a coherent form, marched on London in a 50,000 strong army to present the following demands to the boy king, Richard II: the end of the poll tax; the abolition of serfdom (from the peasant class, a serf was the ‘lowest of the low’); the freedom to buy and sell in the marketplace; the abolition of the Statute of Labourers (1351), which kept wages artificially low; and the execution of all of the king’s treasonous advisors, who also happened to be the architects of the poll tax.

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John Ball delivers his famous sermon to the rebels: “When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?” (c) Stephen Basdeo

The history of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 is usually conceived of as a very ‘manly’ affair: the ringleaders of the revolt, Wat Tyler, Jack Straw, John Ball, John Wrawe, Jack Chep were all men.

Yet it wasn’t just men who had all the fun. In records from the time, we also find that women enthusiastically took part as well. In his ground-breaking study of the revolt, Bond Men Made Free (1973), Rodney Hilton pointed to the case of one woman, named Joan Smith, from Rochester, Kent, who was indicted after the rebellion and called

The leader of a great band of rebellious evil-doers from Kent.[i]

To find out more about these ‘revolting’ women, I decided to read Sylvia Federico’s study of women’s role in the rebellion.[ii]

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Richard II

That women took a prominent role in the Peasants’ Revolt is attested to by several sources: Federico points out that they appear in the records of the Court of the King’s Bench and the Court of Common Pleas; the chroniclers Thomas Walsingham and Henry Knighton, from whom much of our modern understanding of the events of 1381 is taken, likewise point out that women were present during the rebellion; and the poets Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower also draw attention to some of these ‘revolting women’ in their writings.

So, let us take a look at some of these women whom Federico identified.

The rebellion began in an Essex village named Fobbing, where a man called Thomas Baker bravely took a stand against the king’s lackies and refused to pay the poll tax. The tax collectors were then attacked by the rebels and forced to leave empty-handed. The revolt spread like wildfire; Hilton shows in his book just how organised the rebels were—messages were sent to parts of Kent where the people too rose up.

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The execution of Simon Sudbury by the rebels in 1381 (c) Stephen Basdeo

Under the direction of Wat Tyler, the rebels broke into Maidstone gaol and rescued the radical preacher, John Ball, who had been imprisoned for preaching about equality, spreading around the ‘dangerous’ saying

When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?

Yet Tyler was not the only one to lead the rebels into the prison, for we find another woman goading the rebels into destroying the prison:

Julia Pouchere came to meet with men from Canterbury and the county of Essex where they had risen in rebellion … [and] persuaded the … evil-doers [to] tore down the [Maidstone] jail and destroyed it.[iii]

The events of the rebellion are well-known: when the rebels reached London, the Chancellor and Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon Sudbury—an architect of the poll tax—was executed by the rebels; the widely-hated John of Gaunt’s palace at the Savoy was destroyed.

The rebels were out for blood.

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Richard II’s first attempt to meet the rebels. Notice how, although many records make reference to women, very few are pictured in the images.

While sometimes women in history are stereotyped as being more passive, sympathetic figures, this was not the case with one Katherin Gamen. As the rebels pursued another official, Chief Justice John Cavendish, through the streets of Lakenheath on 15 June (angry medieval villagers carrying pitchforks is not a wholly inaccurate image), the beleaguered Cavendish was chased as far as the banks of the river. He saw a boat — a means of escape from the angry mob — he would jump in it and row to safety!

But it was not to be.

Gamen was nearer to the riverbank than Cavendish and saw that he was aiming for the boat. So she untied the boat and let it float out into the lake, depriving Cavendish of the means of escape.[iv]

Cavendish was then taken by the rebels and beheaded.

One of the rebels’ aims was the abolition of serfdom and feudal dues. Back in London, lawyers were the rebels’ primary target, along with the architects of the poll tax. Several lawyers lost their lives and many legal records were burnt, so as to erase all memory of feudal obligations. We find women doing exactly this: Matilda Aleyn Sprynghald stole a full chest of legal documents from a lawyers’ while another woman, Alice Wymond, broke into her lords’ manor house in Sussex and burnt all the documents pertaining to feudal obligations. This was not mindless violence but a well-thought out strategy; in fourteenth-century court cases, if a dispute arose between a lord and a tenant, the lord had to be able to give evidence that the tenant owed him a particular service or rent-in-kind.

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The death of Wat Tyler at the hands of William Walworth (c) Stephen Basdeo

After Wat Tyler was killed by the treacherous fishmonger, brothel-owner and Lord Mayor, William Walworth, the other ringleaders of the revolt were rounded up and subjected to horrific punishments like hanging, drawing, and quartering. However, the government could obviously not execute over 50,000 people so they wisely declared an amnesty for those who were merely ‘led astray’ by the ringleaders.

People quickly applied for the amnesty.

