In 1763, was born William Cobbett sometimes known as Peter Porcupine who tried to preserve the countryside in the face of the Industrial Revolution.

Cobbett was born in Farnham, Surrey on a small farm kept by his father. Now a pub. When aged twenty-one, Cobbett joined the army in the 54th Regiment of Foot  and, in due course, rose to the rank of sergeant major. He used the ample spare time available to soldiers in peacetime, to learn the rudiments of English grammar. After service in Canada, Cobbett reached the rank of sergeant but on his return to Portsmouth, charges were brought against him by corrupt officers, against whom he had gathered evidence of venality.

Although the charges were unsubstantiated, Cobbett was obliged to flee to France, which he found in the throes of revolution. After escaping to Philadelphia, Cobbett supported himself and his family by teaching English to French immigrants. Cobbett disliked the American Revolution and its consequences and began writing pamphlets criticising America, its constitution and its republic. His vitriolic journalism was not popular and gained him many enemies but he continued for six years, writing against the American system, until eventually he lost a libel suit and was ruined. A story by Cobbett in 1807 led to the use of 'red herring' .

Cobbett fled to London, where he founded a weekly journal, Political Register, in which he attacked the government’s conduct of the war against France. He also produced a journal containing continual verbatim reports of the proceedings of the House of Commons. This journal still exists and is now called Hansard. Cobbet particularly disliked the fact that commercial interests were dictating foreign policy, In 1816, when he denounced corruption in parliamentary elections, his enemies sought to have him arrested and he was obliged to leave for America.

In 1819, when Cobbett thought it safe to return home, he conceived the idea of repatriating the remains of Thomas Paine. According to some contemporary reports, Cobbett exhumed Paine’s body and shipped it to Liverpool.

O DE

O N

THE B  O  NES

O F THE

Im  m  o  rta l   TH O M   A S PA  INE,

NEW  L Y   TRA NSPORTED FROM      AMERIC A TO  ENGLAND

The No  Less Im- m  ortal

William   Cobbett, Esq.

Great Pain  for great  Trumpery.

1819

AND so, friend William, thou art safe returned from the Land of Liberty, where there is no such a thing as a Maid Margery to be found. If Madam is asked, Whether her Master or Mistress is at home, instead of dropping you a courtesy, as a simple English girl would do, she will stare thee in the face, and answer, She does not know who you mean; she has no Master or Mistress.

This is Liberty indeed!

And thou hast most patriotically brought us the Bones of Том Paine, to set us all to rights. Troth, I began to rub my hands when I heard the news.

Pry thee, canst not contrive to clap a few brains into the pericranium, and then we shall have, par nobile t'nitrum, a noble pair of counsellors to mend the Times, that, as Shakespeare say», are sadly out of joint.

But really, friend Cobbett, jesting apart, if I had given thee a dinner at my Garret in Grub Street, instead of at the Crown and Anchor, I would  have given thee a Glass of Rumbo.   There are my good neighbours Mrs. Mumpsimus, Mrs. Slipslop, Miss Biddy Mantrap, and Miss Nancy Placket.. But, hush ! here's my Landlady calls for her weekly rent

When she is gone, I will give thee the first six stanzas of a Ballad never printed on the Boston riot.

                                     

The bones were still among Cobbett's effects when he died over twenty years later.  There is no confirmed story about what happened to them after that, although down the years various people have claimed to own parts of Paine's remains such as his skull and right hand.

Cobbett followed later in another vessel, but when he arrived at Liverpool, he found to his dismay that the other ship had been lost at sea and Paine’s bones were at the bottom of the ocean.

During the 1820’s, Cobbett toured the country on horseback, writing descriptions of the countryside, hoping to draw attention to the plight of the agricultural workers, who were suffering great hardship due the effect of the Corn Laws. He published his writings in 1830 in book form under the name Rural Rides. This book gave an unrivalled picture of the land, in the period before wholesale agricultural reform swept the country in the mid nineteenth century. Rural Rides became famous, not only for its realistic, and often humorous, portrayal of the countryside, but as a historical document, giving an insight into the habits and customs of village life. The village way of life, as portrayed by Thomas Hardy, has more to do with Rural Rides than life in Hardy’s own time.

This, to my fancy, is a very nice country. It is continual hill and dell. Now and then a chain of hills higher than the rest, and these are downs or woods. To stand upon any of the hills and look around you, you almost think you see the ups and downs of sea in a heavy swell (as the sailors call it) after what they call a gale of wind. The undulations are endless, and the great variety in the height, breadth, length, and form of the little hills, has a very delightful effect

There were some very pretty girls, but ragged as colts and pale as ashes. The day was cold too, and frost hardly off the ground; and their blue arms and lips would have made any heart ache but that of a seat-seller or a loan-jobber. A little after passing by these poor things, whom I left. cursing, as I went, those who had brought them to this state, I came to a group of shabby houses upon a hill. While a boy was watering his horses, I asked the ostler the name of the place; and, as the old women say, "you might have knocked me down with a feather, "when he said, "Great Bedwin ."

I am now going to speak of clouds coming out of the sides of hills in exactly the same manner that you see smoke come out of a tobacco pipe, and rising up, with a wider and wider head, like the smoke from a tobacco-pipe, go to the top of the hill or over the hill, or very much above it, and then come over the valleys in rain.

In looking from a hill, over this valley, early in the morning, in November, it presented one of the most beautiful sights that my eyes ever beheld. It was a sea bordered with beautifully formed trees of endless variety of colours. As the hills formed the outsides of the sea, some of the trees showed only their tops; and, every now and then, a lofty tree growing in the sea itself, raised its head above the apparent waters.

Cobbett stood for Parliament on several occasions, but each time was rejected, on account of his unwillingness to offer voters the customary bribe. Eventually he was elected as MP for Oldham, in 1832, at 69 years of age. Sadly the nocturnal schedule of Parliament disturbed his wellbeing and hastened his death, from influenza. Cobbett died on 18th June 1835.  A reported 8,000 people attended his funeral.