The Following is a selection from

The Life & History of Captain Swing, the Kent Rick Burner,

 written by Himself, Anonymous, W . P. Chubb, 1830.

I was born on the day William Pitt became Prime Minister of England. My father was one of the class of small farmers, then so numerous in England, but whom the system of large farms has now altogether extinguished in the country. My father had two sons, of whom I was the younger; and as the savings of his predecessors had rendered him wealthy in his way, he determined educating me for a profession, and sent me to a grammar school in the neighbourhood; from whence I was removed in due time to a public school, preparatory to my entering college. When I was about to enter college, my elder brother died,-in consequence of which my father changed his intention of bringing me up to a profession, and took me home to attend to the farm. As I considered my future path in life was now definitively marked out for me, I gave up my entire time and attention to acquire a thorough knowledge of agriculture, and soon became one of the best farmers in that part of the kingdom. Soon after my father died, and bequeathed to me the farm and greater part of his effects. Some time after this I became acquainted with the daughter of a neighbouring curate,* * * and after a short period I proposed marriage to her, and she became my wife. 1, of course, got no fortune with her, but she had that which surpasseth riches,-a most kind and amiable disposition; and if industry and integrity on the one side, and virtue and humility on the other, were sufficient to render our union a happy one, never was there a couple bid fairer for it than we did.

A few years passed as happily as I could wish, and three little ones added to my felicity. Although working hard all day, I at night forgot my toil and trouble when I returned to my fireside and family; and as soon as my children began to lisp, the first words I taught them to utter were the same I had myself learned when I was their age,-namely,, "To fear God and honour the King-to give every man his due, and behave uprightly to all." A short time after the birth of my fourth child, our old landlord died, and was succeeded by his son.

About two years after our young landlord returned home, (he had been on the Continent since the death of his father) I received a notice to quit,-the receipt of which astonished me beyond measure, as I owed no rent, and had always supported the character of being the best and most improving tenant on the estate.* * * As I found it impossible to see the lord, I called on the steward, and asked him what fault I had committed, or what crime I had been guilty of, that I should be turned out of the farm where my forefathers had lived for centuries, and which they and I had done so much to improve? "There is no fault to be found with you," replied the steward, "you have always paid your rent regularly, and conducted yourself correctly; but my lord wants your to make a fox-cover, and you must leave it next settling day."

"Good God!" exclaimed I, "are my wife and children to be turned out to make room for wild beasts?"- "There is no use in talking," said the steward, "your land is the best site on the estate for a fox-cover, and you must give it up."

The lord himself happened to pass by, and with tears in my eyes, I beseeched him not to turn out my family, in order to replace them with foxes. "Every man," said the lord, "can do what he pleases with his own," and he walked away and left me.

Time, which, flies equally fast whether we are miserable or happy, soon brought about the settling day, and as I found all appeals to the landlord utterly useless, I was prepared to give him possession, I had not sufficient capital to take a large farm, and small ones were not to be had, so I was obliged to dispose of my horses, black cattle, and farming machinery; and as the period I sold them was one of unusual depression, I did not receive one half their value.

As soon as my first burst of grief for the loss of my farm was over, I again applied myself to labour in my garden, (which I had taken with a cottage in the neighbourhood) and by dint of industry and exertion supported my family, by supplying a neighbouring village with vegetables. Up to this period I had never attended a political meeting in my life, nor took any part whatever in politics; I thought our laws and legislators too good to require alteration or change; and if I hated one thing more than another, it was Radicalism, the abettors of which I considered no better than rebels and revolutionists, who wanted to destroy our glorious constitution, and cause anarchy in the country. I begun, however, now to think otherwise. I had seen all around me, my neighbours reduced from comfort to poverty, and from poverty to the poor-rates; and as, in the greater number of cases, it had arisen from no fault of their own, it occurred to me that some change was necessary; as had England been governed as it ought, those things could never have taken place. Reflections of this sort determined me to attend the great meeting at Manchester, then about to be held, and I accordingly went there. Every thing passed quietly off until noon, when, to my horror and surprise, a charge was made by the military and yeomanry on the peaceable and unarmed multitude that were assembled, and 1, amongst others, was wounded by a sabre-cut in the arm. Bleeding profusely, and with my arm hanging uselessly by my side, I went into Manchester and got it dressed; I was kept awake the entire night by the pain of my wound, but consoled myself with the reflection that immediate and condign punishment would be inflicted on the lawless soldiery who had dared to massacre a peaceable multitude assembled to petition Parliament. "The King," said 1, "will certainly send down a commission to have the monsters tried for their blood-thirsty outrage." What was my astonishment and indignation, in ten days after, when I saw a letter from the Secretary of State, thanking in the King's name, the military and magistrates, for massacring the people at Manchester.