All in all, in the Pardon Rolls, we can find the names of 30 women who allegedly participated in Wat Tyler’s Rebellion, and they are often listed in the rolls along with their husbands. So we have women such as

  • John and Beatrice Pegge of Bantre.
  • Elena, the wife of John de Wetewang of Beverley.
  • Agnes, widow of John Hunter of Whittington.[v]

The names of these women appear in the Pardon Rolls only once, but some women were so notorious during the rebellion, it seems, that they needed to secure two pardons. These women were:

  • Joan Taburn.
  • Joan Tapister.[vi]

It is not clear exactly what these women did in the revolt. They may have marched against the government, but we know also that, like many men, some women used the disturbances to commit crime, especially against their neighbours with whom, presumably, they had had long-standing grievances. This is what we see, for example, in the records of the Court of Common Pleas: Joan Aleyn stole 2s. 6d. from her neighbour; Agnes Stevenage burgled the house of John Brode, an escheator in Kent, although an escheator was a royal official charged with, among other things, collecting taxes, so perhaps her actions were way of her getting revenge on the government and enriching herself.[vii]

Furthering the rebels’ aims while taking a little for herself is also what a woman named Johanna did while Gaunt’s palace was being attacked. Federico records that this Johanna took a chest containing over £1000 (a staggering amount in 1381 — approximately £617,000 today) from Gaunt’s palace, then took a boat to Southwark where she divided the spoils between herself and her friends.[viii] Apparently, this same Johanna returned to central London the next day where, so some records say, she convinced the rioters to behead Simon Sudbury.

These are just some of the ‘revolting women’ which Federico has found in records from medieval England and it’s unfortunate that I cannot find any contemporary images of these women.

But fair play to them—where men might have been deprived of certain political and economic rights, women were worse off because they were women and enjoyed fewer advantages than men.

[i] Rodney Hilton, Bond Men Made Free (New York: Viking, 1973), p. 215.

[ii] Sylvia Federico, ‘The Imaginary Society: Women in 1381’, Journal of British Studies, 40: 2 (2001), 159–83.

[iii] Federico, 167.

[iv] Ibid.

[v] Federico, 163.

[vi] Federico, 164.

[vii] Federico, 165.

[viii] Federico, 168.

“The Vision” by Robin Hood (1841)

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Everyone of course loves to investigate appearances of the name of Robin Hood in medieval court records. One of these days, it might finally be proven who the “real” Robin Hood was by combing through these patchy records of medieval England.

Yet Robin Hood, whether he was real or not, is significant because he is a symbol. So, appropriations of his name in later centuries, by foundlings, Anti-Corn Law Activists, or angry letter writers, are significant because they are simply one means of highlighting the longevity of the legend.

Below is the text of a poem entitled “The Vision”, written by a man who called himself Robin Hood, which appeared in The Penny Satirist in 1841. Victorian newspapers and magazines, particularly those which catered to a working-class readership, often solicited poems from aspiring writers.

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The Penny Satirist, and its sister magazine, The Satirist, were quite controversial in their day. They devoted themselves to exposing the scandals of the aristocracy and upper middle classes, as well as aiming to offer a working-class radical critique of contemporary political issues. Issuing from the presses of Chartist newspaper publishers, made it one of the less “respectable” Chartist-sympathizing papers.

The Penny Satirist ran between 1837 and 1846, after which its popularity as a satirical journal was eclipsed by the bourgeois-radical magazine, Punch.

Clearly, the name of Robin Hood here, as it was in centuries past, is still being used as a symbol of resistance against an oppressive elite.

I look’d—and the Sons of Pride stalk’d past,

In their gauds and glittering sheen;

But stormy passions and baffled hopes

In their restless eyes were seen!—

And again I look’d—and a phantom ship

O’er a dark and shoreless sea,

Was bearing them on, while the arch-fiend’s voice

Yell’d out—“For Eternity!”

 

Then the vision changed—and methought I saw

A blissful valley trod,

By all who with meek contrite hearts,

Walk humbly with their God!

Down a beautiful vista lighted up

With unearthly splendours came,

The mingling music of seraph’s harps,

And songs of loud acclaim!

 

As nature with mental strife o’erpress’d

The chains of slumber broke,

A still small voice from viewless lips,

In solemn sweetness spoke:—

“Remember the phantom ship—and beware

The doom to which pride condemns,

And school thyself to become as the meek,

Whose jewels are sacred gems!”

 
Leeds, March, 1841. Robin Hood.

Citation: Robin Hood, ‘The Vision’, The Penny Satirist, 17 April 1841, 3.

Further Reading: Mike Sanders, ‘No Laughing Matter: Chartism and the Limits of Satire’, in Nineteenth-Century Radical Traditions, ed. by Joseph Bristow, Josephine McDonagh (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2016), pp. 21–36.