I just finished reading a book called Our Tempestuous Day, A History of Regency England, by historian Carolly Erickson, PhD (who has written several other books on historical periods and people). It’s a relatively short book (276 pages), and has a lot of footnotes, but does not go into great depth about the period. However, the author does give a very good overview of the forces at work during the years 1810-1820.

Besides the grand society that we are so familiar with through reading our favorite Regency romances, it was a decade with huge social forces in play. Hannah More was an evangelical reformer, teacher and writer. She worked closely with William Wilberforce (remember the movie Amazing Grace?). Miss More said that popular fiction “debased the taste, slackened the intellectual nerve, let down the understanding, set the fancy loose, and sent it gadding among low and mean subjects.” Her books and pamphlets outsold everyone else during this period. In order to improve the lives of the poor, More established schools – to teach farmers’ children to read the bible. The first school was located in Cheddar, a parish badly neglected by the church (because it was so poor). “Children came into the world without baptism and frequently died without a funeral.”

According to Erickson, Wilberforce was a humanitarian when it came to African slaves, but not with English laborers. He said their attempts to form unions was immoral. He also argued that Christianity should make the lower orders “less discontent with their lot, and the Bible taught them to be diligent, humble and patient.”

The Family Shakespeare was published in 1804 by Thomas Bowdler, who removed every impropriety he read in Shakespeare’s woks. The author wanted to protect women and children from being subjected to Shakespeare’s blasphemy and vulgarities. Men, of course, could read whatever they wanted, in private. Words were replaced (body became person; God became heaven. And everything was sanitized so that no bodily functions or expletives were found. In fact, the changing of a work in this way (with a silly connotation) has come to be known as “bowdlerization.”

On the opposite end of the moral gauge was George Gordon – Lord Byron. He was a gorgeous fellow who caused ladies to faint in awe when he entered a room. But he did not hold with the evangelistic leanings of the day, having adulterous affairs and living a rather dissipated existence.

Starting around 1812, there were “Luddites” – Regency terrorists – who came into country villages (anonymously) and smashed hosiery workshops. This was done in protest over the loss of work for framework knitters. It’s a complex story of labor/supply/demand, but suffice it to say that there was a huge group of people who were put out of work by the conditions of the day and they did not just sit still and take it.

And then there were the Corn Laws.
After the first defeat of Napoleon, the people became disenchanted with the government. Orators sprang up – spokesmen who would speak eloquently against the status quo. People gathered in crowds to grouse about the price of bread, singing anti-government songs and posting slogans on walls. When a bill was introduced in Feb, 1815, which would limit the importation of foreign grain, it threatened the survival of the lower classes. At this time, it was estimated that the average adult ate a pound of bread a day. Bread was the chief staple of their diet, and it had to be affordable.

But Parliament, in its typical way, passed the bill that favored the landowners. It kept the price of grain artificially high, creating vast numbers of people who could not afford to eat! After the second defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, they used the army to disperse the disenchanted crowds that gathered, sometimes with tragic results.

With so much social upheaval going on, our fascination with the titled elite of this era is interesting, isn’t it?