3385. Robert Southey to
[William Peachy](people.html#PeachyWilliam),
8 November 1819Address: To/
Major-General Peachy/ Yarmouth/ Norfolk
Stamped: KESWICK/ 298
MS: British Library, Add MS 28603. ALS;
4p.
Unpublished.[Keswick](places.html#Keswick).8 Nov. 1819. My dear
Sir You may insert the Address which I sent youFollowing the
‘Peterloo’ Massacre of 16 August 1819, Whigs in Cumberland organised a County Meeting on 13 October 1819 to
protest at the local authorities’ actions and send an Address to the Prince Regent. Southey drew up a conservative
response – an Address to the Prince Regent denouncing the radicals and calling for curbs on the press. He sent a
copy to Peachy on 15 October 1819, Letter 3365. at the end of the Rejected Addresses.Horace Smith (1779–1849; DNB) and James Smith (1775–1839;
DNB), Rejected Addresses, or, The New Theatrum Poetarum (1812), supposedly a series
of unsuccessful submissions for the £50 prize awarded for the best address to be recited on the opening night of
the new Drury Lane Theatre. The book was actually a skilful pastiche of the styles of leading writers, including
Southey. One of Mr Wallace’sThomas Wallace
(1768–1844; DNB), MP for various seats 1790–1828, including Cockermouth 1813–1818, member of the
Board of Control 1807–1816, Vice-President of the Board of Trade 1818–1823, created 1st Baron Wallace 1828. He had
inherited Carleton Hall, near Penrith. composing was substituted in its place, as being thought more in
form, & in other respects less unobjectionable, – because it did not speak so plainly.Wallace’s Address appeared in the Morning Chronicle, 29 October 1819.
The new Address was notably circumspect in its reference to events at ‘Peterloo’. If I could have obtained
a copy in time I should certainly have sent it to you, but as that was not the case, I knew you would not think it
fitting that a Loyal Declaration from the County of Cumberland should go without your name to it, & therefore I
desired it might be set down, – a liberty which of course I should not have taken on any other occasion. –
Altogether it is an odd story. While Mr Wallace occasioned the first Address to be laid aside
here, it had gone up to London, & as I saw by a letter from BeckettJohn
Beckett (1775–1847), Under-Secretary of State for Home Affairs 1806–1817, Judge Advocate-General 1817–1827,
1828–1830, 1834–1835. to [Lord Lonsdale](people.html#LowtherWilliam), had been
much approved by the people in power; – & moreover I have reason to believe that Lord Wm
GordonLord William Gordon (1744–1823), son of Cosmo George Gordon, 3rd
Duke of Gordon (1720–1752). He owned the Waterend estate on the west side of Derwentwater. had shown it to
[the Prince](people.html#GeorgePrinceRegent), – for he received it at the Pavillion,
& wrote to me from thence that he had good reason to think it would be most graciously received at Carleton
House.The Royal Pavilion, Brighton, the Prince Regent’s seaside home; and
Carlton House, his London residence.
I send you the Westmorland Gazette, in which you will <find> a reply to some Animadversions on
our Address.Southey’s letter to the Editor of the Cumberland
Pacquet, [before 26 October 1819], Letter 3370, was reprinted in the Westmorland Gazette,
6 November 1819. In the next paper there will be a letter to [M](people.html#BroughamHenryPeter)r Brougham upon the same subject, exposing in
pretty strong terms his mendacious conduct at Kendal.Southey’s letter to
Henry Brougham [before 6 November 1819], Letter 3381, was published in the next number of the Westmorland
Gazette, 13 November 1819. This was a response to the County Meeting for Westmorland, held at Kendal on
21 October 1819 to protest against the authorities’ actions at the ‘Peterloo’ meeting. Brougham was present, and
read out and denounced the rival pro-government Loyal Address for Cumberland which Southey had written (though
Brougham was unaware of its author). Brougham remarked that the Address ‘is very long indeed, and extremely dull’,
and described its authors as ‘fawning sycophants’ who had produced a ‘slavish’ document, Morning
Chronicle, 26 October 1819. The entire address written by Southey had been leaked to, and printed by, the
Morning Chronicle, 23 October 1819. I will send it you, – it is not quite so long as Mr Flemings epistle.John Fleming (c. 1769–1835) of Rayrigg
Hall, Rector of Bootle 1814–1835, wrote a series of nine letters, which were published in successive weeks in the
Westmorland Gazette, 17 October–12 December 1818. They defended the conduct of Fleming and his six
fellow governors of St Bees School, near Whitehaven. The House of Commons Select Committee on the Education of the
Poor, chaired by Brougham, had taken evidence which had raised some embarrassing issues about how the School was
run, including the fact that valuable mining rights belonging to St Bees had been leased to the Lowther family in
1742 for 867 years and at a rent of only £3 10 shillings per annum, Morning Chronicle, 21–23
September 1818. The Earl of Lonsdale, head of the Lowther family, was a governor of the school. Please to
return me the papers, or lay them by till we meet in the early part of the year, – for I have the whole series of
this newspaper & mean to preserve it. – I have not seen Mr Bathursts bookPossibly Henry Bathurst (1780–1844), Christianity and Present Politics How Far
Reconcilable: in a Letter to the Right Hon. W. Wilberforce (1818). & shall be much obliged to
you for it. It may be directed to [Longmans](people.html#LongmanThomas) for me.
