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Updated: June 7, 2025
By all his neighbours he was much beloved, and his society much courted by those who knew how to estimate the value of a superior mind, and an enlightened and comprehensive understanding. He took great delight in imparting to me the knowledge which he had acquired, and when he left the parish of Enford, no one felt his loss more acutely or lamented it more sincerely than I did.
Amongst the number of defaulters on this occasion was the parish of Enford, the farmers of which had used every means to raise the men; being, in the first place, loth to part with their money, and in the next, not relishing the disgrace of not having influence enough with their labourers to induce them to volunteer.
I did every thing that lay in my power to relieve the wants and sooth the sorrows of my poor neighbours in the parish of Enford; I took care that my own servants should not want any of the common necessaries of life, but numerous little comforts, and hitherto esteemed necessaries, were, however reluctantly, obliged to be dispensed with.
But my calling on the county members to explain their parliamentary conduct; and my doing this publicly, when, on the dissolution of Parliament, they offered themselves for the representation, had greatly added to the antipathy which the Tories had before evinced against me; and it was determined that I should be put down, by the lords of the soil, who surrounded my property at Enford.
My bailiff added, that if I would come to the meeting, on the following Sunday, which was the last intended to be held, and give in my name as their captain, the number, which was to be sixty, would be volunteered in an hour. Agreeable to this suggestion I drove to Enford on the following Sunday, and, as I was late I drove up to the church door in my curricle.
John Coward of Enford, with a strict injunction not to spare any pains to find me, and to hasten my return home.
Carrington, the curate, with whom I had passed so many pleasant hours, and from whom I had received so much valuable information, and such good and useful advice, was about to leave the vicarage of Enford, he having been offered, and accepted, the situation of tutor to the sons of the Earl of Berkley, and as this was the likely road to preferment, I rejoiced in his success, although I very much lamented his absence.
Within one month after I had been in this troop, the labourers of Enford and the adjoining parishes, smarting under the privations and sufferings they had to endure, in consequence of the rise in the price of provisions and the low rate of wages, which latter many of the farmers had decided to keep down to the old standard, and urged on also by those who ought to have known better, and who instead of secretly exciting their poorer neighbours to acts of desperation, ought to have come forward manfully to advocate their rights; the labourers, under the secret influence of a designing man or two, all struck their work, and, having assembled in a large body, they openly avowed their intention to pull down several mills, which were pointed out, as well as to burn the corn ricks of several obnoxious individuals.
The first men who pressed forward, and placed their names at the head of the list, were those very men whom, a few years before, I had caused to be prosecuted for a riot and rescue, at Netheravan. I never witnessed a more gratifying flattering scene than the village church-yard of Enford exhibited.
The student of Rural Rides will remember that here Cobbett saw an "acre of hares!" Fittleton is another unspoilt little village, and Enford, or Avonford, the next, has a fine church unavoidably much restored after having been struck by lightning early in the nineteenth century; the Norman piers remain.
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