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Thomas Cobbold F/Mc Married Married Married Married Married Married Married: 1766 Ann Savage Rust F/Mc | ||||||||
| William Rust Cobbold [CFT #71] Born: 1772 Died: 1841-Nov |
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| b Wilby, Suffolk d Ludgate Hill, London Extracts from 'Cobbold & Kin' by Clive Hodges, 2014. The harvests of 1829 and 1830 were particularly poor in southern England and the demands of the tithe on farmers particularly burdensome. Consequently, the pittance farmers were able to pay their workers reduced still further. Poverty-stricken labourers, often with the tacit support of their employers, resorted to direct action against both the new-fangled machinery, which could do the work of many men, and against a Church whose greed denied them a living wage. Historian John Owen Smith's meticulous research reveals that in Selborne, in east Hampshire, the target of this latter frustration was the village vicar, Reverend William Rust Cobbold. In 1813 William, the third son of 'Pious' Thomas Cobbold and Ann Rust was given the living at Selborne by Magdalen College, Oxford where he had studied and in whose gift the parish was. Evidence suggests that, even as a young man William was not over-blessed with humour and charm. William's irascible character seems not to have been improved by marriage to maria Mabbot, the year following his arrival at Selborne. From the day he arrived in the village he was almost instantly unpopular and regularly at odds with his vestry. Relations became so strained between vicar and vestry that the latter took to holding its meetings at the village's only public house, The Compasses, in the knowledge that William, who considered himself Selborne's only 'gentleman', would never cross the threshold of such a den of iniquity. As the harsh economic realities of the agricultural revolution began to hit Selborne, William's comfortable lifestyle, sustained by the excessive tithe, contrasted ever more sharply with the hand-to-mouth existence of many of his impoverished parishioners. Tensions between the already unpopular vicar and his flock mounted steadily until they erupted dramatically at 11 pm on Sunday, 12th of January 1823. The London Gazette reported that upon that evening..."Some evildisposed person or persons did wilfully and maliciously discharge a gun or pistol, loaded with shot unto the parlour window of the Reverend William Cobbold with intent to do him some bodily harm". It would have been remarkable had the wave of riots of the autumn of 1830 bypassed such a discontented parish. They did not. On 21st November rumours of impending disturbances reverberated around Selborne. William was made aware of the gathering storm by Hori Hale, a local farmer, and by Henry Collyer, a churchwarden, who were both seeking his advice in the event of rioting breaking out. The vicar's response was characteristically curt, advising the two men to do as they saw fit, but that he could do nothing. The following morning, at seven o'clock William encountered a small delegation of local farm labourers near the vicarage. Prominent among this group were Aaron Harding, a forty-one year old local man with nine children and Robert Holdaway, former landlord of The Compasses, who had been ousted from the public house following a concerted, obsessive campaign by William. Harding said to the vicar, 'We must have a touch of your tithes.' William argued that if his income was reduced he 'could not do the good he was in the habit of doing'. This rather pompous response was dismissed by Harding who demanded a reduction from six hundred pounds per annum to three hundred, which would allow the farmers to pay improved wages. William remained unmoved. He later reported that by nine o'clock the vicarage was besieged by 'a mob of three to four hundred' intent upon his submission to Harding's demand. William was not the only object of the mob's ire. John Harrison, master of Selborne's squalid workhouse, was similarly loathed owing to the appalling treatment dished out to those unfortunate enough to be in his 'care'. Harding informed William that the assembled mob would leave him to consider his proposal while it turned its attention to Harrison. Harrison, perhaps having been tipped off by the farmers was absent. The rioters ransacked the property, stripping the roof within fifteen minutes, destroying furniture and setting fires. William, hearing the commotion from the workhouse set off to investigate. He did not get far before being advised by those fleeing the riot to return to the vicarage 'as the mob were coming back and bent on mischief'. William, a corpulent man, lumbered back to the relative safety of his house before, sure enough, the mob, now numbering four hundred, assembled on the adjacent village green. Harding repeated his earlier demands, though in a more threatening manner. If William failed to comply, Harding warned, 'a rush' would be launched against him and his property. William had little option but to submit and he signed an agreement reducing the tithe to three hundred pounds. Eventually the rioters returned to The Compasses to celebrate with buckets of beer, initially paid for by William, but eventually charged to the Poor Rate. The following day, not content with victory in their own village, Holdaway led many of the rioters out of Selborne towards the neighbouring village of Headley, gathering recruits on the way. There, the Selborne mob, its number swelled to more than a thousand, joined forces with a smaller group from Headley, which had already 'negotiated' a reduction in the tithe from its own rector. The combined Selborne-Headley force then sacked the Headley workhouse, draining the wine cellar of its master, James Shoesmith, and causing damage estimated at one thousand pounds. Retribution was swift. The Selborne and Headley ringleaders were rounded up just two days later and brought to trial within a fortnight, together with more than three hundred other rioters from across Hampshire. Holdaway, Harding and seven others from Selborne and Headley were sentenced to transportation, setting sail for Australia in February 1831. Ultimately the disturbances achieved nothing whatsoever. Tithes returned to their earlier rates and wages for farm labourers remained pitiful. Selborne quickly returned to normal. Despite his narrow escape William Cobbold was simply unable to lighten his demeanour or adopt measures to begin mending the rifts between vicar and flock. Rather he acquired a formidable mastif to protect himself from his parishioners; the collar which adorned this beast's prodigiously thick neck resides in a glass case in the village church to this day. Selborne continued to be an unhappy corner of rural Hampshire and, unarguably, this mood was in no small measure set by the character of its vicar. William died aged sixty-eight in November 1841. While visiting London, he was struck by the Oxford Mail cart at the end of Ludgate Hill. His injuries were not immediately considered life-threatening; as The Gentleman's Magazine later reported, 'Being a very corpulent man, it was two days before it was discovered that his ribs were broken.' He died six days after the accident - a miserable end to a rather miserable life. |
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