Lord Somerville’s unexpected death gives me the chance –– of a law-suit, an evil which you may be
well assured I am neither rich enough, nor litigious enough, nor idle enough to engage in rashly.John Southey Somerville, 15th Lord Somerville (1765–1819; DNB),
agricultural reformer and third cousin of Southey, had died on 5 October 1819. This produced a further round of
legal tangles over the Fitzhead estate in Somerset that Somerville had inherited and on which Southey had a
potential claim. The unlucky will which devised Cannon Southeys property to him in his infancy
has been repeatedly pronounced in court to be one of the most perplexed wills that ever was made.Somerville’s mother was Elizabeth Cannon Lethbridge (d. 1765), the daughter of Mary
Southey (1704–1789) and niece of John Cannon Southey (d. 1768). The latter had inherited the Fitzhead estate from
his mother Mary Cannon (1678–1738). On his death, John Cannon Southey had left a complex, ill-advised will which
named Somerville as his primary heir, and, if he produced no heirs, Southey’s father and two uncles as residuary
legatees, their rights passing, in turn, to their children. Of the three Southey brothers only Southey’s father
married, leading the poet to believe (after the death of his father and paternal uncles) that he and his brothers
were now the rightful heirs to the Fitzhead estate. [My good
Aunt](people.html#SoutheyMary) is full of hopes, & longs to show me the estates, every one of which she knows. But whether I am
entitled to claim any one of them is a matter of which I have no knowledge whatsoever, & but slender
expectation. I am making enquiry upon this subject, & shall have the best legal opinions. It would be strange
indeed if after being twice cut off from a fair inheritance in Somersetshire, for no fault or shadow of offence
that I had ever committed toward my two Uncles,Southey’s paternal uncles
[John](people.html#SoutheyJohn) and [Thomas Southey](people.html#SoutheyThomasUncle). Neither had left any of their fortunes to Southey
or his brothers. I should be called led into that country at last, to settle upon a family
property, & be gathered to my fore fathers. That odd, honest, open-hearted, tho in his latter days factious
& crazy, old poet George WitherGeorge Wither (1588–1667;
DNB), poet, and in his later years, supporter of Parliament in the civil wars of 1642–1651.
(the xxx of Big SheepSouthey’s uncle, Herbert Hill, had married
into the Bigg-Wither family, who were related to George Wither, so this may be a punning reference to Hill’s
deceased father-in-law, Lovelace Bigg-Wither (1741–1813) – the ‘withers’ are the highest part of the back at the
base of the neck of a sheep and the substantial Bigg-Wither estates in Hampshire were partly used for rearing
sheep. was of his family) took for his Motto Nec habeo, nec careo, nec curo,‘I have not, I want not, I care not’; Wither’s Motto. Nec habeo, nec
Careo, nec Curo (1621). & made those words the text of x one of his prosing poems.
The motto might almost do as fitly for me as it did for him. If I can recover any thing I shall know how to make
use of it, & be glad of the means; if it end in nothing I shall still be contented with my present situation,
& thankful for it.
We are expecting [Kenyon](people.html#KenyonJohn) every day.
[Senhouse](people.html#SenhouseHumphrey) is just returned to Fingest
Grove,Netherhall, Senhouse’s residence in Cumberland, was being
extensively renovated, so he had temporarily rented Fingest House, near High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire.
after having exposed himself in a Berwick smackFast, but small, boats that
carried cargo and passengers between London and Berwick-upon-Tweed. during these late gales, – an act of
rashness which he ought not to have committed. I shall meet him in town in February, & if you are at Bath in
that or the following month, I hope to accept your invitation, & shake hands with [Bowles](people.html#BowlesWilliamLisle) & with Crabbe.The poet and clergyman George Crabbe (1754–1832; DNB) was Rector of Trowbridge, Wiltshire
1814–1832. His parish was only about twelve miles from William Lisle Bowles’s at Bremhill. The two men had met in
1815 and Bowles had since introduced Crabbe to his friends. Crabbe was also connected to Peachy’s social network –
in 1815–1825 Crabbe corresponded with Elizabeth Charter (1782–1860), the sister of Peachy’s first wife, Emma.
By that time the Radicals will neither be quite so loud nor quite so open in their operations. But unless
some efficient means be taken for checking the abuse of the Press, the danger will only be abated for a time, &
will break out again & again, always with more force every time than the last, till the Revolutionists effect
their end. The Ministry want foresight, vigour & consistency: they have no confidence either in [the Prince](people.html#GeorgePrinceRegent), or in each other, & the nation has no confidence in
them, – tho it prefers them very justly to any other set of men. I wish the reins were in the [Duke of Wellingtons](people.html#WellesleyArthurWellington) hands.
Did I tell you that [Elmsley](people.html#ElmsleyPeter) has consented
to go to Naples & examine the Herculaneum Manuscripts as they are unrolled by [Davys](people.html#DavyHumphry) process?In 1819, funded
largely by the Prince Regent, Elmsley and Davy had been commissioned to try new means of unrolling and
transcribing the carbonised papyri that had been discovered in the ruins of Herculaneum, the town destroyed in the
eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. Although Herculaneum had been rediscovered in 1709, the existence of the papyri had
not been realised until 1752. By the 1810s their significance for classical scholarship was beginning to emerge.
Although Davy and Elmsley applied their scientific and scholarly knowledge to the task, it was abandoned in early
1820. Davy’s findings appeared in his ‘Some Observations and Experiments on the Papyri Found in the Ruins of
Herculaneum’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 111 (1821),
191–208. His Greek will now be put to some use, & what an enviable distinction in classical literature
he will obtain if any thing of value should be discovered! It is a very gratifying thing to me to see how many of
my early friends have taken high degrees in life, & proved themselves first class men in their respective
pursuits.
The Ladies[Edith Southey](people.html#FrickerEdith), [Sara
Coleridge](people.html#FrickerSarah), and [Mary Lovell](people.html#FrickerMary). join with me in
kind remembrances to [M](people.html#PeachyMrs)rs Peachy
Believe me my dear Sir Yrs very
truly Robert Southey.