I no longer wanted a proof that our country was sadly misgoverned,-that a great change was necessary,-and that the Reformers were the only real friends of the people.

[Swing is wrongfully accused of poaching and serves eighteen months in prison] When I was permitted to leave prison, I again commenced working in my garden, hoping my troubles were now over, and that, for the rest of my life, though poor, I should be allowed to rear my children peaceably and without persecution. A new and unexpected misfortune, however, arose; the parson of the parish considered his tithes not sufficiently productive, and made a claim for small tithes, which none of his predecessors had done, and demanded of me not only tithes for the current year, but also for that of the preceding one. I was unable to pay it, and was served with a law process, and, in a few weeks after, my cow sold by auction for the parson's tithes. I was now no longer able to keep my cottage and garden, and gave it up to the landlord, and rented a smaller one, having half an acre of ground attached to it. My present holding, though situated in the same parish, was two miles farther in the country than the former one, and adjoining it was a slip of uncultivated land, containing about an acre. My present landlord proposed that I should take this piece of land, in addition to what I had already, and, as an encouragement to me to do so, told me that he would not ask rent for the two first years, as during that time, he was perfectly well aware, the land would produce nothing. As I considered his proposal a fair one, I accepted it, and became his tenant for the piece of land, which I immediately set about enclosing with a ditch: having no person to assist me in making it, it was a considerable time before I had it finished: and I then commenced digging it with a spade, as I had no money to pay for getting it ploughed. In this way I fallowed it for two successive seasons; and in the beginning of the third spring I contrived, by parting with a good deal of my furniture to purchase some manure, which I carried in a basket on my head to the land: thus prepared, I sowed a crop in it, and nothing could succeed better than it did. When the time nearly came for gathering it, I was one day standing admiring it, with a gratification proportionate to the immense labour and time I had expended in bringing it about. "Although it had cost me three years labour," said 1, "to grow this crop, it will nevertheless amply remunerate me." I had scarcely uttered the words, when two men rode up to me, one of whom I found to be the parson, whom I had never before seen in the parish, and the other his tithe valuator. After the latter had examined the crop, the parson asked me whether I would pay in kind or money?

"How much is it parson?" asked I.-"Only the tenth of the crop," replied he; "you must be very ignorant to ask such a question."

"But, " said I, "if your reverence takes the tenth of the crop, it will be three-tenths of the produce of my laud; for I have been three years bringing the land into cultivation before it could grow any thing."-"I don't understand you," said the parson; "I must have my tithe."

"Why surely," said 1, "your reverence will not rob my poor little children, by taking two-tenths more than you have a right to?"-"Rob them!" roared out the parson; "I see, my good fellow, you are a Radical, but I'll make you pay me my right; you shall not defraud the church of its lawful dues."

The parson went away, and the overseers came and demanded the poor-rates; the churchwardens called for an applotment, made to repair and beautify the church, and the landlord took his rent,-and I was a ruined man. My whole three years' labour went amongst them, without leaving me one shilling for myself. I was now broken in purse and spirit, and could no longer bear up against the misfortunes that had fallen upon me. I gave up my land, and as I could procure no employment, I was obliged to apply to the parish. In order to lessen the poor-rates as much as possible, the overseers and farmers met each Sunday, and every able-bodied labourer was set up to auction, and the farmer who bid most for him had him to work for him during the ensuing week. One farmer bid three shillings a week for me, and I was ordered to work for him for that sum, and four shillings that the overseer gave me, making together seven shillings a week, to support my wife, five children, and myself. At the end of a week the farmer had no further occasion for my services, and I was on the following Monday, in company with some others, yoked to a cart, and made to draw gravel to the road. "Good God!" exclaimed 1, when I found the harness upon me, "what is England reduced to, when, without any fault of my own, in the same parish that so many generations of my forefathers lived comfortable and happy, I am obliged to submit so be treated as a beast of burthen!" The work of drawing stones was so dreadfully severe, and so unlike what I had been accustomed to, that a few weeks' trial soon convinced me it would soon kill me; and I determined leaving my native parish, and seeking employment elsewhere; and with this intention I came into Kent.* * *

In Kent I found myself still worse off than at home, for I could procure no employment whatever, and as I had no claim on the poor-rates, I was in danger of starving, and felt myself compelled to return home; before, however, I could do so, my poor wife fell ill of fever, and in order to prevent her perishing from want, I was obliged to go and beg-downright hunger having conquered my reluctance to ask charity. I proceeded along the road in order to do so, and saw a fat man, dressed in black, approaching me, to whom I applied for something to prevent my wife and children dying of starvation.-"I cannot afford to give you any thing," replied he; "go to your parish." His manner was so repulsive, that I considered it useless to make a second application, and passed on: when I had walked a few yards, I began to think I had somewhere before seen the gentleman in black, and, after a few minutes recollection, remembered he was the Rev. Mr. Saint Paul, who had taken my cow in payment of his small tithes, and who afterwards took three-tenths of my crop for his tithe of my plot of ground: he was a pluralist; and, having five livings, seldom or never came to the parish I had lived in, except to receive his tithes, so that I did not at first recognise him. I walked on for some time longer, and not meeting any person, was obliged to return to the cottage that my wife was in, without any thing to give her; as I could not bring myself to enter the cottage and behold my wife dying for want, I sat down on the road, a little distance from the door, and soon beheld the parson returning from his walk. He had a cake in his hand, which, as he had no inclination to eat, he threw to a large pampered dog that walked beside him. The dog, having no better appetite than his master, took the cake in his mouth, played with it for a moment, then tossed it in the dirt and left it there, A little child of mine beheld the scene from the cottage door, and ran and picked the cake out of the gutter, when the parson demanded how dare she take it from his dog? "Oh, Sir!" said the little girl, "the dog will not eat it, and I wish to bring it to my poor mother, who is starving ... . .. Your mother and yourself ought to be in the workhouse," said the parson; "it is a shame for the parish officers to allow little naked vagabonds like you to be running about the roads."

"Can this man," thought I, "be a descendant of the Apostles, who carried nothing with them but scrip and staff, and who preached that we should consider every man as our brother, and relieve the necessities of our fellow creatures?" Such an impression did his conduct make on me, that I got a piece of paper, and wrote a few lines, cautioning him against the consequences of his cruelty, and having signed it with my real name, "SWING," I left it at his hall-door during the night, and the following day the village rung with the report of the parson's having received a threatening notice, and that if the author could be detected, he would certainly be transported.

When writing the notice, I had not the most distant intention of making myself the instrument of punishment to the parson; it was an ebullition of the moment, called forth by my suffering, and I though no more about it. In a few days after the serving of the notice my wife died, and I was obliged to procure a coffin from the parish to bury her; no person attended her remains to the grave but a man who helped me to carry the coffin, and my five motherless children; it was late in the afternoon when we reached the churchyard, and as the man was obliged to leave me before the grave was entirely covered in, it became quite dark ere I could finish it, and I was obliged to procure a lantern to enable me to do so. When I completed it, I beheld my five children starving and shivering with cold beside the grave of their poor mother, without the smallest prospect of obtaining any food for them before morning; and in this condition I returned towards the cottage from whence I had that day carried my wife to be buried; the idea of passing the night on the straw on which she had expired was so repugnant to me, that I determined not to do so, and as the parson's haggard was only a short distance from me, I brought my children to pass the night on some loose straw that was lying on the ground. I was too much overwhelmed with grief and misery to attend to any thing, and I forgot to extinguish the light in the lantern which was carried by one of my children; the child incautiously placed the candle close to a rick, which caught fire, and was in a few minutes in a blaze; frightened and confounded at the accident, I immediately left the place, and the next morning journeyed homewards, begging for subsistence along the road: every where I went I heard of fires and notices signed "SWING." "How happens this," thought 1. "I am not the author of these burnings! - What can have caused them?" A few minutes' reflection on the history of my own life, which without any alteration may stand for that of thousands of others, enabled me to give myself a satisfactory answer. "Those fires," said 1, "are caused by farmers having been turned out of their lands to make room for foxes, peaceable people assembled to petition Parliament, massacred by the military,- peasants confined two years in prison for picking up a dead partridge, English labourers set up to auction like slaves, and treated as beasts of burthen, - and pluralist parsons taking a poor man's only cow for the tythe of his cabbage garden. These are the things that have caused the burnings, and not unfortunate 'SWING!'" I continued my route, reached home, and am again harnessed like a horse to a gravel cart. But I bear it with patience, under the conviction that, in a very short time, Reform or Revolution must release me from it.